It’s a good night. I just came back from Borders, it’s snowing outside enough that I have an excuse to practice a little sloth tomorrow morning, I’m watching Magnolia, and I just read Shawn Macomber deliver an eloquent pummeling to my former least favorite former president.

Once again proving why he’s one of my favorite writers, Macomber gives us a great examination of how Carter’s religious faith isn’t, perhaps, what you might have thought it was.

Carter places the miracles of government bureaucracy ahead of those of his own church, yet still wonders why the largest single contingent of Baptists in the country is skeptical of his New Covenant. “I treat theological arguments gingerly but am bolder when it comes to connecting my religious beliefs with life and current events in the world, even when the issues are controversial,” Carter writes in Living Faith. In other words, the details of scripture are uninteresting until they offer a rationale for Carter’s left-wing predilections or somehow justify the four years of tribulation known as his presidency.

Recently, another writer who I admire said something about a sentence that I had written ("Wish I’d had that line for Will in PC.") and it was the kind of compliment that made me feel about as good as you might imagine. I can’t deliver the same kind of compliment--I don’t have the same kind of professional standing as the gentleman who said those words to me--but let me say that I wish I had written that paragraph, and very specifically that last sentence, myself. It pulls together so much of my impression of Carter into one tiny package that I can’t imagine how I would improve upon it.

Go read the rest. Great stuff.