JIMMY CARTER, by consensus the best ex-President of the United States, was a Southerner — the first to occupy the White House since the disastrous administration of Andrew Jackson in the early 19th century. And, unlike his Southern predecessors, Carter was from the Deep South.
Carter, whose civil-rights record both in state office and the presidency was exemplary, was not an atypical Southerner. The South was never like the rest of the country, only racist — racial segregation was common practice throughout the United States — but it was institutionalised in Southern states. In other respects, however, the South was another country.
The South was feudal. And the Carter family, landowners who had for generations farmed cotton, and later peanuts, were among its minor aristocracy. Carter himself was a model Southerner. A farmer and business-owner from the rural town of Plains, Georgia, he had served in the military, was active in his local community, and was a committed Southern Baptist who freely discussed his faith, including how he became a “born again” Christian.
Evangelical Christianity was the religious lingua franca of the South, but elsewhere it raised eyebrows. By the mid-20th century, Roman Catholicism had been Americanised, and was, along with “mainline” (non-Evangelical) Protestantism and Judaism, one of the three standard brands of American religion. So, when John F. Kennedy campaigned for the presidency in 1960, no one worried about his hereditary Irish Catholicism. But Evangelicalism was the religion of another country.
The phrase “born again” was a shocker. It evoked tent revivals and sinners “slain in the Spirit”, which most Americans had only read about and regarded as primitive superstition. When Carter launched his campaign for the presidency in 1976, most Americans, not just a small urban-coastal elite, had never knowingly met an Evangelical Christian. Any Evangelicals outside of the Bible Belt, which encompassed the South and parts of the rural Midwest, were in the closet.
CARTER won the support of Evangelicals in his 1976 run for the presidency, and carried the South. Northerners were less enthusiastic: he did not win the West or most northern states. Outside the South, Southerners were viewed as at once exotic and suspect. Until the late 20th century, the South hewed to Jefferson’s vision for the country as an agrarian society of landed aristocrats, white yeoman farmers, and black farm labourers. It was only in the latter half of the 20th century, when that system had collapsed and the New South emerged, that a Southerner could attain national office.
Jimmy Carter was a man of the New South: educated, cosmopolitan, and untainted by racism; but, deeply rooted in the South, he was audibly and unmistakably Southern. He could not have passed as a generic American even if he had wanted to. Most importantly, as a Southerner, he was a Washington outsider.
And that was just what the American public wanted after Nixon’s presidency, Watergate, and the lacklustre administration of Gerald Ford, who, to the consternation of most Americans, pardoned Nixon. Carter was scrupulously honest and sincerely religious, and he articulated a moral vision for the country — an alternative to politics as usual.
But, within four years, Carter’s presidency was widely viewed as a failure, and, in the 1980 presidential election, he lost by a landslide to Ronald Reagan. Evangelicals threw their support at Reagan — a creature of Hollywood, divorced, and of no discernible religious affiliation — and Carter lost the South, apart from his home state of Georgia.
Carter was crushed in a hinge of history. In the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, after race riots a decade earlier, the 1970s were penitential. Carter preached sacrifice for the common good and for the good of the earth. He installed solar panels on the White House roof, and, addressing Americans in a cardigan, urged them to reduce their energy consumption.
By the end of the decade, Americans were sick of it. They wanted an end to burdensome piety, a return to guiltless and unlimited consumption, and the glitz and bliss of the “Morning in America” which Reagan promised.
Perhaps more importantly, with the rise of the religious Right, Evangelicalism had been transformed from a religious commitment into a political agenda. Evangelical Christianity became visible to the American public through the efforts of televangelists. Non-denominational megachurches featuring gyms, self-help groups, eateries, and all the amenities of shopping malls boomed, while mainline churches petered out.
Evangelicalism became a lifestyle: the family defined by male headship, parents who “dared to discipline” by corporal punishment, father-daughter “purity balls” for enthusiasts, and the tie that bound all — implacable opposition to abortion. Politics drove religious affiliation. Individuals who were not churchgoers adopted the Evangelical label to signal their political stance. And pastors who did not toe the party line lost their congregations.
WITH Evangelicalism reconstructed, Carter, a lifelong Christian who had taught in Sunday school for his entire adult life, was left behind. In 2000, he renounced his membership in the Southern Baptist Church when the Southern Baptist Union announced that it would no longer permit women to become pastors.
Carter had no home in the new Democratic Party, either. Once the party of unions and the working man, the Democratic Party dropped its economic agenda and threw support to policies on immigration, gun control, and, of course, abortion, which were favoured by a secular upper-middle class that was increasingly hostile to religion.
The Republican Party, traditionally the party of business, captured the socially conservative working class. Democrats purged all politicians who opposed access to abortion without restriction; and Republicans warned constituents that Democrats intended to shut down churches and confiscate their Bibles.
In the decades that followed Carter’s decisive defeat, no Democrat who was an openly committed Evangelical Christian could have been elected to high public office. Upper-middle-class voters viewed the statements of religious affiliation which appeared on most Democratic politicians’ public profiles as a mere formality to appease the working class. Few white working-class voters would support a Democrat. The South, which had been solidly Democrat for more than a century, became majority Republican.
WHILE he was in office, Carter’s achievements had been overshadowed by double-digit inflation, rising unemployment, and, above all, the Iran hostage crisis.
But, freed from the exigencies of politics, Carter became America’s most successful and best-loved former President. During his post-presidency, he founded the Carter Center, a non-profit organisation devoted to advancing human rights, which earned him the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.
He travelled extensively to conduct peace negotiations, monitor elections, and further the eradication of infectious diseases. He supported numerous charities in the US and abroad, and volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, a philanthropic organisation that helps working people to build and to buy their own homes.
An active critic of US policy, Carter urged the closing of the Guantánamo Bay Prison in Cuba, which was a focal point for claims of prisoner abuse, spoke out against the Iraq War, and criticised both his Republican and Democratic successors for policies that violated human rights, degraded the environment, and threatened world peace.
And Carter kept the faith. He continued to teach in Sunday school at the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, remained a member of the Co-operative Baptist Fellowship, and, with the former President Bill Clinton, founded the New Baptist Covenant organisation for social justice. He will be sorely missed.
Dr Harriet Baber is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego, California, in the United States.