Jimmy Carter And America’s Double Standard For Celebrating Christianity

People are widely praising President Jimmy Carter’s Christian faith after his passing, a reaction that reveals a telling double standard in how elites treat different expressions of Christianity.

For example, a Washington Post writer declared, “For Jimmy Carter, faith was inseparable from politics and life.” The Hill wrote, “Jimmy Carter was the Christian most politicians pretend to be.” And The New York Times profiled how Carter’s faith defined his activities and outlook in public life.

By all accounts, Carter’s Christianity was a particularly pietistic expression of Mainline Protestantism. This is a faith whose doctrinal core has been hollowed out for decades by theological liberalism. It’s a modernized Christianity that sheds the most controversial and supposedly outmoded elements of biblical doctrine to placate the spirit of the age.

For example, Carter is on record celebrating same-sex marriage and defending abortion. He publicly opposed Southern Baptist conservatives as they sought to return the denomination to a more biblically faithful position, ultimately departing it altogether.

Carter’s faith resonates with liberal ideals — service, humility, and social justice. His Christianity embodied what one of my old professors called “BOMFOG” (Brotherhood of Man and Fatherhood of God). This version of Christianity wins praise. 

Of course, service, humility, seeking justice, and loving your neighbor are beautiful and vital parts of Christianity. But Christianity also addresses sin, human nature, family structure, the exclusivity of Christ for salvation, sexual morality, repentance, and absolute truth. These are the harder truths of the faith that don’t play well in progressive circles.

When conservative Christians act on their faith, public opinion and media framing shift. Suddenly, Christianity becomes a problem. When conservative Christians act in line with their beliefs on issues like life, family, or religious liberty, they are met with criticism and labeled intolerant or regressive. It’s a threat to democracy and an illiberal force in society. 

Just look at the past eight years. Evangelicals have been relentlessly vilified in the media, even by fellow Christians at elite publications. Yes, there’s some nutty behavior out there among evangelicals. But on the whole, if you take your Christian faith seriously and it becomes a threat to the cultural comfort zones of progressivism, you are persona non grata. Consider the ominous media analysis of Sen. JD Vance’s supposed “post-liberal” Catholicism. The tone makes it seem like his faith is as sinister as Darth Vader’s theme song.

The difference? Carter’s faith comforted the cultural Left. It posed no threat to the dominant liberal order.

To be fair, his faith motivated many good works for which I will not criticize him. But Carter’s Christianity ultimately allowed him to serve as a chaplain to progressive America. It represents the convergence of religious sentimentality with progressive moral values. In effect, Carter’s faith symbolizes the one form of church-state establishment that liberalism will tolerate: a Christianity stripped of its harder truths, its calls to repentance, and its moral clarity.

Biblical, orthodox Christianity, on the other hand, confronts the liberal order with truths it refuses to hear. And when those truths are voiced, orthodox faith is sidelined or castigated as intolerant. Liberalism will not accept a Christianity that proclaims Jesus Christ as the only way to God, that defends unborn human beings discarded as medical waste, or that challenges the decadent sexual deviancy now treated as routine.

The lesson? Our culture tolerates a Christian faith that aligns with its values but resists a Christian faith that challenges it. This dynamic reveals something fundamental about true Christianity: it is to do both, comfort and confront.

If your Christianity is celebrated in the highest echelons of culture, maybe that’s a sign something is amiss. That doesn’t necessarily mean compromise is present, but it should at least raise questions. On the other hand, being so hard-edged and “prophetic” that you’re unbearable to be around is also a problem. Authentic faith should embody love and truth (1 Corinthians 13:6), reasonableness (Philippians 4:5), and sober-mindedness (1 Peter 5:8).

Carter’s life invites us to examine how faith is understood and celebrated in public life. The irony is clear: society embraces a faith that serves its agenda while rejecting a faith that stands apart from it. True Christianity, however, is neither a servant of the age nor its unrelenting critic. Instead, it provides both the comfort of grace and the challenge of repentance, which our culture desperately needs.

So, let’s not selectively celebrate faith only when it fits a preferred narrative. If faith matters, it matters in full, whether it aligns with our politics or not. That’s the beauty of Christianity. It’s the one worldview that provides both comfort and confrontation, truth and grace, and it’s what we need in this moment of cultural upheaval. 

Andrew T. Walker is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Managing Editor of WORLD Opinions. He is a Fellow at The Ethics and Public Policy Center.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.