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.

Joshua Carter described President Jimmy Carter's legendary devotion to teaching Sunday school in Plains, Georgia, saying that people flocked from around the country to hear him speak.

Reverend Samuel Tolbert served with Jimmy Carter after his days as president, when he worked with religious leaders around the country on the New Baptist Covenant

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

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

As the world pays homage to former President Jimmy Carter, some people overlook a primary source of inspiration for his politics: his distinctive brand of White evangelical Christianity, which remains hidden from most Americans.

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.

Carter was widely known as a man of faith, with his post-presidency defined by images of the Baptist Sunday School teacher building homes for low-income people.

Lesser known, and particularly relevant for American politics today, is our 39th president’s commitment to the Baptist value of religious liberty. The United States’ most religious president in recent memory was also the most committed to the separation of church and state.

Mr. Carter witnessed a shift from what had been a solidly Democratic South to one that Republicans, supported by white voters and particularly evangelicals, came to dominate.