President Jimmy Carter died Dec. 29, 2024, at the age of 100. For the American nation, his death could not have come at a more teachable moment given that the proceedings of his state funeral occurred barely two weeks before the 2025 presidential inauguration, 48 years after his own.
The juxtaposition of those events seems ironic, to say the least.
Carter lived under hospice care for nearly two years; in his fragile condition he could have died at any time. As it happened, death claimed him at the end of a divisive political process in which the republic Carter loved and served was and remains torn apart by constitutional, cultural and, yes, even religious discord.
Bill Leonard
From his lying in state at the Carter Center in Atlanta and in the U.S. Capitol, to his state funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral, Carter’s passing bears the marks of a providential moment, a final public opportunity to remind the nation of his distinctive approach, dare we say witness, to the nature of life, faith and democracy. His century-long life now seems in dramatic contrast from our present cultural context.
At every turn, the rituals for sending the peanut farmer-naval officer-governor-Sunday school teacher-Habitat for Humanity builder-global health advocate-U.S. president toward eternity exuded an abiding spirituality consistent with that personified in the “man from Plains.” At the Carter Center, family eulogies often felt like faith-based “testimonies” of humor, insight and grace intensified by the Morehouse College Glee Club’s ethereal hymnody.
That spirituality extended to Carter’s arrival in Washington with an event that led me to post the following on Facebook: “I’m watching as they place President Jimmy Carter’s coffin on a horsedrawn catafalque to take it to the Capitol building, where he will lie in state. The military band is playing ‘Just as I Am.’ I am overwhelmed.”
“At the Capitol, Carter’s lying in state momentarily united members of a desperately divided Congress.”
Since that posting Jan. 7, some 365 individuals have responded with Facebook symbols of like, love or care.
At the Capitol, Carter’s lying in state momentarily united members of a desperately divided Congress, with remarks by House Speaker Mike Johnson and Vice President Kamala Harris, both of whom rose to the occasion. Again, Carter’s death and related ceremonies provided brief respite from the all-too-normal rancor of congressional relations.
Carter’s funeral at the National Cathedral, the traditional site of such memorials, was a spiritual feast of Scripture, inspiring music from a magnificent choir, soloist Phyllis Adams’ moving rendition of “Amazing Grace,” and the Carter-selected John Lennon song “Imagine,” performed by Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood.
Eulogies plumbed the depths of Carter’s life, work and personhood, underscoring the profound difference between the faith and ethics Carter exemplified and this existential moment in American society.
A matter of truth
Steve Ford, son of President Gerald Ford, read a eulogy his father wrote for Carter, who delivered a eulogy at Ford’s state funeral. Gerald Ford wrote from the grave that “Friendship bonded us,” acknowledging that “we respected one another as adversaries before we came beloved friends,” a friendship that “transcends politics.” Ford noted that “honesty and truth telling” were synonymous with the life of Jimmy Carter, and that such honesty was “not an aspirational goal but part of his soul.”
“I’ll never lie to you,” Jimmy Carter said on entering the presidential race.
“From Carter to Trump, it’s a straight line down in terms of lies.”
“From Carter to Trump, it’s a straight line down in terms of lies,” Boston University professor Lee McIntyre told the Washington Post after Carter’s death, adding, “But it wasn’t like Carter was the last truth-teller and it all went off the rails after that. He was really trying to restore something we’d never had. Politicians have always lied. … They hold things back because it’s necessary to do the job.”
Yet that long reality has become increasingly normative in the land of the free and the home of “alternative facts.” In that America, the truth is a multiple-choice question that often ends with an “all of the above” option.
That’s why I found this smug comment from New York Times editorial writer Maureen Dowd appalling: “Carter was excessively virtuous, irritating Americans when he was in office with his parsimonious, micromanaging ways and blunt, demoralizing truth-telling.”
Truth is: The importance of truth-telling was less valued by a majority of American voters in this presidential election than when Carter was on the ballot. That fact, not Jimmy Carter’s “blunt truth-telling,” is our society’s own demoralizing truth.
A matter of race
The final homily at Carter’s state funeral was left to United Church of Christ minister, civil rights legend and former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, who began by saying: “It’s still not clear to me how you could get to be president from Plains, Ga.”
By that he didn’t just mean rural poverty, but 20th-century racism deeply imbedded in that community.
Said Young: “Dr. King used to say that greatness is characterized by ‘antithesis strongly marked.’ You’ve got to have a tough mind and a tender heart. And that was Jimmy Carter.” For Young, Carter incarnated that spiritual and moral antithesis.
“Racial reconciliation was at the center of Carter’s founding of the New Baptist Covenant.”
Young related how, as a student at Annapolis, Carter requested to be the roommate of the first African American to be admitted to the Naval Academy, explaining that he had grown up as a (white) minority in Plains so he thought he could be helpful.
Racial reconciliation was at the center of Carter’s founding of the New Baptist Covenant organization in 2007 as a resource for encouraging multiracial fellowship and ministry. The first national meeting transpired in Atlanta in 2008 with more than 15,000 participants, a profound moment in Baptist life.
Consider the proximity of Carter’s state funeral, the Martin Luther King national holiday, and a presidential inauguration aligned at a time when 18 states are restricting the teaching of African American studies by claiming details of slavery and Jim Crow are upsetting to students, and when the abolition of affirmative action programs already has lowered minority admissions to universities, and white supremacists seem dangerously energized.
Carter’s 1971 inaugural address as Georgia governor included the statement, “The time for racial discrimination is over.” Still is.
A matter of climate
At the Carter memorial, Jason Carter said of his grandfather, “Fifty years ago he was a climate warrior who pushed for a world where we conserved energy, limited emissions and traded our reliance on fossil fuels for expanded renewable sources.”
In a 2023 Yale Environment 360 article, Kai Bird wrote that Carter ordered 56 million acres of Alaskan wilderness to become protected territory. In 1978, he secured the first congressional environmental protection bill with penalties on gas-guzzling autos, expanded standards for appliances and gave tax breaks for developing solar technologies. Carter even added solar heating to the White House; Ronald Reagan had it removed.
Those actions were recalled on the very day that large segments of the country’s most populous state were literally burning to the ground fueled by climate-related firestorms. What if Carter’s environmental concerns had continued unabated?
“Jimmy Carter didn’t sell Bibles. He taught the Bible in Baptist Sunday schools for 70 years.”
Prophet and priest
Jason Carter said his grandfather’s “political life was not just ahead of his time, it was prophetic. He had the courage and strength to stick to his principles even when they were politically unpopular.” Speakers at the memorial service documented that statement, recounting his integrity, honesty, humility and actions for the good. Hearing them, one might also realize: Jimmy Carter didn’t sell Bibles. He taught the Bible in Baptist Sunday schools for 70 years.
Lest we forget, had Carter died Dec. 29, 2020, and had today’s state funeral schedule been followed, the U.S. Capitol could not have accommodated his remains on Jan. 7, 2021. The Capitol had fallen the day before.
On the day of service at the National Cathedral, Andrew Young, articulating Christian hope, said it like this of James Earl Carter: “He’s gone, but he ain’t gone far.”
For the sake of the Republic, and the gospel, let’s keep that hope alive.
Bill Leonard is founding dean and the James and Marilyn Dunn professor of Baptist studies and church history emeritus at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C. He is the author or editor of 25 books. A native Texan, he lives in Winston-Salem with his wife, Candyce, and their daughter, Stephanie.
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