:A Tale of Two Baptists Jimmy ﺳﻢ؛ﻣﻮﺀand Jerry Falwell ل-
Brooks Flippen
Brooks Flippen is professor ofhistory at Southeastern ./ Oklahoma State University in Durant, Oklahoma .
At first glance they seemed ؛٠ .have so much in common Both President Jimmy Carter and evangelist Jerry Falwell were products ofthe early twentieth-century American rural South, both bom to devout mothers who stressed strict adherence ؛٠ their common Baptist faith. Both .stressed the value offamily I had a very developed sense of fam ily th at eentered around church “ C arter recalled. The family, Falwell concurred, “is God's activities basic ,״ u n it in society.*״ W hile both professed evangelicals, to be “bCoarter rn again and ״ Falwell em erged b itte r political enem ies, th eir sim ilarities paling as th eir policy differences fueled increasingly public disputes. T he devolution in the relationship of these two m en, sharing so m uch in com m on, tells -m u ch about how the libertine culture o fth e post-World War 11 age exacer bated ten sio n s w ithin the A m erican Baptist com m unity, proving a wedge to divide fu rth e r a faith already know n for its divisions. Fem inism , legal abortion, and d em ands for gay and lesbian civil rig h ts—am ong other ,issu es—ap peared a direct challenge to the traditional n u clear fam ily a n d as such, fueled a m ore doctrinaire, rigid, and politically active cohort of .B aptists De-em phasizing the autonom y of individual conscience so crucial historically to Baptists, these new activists m ade the C arter years an