When Plains Baptist Church voted overwhelmingly in the 1950s to bar Blacks and “racial agitators” from membership, Jimmy Carter and a handful of his family members

Baptist leaders are remembering Jimmy Carter as an example of faithfulness, compassion and justice and advocate for religious liberty.

Chuck Leavell, keyboardist for the pioneering Southern rock band, said its members saw their fellow Georgian as an honest, inspiring figure.

Jimmy Carter was an evangelical. A liberal evangelical. A liberal evangelical in the age before the Christian Right supported a conservative revolution that swept Republican Ronald Reagan into power.

I can tell you without any equivocation that the number one abuse of human rights on Earth, strangely not addressed quite often, is the abuse of women and girls,” the former President said.

Jimmy Carter, a progressive Baptist, balanced faith with politics, advocating for church-state separation while evolving on social issues, shaping evangelical roles in U.S. public life.

President Jimmy Carter shakes hands with the crowd after delivering an address at Wait Chapel concerning the Soviet threat, March 17, 1978. To the right of Carter is Fifth District Congressman Steve Neal. More than 50 years after filling out his ballot, Jimmy Walker freely admits it.

The service, which lasted roughly two hours, was packed with heartfelt and vivid remembrances that recalled both a powerful president and politician as well as a thoughtful and giving man of faith.

Carter was one of the most explicitly religious presidents, but his rise in politics came during a transformative era in American Christianity.

Jimmy Carter, who died Dec. 29 at the age of 100, spent his life intertwined with America’s and the world’s enduring legacy of slavery.

On January 31, 2009, I had the honor of introducing former President Jimmy Carter before he spoke at the Southeast Regional Gathering of the New Baptist Covenant at 16th Street Baptist Church m Birmingham.