Jimmy Carter - Faith: A Journey for All

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Copyright 2018 by Jimmy Carter

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition March 2018

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Interior design by Paul Dippolito

Jacket design by Pete Garceau

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Carter, Jimmy, 1924author.

Title: Faith : a journey for all / Jimmy Carter.

Description: First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.|New York : Simon & Schuster, 2018.|Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN2018003986 (print)|LCCN2018005243 (ebook)|ISBN 9781501184420|ISBN 9781501184413 (hardcover : alk. paper)|ISBN 9781501184437 (trade pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Faith.|Christianity and culture.|HistoryReligious aspectsChristianity.

Classification: LCC BV4637 (ebook)|LCC BV4637 .C346 2018 (print)|DDC 234/.23dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018003986

ISBN 978-1-5011-8441-3

ISBN 978-1-5011-8442-0 (ebook)

This book is dedicated to my wife, Rosalynn, who has shared all kinds of faith with me for more than seventy years.

These are some people of faith whose works I reviewed before writing this book. I do not claim to understand all their theological or philosophical premises, but over the years I have jotted down and retained excerpts from their voluminous works with which I agree. Their quotes in this book will help us understand their basic beliefs.

My admiration for Reinhold Niebuhr (18921971) is well known. I quoted him in 1975, in Why Not the Best?, my first book. He was an unusual theologian, who, through his writings, exerted a great influence on American public affairs. He certainly had a powerful effect on my attitudes toward politics.

Reinholds brother H. Richard Niebuhr (18941962) engaged less in public affairs, but he also was a distinguished American theologian and ethicist. His book, Faith on Earth: An Inquiry into the Structure of Human Faith, was given to me by his son, Richard, when it was published posthumously in 1989. It was especially helpful for this book.

Two American Christian thinkers and activists, whom I knew personally, were William Sloane Coffin (19242006) and Clarence Jordan (19121969). Both were controversial. Coffin had supported the civil rights movement, but he became best known as a leader of the peace movement during the Vietnam War. He served as chaplain at Yale, and later became senior minister at Riverside Church in New York, where he invited me to speak. He wrote a popular book, The Heart Is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality.

Clarence Jordan was a fellow Georgian. In fact, his nephew, Hamilton Jordan, was one of my closest aides and became my White House chief of staff. Clarence Jordan was a New Testament Greek scholar who translated New Testament books into Cotton Patch versions, using Southern colloquial language. His book of Matthew was adapted into The Cotton Patch Gospel, an off-Broadway musical. A collection of his sermons has been published as The Substance of Faith: And Other Cotton Patch Sermons . I contributed the foreword. In 1942, Jordan founded Koinonia, a racially integrated religious community in southwest Georgia near Plains. As the civil rights movement advanced in the 1950s, Koinonia was perceived as a threat and suffered boycotts and violence. To me, Jordan was a model of courage and faith.

I studied two influential Swiss theologians, Karl Barth (18861968) and Emil Brunner (18891966). Barth often has been described as the most important theologian of the twentieth century. As a professor at German universities, he opposed Hitler and the Nazis. Of all the theologians I have read, Barth has been the most difficult for me to understand. His discussions of election, or predestination, have been enlightening if I understand his writings: that Jesus was predestined to be born as divine, but that God does not decide in advance which persons are destined to be saved or condemned. Brunner also has had an international impact. He respected but disagreed with certain teachings of Barth. I was especially interested in his discussion of the divine aspects of Jesus life.

Three German theologians whom I read were Dietrich Bonhoeffer (19061945), Rudolf Karl Bultmann (18841976), and Jrgen Moltmann (b. 1926). Like Barth, Bonhoeffer was a theologian and founding member of the German Confessing Church, which opposed the Nazis. However, he remained in Germany during the war, was arrested, and executed. The knowledge of Bonhoeffers personal courage has made me feel inadequate in my Christian life but has been inspirational in its impact.