@article{438876,
      recid = {438876},
      author = {Flippen, J. Brooks,},
      title = {Jimmy Carter, the politics of family, and the rise of the  religious right [electronic resource] /},
      publisher = {University of Georgia Press,},
      address = {Athens [Ga.] :},
      pages = {1 online resource (x, 445 p.) :},
      year = {2011},
      abstract = {As Jimmy Carter ascended to the presidency the heir  apparent to Democratic liberalism, he touted his background  as a born-again evangelical. Once in office, his faith  indeed helped form policy on a number of controversial  moral issues. By acknowledging certain behaviors as sinful  while insisting that they were private matters beyond  government interference, the author argues, Carter  unintentionally alienated both social liberals and  conservative Christians, thus ensuring that the debate over  these moral "family issues" acquired a new prominence in  public and political life.  The Carter era, according to  the author, stood at a fault line in American culture,  religion, and politics. In the wake of the 1960s, some  Americans worried that the traditional family faced a grave  crisis. This newly politicized constituency viewed secular  humanism in education, the recognition of reproductive  rights established by Roe v. Wade, feminism, and the  struggle for homosexual rights as evidence of cultural  decay and as a challenge to religious orthodoxy. Social  liberals viewed Carter's faith with skepticism and took  issue with his seeming unwillingness to build on recent  progressive victories. Ultimately, thar author argues,  conservative Christians emerged as the Religious Right and  were adopted into the Republican fold.  Examining Carter's  struggle to placate competing interests against the  backdrop of difficult foreign and domestic issues,  struggling economy, the stalled Strategic Arms Limitation  Talks, disputes in the Middle East, handover of the Panama  Canal, and the Iranian hostage crisis, the author shows how  a political dynamic was formed that continues to this day.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/438876},
}