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Jimmy Carter was not our best president, but is he our worst ex-president? Joshua Muravchik marshalls the evidence for that conclusion in an essay in February’s Commentary magazine. Make sure to read the entire thing. What struck me in particular was Carter’s consistent anti-Israel-ism, for which Muravchik provides chapter and verse. Criticism of Israel is, of course, entirely within the bounds of acceptable political discourse, but according to Muravchik’s account, Carter’s criticism of Israel is both hypocritical (in that he does not voice similar criticisms of Arab abuses) and borderline anti-Semitic. And that, as Muravchik notes, is ironic: "It is sad that a President whose cardinal accomplishment was a peace accord between Israel and one of its neighbors should have devolved into such a seething enemy of Israel. It will be sadder still if this same man, whose other achievement was to elevate the cause of human rights, ends his career by helping to make anti-Semitism acceptable once again in American discourse."

Ted Haggard recently admitted to buying sex and meth from a gay prostitute. That might not make the news any other day, but Haggard is the president of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of New Life Community Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Or rather, he was. Now he is just another example of evangelical hypocrisy.

Surveying the damage Haggard has done to the cause of Christ, pastor and author Gordon MacDonald makes a few soul-searching remarks about how to proceed. Back in the 1980s, MacDonald himself committed adultery. His church discipled him, with help from leaders in the evangelical community, and after several years, he was able to resume ministry. Chastened by his experience, MacDonald has become very attuned to the ways in which pastors and other Christian leaders are tempted to go wrong. Here's a sample of his remarks:

I've spent more than a little time trying to understand how and why some men and women in all kinds of leadership get themselves into trouble, whether the issues be moral, financial, or the abuse of power and ego. I am no stranger to failure and public humiliation. From those terrible moments of twenty years ago in my own life I have come to believe that there is a deeper person in many of us who is not unlike an assassin. This deeper person (like a contentious board member) can be the source of attitudes and behaviors we normally stand against in our conscious being. But it seeks to destroy us and masses energies that—unrestrained—tempt us to do the very things we "believe against."

If you have been burned as deeply as I (and my loved ones) have, you never live a day without remembering that there is something within that, left unguarded, will go on the rampage. Wallace Hamilton once wrote, "Within each of us there is a herd of wild horses all wanting to run loose."

It seems to me that when people become leaders of outsized organizations and movements, when they become famous and their opinions are constantly sought by the media, we ought to begin to become cautious. The very drive that propels some leaders toward extraordinary levels of achievement is a drive that often keeps expanding even after reasonable goals and objectives have been achieved.

Like a river that breaks its levy, that drive often strays into areas of excitement and risk that can be dangerous and destructive. Sometimes the drive appears to be unstoppable.

This seems to have been the experience of the Older Testament David and his wandering eyes, Uzziah in his boredom, and Solomon with his insatiable hunger for wealth, wives, and horses. They seem to have been questing—addictively?—for more thrills or trying to meet deeper personal needs, and the normal ways that satisfy most people became inadequate for them.

 —–

Ever since the beginning of the Bush administration, I have worried over the tendency of certain Evangelical personalities to go public every time they visited the White House or had a phone conference with an administration official. I know it has wonderful fund-raising capabilities. And I know the temptation to ego-expansion when one feels that he has the ear of the President. But the result is that we are now part of an evangelical movement that is greatly compromised—identified in the eyes of the public as deep in the hip pockets of the Republican party and administration. My own belief? Our movement has been used.

There are hints that the movement—once cobbled together by Billy Graham and Harold Ockenga—is beginning to fragment because it is more identified by a political agenda that seems to be failing and less identified by a commitment to Jesus and his kingdom. Like it or not, we are pictured as those who support war, torture, and a go-it-alone (bullying) posture in international relationships. Any of us who travel internationally have tasted the global hostility toward our government and the suspicion that our President's policies reflect the real tenants of Evangelical faith.

And I might add that there is considerable disillusionment on the part of many of our Christian brothers/sisters in other countries who are mystified as to where American evangelicals are in all of this. Our movement may have its Supreme Court appointments, but it may also have compromised its historic center of Biblical faith. Is it time to let the larger public know that some larger-than-life evangelical personalities with radio and TV shows do not speak for all of us?

Pope Benedict XVI deliverd a speech at the University of Regensburg that has generated quite a bit of controversy in the Muslim world. (The text of the speech is here.)

