Former President Jimmy Carter, who died Dec. 29, 2024, at age 100, has been a landmark figure in Southern Baptist politics since his 1976 presidential campaign.

The nation will continue to honor him this week, as his body will lie in state in the rotunda at the U.S. Capitol, and with a state funeral at the Washington National Cathedral.

As Carter finished his only term as president in 1980, his fellow Southern Baptists were shifting politically to the right, even though many voted for him in 1976 and were excited by having a “born-again” Christian in the White House.

Starting in 1979, a series of votes at the annual Southern Baptist Convention led the nation’s largest Protestant denomination to the right politically, as biblical “inerrantists” took control of denominational agencies including the six seminaries. A series of conservative SBC presidents were elected on a platform of getting rid of “liberal drift” in the denomination.

Carter, who had been a life-long loyal Southern Baptist, was viewed as part of that leftward political drift.

Carter eventually declared that he was no longer a Southern Baptist and threw his support behind a competing movement of moderates leaving the denomination, called the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

In 1993, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship held a major meeting at the BJCC in Birmingham. Carter was the keynote speaker.

Carter called for ordaining more women, keeping church and state separate and encouraging individual religious freedom.

“When we enforce conformity on others, it saps away their freedom,” Carter said to an audience of more than 6,000 at the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center.

Largely because he professed his faith publicly as a born-again Christian, Carter won admiring support from evangelicals that helped him oust President Gerald Ford in 1976.

But during his presidency, Carter angered conservative Southern Baptists. By the 1980 election, conservative Southern Baptists were avidly supporting Ronald Reagan and helped him defeat Carter.

In 1979 conservative Southern Baptists elected the Rev. Adrian Rogers, the first in a series of denominational presidents who vowed to curb alleged liberalism in seminaries and mission boards.

Rogers then visited Carter at the Oval Office. “I was proud to meet with the president of my convention,” Carter recalled. “He said, “Mr. President, I hope you’ve given up your secular humanism and become a Christian again.’ I thought I was still a Christian.”

Carter said that nearly every issue – women’s rights, abortion, SALT II negotiations (the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II was a 1979 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union to limit nuclear weapons) and the organization of the Department of Education – was viewed as a religious litmus test by Southern Baptist Convention leaders in his term.

He said leaders of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination were treating Bill Clinton, also a Southern Baptist, the same way. “When I see what’s happening to Clinton, I see the same thing that happened to me,” he said.

Carter warned the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship not to be overconfident about breaking away from, at the time, the 15-million-member Southern Baptist Convention.

“It would be a mistake for us to come here in a self-congratulatory mood,” he said. “We can’t come here filled with self-satisfaction because we have broken away. We’ve got to keep searching our souls and saying, “What can we do?’ ”

He urged cooperation, reaching out to other denominations and avoiding competitiveness and duplication of programs.

Carter, a deacon and Sunday school teacher at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., spoke of his lifelong commitment to the Baptist principles of local church autonomy and church and state separation. He said those were being dissipated by the Southern Baptist denominational trend toward demanding conformity and melding church and state interests.

“My religious heritage means a lot to me,” Carter said. “The last few years Rosalynn and I have been in a quandary about what to do. In the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, my wife and I have found a home.” Mrs. Carter sat on the platform next to her husband.

Carter said he was almost “totally ignorant” of Southern Baptist infighting until he became alarmed a few years earlier by what he said was an increasing tone of militarism in the Sunday school literature he taught from.

Noting that many Baptist churches still oppose women clergy, Carter said CBF should do more to encourage women ministers. “There’s a tremendous reservoir of untapped talent and inspiration,” he said.

Top leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention opposed ordaining women on the grounds the Apostle Paul preached against women leading churches.

Before Carter came to the podium in Birmingham, the Rev. Dan Vestal, pastor of Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston, appealed for funds to pay the $200,000 cost of the convention. “Frankly, we need $25 from each registrant,” he said.

Before Vestal led a prayer, Carter pulled out his wallet and thumbed out a bill, which he handed to the platform usher as a pianist played offertory music.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship formed in 1991 as a way for churches to fund Southern Baptist agencies and send missionaries without contributing money through the conservative-controlled denomination budget.

By 2008, Carter had a new concept. He organized the New Baptist Covenant in Atlanta, a meeting of politically like-minded moderate Baptists including Black Baptist denominations that tried to counteract the conservative influence of the SBC. Carter delivered the keynote there too. Former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore also spoke.

In 2009, Carter returned to Birmingham to speak at a meeting of the New Baptist Covenant at 16th Street Baptist Church.

“There is no way for us to ignore Jesus’ emphasis on the poor, the brokenhearted,’’ Carter told the Southeast regional meeting of the New Baptist Covenant, which he helped found in 2008 with an interracial, inter-denominational gathering that drew 15,000 in Atlanta.

‘’I have found this evolution of the New Baptist Covenant to be the highlight of my religious life,’’ Carter said.

He spoke at a worship service that was followed by workshops on poverty and racism.

‘’It’s not an accident that God led us to Birmingham and this institute,’’ Carter said during a breakfast at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

He recalled a time when racial prejudice was rampant in Baptist churches, and theologians defended separate worship.

‘’The Baptist church was a stalwart defender of segregation,’’ he said. ‘’It was ingrained in our conscience.’’

Carter said he hoped the meeting would help churches work better together. ‘’I would like to see a complete breakdown in separation of people,” he said.

He encouraged Baptists of different races to share worship. ‘’I hope in the future the barriers will be broken down,” Carter said.

In an interview with The Birmingham News in 2009, Carter talked about his hope for ultimate unity.

‘’There’s a strong inclination among Baptists to come back together,’’ Carter said. ‘’Many people who are Southern Baptists want to reach out to others.’’

At Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., where Carter taught Sunday school, 10 percent of the budget went to mission work – 5 percent to Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, and 5 percent to the Southern Baptist Convention’s mission work, Carter said. ‘’Our church is still a member of the Southern Baptist Convention,’’ Carter said at the time.

Carter declared his disagreement with and disappointment with the Southern Baptist Convention as it grew more conservative, and was especially aggrieved when the Southern Baptist Convention added language to its statement of beliefs that specifically interpreted the Bible as opposing women as senior pastors.

‘’I’ve always felt women should play an equal role in the church,’’ Carter said. ‘’It was incompatible with what my wife and I believe. Rosalynn and I have expressed our displeasure.’’

Carter believed the Southern Baptist Convention had also come to place too much emphasis on the power of the pastor.

‘’I’ve always thought that pastors should be servants of the church,’’ Carter said.

But Carter said he welcomed Southern Baptists at the New Baptist Covenant gatherings, though few came. ‘’My inclination is to reach out with friendship and love,’’ he said. ‘’I’m a Southerner, a Baptist and an evangelical. I don’t feel I’m affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.’’

But he kept that personal separation ‘’without any animosity,’’ he said.

Carter’s beloved Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is still alive and well, although much smaller than than the SBC and more often overlooked.

In 2019, the CBF held its national meeting at the BJCC in Birmingham again – a week after the Southern Baptist Convention met there.

See also: Jimmy Carter enjoyed his childhood visits to Birmingham