January 20, 2025
PLAINS, Ga. — Georgia’s most visible and influential citizen has died at age 100. Jimmy Carter lived a long, full, and meaningful life. He will be missed by people all over the world. His accomplishments since his presidency have perhaps been even more significant than what he accomplished while in the White House.
After his presidency, he established the Carter Center designed to promote and expand human rights, develop programs to prevent disease, advance economic development, and resolve conflicts. His success in meeting these objectives resulted in him being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Carter will be remembered as compassionate, a philanthropist, a man who loved his wife, Rosalynn, the one who facilitated the Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt, which paved the way for a season of goodwill in the Middle East.
The man who rose from being a peanut farmer to president will also be known for his work with Habitat for Humanity. The Washington Post stated that Carter helped build 4,390 homes
While I admired Jimmy Carter for many reasons, I did not always agree with him. However, I recognize that he was a great humanitarian and a gracious Southern gentleman, and a sincere Christian.
I had the privilege of preaching at the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, where the Carters are members, on Dec. 2, 2018. I had never been to a church at that time when the Secret Service screened the congregation before permitting them to enter the worship center. I joined a host of people who had packed the sanctuary to hear President Carter teach the Sunday School lesson. The text was from Isaiah 40, and he expounded the scripture for 45 minutes without looking at notes and I enjoyed gleaning from his knowledge.
The worship service followed the Sunday School hour in the same room, but there were obviously less people compelled to remain for my sermon than had come to hear the former president teach the lesson from God’s Word. However, the Carters were there on the second row and seemed to have a genuine interest in the sermon I preached from Philippians 2: 5-11.
Following the worship service, I was invited to go into the pastor’s study to visit with both Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. The only Georgian who has ever served as president of the United States was as engaging and as gracious as you could imagine. After about a 15-minute conversation, he said, "I really liked your sermon and it would be worth a good serving of peanut butter ice cream, but I think we are fresh out of it.”
The preaching experience in Plains was not the first time I had met the former president. In fact, I met him when he was the governor of Georgia. I was the pastor of a church in Gastonia, N.C., in the early 1970s and took a group of senior adults to Atlanta for a two-day excursion and one of the stops was Georgia’s capitol building.
Shortly after our arrival, I saw Gov. Carter coming down the stairs in the rotunda. I introduced myself and explained that we were in Atlanta to see some of the iconic sights. He stopped and spoke to our group for at least ten minutes and highlighted his salvation testimony. We are all impressed with his warmth and friendliness.
Southern Baptists may remember that in 2006 President Carter hosted a meeting at the Carter Center with 18 religious leaders representing millions of Baptists from across the country. The purpose of the gathering was to forge a new coalition of Baptists.
Carter and a significant number of moderate Baptists had chosen to leave the Southern Baptist Convention and establish a New Baptist Covenant because of their dissatisfaction with the direction of the SBC after the successful changes wrought by the Conservative Resurgence.
Two years later an estimated 9,000 Baptists representing a significant number of Baptist conventions gathered at the World Congress Center in Atlanta to hear several high-profile speakers at the “New Baptist Covenant Celebration.”
One of the speakers at the “Celebration” emphatically stated, “Unity is more important than doctrine.”
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, speaking at the “Celebration” and alluding to I Corinthians 13 stated, “The reason we must put love above everything else is because we see through a glass darkly and know in part. Therefore, it almost doesn’t matter whether the Bible is literally true, because we know in part. We see through a glass darkly. Humility is the order of the day. The reason we must love each other is because we might all be wrong.”
Jimmy Carter was a champion of unity, a commendable trait, but he faced a quandary. He asked, “Just how tolerant of doctrinal diversity are we willing to be and how many convictions are we willing to forfeit to achieve unity?”
I think our 39th president ultimately decided that unity at all costs is not worth it, and he chose to adhere to the truth rather than seek a hollow compromise. We can believe that Jimmy Carter was not saved by his works, but his good works were evidence of a faith in Christ that won for him a place in glory.
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J. Gerald Harris is a retired pastor and journalist who served as editor of The Christian Index for nearly two decades. You can reach him at gharris@loveliftedmehigher.org.