The thesis of the speech, as far as I can tell, is a quote from the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palelogus, who was dialoguing with a Persian scholar about the differences between Christianity and Islam: "Not to act reasonably (with logos) is contrary to the nature of God."

In and of itself, the quote is uncontroversial, both within Catholic and Muslim theology. What has been controversial is the Pope's citation of another remark by Manuel II: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Various authorities in the Muslim world have demanded that the Pope apologize for his remarks. 

Consider these paragraphs from a story in The Guardian:

In Turkey, however, where the Pope is due to visit in November, the deputy leader of the ruling party said Benedict had "a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the middle ages". Salih Kapusuz added: "He is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini."

Representatives of the two million Turks in Germany, where the comments were made, also expressed deep annoyance. The head of the Turkish community, Kenan Kolat, said they were "very dangerous" and liable to misunderstanding.

In Beirut, Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, one of the world's top Shia Muslim clerics, said: "We demand that [the Pope] apologises personally, and not through [Vatican] sources, to all Muslims for such a wrong interpretation." An influential Iranian cleric branded his remarks "absurd". Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Tehran University: "The Pope has insulted Islam."

I only wish one of these Muslim authorities would show in which sense the Pope is wrong: (1) Is he wrong to assert that not to act reasonably is contrary to the nature of God? (2) Is he wrong to assert that using violence to spread one's religion is unreasonable? (3) Is he wrong that Mohammed actually commanded the use of the sword against infidels, or that the House of Islam spread in the early centuries through a vigorous practice of jihad?

From what I've read about Islam's history, I have concluded that Mohammed did in fact countenance violence and that Islam spread through jihad. So, in my opinion, the Pope's simply telling the truth. Rather than protesting the Pope's remarks (and acting violently against Palestinian Christians), why don't these Islamic authorities simply cite chapter and verse by way of an enlightened and peaceful refutation?

Not to do so simply proves the Pope's point and confirms the worst stereotypes about Islam.

UPDATE: Speaking of confirming Islam's worst stereotypes, it seems that Islamist gunmen in Mogadishu, Somalia have murdered a Catholic nun and her guard. Click here for details.

UPDATE 2: Peter Robinson provides some interesting background on Manuel II Palelogus here. He seemed to have a very extensive experience with Muslims, so one can hardly dismiss his remarks as misinformed. Wrong, perhaps, but not from a lack of textual knowledge and personal experience.

This weekend, Finland will host the 11th annual World Championship of Wife Carrying. For a description of this championship and a meditation on its possible meaning, check out William R. Mattox Jr.’s essay in today’s Opinion Journal. Here’s his conclusion:

Over the past half-century, our official gender debate has often forced people to choose between gender equality and gender-specific roles. You could be against misogyny. Or against androgyny. But you couldn’t be against both. At least not in the official debate.

But in our private lives–especially in those leisure pursuits that often (unconsciously) reveal our deepest hopes and aspirations–I get the impression that most couples somewhat paradoxically want both gender equality and gender-specific roles.

Perhaps this is why a high-powered lawyer friend of mine insists that her husband do the often-grimy “blue” jobs around the house (like grilling burgers on the Fourth of July) while she opts for the traditional “pink” household chores. Or why a recent University of Virginia study of more than 5,000 couples found that the happiest wives are those whose husbands earn at least two-thirds of the household income.

“Women today expect more help around the home and more emotional engagement from their husbands,” observes W. Bradford Wilcox, one of the study’s authors. “But they still want their husbands to be providers who give them financial security and freedom.”

In fact, curiously, this preference for husbands to carry the primary responsibility for providing household income could be found even among the most feminist-minded wives, according to the University of Virginia study.

Now, I realize that it is foolish to treat a wife-carrying competition with a great deal of seriousness. And I recognize that over-analyzing frivolous diversion can potentially threaten the carefree spirit that makes leisure play so enjoyable in the first place.

Nevertheless, I think the couples who annually gather in officially androgynous Finland for the World Championship of Wife-Carrying may be unintentionally making an important statement.

They may be expressing–in an admittedly peculiar manner–that they want to live in a world where husbands and wives are equals, but their roles aren’t completely interchangeable.

This Wednesday, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA cast two contradictory votes.

