JIMMY CARTER: I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THAT ...

... the left-leaning, former president, former Southeren Baptist, former peanut farmer, winner of the formerly noble Nobel Peace Prize owed Adrian Rogers an apology for dis-ing him in his last book, "Our Endangered Values."

Then again, why would I? I wouldn't read his book anyway! Or should I say, I would read any of his books for anything anyway. There that's better.

I figure one of the worst presidents in modern American history and a pathetically poor Sunday School teacher most likely has little to say of interest to me ... besides, there's far too much to hear from good people.

However, back to the apology:

Former President Jimmy Carter has agreed to correct future editions of his recently released book, “Our Endangered Values,” after James A. Smith Sr., executive editor of the Florida Baptist Witness newspaper, challenged his allegation about an Oval Office exchange with Adrian Rogers. [...]

The question arose from an excerpt on page 32 of Carter’s book which reads:

“A few weeks before our hostages were seized in Iran, the newly elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention came to the Oval Office to visit me. This had been a routine ceremony for many years, especially when the president of the United States happened to be a Baptist.”

“I congratulated him on his new position,” Carter continued in the book, “and we spent a few minutes exchanging courtesies. As he and his wife were leaving, he said, ‘We are praying, Mr. President, that you will abandon secular humanism as your religion.’ This was a shock to me. I considered myself to be a loyal and traditional Baptist, and had no idea what he meant.”

According to Rogers and his wife Joyce this exchange never occured. Rogers, in an interview with a Baptist editor, voiced a different view of the exchange ...

“... Rogers said he told Carter, ‘Mr. President, it is a heady thing for a Baptist preacher to be in the Oval Office’ and ‘if I had had the cheek or temerity to say that, I will guarantee you I would have remembered it,’” [the editor] recounted.

“Rogers continued, recalling his statement to Carter, ‘I may have said going out the door, ‘We need to turn this nation back from secular humanism, back to its roots.’’ He said further to Carter, ‘Now, unless you think I am a sheer fool, insane or [a] liar, I can tell you emphatically I didn’t say it. Had I said it, it would have been so etched in my consciousness.’”

I doubt the President would deliberately exaggerate the exchange to sell books; he continues to insist the exchange took place. He has apologized to the Rogers family because Carter is a super swell guy and he'd do the right thing, regardless. And he's promised to edit the exchange out of all future printings of his book.

RELATED POST: Adrian Rodgers

Full story >>>>>

Adrian Rogers; Fundamentalism; Jimmy Carter; Secular Humanism; Southern Baptists