Jimmy Carter responds to Witness editorial

I have been quite disturbed by your recent editorial concerning my book, Our Endangered Values [Dec. 8].

Click on image for related coverage

In no way did my text make any personal equation between Dr. Adrian Rogers, a great Christian leader, and the Ayatolla[h] Khomeini. My only inference was regarding my personal experiences with the rise of fundamentalism (carefully defined in the book) at about the same time in my life – approximately a quarter century ago – when our hostages were taken and the Southern Baptist Convention made a dramatic movement toward conservative leadership.

Although I did not include any names in the text, I feel personally culpable for any misinterpretation, such as in your editorial, of a lack of respect for Dr. Rogers. Although he and I had strong differences of opinion about Baptist policies, both in public statements and in our private conversations, I have never doubted his integrity or truthfulness. After expressing condolences to his widow the day after his untimely death, I added, “Adrian was a powerful and influential Christian leader, and I know how proud he made you all.”

The book text will be corrected in future editions, and I have sent a personal apology to Dr. Rogers’ family for any aspersions that were aroused against him because of my writing or comments.

Jimmy Carter
Atlanta, Ga.

Witness executive editor replies

I’m delighted that President Carter will be correcting future editions of Our Endangered Values and that he has apologized to the Rogers family. These were primary objectives of my editorial.

Although Carter told me in a Dec. 7 e-mail (after my Dec. 8 editorial had already gone to press) that the reference in the book was incorrect, the letter does not explicitly note the actual error.

Concerning the reference in his book to a meeting with the “newly elected” SBC president which occurred “a few weeks before our hostages were seized” (which was in 1979), Carter said in the Dec. 7 e-mail, “It was a meeting in the Oval Office in August 1980 and not 1979 when the newly elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention made the remark to me concerning secular humanism. It was not Adrian Rogers.”

Left unanswered by either his e-mail or letter is why President Carter repeated this claim in his book and in a Nov. 22 interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution even though Rogers disputed it in a private meeting with the president after Carter made the claim during the 2001 Cooperative Baptist Fellowship general assembly.

It’s astonishing that Carter claims I misinterpreted the comparison of Rogers (or the unnamed SBC president) to Khomeini, although this is the logical, obvious intention of Carter by linking his meeting with the SBC president and the Iran hostage crisis in a chapter on “The Rise of Religious Fundamentalism.”

James A. Smith Sr.
Executive Editor