Jimmy Carter (1924-2024): The born again Baptist who taught the Bible and healed divisions

David Coffey shares a personal tribute to the 39th President of the United States, who died on 29 December aged 100

‘Born again peanut farmer runs for president’ read the headline on the front cover of Time magazine in 1976 after Jimmy Carter announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. Very few knew his name outside his home state of Georgia, and the familiar response was ‘Jimmy Who?’  

Following the Nixon years of the Watergate scandal, there was a public longing for integrity in the White House. Carter campaigned as a reformer who was untainted by the political fallout of Watergate, and he pledged to the electorate that he would never knowingly tell a lie or mislead the nation.

He said that if elected, he would take a new broom to Washington and do everything possible to clean the house of government. He won a narrow victory over the incumbent President, Gerald Ford, and served as the 39th President from 1977-1981.

The peace-making President  

At his inauguration Carter took the oath of office on the Bible his mother had given him as a young man. It was opened at Micah 6:8, and he quoted this verse from the King James version: “He has shown thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.”

In the years that followed, he frequently quoted from the Bible in his public addresses and said the Old Testament prophets had informed his understanding of human rights and his Christian faith shaped his foreign policy.

On his first day in office, Carter announced that one of his priorities was to work for peace in the Middle East because he took Jesus’s words seriously: “Blessed are the peacemakers.”