From Garry Wills’ review of Jimmy Carter’s new book Faith, in the New York Times Book Review a couple weeks ago (posted online earlier):
In the ideology that the right thinks is a religion, the sin of sins is abortion, though that is not a subject mentioned in the Torah, or the Gospel, or the early church creeds and councils. Even the Catholic Church sees this not as a theological issue but as a matter of natural law, more a subject for philosophers, psychiatrists and scientists than for preachers as such. But science is evil in the rightists’ ideology: Scientists invent nonexistent things like evolution and global warming. The ideology also holds that guns are the very essence of government. Regulate guns in any way and we lose justice, liberty and comity, crushed by an instant tyranny. The ideology also insists that women should be subordinate to men, blacks to whites, and experts to “the common man.”
Carter was too religious to accept such pseudo-religion. He taught Bible classes all his adult life, with an emphasis on what is in Scripture rather than what is not — mainly, a regard for the poor, the rejected, the victims of prejudice and injustice.
(Backlogged on links to quote and comment on…)
