Jimmy Carter
speaker
288 appearances
16 recordings
12 series
first heard Sep 2024
last heard 1 May
Jimmy Carter’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
with the Iranian officials to get our hostages out, and it was fruitless until the last few days of my presidency. The last three days that I was president, I never went to bed at all. I never even went over to the White House. I stayed in the Oval Office to negotiate with the Iranians indirectly through the Algerians.
And it was that negotiation that finally brought about the release of the hostages. From 10 o'clock that morning Until noon, when I went out of office, they sat in an airplane at the end of the runway in Tehran Airport. And as soon as President Reagan was sworn in, the plane took off. But that was a result of a last-minute negotiation through the Algerians.
Well, I've got more time now to devote to my church and my duties as a Christian in a non-political fashion. I just don't have any ambitions or interest in ever seeking another public office. And the Carter Center's work in which Rosa and I devote almost all of our time, is strictly bipartisan in nature.
So now I'm able to teach Sunday school every Sunday that I'm in Plains, which is about two out of three Sundays. Last year I taught 36 times. And some other aspects of our life are directly related to Christianity. But I don't want to imply... That when I was present, that I abandoned my faith or found a basic inconsistency between what I believe.
In religion and what I did as a politician, I think almost always, they were compatible. There were a few times when they were not completely compatible, but I took an oath of office before God to support the Constitution and laws of my nation, and I did. And if I disagreed with some of the laws or felt that they were not completely compatible with my religious faith, I just obeyed the law.
Two or three aspects. One is that I believe in the separation of church and state. So I was very careful not to have religious services in the White House or to have religious meetings in the White House. I went to church on Sunday when I was in Washington at the First Baptist Church at Camp David. We had a private religious service.
And there were very few times when I felt any discrepancy at all. But I had to interpret the Constitution as the Supreme Court ruled it to be at that particular moment. There were two issues, for instance, I'll just give you an example, where I felt that, well, I just couldn't believe that Jesus Christ would favor abortions. And I also can't believe that he would favor the death penalty.
And fortunately, all the time I was governor, all the time I was president, there was never a death penalty imposed. On abortion, the Supreme Court had ruled that Roe v. Wade was applicable, and I obviously, as president, enforced that interpretation of the Constitution, but I did everything I could to reduce the need for abortions. So that was the main thing that came to mind.
Well, that was obvious to me because the number one news story of the entire 1976 campaign was an interview that I gave with Playboy magazine. And all I did was quote part of the Sermon on the Mount, and it became an issue that almost cost me the election. The Playboy interviewer turned off his tape recorder, started to leave my home, and he said, you claim to be a born-again Christian.
You claim to be perfect. American citizens are imperfect. How can you claim to be willing to govern them fairly? And I said, well, you've completely misinterpreted my religion. Our religion teaches us that all of us have sinned, come short of the glory of God, that we should not judge other people. And Jesus taught us not to try to distinguish between degrees of sinfulness if we
hate our brother, we should not criticize someone who commits murder. If we have lust in our heart for a woman, we should not criticize a person who commits adultery. And, of course, the next question was inevitable. He said, have you committed adultery? And I answered that question. He said, well, have you ever had lust in your heart? And I said, sure.
When I was a high school kid, when I was in college, before I married Rosen, Quite often I would look at a beautiful girl and I would want to have sex with her. And he said, well, thanks a lot. So he left. And two or three weeks later, Playboy magazine came out. It was the biggest selling issue of Playboy in history. And my public opinion poll dropped 15% in 10 days.
So that was those innocent days 20 years ago, just because I said that I had lust, as I thought every man did. But then the news reporters went all over the country asking famous preachers and TV evangelists. about the issue, and they all said, no, no, I've never lusted after any woman except my wife.
So it made me look, you know, both sinful and also, I would guess, equivocating on an important issue.
Well, I worshipped as I would if I had not been in public life at all. I went to Sunday services at the First Baptist Church in Washington, which was the nearest Baptist church to the White House. Most of the weekends we tried to go to Camp David. We had a chaplain from a nearby army base come and preach a sermon. We sang hymns together.
And as far as my personal prayer life was concerned, I would say it was much more frequent and maybe on the average more heartfelt than any other time in my life because I felt that the decisions I made were affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of people. I never prayed for popularity. I never prayed to be reelected, things of that kind. I prayed that I could keep my nation at peace.
I prayed that I could extend the advantages of peace to other people, say, between Egypt and Israel at Camp David. When the hostage crisis came along, the prayer that I made was that all the hostages would come back home safe and free, that I would not betray the principles of my nation or do anything to embarrass it. And I think in all those cases, my prayers were answered.
I think God always answers our prayers. Quite often, God's answer is no. We don't get what we ask for. And then the obligation, if we have faith, is to find out within ourselves why. Are we asking for selfish things? Are we asking for things that are unjustified? Are our prayers in accordance with God's will? Those are the kind of things that I've learned over a long lifetime, as you know.
And those are the things I try to describe in Living Faith.
Well, when I was a child, say when I reached the age of 10 or teenage life, I had some very serious doubts about what I heard in church, what I heard in Sunday school, what I heard my own father teaching. But I wouldn't express my doubts to anybody. And I thought I was very sinful not to have absolute and total faith. Now my faith is stronger.
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