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If you know anything about Jimmy Carter, this may be it: He never lost touch with his home in Plains, Georgia, and he never gravitated away from teaching his Baptist faith.
Until just recently, the former US president and Nobel Peace Prize winner could be found teaching Sunday school in Georgia.
What might be even more remarkable is that he maintained that grounding even when he was leading the free world, frequently popping up 16th Street to teach a couples’ Bible class in the balcony of the First Baptist Church of the City of Washington, DC. Carter intertwined a first-person, real-time account of world events with his thoughts on the scripture.
A week after celebrating the historic high point of his presidency – the 1978 Camp David Accords, which created a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt – Carter was telling his students, members of the First Baptist Church, about praying with then-prime minister of Israel Menachem Begin and then-president of Egypt Anwar Sadat.
“I think some of the most unpleasant moments of my life occurred during the last two weeks,” he told the class. “And of course, also some of the most pleasant.”
The photos of the three world leaders during their two-week negotiations at Camp David and signing of the agreement at the White House have followed Carter into the history books. Sadat was assassinated in 1981 and Begin died in 1992, but the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt is still in effect.
In today’s tightly controlled media environment, when the fences around the White House keep getting higher and the barricades farther away, it’s incredible to think that any parishioner could stand in the balcony of a church…
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