Jimmy Carter The Baptist Christian
In Celebration of Our Former President and Fellow Baptist!
Jimmy Carter The Baptist Christian
I write to add my voice to all who are expressing appreciation for former President Jimmy Carter in commemoration of his life of sacrificial Christian service.
He is the only US president with whom I have had personal interactions. Mine were not deep and were spread over 35 years.
His Christ-like character was exemplary. His commitment to compassion ministry knew no bounds. His own spiritual walk was a model for the masses. His Bible teaching drew many to his church in Plains, GA.
I am among those who consider him the most outstanding former US President of my lifetime. His work in and through The Carter Center in Atlanta was phenomenal.
I also appreciated his regular compassionate ministry with Habitat for Humanity. His example and influence impacted the ministry of Habitat in amazing ways.
A Habitat Story
One Habitat story I heard bears mentioning. This is how I recall it.
Each summer Jimmy and Rosalynn would participate in a multiple week Habitat build. One summer it was in Charlotte, NC.
Five years later, Millard Fuller—who founded Habitat along with his wife—was speaking in the morning worship services of Providence Baptist Church in Charlotte.
The time between services allowed Fuller’s host to drive him through the Habitat-built community. As they approached the specific house that Jimmy and Rosalynn worked on, Fuller asked that they stop.
A little boy was playing in the yard. Fuller rolled down his window and spoke to the boy saying he had a question to ask him.
“Do you know who built this house?” said Fuller. He was wanting to see if the boy knew the former President had built it.
The boy replied, “My Momma said Jesus built this house!”
He had the right answer. It was the answer Jimmy Carter would want people to know.
The Carters in Pennsylvania
The first time I heard of Jimmy Carter was when he and Rosalynn came to Pennsylvania with a church missions group to do survey work for the planting of a new congregation. Word got around that on the team was a state senator from Georgia who had run for governor.
Their trip was to central Pennsylvania. My family lived in the Philadelphia area where my father was the executive director of the local Baptist association. We did not meet the Carters at this time.
First in Louisville
When Jimmy Carter ran for president, he made a trip to Louisville where my wife and I lived while I attended seminary and was pastor of an inner-city church.
My in-laws were in town, and my father-in-law and I went to the Carter rally. Only a couple of hundred people were there. We all got to shake his hand.
I was glad he became US President. I appreciated his Christian personhood. It did not hurt that he was also Baptist.
Second in Atlanta
The second time I saw Carter was in 2008 at the New Baptist Covenant event he put together with a coalition of Baptist leaders. I recall there were upwards to 20,000 people who attended one or more sessions. My wife and I went and truly enjoyed it.
It was among the finest Baptist gatherings I have attended during my life. What made it so special was it was like a homecoming. It was great to see so many people we knew. It had the depth of fellowship and unity lost in Southern Baptist annual meetings over the previous 20 years.
The Covenant event brought a few more opportunities to shake his hand and greet him.
I had not been involved in developing this event, but soon I received an invitation for the follow-up debriefing and planning session at The Carter Center.
The next year I became the General Secretary (read as executive director) of the North American Baptist Fellowship of the Baptist World Alliance. I began making periodic trips to Atlanta for group meetings with Carter regarding the New Baptist Covenant.
A Movement or a Moment?
The New Baptist Covenant was both a joy and a disappointment. The next half-dozen years clouded the positive impact of the New Baptist Covenant gathering. Not the greatness of the “moment” in 2008, but the stumbling of the “movement.”
I do not fault Jimmy Carter for this. Various circumstances surrounding the overall Baptist movement in the country derailed the effort. The ambition, hubris, and idealism of the people who did the organizing work for Carter made long-term success improbable.
A key issue Jimmy Allen, the chairperson for the New Baptist Covenant, raised at the end of the first gathering was whether this event was a “movement” or “moment”.
It was obvious the two “Jimmy’s” wanted it to be a movement highlighted every three years by another large group gathering. Spinning off various causes that would unite Baptists around missional efforts.
They knew it was never going to include Southern Baptists. But without Southern Baptists, many leaders of the other 34 Baptist denominations in the US and Canada did not support the movement.
One significant Baptist leader said at a meeting of our North American Baptist Fellowship that the 2008 gathering was a true Kairos experience. But the desire to repeat it was more of a Chronos calendar event pushed by the two “Jimmys”.
The President of the North American Baptist Fellowship and myself as General Secretary tried to negotiate through Jimmy Allen for a broader tent so a greater diversity of Baptists would participate.
We made a formal proposal which we understood was going to be taken to Carter for his consideration.
At our next meeting, Jimmy Allen spoke to an agenda very different than what we had presented. We stopped him and asked about our proposal. He said, “Oh, we are not going to do any of those things.”
That killed it. We could not even get him to say if he had talked with Carter about our proposal.
No one who could be convincing wanted to tell Carter the movement was dead. A remnant second gathering was held three or so years after the 2008 experience at a church in Atlanta.
Later an ongoing organization was formed with one or two key directives. One was racial reconciliation. Its approach was too narrow and did not receive broad-based support.
When a conversation developed around a third gathering, I could not get the North American Baptist Fellowship to support it. They voted down an invitation to be an official sponsor. The staff leader for the New Baptist Covenant was present and could not convince our group to support another gathering.
The passion for a “movement” was gone. The tent became too small.
Many member groups of the North American Baptist Fellowship were more conservative than Carter and the leaders of the New Baptist Covenant.
The 2008 New Baptist Covenant gathering was a “moment” and never became a viable “movement”.
Jimmy Carter should be commended for attempting something transformational for Baptists.
I know I appreciated it.
Copyright 2025 by George W. Bullard Jr. January 9, 2025 Edition
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