Transcripts For CSPAN2 The Life Of Jimmy Carter 20140714 : v

Historian and priest ronald examines the role religion plays. The report is that the progressive evangelicalism is a factor in winning the 1976 president ial election however the same evangelical population that supported the president s First Campaign in the searc sear him four years later in favor of Ronald Reagan. This is just over an hour. Welcome. Its a pleasure for me tonight to introduce randall who is the family professor of arts and sciences at dartmouth college. I have followed his career for a long time. His undergraduate work was done where my father was 18 and my brother attended that school at the same time and randy has turned into one of our great modern american historians. One of the things that makes him great is that he minds the resources of the president ial libraries. He has come here to the Carter Library and has gone through and found a very interesting document that other people have not seen before and he has done that at other president ial libraries. Combined with that he is also mind the resources of the archives on various evangelical organizations that have become involved in politics. And in addition to that on top of his Research Skills come he is an excellent writers ive had the privilege of reading many of his books including the one thats just come out. And i can tell you that as much as i followed the subjects and have done my own research there were many points i came across new information and said wow that really explains whats going on. So if you want to understand the difference in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s and in case youve forgotten there were very significant differences and you want to know about the sort of transition to the time when jimmy carter was president of the time when Ronald Reagan was president. If you want to understand the role of billy graham in american politics or the role of Jerry Falwell in american politics this is the book for you. I highly recommend it and as i say i read it personally and found it very fascinating and i think all of you will, too. Hearing some comments by the author himself to give you randy balmer. [applause] thank you for that kind introduction. Its wonderful to be back here. I did a lot of archival work at the Carter Center and the last time i was here the museum was being refurbished and i spent more than three hours this afternoon going to be exhibits the guards had to chase me away. I was engrossed by it to them and it was remarkable and i probably learned a few things that i didnt know before going through the museum. I want to talk about carter tonight obviously and tell you first of all my interest as indicated. I went to a Small College in northern illinois. I went to a small School Called Trinity College in 1970s and it was during my time as an undergraduate at the jimmy carter burst out of the natural scene. I had grown up as an evangelical and was attending an evangelical college and what was so remarkable to me is that he talked otalked an unabashedly at being a bornagain christian which is what we use to describe ourselves because we were always cowering when we did that. And carter wasnt coming jimmy carter came on the scene and said im a bornagain christian and this was for me and many other is a kind of wakeup call. Here was a man that was running for president and being taken seriously and who was able to talk about his faith in very unabashed and unapologetic ter terms. I followed his career rather closely over the years and resolved at some point i wanted to write a book about jimmy carter. I have to say ive been kind of brewing with this idea for probably at least two decades now. And over the last decade or so i hahave spent a good bit of time researching when my schedule permitted me to do that. The authors are always making claims for themselves which is not justified but it is i think the first biography of jimmy carter to take his faith seriously as a way of understanding both himself, his conduct and beyond. But also the very turbulent religious times in which he lived, and thats what i want to talk about a little today because i think that is the core of the book. I will do a few things in terms of background im sure many of you know the details already. Jimmy carter was born october 11924 in georgia and he is the first president ever born in the hospital because his mother was a kind of itinerant nurse and he was able to be born in a hospital for the first time in american history. Jimmy carter went to Plains High School and went on to the u. S. Naval academy which had been his dream ever since he was a boy. And then he was commissioned into the navy and accepted in the Nuclear Submarine program and then in 1953, his father James Earl Carter senior succumbed to his two pack a day habit and jimmy carter was granted leave to go back to plains and attend his fathers bedside. That was for him a regulatory moment because he saw what his fathers life that meant to so many people in planes, things he didnt know about his father. The time for example that he provided money to the family so they could buy new clothes to celebrate their daughters graduation from high school, something they couldnt have afforded to do other times. Otherwise the time he carried peoples mortgages when they were too poor and too strapped to do so the time that he had extended credit to various people in the family and jimmy carter returned to his posting in schenectady new york one thing to have a life much more like his father to do the kind of good things that his father had done in the community. The one dissent about the decision to leave the navy was Rosalynn Carter who was not amused by this development. Apparently as nearly as i can