Reactions to Jimmy Carter’s death have a bit of the feel of socialism’s defenders who say the system, despite apparent failures, has never really been tried. Evangelicals who lean left are using Carter’s legacy to take a win for their brand of faith-based politics and jab at both the Religious Right and MAGA evangelicals. They rarely admit that Carter’s presidency ran middle of the pack at best—in historians’ rankings he has averaged number 26 of all presidents (though in 2000 Carter came in at number 22). In the process, Carter’s most prominent defenders are using the same logic that Christian Nationalists employ when arguing that liberalism (and secularism) has been a failure and that America needs Christianity. Progressive evangelicals have used Carter’s career not only to score points against the Religious Right but to support a faith-based politics that they believe will turn the United States Christian.

　　When he ran for president, Carter was an unlikely barometer of evangelical politics since he was even more unknown in born-again Protestant networks—which then ran among Wheaton, Illinois, Boston, and Pasadena—than he was among a Democratic Party still recovering from Richard Nixon’s landslide 1972 election. Even so, Carter’s 1976 campaign coincided with the “Year of the Evangelical,” partly because he identified as a born-again Christian. Republicans were also discovering the potency of the evangelical vote in their efforts to peel Southerners away from the Democrats. Almost accidentally, Carter’s electoral victory coincided with a recognition of Protestant evangelicals as an untapped source of electoral energy. That coincidence secured Carter’s prominence in scholarly and journalistic assessments of what became the Religious Right and why those evangelicals in 1980 supported the divorced Ronald Reagan over the Sunday school teacher, Carter. Unfortunately, the prominence of Carter’s faith and the Moral Majority’s (founded in 1979) loud voice obscured the baseline of evangelical politics. Before 1976, evangelicals in the North voted Republican and leaned more Eisenhower than Goldwater. In the South, evangelicals were increasingly out of step with a Democratic Party still energized by affirmative action, feminism, the sexual revolution, and opposition to US foreign policy.

　　Randall Balmer, a religion professor at Dartmouth College and an episcopal priest who came through the ranks of the evangelical academy (he is a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School), has been the most vocal in praise of Carter. His esteem echoes his book with the bracing title, Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter (2014). Balmer writes, “Carter’s election represented the high point in the resurgence of progressive evangelicalism in the 20th century.” He adds that progressive evangelicalism had a long history of social reform movements such as the abolition of slavery, public education, prison reform, women’s rights, and peace movements. Some, like the evangelist and president of Oberlin College, Charles Finney, “even doubted the morality of capitalism.” When Reagan defeated Carter in the 1980 presidential election, Balmer opines that “progressive evangelicalism … came tragically to a close.”

　　Some wonder if Carter’s faith was actually evangelical. The positions Balmer advocates, for instance, are common among liberal (or mainline) Protestants. That at least is the contention of Stanford University graduate student, Austin Lee Steelman, who observes that Carter invoked liberal theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, supported gay marriage, and wrote about “faith in ways that increasingly diverged” from mainstream evangelicalism.

　　Even so, for evangelical progressives, Carter was a symbol of a better time for born-again Protestants. At Christianity Today, David Swartz, a historian and author of another favorable study of so-called progressive evangelicalism, The Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism (2012), similarly contrasts Carter’s faith and policies with the Religious Right. Swartz writes that Carter “was a theologically conservative Christian with a liberal political platform.” The “profound misfortune for Carter—and for a broader evangelical left”—was to emerge in an era of “increased enforcement of cultural orthodoxies” which drove “large chunks” of Carter’s evangelical support to Ronald Reagan, “a divorced-and-remarried Hollywood actor.” Swartz concedes that Carter’s administration was no match for “events beyond his control—notably a stagnant economy, high inflation, and diplomatic crises in Afghanistan and Iran.” Still, Swartz credits Carter’s progressive evangelicalism with winning “the highest office in the nation” and faults the president’s “own people” for a backlash that “hamstrung his presidency and sabotaged a potential second term.”

　　Those who use the former president to justify left-of-center policies do so ironically in the name of Christ, as if Christianity properly applied leads to a fairer and more just society.

