Hello, fellow wayfarers … Why former president Jimmy Carter’s eternal state ought to be a warning to the American church (but not in the way some think) … What I learned praying and talking Baptist inside baseball with Carter … How the church can stop hurting people … Yes, Virginia, there’s a Desert Island Bookshelf … This is this week’s Moore to the Point.
What the Death of Jimmy Carter Reveals About American Christianity
Since the dawn of the modern media era, every American president’s funeral has been televised live. Since the dawn of the social media era, all those aspects of a presidential postmortem—the announcement of death, the lying in state, the funeral procession, the eulogies—are video-clipped and discussed across platforms.
Until the death of Jimmy Carter, though, we’ve not been accustomed to seeing a livestream of the judgment seat, when the deceased stands to give an account of his life and to hear the pronouncement of his eternal destiny. The judgment seat was not that of Jesus Christ, though—our technology is still not that good—but of the guardians of politicized American Christianity.
What I mean by this is not that some American Christians demonstrated a mean-spirited glee in denouncing at death someone they deemed an “enemy.” For those of us who grew up in the funeral culture of the Bible Belt South, we were taught this was at best impolite and at worst impious.
Those standards are long gone, but I was still disheartened to see how some American Christians have taken to social media to imply that Carter, who professed faith in Jesus Christ publicly and privately for the full lifetime of almost every person alive today, might be in hell.
Those outside of the evangelical Christianity subculture might not be aware that on some matters, we have developed unwritten rules of Jesuitical complexity to enable us to disobey certain clear directives of Jesus without having to admit to doing so. The elderly women in my home church would never approve of bragging about themselves, but doing so is made alright by adding the words “if I do say so myself” right before or after the boast.
Similarly, it might be hard to justify questioning the eternal destiny of a professing Christian, given Jesus’ command not to judge one another. All one need do, though, is add some caveats such as “No one knows the heart” and “God is the judge, but …” and “We can only hope” (with an implied shake of the head and shrug of the shoulders). Then one is allowed without penalty to say of one’s just-dead enemy what secularists can say more directly but never as literally: “Go to hell.”
What should interest us in all of this is not that religious people can be judgmental; the empty tomb was still warm when the earliest disciples started arguing about who was in and who was out. Instead, what we should note is not the judgment but the criteria by which it is made. That is what is revelatory about the state of the American evangelical Christianity of which Jimmy Carter was once, in the minds of much of the American public, the grinning face.
When revealing himself to his followers, the fundamental question Jesus asked was “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:15, ESV throughout). This had to do, first of all, with who Jesus is, and then with what he has done.
The apostle Paul wrote, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9), assuring that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (v. 13).
There is a category in the New Testament, some may say, for one who claims the name of Christ but has not really believed in him—what the 20th-century martyr-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously called “cheap grace.”
Almost no one charges Carter with rejecting the affirmations of the person and work of Christ found in the New Testament and reiterated in the historic creeds: the deity and humanity of Jesus, his atoning work on the cross, his bodily resurrection from the dead. Almost no one questions Carter’s own sense of what the gospel was—that he saw himself as a sinner who could not justify himself in the eyes of God and as one who trusted in the blood and righteousness of Jesus for eternal life. Carter himself made that clear publicly.
Just a few years ago, he and I talked privately about all of those commitments, extensively, and about sharing the gospel with those who haven’t heard it. That’s not really in question.
So is the implication that Jimmy Carter might not have been a “real” Christian an indication of a kind of “works righteousness”? Does it mean his faith was opposed to the New Testament apostles’ gospel of grace, a gospel that cannot be earned but can only be received by simple, trusting faith?
As much as we should reject that kind of false gospel, at least it would be understandable. After all, the gospel of grace was so startling—to religious people—that the apostle Paul had to clarify repeatedly that it did not mean “Sin all you want, because Jesus” (Rom. 3:5–8).
Works righteousness seems plausible enough that it could “bewitch” the faith of entire first-century churches (see the Book of Galatians), precisely because God does, in fact, call us to obedience and holiness. A faith that does not work itself out in love is, James writes, “dead” (2:17).
Virtually no one questions the personal character of Carter, who was faithful to his wife, Rosalynn, to the point of asking that she be home for hospice so he could hold hands with her in bed. He can’t even be charged with self-righteousness over his sexual morality, given his infamous “lust in my heart” interview, which almost derailed his 1976 presidential campaign. In it, he pointed out that he could not judge others because, by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount standards, his internal heart-wandering meant he was an adulterer too, in need of God’s grace.