tell and there are people in the audience that can confirm or deny this, the car trip from schenectady new york to plains georgia was conducted in almost total silence between the two. Two very strongwilled people. And in this case, jimmy carter won that debate or that argument. But apparently the word divorce profit of at least once in the course of the transition. Carter of course takes over the business, not successful in the first year less than 20 200 ia profit for the carter business interests but then he quickly begins to build this into a growing concern. He also begins to look more broadly at service of the community including on the Sumter County school board and then on his 38th birthday october 31, 1962 he gets out of bed and puts on his sunday trousers rather than his work trousers and goes to america to fight over the Georgia State ste Senate Without having consulted rosalynn before doing so. When i asked mr. Carter about this about a year ago in planes he said i cant believe i did that. Because he wouldnt dream of making such a decision like that today without consulting his wife. But times are very different in 1962 and they are now in the 21st century. The election of course is contested because of the widespread corruption in the county. I forget the numbers but they are in the museum. There were Something Like 420 ballots that were cast in the county, and only 300 some registered voters and for some reason in fact the voters managed to vote in alphabetical order down to the second and third letters in their last names it was quite a remarkable day for georgia politics. Carter of course finds out about this and he is morally outraged. If you read turning point, which i have to say that is my Favorite Book of his that has moral outrage and righteous indignation and he had been robbed of his election and the campaign in january of 1963. He then runs for governor in 1966 and he runs what would qualify at the time as a racial moderate coming and he is beaten by apple people left their maddux who wa was mr. Reyes and george of course for his segregationist ways the day after Lyndon Johnson got the Civil Rights Act of 1964 leicester agreed in the restaurant with the ax handle threatening to drive them away or driving them away from eating in his restaurant because he didnt want a desegregation at restaurants. Of course he said use this to catapult himself to the governorship. He lost 22 pounds in that campaign because of his vigorous campaigning. He lost a lot of money, the family put a lot of money into that campaign and he returns to plains not really sure what hes going to do. There are family accounts that have him Walking Around the fields and just not knowing how to procee proceed into very ofth tears in his eyes and then of course the following year he has a famous encounter with his sister, a costal evangelist and he has a recommitment of his life to jesus but does seem to be very transformative. He speaks of that experience not as a bornagain experience that occurred back in 1935 at the planes that just church that as a rejuvenation of his faith. On the heels of that, jimmy carter goes on the two Mission Trips one to pennsylvania with other baptist laymen going around knocking on doors to tell people about jesus and again in Springfield Massachusetts in november of that year with a cubanamerican pastor from brooklyn to believe it is proclaimed brookland. This was again a very informative moment for jimmy carter. At the end of the week together carter asks the reverend you know, how why it is he is such a strong christian believer and why he is so effective dealing with other people. And he tells carter that the secret to a life of faith or being a good christian is two things. To love god and to love the person in front of you at any given time and he repeats this many times over the course of his life as being a formative moment. He never loses sight of the Georgia Statehouse in the 1970s he launches yet another campaign at this time. A jimmy carter does quote the segregationist vote in this campaign and the final days of the campaign he endorses leicester maddux and the governors of georgia could have succeeded themselves and carter endorsed him and seeks some of the segregationist endorsement. He is uneasy about that and there is good evidence for that. He tells the united fund you wont like my campaign but you will like my administration and there is some evidence i think that it is uncompetitive but i think that there is some evidence after that campaign carter apologizes to his primary opponent in the campaign for the conduct during the campaign, but that it was not exactly a sterling moment in the life of jimmy carter and i think that he realizes that and regrets it. He takes the office as the governor of virginia recalled 1971 and famously says that racial determination is over this is in part what elevates him in terms of the national profile. The New York Times picked up on that and the following day in the front page there is an article about the inauguration governor and what he said to the people of georgia. And within several weeks or actually a couple of months Time Magazine puts him on the cover as an example of a new south governor that is a postracial governor and i have to mention that article but carter is the one who is on the cover of Time Magazine. Carter almost immediately begins to think about running for president after being the governor of georgia only who knows maybe a few days before he begins looking towards the larger rise in. And in fact about the time within a day or two of George Mcgoverns cataclysmic loss to Richard Nixon in the president ial campaign of 1962. The advisors begin to talk about the rise to the presidency. At the end of 1973 or the beginning of 1974 