　　Oddly enough, faith-based assessments of Carter focus more on the health of the evangelical movement than the well-being of the entire country (a sectarian tendency for those who identify as progressive). Gerald Seib in the Wall Street Journal noted Carter’s accomplishments in starting deregulation, turning the Panama Canal over to Panamanians, facilitating a peace deal between Israel and Egypt, and even turning American foreign policy in a more ethical direction. The hostage crisis, however, overshadowed the other parts of Carter’s governance. Even more consequential, as Seib observes, was the end of America’s access to cheap oil. Among the many consequences of that development was to turn the American economy away from heavy manufacturing toward technology and services. The rising cost of energy also contributed to inflation which ran at 10.4 percent in 1979, accompanied by mortgage interest rates of close to 13 percent. Seib concludes that Carter was a good man whose “vacillation and indecision” likely made the nation’s crises worse. This context is missing from evangelical scholars writing about Carter, which is especially notable at a time when progressive politics might warrant affirmation of climate change and green activism.

　　Also notably missing from evangelical evaluations of Carter is the double-edged sword of faith-based politics. Carter clearly cultivated evangelical support. He served as honorary chairman of the 1973 Billy Graham Crusade in Atlanta, described himself as “born-again,” and openly spoke of God as the most important part of his life. Had Carter known more about the differences between conservative and liberal Protestants, he might have understood that certain phrases do not have the same meaning to different Protestants. Daniel Williams in Christianity Today observes that this naivete was a significant factor in evangelicals abandoning the apparently evangelical Carter. While the evangelicals who formed the Religious Right saw abortion and sexual promiscuity as reasons for returning to fixed moral standards in national life, Carter’s background in the Civil Rights movement animated his moral calculus. For Carter, following Jesus in public office did “not mean imposing Christian standards through law.” It did require “acting with integrity and concern for all people.” Even if many Americans converted to Christ, the result would not “necessarily be laws against same-sex marriage or abortion.”

　　Sometimes Carter even wondered if progressive policies were distinctly Christian. After leaving office, he told Christianity Today in a 2012 interview, “Democracy and freedom are not dependent on Christian beliefs.” Other religious groups also advocated these political ideals. In fact, the “finest beliefs” of Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists promoted “peace, alleviation of suffering, and justice.” That way of construing faith and politics was markedly different from progressive evangelicals who attributed Carter’s policies precisely to his faith. In fact, Balmer frames another piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by attaching Carter’s 1976 candidacy to the concerns of evangelicals who in 1973 adopted the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern. Carter drew “on many of the same themes”—decrying “income inequality and militarism … the persistence of racism and hunger in an affluent society,” and embracing “women’s rights and gender equality.”

　　What may be the most important lesson of Carter’s life, both as president and after holding office, is one that many evangelicals have missed, namely, that Christians do more good outside politics than in office. In that same Christianity Today interview, Carter indicated surprise that “my influence on a global basis is probably greater since I left the White House.” Free from the constraints of politics, “we’ve helped cure and prevent disease and promote freedom and human rights in an unrestricted way.” “The last 25 years of my life,” he added, “have not only been the most enjoyable and gratifying, but where my influence has been greatest.”

　　Carter’s assessment of his life contrasts with recent progressive evangelical assessments. Those who use the former president to justify left-of-center policies do so ironically in the name of Christ, as if Christianity properly applied leads to a fairer and more just society. Identifying faith and nation overlaps with Christian Nationalism even if its progressive version obviously differs from its post-liberal competitor. For most of the last eight decades, progressive politics aimed to place American society on a secular platform that involved the rejection of the privilege Protestants enjoyed both formally and informally. Ironically, Carter’s defenders call for more religion in national affairs, not less. 

　　The good that Carter did as a follower of Jesus and ordinary citizen also contrasts with his introduction of faith into politics. Obviously, Carter is not to blame for the Religious Right. But he did give legitimacy to a faith-based politics that inspires both the evangelical Left and Right. Without Carter’s claim to be a follower of Jesus, perhaps evangelicals could have been content—as they had been generally before 1976—with simply being conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat.