Navy service, Sunday School teacher: 5 interesting facts about Jimmy Carter

First U.S. president who was Southern Baptist

When Carter was sworn in as president in 1977, he earned the distinction of being the first U.S. president to be a member of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Months after becoming president, Carter appeared in a video presented at the SBC annual meeting that championed the Mission Service Corps of the Home Mission Board.

“The following year, he spoke at an event related to the 1978 annual meeting in Atlanta, organized by the National Conference of Baptist Men,” explained Chris Fenner in a 2016 article for Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

“Shortly after ceding the presidency to Ronald Reagan, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were presented with the SBC Christian Life Commission’s Distinguished Service Award. At the ceremony, held March 22, 1982 in Atlanta, the Carters championed the value of having strong, healthy family units, including unity in the broader Christian family.”

However, Carter would eventually leave the SBC over theological differences, among them the question of biblical inerrancy and the issue of not allowing women to become pastors.

“I have seen an increasing inclination on the part of Southern Baptist Convention leaders to be more rigid on what is a Southern Baptist and exclusionary of accommodating those who differ from them,” Carter told The New York Times in a 2000 interview. 

“In the last couple of years, this tendency of the Southern Baptist Convention leadership to ordain their creed on others has become more onerous for me and more difficult for me to accept.”

SBTS President Albert Mohler was among the critics of Carter's views, writing in a 2009 piece that "Carter actually makes no argument for women as pastors."

"He simply dismisses out of hand what the Christian church has believed for centuries -- and what the vast majority of Christians around the world believe even now," wrote Mohler.