In Gratitude for Jimmy Carter

It was in March of last year that I started drafting this article. I had just heard that ex-President Carter had gone into hospice care. I was preparing to post an article about him as soon as possible after his passing—but he is still alive and has recently said he has to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris! So, I am posting this on the day before his 100^th birthday. 

Jimmy Carter in 2021

James Earl Carter, Jr., who “everybody” knows as Jimmy, is the only U.S. President I have shaken hands with—and on two separate occasions. Although not agreeing with him on everything, I have highly admired him for many decades now and am grateful for his long life and meritorious work.

Although I have mentioned Jimmy in several blog posts, the most I wrote about him was in the article posted on the day before his 90^th birthday, on September 30, 2014 (see here). Now near the end of his long, productive life, I am writing mainly regarding two important emphases he made as POTUS.

Part of what I have included in this post is based on Randall Balmer’s 2014 book Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter. While having great respect for the author, I did not particularly like the title of that book: I thought the term redeemer applied most aptly to Jesus Christ.

Recently, though, I read “Redeemer President,” the fifth chapter of Balmer’s book and was quite favorably impressed with what he wrote there—and I understood what he meant by Jimmy being a “redeemer.”

As Balmer explains, it is hard to imagine Carter being elected president “had it not been for Richard Nixon.” As the new president took the oath of office in January 1977, he “represented a clean break with the recent past, an opportunity to redeem the nation” (pp. 76, 77).

Early in 1977, Carter called the nation’s attention to the energy crisis. That was particularly in his April 18 “Address to the Nation on Energy” (see here). It was in that speech that he declared, [“”]

Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. This difficult effort will be the "moral equivalent of war."

His early recognition of the growing ecological problem was noted in what I called “the most important book you’ve never read” in this March 2023 blog post).

William Cotton, the author of that book, Overshoot (1980), mentions Carter favorably several times in his powerful book and writes most about Carter’s speech in July 1979. The title of that address was “Crisis of Confidence,” but it became known as his “malaise speech.” (Click here to read the transcript.)

That 1979 talk was an important one—and was basically correct. But it was not well received and was detrimental to Carter politically—and it was one of several reasons why he was soundly defeated in the 1980 election.

In a perceptive February 2023 article, though, David French wrote “The Wisdom and Prophecy of Carter’s Malaise Speech” (see here). The eminent NYTimes columnist averred that “Carter’s greatest speech was delivered four decades too soon.”

Carter’s emphasis on human rights was another key element of his presidency. Balmer wrote that “Carter sought to nudge the United States away from the reactive anticommunism of the Cold War and toward a policy that was more collaborative, less interventionist, and sensitive above all to human rights” (p. 79).

That emphasis was grounded in Carter’s Christian faith. “Jimmy Carter’s religious values were never far from his presidency or his policy” is the title of a March 2023 post on ReligionNews.com, and “human rights” is the first topic of several mentioned in that perceptive article.**

World peace is the second topic given in the above piece. Carter is quoted as saying, “There’s no doubt in my mind that the greatest violator of human rights that we know is armed conflict.” Consequently, “Carter’s presidency made the biblical concept of shalom seem less of a distant dream.”

These are just some of the reasons I have deep gratitude for Jimmy Carter and honor him on this day before his 100^th birthday. My double hope is that he will still be alive on January 20 and lucid enough to enjoy fully VP Harris’s inauguration as the 47^th POTUS.

_____

**That article (found here) was written by Lovett H. Weems, Jr., who for 18 years was president of Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City before moving to a faculty position at Wesley Seminary in Washington, D.C., in 2003.

Note: I learned from Heather Cox Richardson’s September 27 newsletter that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which has provided invaluable help before, during, and following last week’s landfall of Hurricane Helene, was initially created under President Jimmy Carter in 1979. In that piece, Richardson also writes that Project 2025, calls for slashing FEMA’s budget and returning disaster responses to states and localities. 

 

Is Gov. Huckabee Right?

To be fair, since earlier this summer I wished Sen. Lindsey Graham a Happy Birthday (here), I am now wishing ex-Governor Mike Huckabee a Happy Birthday.

