Carter Preaches a Sermon of Involvement

Jimmy Carter gained fame--and learned the sting of defeat--as a politician. But he gained respect as perhaps the nation’s most prominent Christian layman, becoming as familiar a figure wielding a hammer building homes for the poor as he had wearing a sweater in the Oval Office.

So who does he see doing more for the homeless, the unemployed and those with AIDS: Christian congregations or that reviled class known as politicians?

For the most part, the pols.

It isn’t that politicians are morally superior, the former president said during a swing through Los Angeles this week. But at a time when many Christians are self-satisfied and reluctant to get involved in the troubled world beyond their congregations, politicians at least look for solutions, he said--if only because voters hold them accountable.

“Quite often church members resent or avoid any sort of entanglement with people who might be a burden of responsibility on us,” Carter said in an interview. “We don’t want . . . to get directly involved with people who are different, who might be homeless or might be in prison or might have AIDS. This is something of which many of us are guilty.”

Those are sobering words, coming days before Christmas--a season of giving--when Christians throughout the world celebrate the birth of a “savior” who the New Testament says repeatedly sought out those different from himself.

Distilled over a career of public life and private belief, Carter’s observations on such issues are contained in his 11th book, “Living Faith,” just published by Times Books, New York.

From contrite passages that recount heated arguments with his wife, Rosalynn, and estrangement from his son Jack to paeans on forgiveness and reconciliation, the 39th president has held up a mirror in which individuals and churches may see unflattering as well as hopeful reflections of themselves.

“It was a very difficult book for me to write . . . intensely personal,” Carter said between a radio show and a book signing at Barnes & Noble in West Los Angeles.

Carter said he felt he could not “preach” to others without first confessing his own shortcomings--to shed light on “the disparity between my secular ambitions and the example of Jesus Christ.”

Carter’s book comes at a time when religion has returned to the public square, seeking to shape society and public policy. Christians, in particular, have organized sophisticated precinct organizations, created extensive broadcast networks and, like other faiths, lobbied government.

Carter said the real test of the Christian agenda is how it comports with the teachings of Jesus. And when it comes to social justice issues, he said, congregations too often fall short.

“It’s human nature to live in a self-encapsulated, secure world, among a homogeneous group who look like us, who speak the same language, who wear the same clothes, who drive the same kind of automobiles,” he said. “We profess to espouse the teachings of Christ. [But] he reached out almost exclusively to people different from himself--to the outcast, to the despised, the inarticulate, the suffering. We don’t often do that.”

How do politicians compare? “A politician may not be morally better. But in a totally competitive race to stay in office or to be elected, when a question comes up about what are we going to do about people who are in need, afraid or suffering, the politician is trying to come up with a good answer, to be a good servant to his constituency. It’s forced on him.”

Carter deals with individual as well as institutional shortcomings,and nowhere are his revelations more poignant than when he writes about his male pride and dominance, his anger and reluctance to forgive, and how it affected his relationship with his wife and children.

Early in his marriage, he said, he made major choices without consulting his wife, including his decision to leave the Navy and return to Plains, Ga., and a decision in 1962 to run for the state Senate.

“I decided to run . . . and Rosalynn never knew about it until I got up on Tuesday morning and put on my dress trousers instead of blue jeans or khakis and she said, ‘Jimmy, are you going to a funeral?’ And I said no. ‘Why are you putting on your Sunday clothes?’ I said I’m going to qualify for the Georgia Senate,” Carter recounted in the Los Angeles interview.

Carter said his wife has supported him in writing the book, which is dedicated to her. But she strongly objected to him disclosing that he was estranged from his son Jack in the late 1980s.

“My father was totally dominant,” he said. “When he gave me an order, I did it. If I didn’t, I was severely punished. He was an officer in the Army. I was a Naval officer and I exerted the same control over my boys. . . . If I gave them an order, I expected it to be carried out.

“I look upon them still--this may not be the most attractive word--as inferior to me. And after my oldest son, Jack, had been to Vietnam for three years, after he finished a degree in nuclear physics, after he went through law school, after he got married, then he and I were walking one day hunting. Jack turned around and said to me with tears running down his cheeks that I almost destroyed his life when he was a child. All I felt was: ‘This is an ingrate. All we’ve done for this boy--he didn’t appreciate it.’ And I went home and shared my displeasure with Rosalynn, and it took us literally a couple of years to become reconciled with Jack.”

Carter says he now finds it hard to believe his behavior toward his son. And his marriage has become more equal, he said.

Carter knows the risks of talking publicly about faith and foibles. His confession two decades ago of “lust in my heart” drew him ridicule that still nags at him.

But he’s once more talking about his heart, and there is an audience--the crowd wound around the block seeking autographed copies of what Carter said is already his best-selling book.

And the audience is not of one faith. He was introduced at the book store by Rabbi Marvin Heir of the Simon Weisenthal Center and the line included everyone from New Agers to, of course, Baptists.

Inevitably, politics came up. But Carter even had a spiritual slant on the low point of his administration. Citing the example of Jesus, he said he is able now to forgive even the Iranians, who may have cost him reelection by waiting to release American hostages until five minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president Jan. 20, 1981.

“The one thing that Christ preached most about was pride, self-satisfaction, ego,” Carter said.

“When we do think we know the answers, that we are even endowed by God with the right answers, and anyone who disagrees with us is first of all wrong, and secondly inferior--and in some extreme cases subhuman--then obviously that’s a total gross distortion of what the faith I would describe means.”