the remarkable events took place within six months of each other. And here the narrative is going to urge a little bit more towards religion and faith. Over thanksgiving weekend in 1973 in Chicago Illinois at the ymca at the southside of chicago, 55 evangelicals meet at the ymca and hair out a document called the chicago declaration that evangelical social concern. This is remarkable because in the strain of evangelicalism that is offered in the document and by the way it is available on the web you can look at it for your self, it is part of what i call progressive evangelicalism that takes this mandate i believe from the new testament that talked about having peacemakers to turn the e other cheek and so forth, but also historically the antecedent was evangelicals in the 19th century into the early 20th centuries who are very much concerned about those on the margins of society. In the antebellum period in particular coming out of an event that historians call the second great awakening around the turn of the 19th century. There was an evangelical reform that really did appreciate American Society in profound ways over the course of the 19th century. They would be one of the People Associated with this probably the most important Person Associated in this movement. But this movement sought to Reform Society according to the norms. They were very much involved in abolitionism to try to eradicate slavery but they were also involved in such issues as Prison Reform and the whole idea of the penitentiary here he came into vote at this time. The idea of a place where a criminal could become penitent and then we hope constructively rejoin society in a much more salutary way. The issue of equal rights for women including Voting Rights which of course in the 19th century was a radical idea. Evangelicals were very much involved in the formation of the Common Schools or what we think about as Public Education today. As a way for those on the bottom run of society to aspire to a better life to try to aspire to move into the middle class. Other campaigns associated in the movement would be the campaign against doing which was inaugurated by the presbyterian minister in connecticut because they thought it was barbaric. There are peace crusades in the early part of the century and even a campaign of gun control. Imagine that in the early part of the 19th century. All of these were motivated and animated by evangelicals who were trying to make the world a better place. What i find unites all of these reform impulses is that they were directed towards those on the margins of society. Those that jesus called the least of these. This is a tradition within the american evangelicalism that most people dont know about but in the 19th century of the robust tradition that really did deserve to rehabilitate and reform in American Society in remarkable ways particularly the antebellum period but it moved over into the 20th century as well as people like William Jennings bryan who was an evangelical and threetime albeit failed democratic nominee for president who was very much conscious about womens rights and workers rights to organize and issues of this sort in the early part of the 20th century. So these people gathering in chicago in november of 1973 actually are trying to rehabilitate this tradition of the progressive evangelicalism which it kind of fallen away from various reasons which i would be happy to go into later but i dont want to spend time dealing with that right now. And this document contains statements about militarism, about the gap between rich and poor in American Society and of the scandathescandal that peopld hungry anywhere in the world come for women, which again in the early 1970s was something of a radical idea at least among many religious folks. Also, the lingering scourge of racism and they sought to address these sort of things so that is one events that took place as i said in november of 1973. Less than six months later in athens georgia there was an event at the university of georgia law School Called law day and as many of you know it is a tradition at the university of georgia law school. The law school invites dignitaries like the Supreme Court justices and attorneys general and the senators into various people to address. The keynote speaker for that address was the senator from massachusetts, and a and the und speaker at that event was the te governor of georgia, jimmy carter. In the morning kennedy gives his keynote address which would have to do with the impeachment proceedings that were unfolding against Richard Nixon and carter then addresses the gathering and begins by saying that there were two very important influences on his life in terms of thinkers and theologians. One key quotes very often throughout his life at least since his time as the governor of georgia. He said this ha the sad duty ofs is to establish justice in a sinful world and carters quoted that passage very often but he said the second formative influence on him was the greek and wellknown theologian doctor lynn whose song in particular and going to work on maggies farm no more was a very important kind of regulatory song. He goes on to talk about the fact that among the politicians and particularly lobbyists in washington, the stack the deck was stacked against ordinary folks. These people, corporation corpon particular head of the money to hire lobbyists who very much themselves were appointed to regulatory agencies regulating their own businesses and corporations and how that was fundamentally unfair. He talked also about georgias prison population which he had taken an interest in when he was governor of georgia and said that overwhelmingly the present division of georgia consisted of those that were poor and couldnt affo