Our last interview with former President Carter in 2012 focused on his Christian faith

“Basic Bible principles still apply today.”
Jimmy Carter in our 2012 interview

By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit online magazine

I first met Jimmy Carter in 1976 at the San Diego Zoo. I was slowly circling the United States that year to report “a young American’s vision of our country during the U.S. Bicentennial” for The Flint Journal in Michigan. The week I ran into Carter at the zoo, I told my editor (in a rare long-distance telephone call) that I had met Carter and maybe our brief interview at the zoo would be a good column for Michigan readers.

“Naw, forget that!” the editor said bluntly. “What about your idea of writing about ‘real cowboys’ in the Southwest? That’s a great story. Everybody’s interested in real cowboys these days. But, candidate whistle stops are a dime a dozen. Nobody cares about that.”

I’ve never forgotten his cynicism, and he was right for his readers. I did wind up reporting two very popular columns about real cowboys—but I now regret never having published my brief San Diego interview with Carter. I had about three minutes with him after watching him work his way along a line of families near the zoo’s bear exhibit. And, now? I can’t find my original reporter’s pad or remember Carter’s exact words—except that he used the word “hope” several times. And, I liked his gracious style.

As it turns out, that wasn’t just a “style.” I interviewed Carter a number of times after he left office during the several decades I was The Detroit Free Press Religion Editor. And, he continued to embody that quality—graciousness—in our conversations about everything from his support for Habitat for Humanity to his long-standing custom of teaching a public Bible study at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia.

To remember Carter in this week of his memorial service, our ReadTheSpirit online magazine is republishing my final interview with him in 2012. The following telephone interview was scheduled as part of his promotion of an inspirational edition of the NIV Bible, created by Zondervan in 2012 with selected texts from Carter’s lectures on the Bible at the Plains church.

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Jimmy Carter: How the Bible can help us find peace

A 2012 interview with former President Jimmy Carter

CRUMM: Your new Bible is a window into the depth of your personal faith. Your notations also show clearly how powerful these ancient scriptures are in our modern world. When you were president (1977-1981), how did you read the Bible in those years?

CARTER: For more than 40 years, my wife and I have read the Bible aloud every night. One night, she reads; the next night, I read. We go all the way through the Bible, then we go back and start over again. In the last 15 or 20 years, we have read the Bible aloud in Spanish, just to practice our second language.

When I was president, we did the same thing. I have to say that I really read it with much more deep attention and thoughtfulness when I was president, because I felt such great responsibility on me. And the most critical time was when the hostages were being held and I was being advised by all sides to go to war and to attack Iran because they were holding our hostages. But, I remembered that we worship the Prince of Peace and so I was able, during my term in office, through prayer and commitment, to preserve the peace. We never dropped a bomb. We never launched a missile at another country. And, we also tried to bring peace to other people, like Egypt and Israel, who had been at war four times in the previous 25 years.

Those kinds of applications of biblical teachings were important to me—and so were the ones calling for justice between rich and poor. The Bible teaches us that all people are created equal as Paul wrote to the Galatians: Whether we are rich or poor, male or female, black or white, it doesn’t matter—we are all equal in the eyes of God. So, those kinds of basic principles apply to my life not only as a president, but also when I was a submarine officer, a farmer, a governor—and to this day.

CRUMM: I spent a long time reading through your additions to this new edition of the Bible, including your prayers and your Bible-study lessons. Among the pages I marked: In Genesis, you remind us that leaders should be servants. You provide a prayer in those pages, asking us to set aside any sense of superiority and domination over others. In Deuteronomy, you single out for criticism people “who have an air of arrogance and who use their position to divide.” In James, you criticize anyone who would “speak ill of others” in order to “destroy or damage the reputation of others.” Honestly, now, in the savage style of politics in recent years—you must be quite disappointed!

CARTER: (Laughs, then says …) Well, this just shows us how applicable the teachings in the Old Testament and the New Testament are to everyday life!

When we depart from these basic principles that never change, despite the rapid changes in world politics and technology, we’re in error. I think it’s particularly applicable now to point out those basic facts. As you know, Jesus—the leader of the entire Christian world—always referred to himself as a servant and said that the greatest among you will be servants of all and he emphasized humility. These same principles apply in the Hebrew texts of the Bible. And they apply to everyday life today.

