Member-only story
God Is Not Your Valet: Jimmy Carter’s Perspective on Faith
Don’t look at your faith as being transactional
As we drove home from an after-church lunch engagement yesterday with friends, my wife was checking social media on her phone (I was driving) and told me the sad news of Jimmy Carter’s passing.
Jimmy Carter is the first American president I really noticed. I was born during the Nixon administration. As such, I lived through Nixon’s resignation and Ford’s presidency — but remember neither. I didn’t take notice of politics until the 1976 election when our second grade held a mock election. I voted for Carter. I was one of only two students in our class to do so.
Carter’s presidency lasted from 1977 to 1981. A former naval officer and peanut farmer, Carter focused on human rights, energy reform, and brokering peace in the Middle East, most notably with the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt.
For his entire career, Carter stood for racial equality and the end of segregation in the South. When he was a rising political figure in Georgia, it was during a time when it wasn’t exactly popular for a white man to take a stand against racism and for civil rights.
But Carter was always driven by “Love your neighbor.”