Jimmy Carter did not shy away from his faith, and he was genuine about it. His religious beliefs guided him during and after his presidency.

Carter, an outsider even as he sat in the Oval Office as the 39th U.S. president, is being honored with the pageantry of a funeral at Washington National Cathedral.

Baptist leaders are remembering Jimmy Carter as an example of faithfulness, compassion and justice and advocate for religious liberty.

I can tell you without any equivocation that the number one abuse of human rights on Earth, strangely not addressed quite often, is the abuse of women and girls,” the former President said.

Jimmy Carter was an evangelical. A liberal evangelical. A liberal evangelical in the age before the Christian Right supported a conservative revolution that swept Republican Ronald Reagan into power.

Mr. Carter said his spiritual rebirth was an “evolutionary thing” rather than “a flash of light or a sudden vision of God speaking.”

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.

A state funeral for the 39th president on Thursday will bring together all five living presidents and feature a eulogy from President Biden.

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

Jimmy Carter, the 39th U.S. President, will be honored Thursday with the pageantry of a state funeral in the nation’s capital, followed by a second service and burial in his tiny Georgia hometown that launched a Depression-era farm boy to the world stage.

Jimmy Carter, who died Dec. 29 at the age of 100, spent his life intertwined with America’s and the world’s enduring legacy of slavery.