Huckabee celebrated his 60th birthday yesterday, and as I said in the article about Graham, in some places (such as Japan and other Asian countries) one’s 60th birthday is considered especially momentous.

I am writing this, however, mainly to question one of Huckabee’s recent assertions. We all know that he is very much on the political right. But is he right (correct) in all he says about the highly controversial matter of abortion?

During the August 6 Republican presidential debate, Huckabee declared, “I think the next president ought to invoke the Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the constitution now that we clearly know that that baby inside the mother’s womb is a person at the moment of conception.”

And then in stringent criticism of Planned Parenthood, he stated, “It’s time that we . . . protect children instead of rip up their body parts and sell them like they’re parts to a Buick.”

The Constitution is quite clear in affirming personal rights: part of the Fifth Amendment states, “No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

And Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment says, “No State shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

It is by no means clear, however, when “personhood” begins. How does Huckabee “clearly” know that personhood begins at conception?

If he were a Catholic, he might claim to know that because it is the Church’s dogma. The Catechism of the RCC states, “Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person” (2270).

But Huckabee is a lifelong Southern Baptist, and not long before his 16^th birthday the SBC adopted a resolution that expressed support for abortion in cases of “rape, incest, clear evidence severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

In a 1974 resolution, the SBC adopted an official position that “reflected a middle ground between the extreme of abortion on demand and the opposite extreme of all abortion is murder.”

And Foy Valentine, the executive director of the SBC’s Christian Life Commission at that time, was particularly vocal in his support of abortion rights.

I was a SB missionary in Japan in those years, so I was not at the 1971 and ’74 annual meetings of the SBC. But I would, no doubt, have voted for the resolutions had I been there.

What does Huckabee know about the beginning of personhood now that Baptists didn’t know then?

What new scientific, or other, discovery in the last 40 years clearly substantiates the claim that a human zygote or embryo is a person, qualifying for protection under the Constitution?

None that I know of.

Even though I disagree with many (most) of his political and some of his ethical views, I am serious in wishing Gov. Huckabee a Happy Birthday. I affirm the sanctity of his life—and of all persons who have been born, as he was 60 years ago yesterday.

But I still insist that he is not right in his beliefs about when personhood begins.

Celebrating Human Rights Day

Today is Human Rights Day, a yearly observance in commemoration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948. The Guinness Book of Records says that the UDHR is the world’s “most translated document.”

The Baptist World Alliance (BWA) for more than twenty years now has encouraged Baptist congregations around the world to observe Human Rights Day (HRD) on the Sunday closest to Dec. 10. (I wish Second Baptist Church where I am a member would do so.) On its website the BWA makes available HRD resources, such as “A Prayer of Commitment for Human Rights Day” written by a Brazilian Baptist. That prayer ends with these words:

“As followers of Jesus Christ, we pledge to be agents of life who actively oppose the powers of death manifest in situations of urban and rural violence, war, genocide, and human trafficking, abuses against women and children, economic and sexual exploitation, racial discrimination and religious intolerance. We commit to so respond to your presence in our lives that our cowardice may be turned into boldness, our egotism into solidarity, our fear into hope, and our weakness into strength. With your help, we will courageously serve as agents of your kingdom of freedom, justice, love and peace. In this, may your grace and mercy always attend our efforts. We pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen!”

This is a fine prayer. But as with other materials on the BWA website and in most other places, it does not say anything about gay rights. But the Amnesty International USA website states clearly that it “believes that all people, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, should be able to enjoy the full range of human rights, without exception.” They go on to say, “However, every day, across the globe, sexual orientation or gender identity leads to abuse in the form of discrimination, violence, imprisonment, torture, or even execution.”

I pray that at this time of recognizing human rights more and more people, and especially Christians, will come to realize that gay and lesbian people generally fail to enjoy “the full range of human rights” and to support efforts to extend those rights to LGBT people across the world as well as to others.

Just this week a broad range of Christian leaders in this country denounced the terribly harsh anti-gay bill now being considered by the Parliament of Uganda. I am thankful for that, but I wish they would also speak out for the human rights of gays and lesbians in this country as well. (Lee Judge in this morning’s Kansas City Star has a good cartoon about that, which you should be able to see by clicking here.) Full human rights should be available for everyone, everywhere.