31
Jan
Transcript of Jimmy Carters’ address at New Baptist Covenant
This is a transcript I wrote up of the address given by President Jimmy Carter on January 30, 2008 at the New Baptist Covenant Celebration in Atlanta, Georgia. The dismal points of the speech deserve critique. Before we get to that though (next post), take a read for yourself.
Note: I have not attempted to perfect punctuation or paragraphs, and certainly there are times when italics could be used in line with Carter’s vocal emphasis.
Here is the link to the video:
- TRANSCRIPT -
Earlier this evening we had a brief session in that window up on the side of the wall there, and I looked down on the empty chairs and I almost fainted. And now I see they are all full. I am so grateful to you.
And then we a press conference, and among the more rational questions was one – “How do you know if your convocation will be a success?”. And I’d like to ask you already – after you heard the music and you heard Bill Shaw’s sermon, has this already been a success or not? [Applause]
Not being a preacher, I am going to take a little bit different approach. But one of the comments he made, I wrote down. Because it does fit in very well with the message I want to bring. He says, “How do we disagree with Jesus in the name of Jesus?” How do we disagree with Jesus in the name of Jesus. That is a very thought-provoking question.
I come tonight representing Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia and I speak to you tonight as a Sunday School teacher, and now I find out I am most famous as the husband of the most famous deacon in the world. [laughter] We have a town of 635 people with eight churches inside the city limits. [laughter] And I guess not surprising, three of them are Baptist. [laughter]
I accepted Christ as Savior when I was eleven years old, and I began teaching Bible lessons almost exactly 65 years ago as a Navy midshipmen at Annapolis. But this Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant is the momentous event in my religious life. [applause]
For the first time in more than 160 years, we are convening a major convocation of Baptists throughout an entire continent without any threat to our unity or our freedom caused by differences in race, politics, geography, or the legalistic interpretation of Scriptures, as Dr. William Shaw has so beautifully explained in his sermon, and as Bill Underwood has also mentioned.
Our common theme is based on the words of our Savior when he finished his miraculous ministry, his first trip around the Northern part of the Sea of Galilee and came back to his hometown of Nazareth. And although you’ve heard it several times, let me quote again the words of Jesus:
“The Spirit of the Lord, he said, is upon me. Because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captive, the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
His words are both inspirational and a call to action. As we strive to emulate in our own individual ways the perfect life of Jesus Christ. But tonight we need to remember that there is no way to avoid his emphasis on a few words which quite often we forget as Christians – the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, the blind, the bruised and also the word he used, “liberty”. We pray as did Christ that they [or “day”?], that the Spirit of the Lord would be upon us, and that he will also preach the gospel, that we can do this trusting that this is an acceptable year, although perhaps long overdue.
We come together in peace and harmony with courage to face facts, and to search for inspiration. We are ready to make commitments individually and collectively to serve the Prince of Peace with eagerness, to spread his gospel, and to inspire harmony – an often missing word among ourselves and also among other Christians.
To make this commitment lasting or permanent will not be easy. The temptations of self-congratulations and self-promotion and self-exaltation are very powerful, as is our human inclination to be enjoyably inspired during exciting moments like this, and then lapse into relative dormancy or complacency or inactivity.
We convene today with thanksgiving, with high hopes and expectations, but also with humility and prayers that all our deliberations would be guided by the permeating spirit of Jesus Christ, with no criticism of others. During this entire week – let me say again – no criticism of others, or exclusion of any Christians, now or in the future who wish to join this cause.
This convocation is a culmination of several earlier efforts beginning a number of years ago. There were meetings at the Carter Center in the 1990’s, of both, what I’ll call traditional and more conservative Southern Baptist leaders, the group included at least seven past and future Presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention. And we issued at the conclusion of that session, several sessions, a unanimous public statement – listen to this exciting excerpt, and I quote:
“We receive the Holy Scripture as inspired and authoritative, agreeing that the criterion is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ. We believe in the principle of local church autonomy and our faith continues to be based on the historical Baptist principals of soul competency, priesthood of believers, separation of church and state, religious freedom, compassion for unbelievers, and respect for all persons as inherently equal before God.”