On the one hand, it voted 405-92 to maintain the church constitution’s “fidelity and chastity” rule for ordained ministers. In other words, Presbyterian pastors must be faithful in marriage and chaste in singleness. Like other mainline denominations, the PCUSA has also debated whether to sanction same-sex marriages, but so far, it has refused to do. Maintaining the fidelity and chastity rule strengthens this refusal.

On the other hand, the General Assembly also voted 298-221 to allow ordaining bodies within the denomination considerable leeway over how–or whether–to enforce this constitutional rule.

Mark D. Roberts is a Presbyterian pastor, and he has started a blogging series about this controversy on his website. Check it out!

Today’s Washington Post includes a article by Shankar Vedantam about the increasing social isolation of the average American.

A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about two.

One of the sociologists interviewed for the article attributed this isolation to commuting and television.

Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard and the author of “Bowling Alone,” a book about increasing social isolation in the United States, said the new study supports what he has been saying for years to skeptical audiences in the academy.

“For most of the 20th century, Americans were becoming more connected with family and friends, and there was more giving of blood and money, and all of those trend lines turn sharply in the middle ’60s and have gone in the other direction ever since,” he said.

Americans go on 60 percent fewer picnics today and families eat dinner together 40 percent less often compared with 1965, he said. They are less likely to meet at clubs or go bowling in groups. Putnam has estimated that every 10-minute increase in commutes makes it 10 percent less likely that people will establish and maintain close social ties.

Television is a big part of the problem, he contends. Whereas 5 percent of U.S. households in 1950 owned television sets, 95 percent did a decade later.

I’m sure commuting and television contribute to the problem of social isolation. But it seems to me that that a more fundamental problem is the parlous state of the American family. I’m sure the sociological data confirm the following three statements: (1) Fewer Americans marry now than in 1965. (2) Married couples have fewer children now than in 1965. And (3) more marriages end in divorce now than in 1965. In my opinion, nuclear and extended families provide are our first and most stable social networks. If they are declining in scope, decereasing in size, and ending in divorce, then so are our social networks.

I’m all for finding a job closer to home and turning off the TV. But if you really want to solve the problem of social isolation, it seems to me that you’ve got to address the problems of the American family first.

Back in the 1990s, I read Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance. I wasn’t impressed then, and I sincerely doubt that I’ll be impressed with his newly released An Inconvenient Truth, that is, if I ever get around to reading it. In today’s National Review Online, Iain Murray offers 25 reasons for my skepticism.

From Best of the Web Today comes this post, with which I agree:Â Â

Horrific news out of Iraq, where two U.S. soldiers, Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker, were either killed or captured and later killed in an enemy attack Friday. Their bodies were found Monday, CNN reports, “mutilated and booby-trapped”:

The bodies also had been desecrated and a visual identification was impossible–part of the reason DNA testing was being conducted to verify their identities, the sources said. . . . Not only were the bodies booby-trapped, but homemade bombs also lined the road leading to the victims, an apparent effort to complicate recovery efforts and target recovery teams, the sources said.

To most of us, this is a reminder of the depravity of our enemies. But blogress Jeralyn Merritt sees it as a reminder of America’s sins:Â

Violence begets violence. Inhumanity and cruelty bring more of the same. The whole world is watching and we don’t have the right to claim the moral high ground so long as those responsible for the abuses at Guantanamo and detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan go unpunished, the policies stand uncorrected and the Pentagon continues to prevent the media from learning the facts first-hand.

The always excitable Andrew Sullivan similarly laments “the cycle of depravity and defeat.” This rhetoric about “cycles” appears to reflect a theory of moral equivalence, but in fact it is something else. After all, if the two sides were morally equivalent, one could apply this reasoning in reverse–excusing, for example, the alleged massacre at Haditha on the ground that it was “provoked” by a bombing that killed a U.S. serviceman–and hey, violence begets violence. Â

But America’s critics never make this argument, and its defenders seldom do. That is because it is understood that America knows better. If it is true that U.S. Marines murdered civilians in cold blood at Haditha, the other side’s brutality does not excuse it. Only the enemy’s evil acts are thought to be explained away by ours.   Â

Implicit in the “cycle” theory, then, is the premise that the enemy is innocent–not in the sense of having done nothing wrong, but in the sense of not knowing any better. The enemy lacks the knowledge of good and evil–or, to put it in theological terms, he is free of original sin. Â

America ought to hold itself to a high moral standard, of course, but blaming the other side’s depraved acts on our own (real and imagined) moral imperfections is a dangerous form of vanity.