President Jimmy Carter died today, December 29, after receiving more than a year of hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia. President Carter will be remembered for living out his devout Baptist faith through his pursuit of peace and support for human rights. as well as acts of service, such as building homes for Habitat for Humanity. When it came to following Jesus, Carter walked the walk.
Less well known, and particularly relevant to American politics today, is our 39th president’s commitment to the Baptist value of religious freedom. The most religious U.S. president in recent memory was also the most committed to the separation of church and state.
“I think prayer should be a private matter between a person and God,” then-President Carter told a group of newspaper editors in 1979 about Supreme Court rulings against compulsory prayers sponsored by government in public schools in 1962 and 1963. government should stay out of the affairs of prayer and let them be between a person and God and not let them become part of a school curriculum under tangible constraints, whether either a direct command to a child to pray or an embarrassing situation where the child would feel pressured to pray. He told editors that he agreed with the Supreme Court’s decisions “as a Baptist.”
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This is how Carter described his commitment in his 2010 autobiography A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety: “My religious faith had become a minor problem during the [1976] campaign, when I answered “yes” to a reporter’s question: “Are you a born again Christian?” Some journalists suggested that I was having visions or that I thought I was receiving daily instructions from Heaven. My traditional Baptist belief was that there should be a strict separation between church and state. I ended the long-standing practice of inviting Billy Graham and other prominent pastors to attend services at the White House and our family assumed the role of normal churchgoers at a church of our choosing.
Before returning to my home state of Texas, I was a member of the Carters’ chosen church, the First Baptist Church in the city of Washington, DC, and currently lead the organization – BJC (Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty). – who continues to advocate for religious freedom for all in the same spirit as Carter. BJC awarded Carter our JM Dawson Religious Freedom Award in 1996. We continue to strive to see a country where Americans like Carter, who hold deep theological convictions, can express themselves fully in their public lives, without ever impose their religious beliefs on others or others. using government to promote religion.
“I just view death as not being a threat,” Carter said in a 1976 interview. “It’s inevitable and I have the assurance of eternal life.” As we remember his life and mourn with his family, we are also concerned about threats to the separation of church and state – an American ideal that Carter championed throughout his life. Unfortunately, people who seem inclined toward a theocracy — like many of those who participated in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 — continue to organize and gain political power. The ultra-conservative majority of the United States Supreme Court is eroding the line between government and religion in case after case.
Carter was also concerned about the growing alliance between right-wing politics and conservative Christianity. “There is no doubt that the Christian right has allied itself with the more conservative elements of the Republican Party,” he said in a newspaper interview. Chronicle of San Francisco in 1997. “And there was a merging of their goals with respect to the separation of church and state. »
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In addition to his work at the Carter Center, Carter continued to play an active role in Baptist life. Although he publicly broke with the Southern Baptist Convention after the fundamentalist takeover of the denomination, Carter remained a deacon and taught Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, until 90 years. In 2007, he brought together Baptist leaders from across racial and theological divides in Baptist life, resulting in the New Baptist Covenant.
In an era of growing Christian nationalism, reinforced and manipulated by officials and candidates, more and more ties between government and religion following erroneous decisions by the United States Supreme Court, and rapid decline of church attendance, I hope we can pause for a moment while we recall the life of Jimmy Carter to reflect on how different the relationship between religion and government would be in the United States if our leaders Politicians followed Carter’s example.
Not only is our nation’s commitment to religious freedom for all, including those who want to be free, Since religion – would be strengthened, but I also believe that Christianity would flourish. Baptists believe that faith should be freely chosen and not forced on people by government. “We believe in the separation of church and state, that there should be no undue influence by state on church or religion, and vice versa,” Carter said during from a press conference as president in 1977.
We don’t need a theocracy to revive American Christianity; we need people to act like Jesus.
Thank you, my dear brother in Christ, for being the epitome of the faithful Christian in American public life. May we remember and be inspired by your life during these difficult days for our country and our faith.
