As our beloved 37th President’s
body made its way from Plains, Georgia to
Atlanta to the US Capitol to lie in state,
tens of thousands of words have been published
in tribute to him. A renaissance man, a
diplomat, a philanthropist, a civil rights
icon, and so much more, he is most aptly
described, in my opinion, as a man of faith.
He lived by his faith and spoke openly of it,
as far too few do. His faith allowed him to
bring Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin together
at Camp David in September 1978, and to
overcome the obstacles of that fraught
communication to reach the Camp David Accord
between Egypt and Israel. His faith compelled
him to embrace his defeat in 1980 and go on to
win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work
around peace and poverty. He was, in the words
of President Joe Biden, “a man of character,
courage, and compassion.”
Biden declared
January 9 a National Day of Mourning in
Carter’s honor. Federal offices were closed and
postal service suspended. Flags were to be
flown at half-staff for thirty days, a fitting
tribute to a man who was too often
underappreciated during his Presidency,
garnering more accolades for his
post-presidential activism than for his
Presidency itself. Even in this mourning, it
is more likely to hear President Carter
described as “decent” than as outstanding or
brilliant, even though he was. Nothing wrong
with being described as decent. In fact, in
this age of indecency and convicted felons
moving into the Oval Office, decent is quite a
compliment. But terms like decent, even
outstanding, doesn’t capture the essence of
James Earl Carter. His essence is that he was
a man of faith, he embraced his faith, and he
also publicly struggled with what his faith
meant to him and how faith could transform
other people.
Faith gave
President Carter the impetus to be both humble
and helpful. A woman talked on CNN, about how
he, at 90, took a broken chair from her porch,
fixed it and returned it. I have my own story
of Carter helpful humility. I worked for the
Council of Economic Advisors while I was
working on my doctoral dissertation, and I was
always running through the Old Executive
Office Building with armfuls of papers. I
dropped some of them, running nowhere fast,
and had to turn around to retrieve them. The
President of the United States stopped his
stride thorough the Old EOB to help gather up
my papers. I stammered thanks, and the
President was very gracious. Asked my name and
where I worked, told me, kindly, to be careful
in the halls. His staffers tried to hurry him
along, but he took a couple of minutes to talk
to me and encourage me. When I said I was
working on my dissertation, he was
encouraging. The whole encounter could not
have taken five minutes, and when I told a
friend about it she simply said, “That’s
President Carter.”
Carter believed in
diversity, although we didn’t call it that
then. He appointed African Americans to
nontraditional positions. Patricia Roberts
Harris first served as secretary of the
Department of Housing and Urban Development as
the first Black woman to hold a Cabinet position. HUD was a
somewhat traditional position for an African
American, with economist Robert Weaver serving
as the first HUD Secretary in 1966. Harris was
the first Black woman to hold two cabinet
positions, serving as the first secretary of
the Department of Health and Human Services
under Carter. He also lifted up Ron Brown, Ben
Hooks, Alexis Herman and many others. Having
grown up next door to a Black family who often
cared for him, President Jimmy Carter believed
in opening doors for the underrepresented,
including African Americans and women.
His
post-Presidential contributions are notable,
especially his work with Habitat for Humanity,
where the former President took hammer to hand
and helped build thousands of homes and
encouraged others to do the same thing. But
his Presidency was hardly a failure. Carter
was not bombastic. Like Biden, he rarely
tooted his own horn which perhaps led to his
1980 defeat. He created the Department of
Energy and the Department of Education. He
worked on nuclear disarmament and sought to
contain Soviet aggression with a grain embargo
and a boycott of the Moscow Olympics. In his
short one-term presidency he made a
difference.
Notably, in his
post-Presidency, he wrote several books,
including the important Faith:
A Journey for All. In the book, he
quotes Dietrich Bonhoffer, the theologian who
wrote that “Faith without works is not faith
at all, but a simple lack of obedience to
God.” That’s an apt summary of Carter’s life.
His faith and obedience led him to do great
things in helpful humility. He was one of our
greatest President because he was, indeed, a
man of faith.
