Faith by Jimmy Carter

Author:Jimmy Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

– SIX –

Challenges to Faith

The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world. —Reinhold Niebuhr

The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children. —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Racism is man’s gravest threat to man—the maximum hatred for a minimum of reason. —Abraham Joshua Heschel

It is likely that many people have been discouraged and frustrated in every historical era, with some always believing that “these are the most troubling and disappointing of times.” I have lived through two such periods in my own life: the Great Depression and World War II. I was five years old when the first of these global tragedies began with the stock market crash of 1929 in the United States, when the world’s total income fell by an estimated 15 percent and at least one-fourth of the workers in the United States were unemployed. The dirt road in front of our house, U.S. Highway 280, ran from Savannah on the east coast to Columbus, and then divided to go south through Montgomery and on to Los Angeles and north through Birmingham to San Francisco. Our family had a vivid reminder of the extent of this American economic tragedy as dozens of “hoboes” walked by our home each day, most of them workers who had lost their jobs in Northern states and had come south to stay warm during the cold months and to seek food or especially any kind of job. Many of the family groups included women and children. Other transients passed our house riding in empty boxcars on the trains of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, whose owners broke their normal rules to accommodate the plight of so many fellow citizens who needed a train ride. My mother was especially gracious to those who came to our door for help.

Our family continued to enjoy a comfortable home, but we shared the general economic burden, as the prices of our crops and livestock fell about 60 percent. Land also became very cheap. I remember when my father refused a wealthy city quail hunter’s offer of the price of a two-hundred-acre farm for one of our best bird dogs. My parents and our neighbors were economically depressed, but our local school was still a source of pride and the dozen or so churches in the Plains community of five hundred people were filled with faithful worshippers. My impression was that our religious faith and gracious dependence on one another reached a high point.

The United States was making a strong economic recovery when World War II began, but the adverse impact of the Great Depression years was still being felt in many countries. Our naval forces in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, were attacked on December 7, 1941, and the United States entered the war as an active participant. I was a new high school graduate, and my only close family member affected by the new conflict was my hero and favorite uncle, Tom Gordy. He was taken prisoner when Japanese forces overran the island of Guam just three days after the Pearl Harbor attack.

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