That was more than ten years ago. We thought at that time that this common commitment would be adequate and may be binding, but tragically the tentative movement toward harmony was short-lived, and the hope of further moves toward reconciliation remained somewhat dormant until almost exactly two years ago when a decision was made by some of the folks on the stage and others to bring traditional Baptists together, to discuss common beliefs and common commitments. Dr. William Shaw, National Baptists, Bill Underwood, Mercer University President, Jimmy Allen, former President of the Southern Baptist Convention, David Goatley, North American Baptist Fellowship, Tyrone Pitts, Progressive National Baptists, and several other leaders. They met several times over the next two years to explore new opportunities for fellowship and cooperation.
Our group affirmed a common desire among many different kinds of Baptists to promote a positive, non-exclusive program of sharing the gospel of Christ with an emphasis on freedom and practical ways to fulfill our duties as Christians. There was a unanimous commitment to traditional Baptist values and their implications for public and private morality, promotion of religious liberty, and also religious diversity.
Last January, in this town, more than eighty participants representing I think more than thirty different groups announced plans here for this convocation based on the overall theme which we will honor all this week of unity in Christ, still with the primary goal of spreading the gospel. We also discussed the enhancement of endangered moral values in America, involving poverty, health care, support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, protection of the environment, rehabilitation and equity in the treatment of prisoners, shelter for the poor, peace instead of constant wars, and the prevention of abuse of Christians in foreign countries.
We are meeting at a time when the global Christian church is numerically strong. We are encouraged and not especially surprised to realize that approximately one-third of the total population on earth profess to be followers of Christ. Our most notable so-called competitors are Muslims, who comprise about one-fifth of the total. But both of us are growing at a very slow annual rate.
While many of our older Christian congregations in Europe and North America are relatively dormant, there is a rapid expansion of faith among the more active and inspired Christians of Africa and Asia and Latin America. Like many of you perhaps, I have witnessed extraordinary passion and dynamism while worshipping with Baptists in Nigeria, in Ghana, in Nicaragua, South Korea.
We Americans need to realize there is no special correlation between freedom and liberty with our own faith, because the three largest democracies on earth are India, Hindus, United States of America, Christians, and Indonesia, Islamic.
Perhaps more surprising to many of you might be to learn that the third largest number of Christians in a nation has grown just here in the last three decades to be in the Peoples Republic of China.
In the Evangelical competition with other beliefs, since the founding of the first Christian churches, our advantages, the advantages of Christians have been derived from the purity and the attractiveness of Jesus’ own commitments to peace, justice, humility, service, forgiveness, and the alleviation of suffering – those attributes of Christ are attractive to all humans. But our strength and effectiveness have always been predicated on a shaky foundation of working harmoniously with other Christians to achieve these common goals.
My wife Rosanne and I have delivered more than 125 different nations since we left the White House, and we and our hosts have had many discussions about religion. Among the unsaved people on earth, what is a prevailing image of Christians today? It is not the dedicated and inspired work of our missionaries. It is not the great preaching of people like Billy Graham or others who inspire people, it is the image of divisions among brothers and sisters in Christ as we struggle for authority or argue about the interpretation of individual verses in the Holy Scriptures.
Unfortunately the arguments and even the animosities that exist among Christians are like a cancer that is metastasizing in the body of Christ. This plagues us with diversions from his ministry and presents to the world a negative image of Christians that is directly opposite from the gentle and loving aspect of the one whom we profess to worship.
This is not a new problem, but one that also threatened the very existence of the early church. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote, and I quote:
“Now I beseech you brethren by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same minds and in the same judgment.”
The early Christians precipitated that warning from Paul because they were departing from the basic gospel of Christ by adding their own requirements for fellowship and salvation. For some it was the prerequisite of becoming, of adopting Judaism first and being circumcised before becoming Christians. Others we imposing a creed concerning the eating of meat that had been dedicated to idols. Others argued about which Sabbath day to choose, it had not been decided then, and there were also disputes about who was the most effective apostle for Christ to be honored – was it Paul himself or was it Peter, was it Apollos, or was it some very eloquent local preacher.
Paul may or may not have anticipated modern-day debates, but he made it vividly clear that to substitute any other issues no matter how important for the good news about salvation was an abomination that could divide Christians one from another and subvert evangelism for Jesus Christ.