The teachings that readers will find added to the pages of this new Bible came from my many years of Bible teaching. Every Sunday that I teach, we have about 30 members in our little church who come—and we also have several hundred visitors who quite often come to hear me teach. What I try to do is use the first 10 or 15 minutes of my 45-minute lesson for the headlines of the day, or things that have happened to me or I know have happened to someone in the audience. That’s how I bring the biblical teachings to life. It’s not an accident that we continue to see how these basic Bible principles, which I taught about for so many years, still apply today.

A Special Concern for the Millions of Us Who Are Caregivers

CRUMM: I’m pleased to find in your new Bible some real encouragement for caregivers. I have on my shelf your wife Rosalynn’s wonderful book on caregiving, which I think still stands up as one of the best books on the subject. From your new Bible, here’s just one example from Leviticus 19. You highlight the passage, “Stand up in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God.” Then, in one of your reflections for Bible readers, you warn about something that people who’ve served in the trenches of caregiving understand: You say that the people who need our care often are not very friendly and often may seem unattractive to us, at first. Say a word to our readers about this kind of spiritual challenge.

CARTER: You’re right about Rosalynn’s book: It’s one of the best. She is still a national leader on caregiving and has a major program at Georgia Southwestern State University. What she points out is that almost every one of us at some point in our lives is going to be a caregiver—or is going to be the recipient of the blessings of a caregiver. This is a matter of biblical teaching for Christians and Jews. And these principles also are central to the teachings of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. We are to take whatever we have been given—our own health and longevity—as a blessing from God and we are to invest that in some way for the benefit of those who need our help. In our experience with caregiving, this invariably turns out to be not a sacrifice on our part but a new addition to our life. We are stretching our hearts and minds to encompass other people and we find that adds vibrancy and excitement and unpredictability and adventure to life.

CRUMM: At ReadTheSpirit, we’ve done a lot of work with readers and congregations nationwide to to help the 65 million caregivers out there serving people in this way. I can envision your devotional Bible as a daily inspiration to help people working as caregivers. Sometimes, that work can be draining.

CARTER: As you’ve just pointed out, 1 in 5 Americans are caregivers and quite often their devotion is to someone they love, without pay. This can be a personal sacrifice that quite often is unappreciated. Rosalynn makes this point, too. We not only need to be concerned for all of the people receiving care—but also for the millions who are working in this dedicated way as caregivers. We know that this kind of effort is a basic premise that permeates biblical teaching.

If we are blessed with long life or good health or fortune of some kind, we need to share what we have with others. The golden rule is emphasized repeatedly in both Old and New Testaments: Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. We can always imagine ourselves being disabled or bedridden or mentally debilitated with a condition like Alzheimer’s and needing care. We can appreciate the benefits from a recipient’s point of view and this realization may help us to be more open to sharing our resources with those who need that kind of care.

And I must say again: Quite often, it may seem to be a sacrifice at first—yet it almost always turns into a gratifying experience.

The Importance of Humility in Leadership

CRUMM: Your new devotional Bible might have been called The Humble Bible. I didn’t actually count the references, but I’ll bet the inspirational materials you’ve added here use the word “humble” more than any other devotional Bible we’ve seen. You’re a famous and influential man. You once were the most powerful man in the world as president.

Why so much emphasis on “humble”?

CARTER: In the broad sketch of things, pride is probably the most insidious and damaging sins that we can have. Elements of arrogance, of superiority, of believing that people who differ from us are inferior implies that we think some people don’t deserve to enjoy the blessings of God as we do. I think that almost every other sinful trait of a human being can be traced directly or indirectly to a lack of humility. When we become proud, arrogant and superior—and then begin to derogate others—this results in the violation of basic human rights. It can result in going to war when war is not necessary.

Now, of course, we have some people in our country who have substituted the mistreatment of African-Americans with the derogation of immigrants. In my boyhood days, even when I was a young adult, the major prejudice not only in the South but in the rest of the country as well was against African Americans. Then, we also developed an animosity in the aftermath of 9/11 toward Muslims or people who are from Arab countries. That has now been transferred to a major degree to people from Latin America who have come to this country. That prejudice applies in various actions we have seen by legislatures that primarily are aimed against people who speak the Spanish language.

So, it seems that human beings, even in societies like our American society, want to have some adversary who we believe is inferior to us in some way. It’s a sin that needs to be avoided and I don’t think it’s an accident that a lot of the biblical analyses I have added to this book refer to that sin.

None of us should feel superior over—or inferior to—others. God provides ways that we all can be successful in the eyes of God, wherever we live, whatever our wealth may be, or whatever education we are able to accumulate. Remember that Jesus didn’t have any advantages like riches or a home and, of course, he didn’t live a long life on earth, and still he was a perfect example for what we ought to be. When we elevate secular things like wealth or self aggrandizement and take pride in our status in society—all of these are counter to the demands of Christ to be humble and to serve others. Christ calls us to love people who are not really loveable, to love people who may not love us back, to love people when we don’t get credit for it. That’s the essence of Christian agape love, I think.

Despite Risks, Peacemaking Is Our Mandate

CRUMM: You’re well aware of the risks of peacemaking. You write about it a number of times in the pages of this new devotional Bible. You’re even willing to risk the world’s scorn for your work, right?

CARTER: That’s a mandate for all Christians, I think. We worship the Prince of Peace. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said those words: Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be considered the children of God. And that’s a part of my current life as well as when I was in the White House. We always try to reach out to others with whom we are estranged, sometimes in unpopular ways. For example, Rosalyn and I regularly go to places like Cuba. We’ve been to North Korea three times. We go to countries where the US government considers leaders to be terrorists. We meet with everyone. I wouldn’t use the word “dangerous” to describe this approach of talking to everyone in pursuit of peace. But it can be an unpopular thing. When I went to Korea, at one point—and I do believe that I helped to prevent a war between North and South Korea as part of our Carter Center work—we were looked upon as appeasers and criticized by some.

So far, I’ve been talking about peacemaking in international affairs but I think that we must look for ways to make peace in our relationships inside America, with our neighbors down the street—or even within our own families. The mandate from Christ is to promote peace, harmony, understanding, forgiveness and grace.

One of my favorite Bible verses is: Be ye kind to one another as God through Christ has been kind to us. That’s such a prevalent all-pervasive instruction throughout the Bible that it’s inescapable.

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Care to learn more?

From one peacemaker to another

We publish a number of books by the internationally known Baptist peacemaker Daniel Buttry, including his magnum opus: Blessed Are the Peacemakers, which profiles dozens of peacemakers from around the world. There’s an entire chapter devoted to Jimmy Carter’s life and legacy.

Carter also plays a key role in Buttry’s book Healing the World: Gustavo Parajón, Public Health and Peacemaking Pioneer.

Consider what these early readers are saying about this remarkable book—

By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine

Give a copy of this book to your congregation.

Give a copy of this book to your pastor.

That’s the advice of our Marketing Director Susan Stitt who is doing that in her own Catholic congregation in Georgia.

That’s also what members of the Rev. George A. Mason’s Wilshire Baptist Church are doing. This week, they are collectively giving more than 500 copies of this book to each family within Wilshire’s 2,500-member congregation.

And, while George’s church is Baptist, we already are seeing the interest in this book among readers from a wide range of religious traditions—because good preaching is still one of the most admired forms of media across America. In this book, readers find not only the text of 80 of George’s best sermons from several decades as one of the nation’s most-admired preachers—but also videos of George delivering half of those messages. Those videos are easy to see by clicking a smartphone at QR codes that appear with 40 of the sermons. In addition, other noted authors and scholars add prefaces to the various themed sections of the book to provide thought-provoking context for these messages.

The book does not even officially launch on Amazon until June 27, 2023, but early copies already are circulating among leading Christian writers and preachers.

We’ve been putting Susan’s advice—that it’s a good deed to give a copy of this book to someone—to practice by making sure a handful of influential pastors and writers see this book even before the official June 27 launch date.

And we’ve seen thankful replies come back from readers around the world.

The Rev. Tom Eggebeen is a nationally influential Presbyterian Church USA pastor and preacher, whose sermons also have an online following. Tom emailed us the day after his copy of The Word Made Fresh arrived: “Started reading immediately. I had never heard of Mason, and that’s my loss, because these sermons are seriously impressive and the preface for each section a little tour de force in theology and practice. I will move through this book with care, and learning—I’ve already grabbed a few ideas and phrases I want to use. Glad that this publishing effort will bring to a larger audience his skillful and faithful sermons.”

