AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Almost every obit for former President Jimmy Carter mentions that he was a person of deep faith. He was a self-described born-again evangelical Christian, but his relationship to the church and to other evangelicals was complicated. Joining us now to talk about Carter's faith is NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose. Hey, Jason.
JASON DEROSE, BYLINE: Hello.
CHANG: So I want to start with that phrase born-again evangelical. I mean, had there ever been a president before Carter who described himself that way?
DEROSE: No, there hadn't. Jimmy Carter, in fact, came onto the national political scene in the mid-1970s when evangelicals were only just starting to go public. So broader society hadn't, you know, really heard about them - among other things that they believe in the need to personally accept Jesus as their savior. In fact, in 1976, on this very program, we interviewed religion scholar Martin Marty about what it might mean that an incoming president, Jimmy Carter, was an evangelical and a Southern Baptist.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
MARTIN MARTY: The Southern Baptist tradition at its best is one that doesn't want merging of church and state. And all you ever have to do to someone like Carter is to remind him that he might be tilting that way, and he would back off very fast.
DEROSE: And Ailsa, that description shows how evangelical views have shifted over the last half century.
CHANG: That is so interesting because the thing is, a lot of people think about Carter as a progressive - right? - like a progressive Democrat, which is a label you don't usually hear aligned with the word evangelical these days. So what's going on there?
DEROSE: Well, you might say that the church changed more than Carter did. The alliance between conservative Protestants and the Republican Party was taking shape during the 1970s. That's when evangelicals really took up public opposition to abortion and LGBTQ rights, and white Southern conservatives continued to oppose racial integration. By the time he was running for reelection in 1980, prominent evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell were not endorsing Carter but rather his opponent Ronald Reagan.
CHANG: So the church that Carter was raised in was changing under his feet. How did he respond to that?
DEROSE: Well, politically, he holds true to his beliefs about the separation of church and state. But personally, he eventually felt he couldn't worship in Southern Baptist congregations as they grew more and more conservative. So much so that, you know, Carter famously left the denomination that he loved in the year 2000 because it said women shouldn't lead congregations. But he never stopped trying to have relationships with Southern Baptists and evangelicals in general. And his politics continued to be progressive, even in recent years. Reverend Paul Raushenbush, who heads the Interfaith Alliance, says he once asked Carter about his views on same-sex marriage.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH: And he said, I don't see Jesus saying anything about that, and I would not say that love between two people would ever be a sin.
CHANG: So it sounds like Carter was a very different kind of evangelical than what many people think of when we use that word today, right? Like, what do you think that says about the state of evangelical Christianity these days?
DEROSE: Well, I put that question to Amanda Tyler of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. She says it's about the relationship to power and the emergence of Christian nationalism within some evangelical circles.
AMANDA TYLER: I think the example of President Carter shows us that people of faith can hold public office, of course, but can do so in ways in which they don't try to impose their religious beliefs on everyone else.
DEROSE: And Tyler says Carter understood Christian nationalism to be harmful to both democracy and Christianity itself.
CHANG: So Jason, as someone who covers belief and faith, what do you think Carter's religious legacy is?
DEROSE: Well, Jimmy Carter said that he viewed Christianity as an opportunity to study the life of Jesus and say, this is the person I want to be. He lived a life of service to others, whether serving as governor or president of the United States or a Sunday school teacher, which he did well into his 90s, or building houses for Habitat for Humanity or as an election monitor in emerging democracies. So I'd say his religious legacy is that he spent his life figuring out how to best serve his neighbors.
CHANG: That is NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose. Thank you so much, Jason.
DEROSE: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
