President Jimmy Carter: Challenged the Moral Majority and Defended of the Bill of Rights.

Posted on | January 5, 2025 | No Comments

Mike Magee

Today was frigid in Washington , D.C. But inside this sacred dwelling on the corner of 16th and 0 Streets NW, marked by soaring 58 foot ceilings supported by gothic arches, smiles and gratitude filled the air at the 6 p.m. prayer service in memory of former President Jimmy Carter.

Carter was an extraordinary devout Christian who once admitted that on some days of his presidency he “might pray up to 25 times.” When he chose to pray more formally those years (1976-1980), First Baptist was where he went – often – in fact over 70 times during his 4 years as President. His love for this community was obvious, once declaring that his and Rosalynn’s choice was among ‘the finest things that ever happened to us, personally.”

When he died last week on December 29, 2024 at age 100, the Washington Post headline highlighted his “brilliant post-presidential career as a champion of health, peace and democracy.” But one would have to search far and wide these days for a major Christian evangelical leader, especially of the Southern Baptist tradition, who is unaware that during the lead up to the 1980 Presidential election Jimmy Carter was widely considered a religious turncoat and “Enemy #1” to the former Conservative Christian cause.

A bit of history:

In 1976, the year that President Ford went up against this Baptist peanut farmer from Georgia, Pat Robertson and his new Christian Broadcasting Network, supported by state-of-the-art direct-mail solicitations, was all in on mixing religion, politics, and entertainment.

That November, 55 percent of Baptists voted for Jimmy Carter, a gain of 22 percent on the previous Democratic presidential nominee. Carter prevailed, and the triumvirate that included Robertson, fellow televangelist, Jerry Falwell, and Heritage Foundation CEO Paul Weyrich, rushed to the White House, expecting to be met with gratitude and open arms.

But Carter made no effort to pack his cabinet with evangelicals, and Billy Graham never even got the call to come pray in the Oval Office. Moreover, while Carter didn’t like abortion, he refused to support a constitutional amendment to override Roe v. Wade, and he didn’t think homosexuals threatened the moral fabric of America. He also got along with Catholics.

For those and other reasons, four years later the now highly organized “Moral Majority” leaders listened intently to then candidate Ronald Reagan in the summer of 1980 address the Christian Coalition’s annual policy meeting and say, “I know you can’t endorse me, but I want you to know that I endorse you and what you are doing.”

The Moral Majority got “their man” (a divorced, completely secular product of Hollywood and corporate America) into the White House. Whereas 61 percent of conservative Christians had voted in the 1972 presidential election, 66 percent voted in both 1976 and 1980, and they voted overwhelmingly Republican. That was enough for Jerry Falwell to confidently claim that the Moral Majority had elected Jimmy Carter and, when Carter had displeased them, replaced him with Ronald Reagan.

But another three years would pass before the real tidal wave of evangelicals in politics would hit, and the seismic force that created the wave was the financial survival of Christian nonprofit schools that promoted racial purity.

In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that Bob Jones University, often called “the buckle on the Bible Belt,” could not receive federal funds so long as it continued to discriminate on the basis of race. The university’s namesake and founder had been an early-20th-century evangelist with such Bible-pounding zeal that he was said to have at least once shattered a pulpit…Twenty years on, he bequeathed to Bob Jones Jr., his son, the Greenville, South Carolina school, which, until 1971, would continue to exclude black students.

When at last it relented under federal pressure, it still required that black students be married to attend the school. After 1975, it opened the door to single blacks as well, but still prohibited interracial marriage and dating. This relative “enlightenment” was still not enough for the IRS, which on January 19, 1976, rescinded the university’s tax-exempt status for failure to comply with federal civil rights regulations.

In the hands of the Heritage Foundation’s Paul Weyrich, this dispute over taxes and compliance with laws banning racial and gender discrimination became not only a David-versus-Goliath battle, but a direct attack on Christian teachings.

The Supreme Court ruled against Bob Jones and its racial policies on May 24, 1983. By then, lily-white “Christian academies” had proliferated throughout the former Confederacy, all of which now felt threatened. Their health curricula were already infused with bans on contraceptive information and abstinence-only values education. The merger of health and education conservative priorities gave Weyrich confidence that he now had an explosive and powerful force that could rile the Southern electorate and ensure Reagan’s (and Republicans for years to come) future success.

That was then, and this is now, you say. Well, not so much. Take for example the life of Sarah Weddington. She was Texan through and through, part of a group of notable women achievers of the time, sometimes referred to as the “Great Austin Matriarchy”which included Barbara Jordan, Sissy Farenthold, Ann Richards, Molly Ivins, and Liz Carpenter.

Weddington served as Carter’s special assistant from 1968 to 1981. The daughter of a Methodist minister, she died nearly 3 years to the day of Carter’s passing on December 26, 2021. Her obituary noted her expert legal service to the President, but focused heavily on the fact that she was one of two lawyers who argued and won Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court in 1970.

Humble and self-effacing as a law professor at the University of Texas, she told her students in 1998, “A lot of people together won Roe v. Wade. We give it to you proudly it can be passed down to other generations.” But by 2017, she foretold the future, stating in an interview, “If Gorsuch’s nomination is approved, will abortion be illegal the next day? No. One new judge won’t necessarily make much difference. But two or three might.”

As Jimmy Carter is laid to rest, beside Rosalynn, how should we remember him? First Baptist senior pastor, Julie Pennington-Russell would certainly say, as a man of deep personal faith, and committed to “acts of service” and “the power of kindness.” Others might note his courage in standing up to Robertson, Falwell, and Weyrich in defense of the Constitution and especially the first clause in the Bill of Rights stating: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Both Sarah Weddington and Jimmy Carter believed in an afterlife, and looked forward to reuniting with their heroes. For Sarah, Texas Gov, Ann Richards was a lifelong colleagued and friend. In 2012, she said, “My gravesite is about 50 feet away from hers. Hopefully, when I call the Texas State Cemetery home, we will have great late-night conversations, remembering our battles of the past and celebrating the victories that live after us.”

Jimmy Carter now can rest in peace at his wife’s side. On her death at age 96 on November 19, 2023, he gave us all a glimpse of how he managed to rise above the hatred of Christian Conservatives by focusing on his gratitude for a life with Rosalynn. As he said of her: “Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished. She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

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President Jimmy Carter: Challenged the Moral Majority and Defended of the Bill of Rights.

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