Best-selling Christian author the Rev. Greg Garrett, an Episcopal priest and canon theologian for the American Cathedral in Paris wrote one of those tour de force prefaces for George’s new book, writing in part: “My friend George Mason is one of the Christian world’s most accomplished preachers and pastors. A writer, teacher, activist and media figure, during 30-plus years as senior pastor at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, he modeled a Christian love of and advocacy for the marginalized, the disdained, the set aside, that feels absolutely like the Jesus I know, love and serve.”

Greg even gave George an international boost by including him in a worldwide Zoom from Paris in late May! And, stay tuned to ReadTheSpirit, because next week we’ll tell the rest of that story of Greg’s current work in Paris.

We’re not only hearing from Protestants and Anglicans. The best-selling Catholic author Chris Stepien opened his copy and immediately emailed us with very high praise, indeed: “Loving the book! Mason is a Baptist Fulton Sheen with a loving heart for the interfaith community!”

The Day1 radio network’s Peter Wallace didn’t want to be left out of this early litany of praise. “I love George Mason! Love the new book. I want to get George back on Day1 again.” For his part, George says he’d like to make a reappearance on Day1, so visit Day1’s website and sign up for updates there.

So, are you ready to jump over and order your copy—and a copy to give to your congregation or your pastor? Well, Amazon offers both hardcover and paperback editions for gift giving that will ship on June 27.

Not yet convinced? Well, just wait a moment: There’s more wisdom below in this ReadTheSpirit cover story from George about why good preaching matters today.

What Is the Goal of Good Preaching?

Because this book contains—by the consensus of early reviewers nationwide—some of the best progressive Christian preaching in America, the first question I asked George in our interview, this week, was:

“Can you tell us how you define good preaching?” I explained my question this way: “Preaching styles vary widely, but there is a core to preaching that you illustrate so well in this book. With each sermon, you’re welcoming people into a much larger community of faith—the timeless calling of Christianity to love God and to love our neighbors. There’s a much larger connection you’re calling people to make, each Sunday morning—right? How do you explain the goal of good preaching?”

George paused, collected his thoughts, and then said:

“Probably the main concern I have is that the big story we are trying to share with the world gets lost in preaching sometimes. The overall theme of redemption, the arc of the biblical story, is not evident in the sermon sometimes. The Gospel itself, the narrative of God’s redemptive work in the world, doesn’t come through in a given sermon that is thematically more narrow.

“As you and I have discussed, David, as we have worked on preparing this book—I think that every sermon has to offer some hope in it, some sense of grace, some vision of the New Creation, some sense of God’s presence that transforms us. Sometimes, there’s a teaching focus in sermons that is too narrow on a particular text and the proclamation is lost in the didactic nature of that specific explanation of a text. So, in a sermon like that, we may come away with a better understanding maybe of a particular slice of a biblical passage—but we may miss the sense that we are caught up in the grand drama of what God is doing in the world.

“This is such an important thing for preachers to recognize: We all are living some kind of story and it’s our job to get the story straight about what the Gospel is and to remind people that they were baptized into this Gospel story. It’s very easy to slip into more of an American story, say, or more of a family story, say, or more of a business story, perhaps—and lose the sense of what your particular place is in this great narrative of what God is up to in our world.

“Related to that is a need for preaching to help shape our souls and our characters in a way that allows us to resist those alternative stories—first to recognize them and then second to resist them and third to be able to be a witness to an alternative way.

“We have to remember what our job is when we’re standing up to preach. Too often we sense that we’re there to entertain because we want people to keep coming back. So, yes, we’re trying to tell good stories. But the stories we need to tell in good preaching are not just the stories that will capture people’s attention. The question is: Why do we tell these stories? What is the point of the stories we choose to tell? How do the stories we tell link to the bigger narrative of God in our world? How does it connect with the stream of God flowing through our world?

“We sometimes are too tempted to entertain or even to pander to the congregation in terms of what would delight them or make them know that we are on their side. In fact, out of love for the Gospel, love for God, love for our calling, sometimes we are called to challenge people—sometimes we need to actually make them uncomfortable. That requires of preachers a tremendous amount of personal spiritual fortitude because the pushback you’re going to get will be real if you are making people feel uncomfortable. You have to have the sense that you are sustained by a greater power. You need that strength, that fortitude, so that you don’t lose your identity when sometimes you are criticized for what you have been preaching.”