The expressed doubts over whether Carter was a “real” Christian has to do instead with a different standard—that of belonging to the right political tribe and holding to the right political and social opinions. Therein lies the tragedy of 21st-century American Christianity.
On many of those political tribal opinions, I too would differ with Carter, and I too would see many of them as of great importance. For over 30 years, I’ve worked in the pro-life movement in opposition to abortion. Carter said he personally opposed abortion and thought it should not be government funded, but he thought the state should allow it. I think he was gravely wrong on that. Carter also believed that Jesus’ principles of nonretaliation and opposition to the taking of life meant that capital punishment is always immoral. I disagree.
Before the abortion debate became what it was in the mid- to late-1970s (largely due to the advocacy and public education work of mostly Roman Catholic pro-life thinkers and activists), not a few very conservative evangelical Christians, such as Southern Baptist conservative patriarch W. A. Criswell and Christianity Today’s founding editor in chief Carl F. H. Henry, were in the same camp as Carter—personally disapproving of abortion but believing it should be legal in many cases. I’m glad they changed their minds.
The question is, though, after they changed their minds, should they have sought baptism? In other words, were they non-Christians when they had the wrong view? Would they have gone to heaven if they had died five minutes before they came to the right view?
Many have noted that virtually no one who question Carter’s personal salvation—given his positions on justice issues for unborn children (in addition to other, much less important, social and political matters)—questions the personal salvation of 18th- and 19th-century professing Christians who opposed the abolition of a system that kidnapped, bought, and sold people as chattel property, separated families, exploited their labor, and systematically raped those made in the image of God.
And most of those who would question whether Carter was “really saved” also defend those who deny historic, creedal, and doctrinal non-negotiables on matters such as the doctrine of God and the Trinity. They defend such people not just as Christians but as Christian teachers and leaders, so long as they are in-bounds on what really matters: support of the right politicians and opposition to the wrong ones. That’s what the old “fundamentalists” would have called “modernism.”
That kind of Christianity is easier than both the true gospel of grace and the false gospel of works. To hold to a true works righteousness, after all, one would have to at least pretend to obey the moral demands of God—both in pursuit of public justice and in fidelity to personal virtues. We all fall short, though, of the glory of God. So to pretend to be justified by such things requires deception of others (Rom. 2:17–24) or of self (1 John 1:8).
American Christianity has found a much easier form of works righteousness—one that doesn’t require, well, work. One can be in a horrible marriage, filled with envy or rage or pride, piling up wealth for oneself while disregarding neighbor, but be justified as a “real” Christian by pontificating all the right political and social positions.
That doesn’t cost a thing. In fact, if you do it right, it can even make you rich.
Justification by ideology alone is also much easier than faith. To follow Jesus, after all, means declaring personal moral bankruptcy. It means giving up hope in being good enough or right enough to be the right kind of person for heaven.
It means realizing that external conformity—whether of hard things, like building houses for the poor or eradicating guinea worm, or easy things, like expounding a “Christian worldview” in which, surprisingly enough, the principles and priorities are the same as those of your political party—can never be enough. You must be born again.
For years, a certain kind of politicized evangelical has used Jimmy Carter as an example of why personal character and piety is not enough for public leadership: “The qualifications to be president are different than the qualifications to be a Sunday school teacher.”
Fair enough. But what if, all along, what they really meant is that they want the qualifications for a Sunday school teacher to be the same as those of a politician?
The sort of world that defines one’s politics as the whole of one’s identity is bad for a country, bad for a person. But the sort of world that defines one’s gospel by such things is infinitely worse.
If Jesus is right about the gospel, Jimmy Carter is in heaven. And so are a lot of other people—a number no man can count—who were wrong on some or another serious political or moral or social question. As a matter of fact, I think that description will include every human being there, except for the one actually sitting on the judgment seat.
What I Learned Praying (and Talking Baptist History Trivia) with Jimmy Carter
Over at The Atlantic, I wrote an essay about what I learned when former president Carter asked me to pray with him.
Writing for a mostly secular audience, I tried to keep out a lot of the inside baseball Southern Baptist conversation, but that was what actually struck me the most.
I mentioned in the article that he talked about the SBC emphasis on the 1978 “Bold Mission Thrust”—which he said he wished he had been able to be more involved with at its launch but “couldn’t because of work.” It was a second or two before my mind registered that “work” for him in 1978 was being president of the United States.
