A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety by Jimmy Carter

Author:Jimmy Carter [Carter, Jimmy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Biograpjy & Autobiography, Nonfiction, Presidents & Heads of State, Retail
ISBN: 9781501115639
Amazon: 1501115634
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2015-07-07T04:00:00+00:00

Worship, and Foreign Leaders

My religious faith had become a minor issue during the campaign, when I responded “yes” to a reporter’s question, “Are you a born-again Christian?” Some reporters implied that I was having visions or thought I received daily instructions from heaven. My traditional Baptist belief was that there should be strict separation between church and state. I ended the long-standing practice of inviting Billy Graham and other prominent pastors to have services in the White House, and our family assumed the role of normal worshipers in a church of our choice. When I became governor, Rosalynn and I decided to join the Baptist congregation nearest our new home, and this same decision brought us into membership in First Baptist Church, just a few blocks from the White House. Our Sunday school teacher, Fred Gregg, asked me to teach a Bible lesson on occasion, and I decided to do so a few times each year if it could be done without prior notice or publicity. Here is a March 20, 1977, excerpt from my diary:

“I taught Sunday school and broached the idea to the Sunday school . . . class that Baptists and other evangelical groups ought to adopt the same policy that the Mormon Church has: to send large numbers of young men and women volunteers around the world for a year or two of service to the church, working with missionaries. I have an inclination to pursue this more in the future when I have time to put my thoughts together.”

Later, I proposed this to Jimmy Allen, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the idea was adopted in 1978 as Bold Mission Thrust. Unfortunately, it was never fully implemented after the convention became divided over a struggle for power and control between traditional and more conservative leaders.

At Camp David there was no chapel at the time, and worship services were held in a small room normally used for motion pictures. I invited the chaplains at nearby army bases to lead our Sunday services, and they sometimes brought tape recordings of their choirs to augment our voices in singing hymns. We used the same room, rapidly modified, for worship services on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to accommodate the Muslims, Jews, and Christians who were assembled for the Middle East peace talks. A small chapel was built with donated funds while George H. W. Bush was president.

Several of the leaders I met as president were interested in my Christian faith. Except for a summit meeting in London, my first foreign visit in 1977 was to Warsaw, Poland, which was then dominated by the Soviet Union. We were received graciously by First Secretary Edward Gierek, who served as the national leader under his masters in Moscow. After several hours of discussing official issues in the presence of our staffs, he asked if he could speak to me in his private office. He said that he espoused atheism as a Communist, but that his mother was a Christian and had recently visited the Vatican.

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