\n\the biblical book of Daniel tells a tale from the times of the Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadnezzar the Great. Babylon today is a pile of ruins about 50
\n\tmiles south of Baghdad. But about 600 B.C. Babylon was the center of the world and its largest kingdom; founded by force of arms and culture. On the plain
\n\tof Dura just outside the city), Nebuchadnezzar erected a 90-foot golden statue of a figure he had seen in a dream. Daniel, a Jewish captive from the
\n\tBabylonian sack of Jerusalem, gave a meaning to the dream, which had eluded the king\u2019s soothsayers. Daniel told the king that the figure, divided into
\n\tdifferent metallic parts, was a succession of world powers—and that he, Nebuchadnezzar, was the golden head of the edifice.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tTherefore the statue: transformed by the king\u2019s hubris into a head-to-toe golden monument to himself. He had the object erected on the Plain of Dura. His
\n\tidea was to require all his subjects to worship it. It was a clever idea to a point. The empire was made up of many peoples and many gods—what better way
\n\tto unite it than to introduce a common deity, the god king? Worship of the state would supersede all other loyalties.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tIt is interesting that about 160 miles south of Atlanta, Georgia, there is another Plains of Dura, the original name of the little town of Plains, home to
\n\t776 people, including the thirty-ninth president of the United States President Jimmy Carter. There have been many types of president of the United States,
\n\tPresident George Washington, while Masonically religious, governed in a distant, secular manner. Thomas Jefferson had a healthy respect for faith, but his
\n\tcontemporary reputation was that of an atheist. Another type was Andrew Jackson, frontier swashbuckler who was more likely to duel an opponent than try
\n\tChristian persuasion. Abraham Lincoln played the religion card very well without revealing much of his own religious identity. In many ways Jimmy Carter
\n\twas the first really religious president: willing to discuss the nature of personal temptation and sin, always wearing his Baptist identity on his
\n\tsleeve—but keeping his personal faith at a good First Amendment remove from the job. It is worth remembering that the U.S. road to Baghdad, Beirut, and the
\n\ttango with Isis began during Carter\u2019s tenure with the fall of Iran to Islamic rule and the U.S. hostage situation. But Carter knew better than to insert a
\n\tnarrow or particular religious viewpoint into America\u2019s public persona. One can only wonder how the history book narrative would have run if the Islamic
\n\tRepublic of Iran had opted to release the hostages before the election and not after, as they were asked to do by the Reagan campaign team. But there was
\n\tno chance for Carter to erect any sort of golden figure for his tenure. It was too humble a faith vision for that.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tA few days ago I drove down to Plains, Georgia, in hopes of catching Jimmy Carter teach his regular Sunday schoolclass at the Maranatha Baptist Church.
\n\tFor years I had intended to make the pilgrimage, and news that the former president had been diagnosed with brain and liver cancer made me think that I had
\n\tput it off for too late. Then came the follow-up news that the treatment appeared to have stopped the disease in its tracks, and I knew it was now or
\n\tnever. After Saturday Sabbath religious liberty meetings in Atlanta I drove down to nearby Amercus, Georgia, for a short night\u2019s sleep and was up early and
\n\tat the Maranatha Baptist Church by 4:30 in order to get ahead of the lines that quickly ensure the little church will be overfilled. I ended up first in
\n\tline, and by the time the president made his 10:00 a.m. entrance I was on the front seat at the end he favored for addressing the class.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThis current presidential campaign has indeed featured religious issues and identity themes, even if a little more obscurely than some years. I always get
\n\tthe impression that there is a voter calculus to all the positions taken, and rarely do I sense personal investiture. But sitting there in front of an aged
\n\tpresident as he held forth, without notes, on a Bible lesson, I was struck by how authentic this surely is for him. Even now the president and his wife,
\n\tRosalynn, travel a lot with the Carter Center and Habitat for Humanity projects. But whenever he is in town, Jimmy Carter takes the lesson. In fact, I
\n\tlooked at his schedule for March, April, and May and noted that he is on post for 10 weeks in total.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tI sat and absorbed the lesson from this sage who at one point said in passing, \u201cI was president once,\u201d as a sort of apology, and thought that this is part
\n\tof true greatness. Not the Nebuchadnezzar boasting. No gold-plated statue in that little church—we were told that carpenter Carter had carved and donated
\n\tthe wooden cross and wooden offering plates, which, I noted, are carved with the initials \u201cJ.C.\u201d\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tWhat was the issue back those many years on the Babylonian plain of Dura? It must have been easy for most to have bowed before the symbol of power and \u201cpay
\n\tmeet adoration to my household gods,\u201d as Tennyson puts it in another ancient setting. State-sponsored religion is an easy take for most, because they want
\n\tto appear loyal and it can be easily excused as just a sort of ceremonial deism. But as always, there is the issue of coercion lurking behind the call to
\n\tworship and obedience. Coercion is the litmus test for bad governance and the marker for a lack of religious freedom, even if the coercion is toward \u201cgood\u201d
\n\tmorals.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tYou probably remember the story from Sunday school days or some childish retelling of the great confrontation between three captive \u201cboys\u201d and the
\n\tautocratic king Nebuchadnezzar. All the others in the crowd bowed at the signal to worship. Three stayed on their feet. On pain of death they said, \u201cWe
\n\twill not serve thy Gods.\u201d Of course the king was \u201cfull of fury,\u201d to put it mildly. He ordered them thrown into a fiery furnace. The only mystery in the
\n\tstory is why a king who had been given such a supernatural dream of passing kingdoms and its interpretation should have been so shocked to discover the
\n\tthree men unharmed in the fire; and with them \u201ca fourth who looked like one of the gods.\u201d (Daniel 3:25, NIV).*\n\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
he biblical book of Daniel tells a tale from the times of the Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadnezzar the Great. Babylon today is a pile of ruins about 50 miles south of Baghdad. But about 600 B.C. Babylon was the center of the world and its largest kingdom; founded by force of arms and culture. On<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[144],"class_list":["post-6357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-may-june-2016","tag-may-june-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}