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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Yesterday, we started three days of short excerpts from former president Jimmy Carter's appearances on the show. This is day two. As most of you have heard, Carter has announced that he has entered hospice care, refusing any more medical treatment. He's 98 years old. No president of the United States has ever lived as long. President Carter came on the show four times between 2010 and 2015. I really enjoyed talking to him each of those times.

Yesterday's excerpts were about the passages of the Bible that Carter annotated. He's a religious Christian, as many of you know, and he had annotated a version of the Bible that was published in 2012 when we did that interview. In 2014, he came back on the show with a much harsher take on an aspect of religion. He wrote a book then called A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power. Now we also talked in that appearance about Vladimir Putin invading Crimea. You'll hear how eerily relevant his answer is to Putin's war on the rest of Ukraine today. He took listener calls. We'll replay one of those. They said it runs about seven minutes. We pick it up where I ask President Carter about the premise of the new book compared to his last one.

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Brian Lehrer: You and I have spoken about religion before in the context of your faith and your lifetime of teaching the Bible. Why point to religion now as a prime cause of what you call the most serious problem in the world?

President Jimmy Carter: Religion and violence are the two generic causes of the abuse of women and girls around the world. It's a misinterpretation of some of the scriptures that result in abuse of women and derogation of them in the eyes of men because they are convinced that women are inferior in the eyes of God. For religious people even that are Christians, for instance, we know that Jesus Christ in his ministry and his words, all the recorded words, he never discriminated against women. In fact, he exalted women far above what they had ever been previously in history.

Even in the New Testament where St. Paul began to write to the early churches, he wrote to individuals, sometimes little tiny churches that had 20 or 30 members, and some of his verses can be interpreted either way.

For the first three centuries in the Christian church at least, women played an equal role, as Paul points out in his 16th chapter of Acts. After that, the men who ran the church began to say, "Why don't we select other verses which show that women are not qualified to be priests or deacons in the church?"

Brian Lehrer: Can you give me an example of either of these verses on either side of this?

President Jimmy Carter: Well, yes. In fact, Paul said to one of the small churches that women should always never adorn themselves, that women should be silent in church, and there's even a verse that says women shouldn't teach men, but on the other hand, he said that in the eyes of God, men and women are equal, as are slaves and masters and are Jews and Gentiles. They are equal in the eyes of God. As I just mentioned in the 16th chapter that I mentioned, he lists about 25 people who were preeminent in leadership roles in the early church, and about half of them are women by name.

You can interpret it, either way, you want to if you have a preference. There are 36,000 verses, more or less, in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew text, and in the New Testament. You can interpret it any way you want to.

Brian Lehrer: Am I right that you and Mrs. Carter left your Christian denomination of 70 years over women's issues?

President Jimmy Carter: Yes. In the year 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention deviated from its previous policy and ordained that women being inferior, could not occupy the positions of pastor or deacon or chaplain. They also even ordained it in some of the seminaries, which is the higher education level of the Southern Baptist church, that women couldn't even teach boys in a classroom.

Brian Lehrer: It's not even just that they're not coming along as fast as some other denominations. It's that even in the post-feminist era if you will, they went the other way.

President Jimmy Carter: They went the other way in the year 2000. My wife and I left the Southern Baptist Convention. We now belong to a Baptist church where I teach Bible lessons every Sunday, as a matter of fact. We've had women pastors, and my wife is a deacon. The chairman of our board of deacons the last time was a woman, and we have a majority of deacons who are women. We treat men and women equally, which I believe that Jesus Christ always exemplified and promulgated as his policy.

Brian Lehrer: Kevin in Ridgewood, you're on WNYC with President Jimmy Carter. Hello.

Kelvin: Yes, hello.

President Jimmy Carter: Good morning, Kevin.

Kelvin: Hi, President Carter. My question is based upon your book, and it's based upon where does the solution begin? Because obviously it's not a denouncing of religion, but it's looking for a change in views and how scriptures are interpreted.

President Jimmy Carter: That's true, Kevin. I want to point out that in the book there are 23 different specific recommendations that I give to assuage the abuse of women all over the world. It ought to start in our own country because here we have a terrible abuse of women and girls. For instance, in our two most respected, I'd say, institutions, the university system and in our military, that's where sexual abuse is most prevalent and is least brought to the attention of authorities. Because a college president and the deans of a college, even Emory University where I teach, or Harvard or whatever, they don't want to have a reputation in their universities that sexual abuse is increasing.

Brian Lehrer: Speaking of macho men and sanctions for that matter, how do you see Vladimir Putin in historical terms? You were president during the Cold War. Is he the latest expression of centuries-long Russian expansionism, or how do you see Putin in historical terms?

President Jimmy Carter: Well, in a way I see him, similar to what I saw Brezhnev when I was president, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. I wanted to make certain that they didn't go any further. I immediately withdraw the American ambassador. I declared an embargo against Russia, Soviet Union then. I approved the action of the Congress and the Olympic Committee to withdraw from the Olympics, which is very important to them.

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Brian Lehrer: 1980 Olympics.

President Jimmy Carter: Yes, and recently after Putin. I also let Brezhnev know with a public statement that if he went any further than Afghanistan that we would take military action to stop that invasion. Then we began secretly to give weapons to the freedom fighters in Afghanistan, which eventually resulted in the Soviets having to withdraw under Gorbachev. Putin, I think, was dedicated to taking over Crimea. I don't think that any outside force could have prevented that taking place because most of the Korean premiers wanted to go into the Russian orbit, but I think that now he has to be stopped. I watched with great attention last week, I think, when he made a speech saying, "We're not going to do that in eastern Crimea."

Brian Lehrer: Eastern Ukraine.

President Jimmy Carter: In eastern Ukraine, but Crimea is going to be part of Russia no matter what anybody on the outside does. I think that what Putin is going to do now is try to woo the people in eastern Ukraine who are Russian-speaking and so forth with blandishments, with good trade, with loans and grants, easy traffic to and from Russia, and so forth. I think he's going to try to seduce them to believing that they will be better off in an alliance with Russia than the West.

Brian Lehrer: Some people say the current crisis is as much the West's fault for pushing NATO membership all the way to Russia's doorstep since the Cold War and boxing Russia in and making it feel defensive. Do you support that theory at all?

President Jimmy Carter: I can see the justification for the theory with which I don't agree. As I mentioned earlier, I believe that Putin was dedicated to taking Crimea no matter what happened. I don't think anything could have deterred him from doing so.

Brian Lehrer: Former President Jimmy Carter, here in 2014. We'll have one more day of excerpts from President Carter's appearances on the show tomorrow, and we'll also talk to Carter biographer Jonathan Alter tomorrow about Carter's legacy as president and after.

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