Challenges Clergy Face

Whatever your faith may be, the world’s great religious traditions are united in calling people toward building healthy communities, caring for the needy among us and promoting peaceful solutions in the world.

Currently, there are more than 444,000 clergy in the U.S. and those numbers are growing each year, according to the DATA:USA report on clergy compiled by Deloitte, Datawheel and Cesar Hidalgo, Professor at the MIT Media Lab.

As I looked at that DATA:USA clergy report with George, one conclusion we drew was: These folks certainly didn’t choose this field for the money. Clergy earn an average of slightly more than $47,000 a year. K-12 school teachers average more than $56,000; registered nurses earn nearly $68,000; police officers earn more than $72,000; pharmacists earn $107,000.

“One thing that really concerns me about these data is that we should be alarmed by how low clergy salaries are. That’s a national average and that means many clergy families are trying to exist on what’s less than a living wage today. That’s especially true for students leaving seminary today with more debt than ever—debt they’ll be paying off for years,” George said.

“The other thing that surprises me here, in this report, is the projected growth of the numbers of clergy,” he said. “I know that enrollment is down in seminaries all across the country and it’s increasingly difficult for many of these schools to stay open—especially to get master of divinity students. There are many students now looking for one- or two-year master degrees but not the longer program that qualifies you traditionally for ordination.

“And beyond the basic financial challenges that we see here for clergy, there are so many other challenges clergy face and so much more we need to know to be prepared for ordained ministry today,” George said.

Diving deeper into the DATA:USA report, the many facets of clergy education today become clear, including: studies in business, social sciences, psychology, public health, administration, computer technology and legal issues.

Even though George recently retired from Wilshire and switched to an ongoing emeritus status with his congregation—his calling to help prepare new pastors continues.

I asked George to describe some of the ways he has been working on that vocation. “Specifically, since this new book is about preaching, can you tell us how you’ve worked on improving the quality of preaching?” I asked.

“Over the past 20 years, the main way I’ve tried to work on improving preaching nationally is through our pastoral residency program at Wilshire Baptist Church, which started in 2002,” George said. “Soon after Wilshire’s program began, we became one of the first congregations in America to receive a major grant from the Lilly Endowment for its Transitions to Ministry program.

“Through that program, we really focused a lot on preaching. We now have 40 graduates of that program who are out in other congregations now and a lot of the work we’ve done is helping them to find their voice, learn how to exegete context as well as biblical texts, talk to them about the setting of where they are preaching, who they are preaching to, what the cultural context is and how to match their voice to the ears of a congregation. So, that’s been a good part of my effort nationally.

“Plus, we’ve supported Day1, which is a longstanding broadcast effort to improve preaching, and I’ve been on Day1 a few times with Peter Wallace’s team.”

And, as we have said above, stay tuned to Day1, because you may hear George again later this year.

Ways We All Can Help Spread Good News

First, order your copy of this book—and another copy to give to your congregation or your pastor. Amazon offers both hardcover and paperback editions for gift giving. If you email us at [email protected] and tell us about your order, we can even arrange for some of those first emailers to receive a signed bookplate from George that you could affix to the front of your copy. We really would like to hear what you think—because we know that more and more readers will be inspired by meeting George in the pages of this multimedia book.

(And because our cover stories remain online for years, we will add this qualifier: We can’t continue the bookplate offer forever, but we would welcome hearing from some of you who are becoming early readers!)

Connect with George yourself via his brand-new author’s page on Facebook—www.facebook.com/revgeorgemason

And visit George’s similarly brand-new website—www.GeorgeAMason.com—which is a gateway both to his new book and to all of George’s ongoing work now that he has moved to emeritus status with Wilshire. When you first visit, sign up for his free email updates. (It’s easy to cancel anytime, but we doubt you’ll want to cancel.) Then, the website also makes it easy to Contact George, if you’re interested in an invitation to speak or have other questions.

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Care to learn more?

This week in our Front Edge Publishing column, we have a special “thank you” from the head of the Wilshire Baptist Church publishing team, Gail Brookshire, who writes about how her team was able to create and launch this book project within one year—a remarkable feat in publishing.

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