Former president Jimmy Carter has written yet another book -- his twentieth -- and he has hit the media circuit in order to promote his latest project. Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis represents the former president's return to familiar themes, even as it will add new layers of confusion concerning his actual beliefs and values.

Jimmy Carter makes one central argument in this new book, and that is that America (indeed civilization itself) is under attack by a sinister force. In effect, he argues that a new specter now haunts civilization -- the specter of Christian fundamentalism.

After tracing a series of crises faced by the United States and the larger world, Mr. Carter places the blame squarely upon conservative Christians: "The most important factor is that fundamentalists have become increasingly influential in both religion and government, and have managed to change the nuances and subtleties of historic debate into black-and-white rigidities and the personal derogation of those who dare to disagree. At the same time, these religious and political conservatives have melded their efforts, bridging the formerly respected separation of church and state." That's quite an argument, but those familiar with Jimmy Carter's mode of public engagement will understand that this is merely the expansion (and repetition) of what the former president has been saying ever since the American people denied him a second term in the Oval Office.

Those who would wish to take Jimmy Carter and his ideas seriously will find little assistance in this book. More than anything else, it represents a superficial complaint against conservative Christianity. He offers a caricature of conservative evangelicals, even as he redefines basic Christian doctrines in order to conform to his own worldview. He criticizes fundamentalists for simplistic and superficial convictions, while he offers superficial and simplistic assessments of urgent moral questions.

What exactly is Jimmy Carter against? The "fundamentalism" he so vehemently attacks is, according to his own definition, represented by movements that "almost invariably" are "led by authoritarian males who consider themselves to be superior to other and, within religious groups, have an overwhelming commitment to subjugate women and to dominate their fellow believers." Furthermore, Mr. Carter argues that "fundamentalists usually believe that the past is better than the present," even as they wish to retain "certain self-beneficial aspects of both their historic religious beliefs and of the modern world."

Beyond all this, Mr. Carter argues that fundamentalists "are militant in fighting against any challenge to their beliefs." Accordingly, fundamentalists are likely to be angry and abusive against those who oppose their goals.

Most interestingly, Mr. Carter argues that fundamentalists err when they "draw clear distinctions between themselves, as true believers, and others, convinced that they are right and anyone who contradicts them is ignorant and possibly evil." The most amazing aspect of that assertion is Mr. Carter's own moralism, both as president and as America's globe-trotting ex-president. Even in Our Endangered Values, Mr. Carter continues the pattern of arguing that others are wrong when they assert that he is wrong. But, according to his own emphatic assertion and self-analysis, he is right and others are simply wrong. One gains the quick impression that they are mostly wrong because they consider Mr. Carter to be wrong.