Jimmy Carter was the first American president to describe himself as “born again.” This is a somewhat quaint term for experiencing rebirth through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
It was a process, not a one-time experience, according to the former president, who spoke frequently and eloquently about his Christian faith throughout his life and was honored Thursday at a state funeral.
He wrote this in his 1996 book ‘Living Faith’: “The new birth did not happen when I was 11 years old.” “For me it was an evolutionary thing. Rather than a flash of light or a sudden vision of God speaking, it involved a series of steps that steadily brought me closer to Christ.”
Mr. Carter, a liberal Baptist from the South who focused on civil rights and equality, received strange treatment from the East Coast media when he arrived on the national scene. Newsweek published a cover story about his campaign in 1976 titled “Born Again!” Evangelical.”
And his comments about his faith have sometimes caused confusion. Like when he told Playboy interviewers that year that he had “committed adultery many times in my heart” and “looked lustfully at many women.” Sin in the Gospel of Matthew. (In the same extensive interview, he quotes the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr on the purpose of law and Paul Tillich on religion as a life-long pursuit of truth.)
Under the headline “Carter’s Comments on Sexual Causes,” The New York Times reported that Mr. Carter’s “worldly remarks” (some viewed his use of harsh language in his discussion of adultery) could be an issue in the election. I did it. However, he beat incumbent Gerald Ford two months later.
As president, Mr. Carter’s faith was not enough to endear him to the nascent Christian right. Prominent conservative pastors and radio and television hosts portrayed him as weak on defense and soft on what they described as threats to “family life.”
Conservatives may have shared Mr. Carter’s theology and biography as a Southern evangelical Christian, but he was not considered one of them. Instead, they united around Ronald Reagan, a divorced former actor who rarely attended church, and ousted him in the 1980 election.
Mr. Carter also wrestled with the religious traditions in which he was raised.
In 1976, rather than admit black worshipers, his Baptist church locked its doors and canceled Sunday services, a policy Mr. Carter opposed. His current church, Maranatha Baptist Church, was soon founded by unhappy members who wanted a more inclusive place of worship.
And in 1990, he distanced himself from the Southern Baptist Convention over its approach to women’s leadership.
But the Christian faith remained a defining theme for Carter, the longest-serving president in American history. He became known for his philanthropic work, including with the Christian housing organization Habitat for Humanity, and regularly drew crowds to his hometown of Plains, Ga., where he taught Sunday school classes for several years, especially after announcing his cancer diagnosis in 2015. .
