“I was really interested in the fact [that] someone burst on the national scene and, without any shame or apology, said he was a born-again Christian,” says Balmer. “I grew up as an evangelical, and what intrigued me was the how and why some evangelicals who put him in office turned against him so dramatically four years later. I set out to answer that question.” Balmer observes that while he knew Carter’s presidency did not go well and knew the standard answer was that the president did not seek a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, he felt that was not the whole story. “The book grew into a full-fledged biography,” he says. “It is the first biography of Carter to take his faith seriously and understand him in a historical context.” Research for the book included interviewing many people, including Carter himself. Balmer also did a lot of archival research at the Carter Center, the Gerald Ford Library, the Reagan Library, and the Bob Jones Library. “Carter is wonderful,” Balmer says. “He is a very gracious person. He is a fairly humble man—he has an ego like any politician—and was very cooperative and very sensitive to what I was asking.” Balmer visited Carter in his Plains, Georgia, Sunday school class and was invited to the Carter compound. Balmer’s general field is American Religious History, and he has written more than 12 books and worked on three documentaries for PBS. He taught for 27 years at Columbia University and came to Dartmouth College in 2012. He is an Episcopal priest. •
SPRING 2014 • HERE IN HANOVER
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