He wanted to talk about—and knew all the relevant facts of—such matters as what year the assignment of RAs went from the Brotherhood Commission to the WMU and the way Foy Valentine saw the relationship between the CLC and the BJC.
I don’t expect you to follow along with those names and acronyms, because 99.99999 percent of even Southern Baptists right now wouldn’t be able to. For me, the conversation was an experience of geeking-out joy, of the sort that Dwight Schrute would have when finding someone in the world who could do scene-by-scene analysis of Battlestar Galactica episodes.
You can read my Atlantic essay here.
Diane Langberg on Sexual Abuse and Church Trauma
This week over on the podcast, I talk with psychologist Diane Langberg, the author of a new book, When the Church Harms God’s People, about what we’ve learned over the past several years about the treatment of sexual abuse survivors—and others harmed by the church.
Diane gives deep and practical wisdom on how someone hurt by church abuse or neglect can start to heal, and how the rest of us can help and not further the damage. She also offers wisdom on how to choose and hold accountable leaders who won’t perpetuate the sort of culture that has led to all of this wreckage.
You can listen here.
Desert island bookshelf
Every other week, I share a list of books that one of you says you’d want to have on hand if you were stranded on a deserted island. This week’s submission comes from reader Chris Tennant from Williamsburg, Virginia:
- Peace Like a River by Leif Enger: A beautiful piece of writing. One chapter in particular stands out for me. I’ve never read such a beautiful depiction of heaven.
- Heaven by Randy Alcorn: I wanted to be excited for heaven—it’s my eternal home, after all! But is it just a never-ending church service? This profoundly impactful book reshaped my understanding of heaven.
- The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan: A timeless classic that has provided much wisdom and comfort to me in my walk with the King.
- Foundations of the Christian Faith by James Montgomery Boice: I read this as an undergraduate in college and it was my first exposure to systematic theology. Discovering it for myself and making it my own was transforming.
- The Hymnal for Worship and Celebration: My first 18 years were spent attending the same rural Baptist church (with the same pastor and the same song leader—who also served as the town judge, my high school government teacher, and the varsity softball coach). Every song in every service came from a hymnal. Missing that a lot these days.
- The Beartown trilogy by Fredrik Backman: Utterly compelling and fascinating characters. I love everything about Backman’s writing.
- Biblical Critical Theory by Christopher Watkin: I had high expectations for this well-reviewed book. I expected it to engage my mind, but was not prepared for how much it has led me to praise and worship in my private devotions.
- How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key: I’ve never experienced such a wide gamut of emotions, with such a degree of intensity, as I have while reading this masterpiece.
- Warnings to the Churches by J. C. Ryle: Anything by Ryle would make my list. I wanted to include his Expository Thoughts on the Gospels but didn’t think I could get away with including another multi-volume selection. I’ve chosen this book because a photograph I took was used for the cover 😉
- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes: A narrator experiencing and reporting the world through drastic cognitive changes. Poignant, powerful, and profound (anyone is free to use that as a sermon outline).
Thank you, Chris!
Readers, what do y’all think? If you were stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life and could have only one playlist or one bookshelf with you, what songs or books would you choose?
- For a Desert Island Playlist, send me a list between 5 and 12 songs, excluding hymns and worship songs. (We’ll cover those later.)
- For a Desert Island Bookshelf, send me a list of up to 12 books, along with a photo of all the books together.
Send your list (or both lists) to questions@russellmoore.com, and include as much or as little explanation of your choices as you would like, along with the city and state from which you’re writing.
Quote of the Moment
“A distinction must be made between griefs and grievances. … Grievances are a form of impatience. Griefs are a form of patience.”
—Robert Frost
Currently Reading (or Re-Reading)
- Rowan Williams, A Century of Poetry: 100 Poems for Searching the Heart (SPCK)
- Frederick Buechner, The Storm: A Novel (HarperCollins)
- Patchen Barss, The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius (Basic)
- Robert B. Talisse, Civic Solitude: Why Democracy Needs Distance (Oxford University Press)
- Tyina L. Steptoe, ed., Jim Crow: Voices from a Century of Struggle, Part One: 1876–1919, Reconstruction to the Red Summer (Library of America)
- Kirk R. MacGregor, Luis de Molina: The Life and Theology of the Founder of Middle Knowledge (Zondervan)
- Lisa Tuttle, My Death (New York Review Books)
- Antón Barba-Kay, A Web of Our Own Making: The Nature of Digital Formation (Cambridge University Press)
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Russell Moore
Editor in Chief, Christianity Today
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