We should remember that Paul’s letters were the first Scriptures written in our New Testament, at least a decade before the Gospel of Mark and others. At that time there were perhaps not more than 1,000 Christians in the whole world. They were in scattered congregations and they were no threat to the Romans or to the leaders of religion in Jerusalem – they were disorganized.
With relative harmony during the next three centuries and with the help of a Christian emperor, the number of professed believers in Christ increased to approximately thirty million – more than half the citizens of the vast Roman Empire. This expansion could not have been possible if members of the early church had been as divided as we are today.
To redefine or change the gospel has been a temptation for many centuries. Either to dilute the gospel message so that it is meaningless, or to impose mandatory human interpretations on some carefully chosen texts.
When I was a child, there was a tragic example of enforced religious belief that was widely promulgated and largely accepted by my fellow Baptists in Plains, Georgia and by most other Christians in America. The meaning of a few certain verses was twisted for more than a century to say that black and white people must not worship together. Very few people in the churches, or great lawyers disputed those words.
Although the legal foundation for racial segregation has been repealed, some elements of this discrimination still exists.
We must acknowledge that man-made issues are still causing serious and debilitating schisms within the Christian church. We Baptists are quite familiar with the conflicting opinions that have divided us from one another. And similar problems, some even more serious, afflict Methodists and Episcopalians, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Catholics and others who are professed believers in the gospel message that Paul was attempting to defend.
Having witnessed myself some of the most intense debates within the political and religious world, I am not minimizing the importance of the controversies.
Let me ask you a few questions, but please, refrain from giving me an answer…
How many of you believe that women should play a full role as Christians including serving as deacons, missionaries, pastors, and military chaplains.
Or, how many believe that women should be submissive to their husbands and excluded from any role as leaders or teachers of men.
How many believe that the earth was formed in 4004 BC?
Or, that God created the universe approximately fifteen million years ago?
How many believe that the Supreme Court ruling on Roe versus Wade was appropriate and should remain unchanged?
Or, that all abortions under all circumstances should be prohibited?
How many believe that homosexual believers should be accepted into Christian congregations and treated with respect?
Or, that the sin of homosexuality is so serious as to warrant the exclusion of Christian gays and lesbians?
How many agree with Thomas Jefferson that a wall should be maintained between the church and state?
How many believe that the United States should continue as the only democratic nation that approves the death penalty?
How many believe in the priesthood of believers, or prefer that elected leaders interpret the Scriptures for the rest of us?
You see the divisive nature of these kinds of questions, and they are the cause of a separation and division that have debilitated so much of the world Christian church. Each of these divisive questions is important, but compared to the gospel message, they have the same historical status as eating the meat of idols, or becoming a Jew before accepting Christ.
Now, I’ll let you answer these next two questions –
How many of you believe that we are saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ?
[mild applause]
How many believe that like the early Christians we should put aside our deeply felt personal differences and work in unity to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.
[mild applause]
You see the distinction between those kinds of questions. We should remember which are the most important. As a matter of fact, the Apostle Paul reminded the early churches that the gospel is not of human origin, but that its simple message should not be distorted even by his own personal beliefs!
He told the Corinthians, and I quote again,
“When I came to you brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words of wisdom, for I decided to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
And Paul made clear in his words to the churches in Galatia that there should be no discrimination among Christians, for in Christ Jesus he said, “You are all children of God through faith, as many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
There is certainly nothing wrong in believing in fundamentals, the most important of which is the basic gospel message in Christ Jesus that we have already mentioned – we are saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
Would you repeat that with me – We are saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
Despite our inevitable human differences, under this simple but profound banner, we Baptists and other Christians can and must stand united. Let us remember that each one of us has a personal responsibility to reach for greatness in the service of Christ.
And to insure that sustained action comes out of this convocation, we will be studying and soon deciding how to collaborate on mission and evangelism projects and other initiatives involving health care, poverty reduction, the plight of prisoners, an abominable situation in this country, poverty reduction, the protection of Christians around the world, the promotion of religious liberty, the protection of our environment…
Let us pray that God’s Spirit will lead us as we share the gospel of Jesus Christ and its implications for public and private morality.
Let us Baptists and all other Christians be bound together in Christ in a spirit of peace, love, forgiveness, and common purpose.
[applause]
