Talk Examines Faith, Politics and Jimmy Carter

Randall Balmer, a prize-winning historian and Emmy Award nominee, explores the turbulent religious context of Jimmy Carter's presidency on Monday, March 17, at 3:30 p.m. at Westmont's Hieronymus Lounge in Kerrwood Hall. The Erasmus Society Lecture, "His Own Received Him Not: Jimmy Carter, the Religious Right, and the Eclipse of Progressive Evangelicalism," is free and open to the public. The Westmont Department of History and the Gaede Institute for the Liberal Arts sponsor the talk.

Jimmy Carter rode to the presidency on the confluence of two streams: his reputation as a New South governor and a brief revival of progressive evangelicalism in the mid-1970s. "After helping propel him to office, however, American evangelicals turned dramatically against Carter four years later, sending him to a stinging defeat," Balmer says.

Balmer, an Episcopal priest, has written more than a dozen books, including "The Making of Evangelicalism: From Revivalism to Politics and Beyond" and "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture," the fifth edition of which will be released this summer, the 25th anniversary of the book’s publication. His commentaries on religion in America have appeared in newspapers throughout the country, including the Des Moines Register, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Los Angeles Times, the Anchorage Daily News and the New York Times.

His newest book, "Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter," will be released in May.