Drawing a Crowd : Visitors Flock to Jimmy Carter’s Sunday School Class, Which He Still Teaches in Georgia

In between his roving diplomacy and various humanitarian projects, former President Jimmy Carter still teaches that Sunday school class at his hometown church in Plains, Ga.

But it usually attracts more visitors than regular members.

“People come to my Sunday school class and quite often they will tell me they’ve never been in a church before and they just came as a tourist,” he said.

They generally include Roman Catholics, Jews and various Protestants, including Baptists such as himself, plus those unfamiliar with church concepts.

“I have a special need to be broad-minded in my teaching and also be prepared for the most startling questions,” he said, but adds that the diversity doesn’t bother him.

He uses humor, personal anecdotes and gentle coaxing to draw strangers into the discussions. “But I teach just the standard--I think basically conservative--Christian story,” he said.

Carter described his continuing role as a Sunday school teacher in a recent interview with Bill Sumners, director of the Southern Baptist Historical Commission’s library and archives.

The interview and videotape of Carter teaching the class are part of a commission project to preserve the denomination’s history through interviews with Baptist notables.

Since Carter left the presidency more than a decade ago, he has kept occupied in various service work, ranging from renovating housing for the poor and health projects in Africa to monitoring elections in Central America.

But on most Sundays, he is back at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains teaching that class--something he has done much of his adult life, including during his White House years and while governor of Georgia.

“It strengthens my own understanding of the Bible,” Carter said. “There’s a certain discipline involved if you are going to learn a little more than the prepared lesson text.”

In describing his approach, as recounted by Baptist Press, Carter centers each lesson on the weekly Scripture texts in the annual sequences used in most churches.

Preparing a lesson, he both studies the texts and supplementary references. On trips, he takes a lesson guide with him and makes notes of pertinent incidents to illustrate points.

“Quite often I don’t get home until Saturday, but I get up early Sunday morning and go into my word processor and write down a lesson outline,” he said.

Up to 120 people show up for his class, and the 150-member Maranatha congregation has built a new auditorium to seat twice its current membership.

Visitors to Carter’s class introduce themselves and he sometimes invites guest clergy to lead prayers or supplement his commentaries on the subject at hand.

Carter has said that he has become more open to other faiths. However, in his recorded talk with the historical commission’s Sumners, he emphasized his Christian and Baptist heritage, talking of the influence of his parents’ faith and his own early life.

“It was part of my life like breathing, like being a Georgian or being a human being,” he said. “To be part of a church life, to be a Christian, was just assumed as a natural part of life.”

He attended Sunday school starting at age 4 and was baptized at 11 after some revival services in Plains. As a boy, he rode a bicycle several miles to attend Baptist Young People’s Union meetings.

“As a rural boy it gave me a chance to get to know big-city life in Plains,” recalled Carter, who was reared on a farm.

He said Baptist pastors taught him that Christianity is not to be confined to the church building or Sunday worship but applied to everyday life and conditions in this country and elsewhere.

As a young man, Carter helped a pastor start a church in Lock Haven, Pa., and served for a time as a lay missionary among Spanish-speaking people in Massachusetts.

However, in the 1960s he differed with many Southern Baptists, whose congregations had remained racially segregated. The integrated Maranatha church was formed over that issue.

Maranatha’s pastor, the Rev. Daniel G. Ariail, said Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, participate actively. He said that since it has only one other paid employee, the Carters take their turns cutting grass or cleaning the premises the same as other members.

“For me,” Carter said, “my religious faith has not only been inspirational and my guide, but it has also been an element of relief during times of tension, of solace during times of sorrow, strength when I was tempted to be weak and falter, and of inspiration when I decided what my life ought to be.”