Writer and organizer Stevie Brooks says remembering President Carter’s legacy should prompt some religious reflection in North Carolina.
By Stevie Brooks
Like most small towns in North Carolina, if you throw a rock in Shelby, you’ll hit a church. (Not that I’d ever recommend throwing rocks at churches.) As I heard the stories of the late President Jimmy Carter last week, I thought about the churches in my town that President Carter would have identified with. And I thought about the ones that he wouldn’t.
My daddy used to point at the picture on the wall at Shelby Middle School of President Carter when I was a kid. Daddy would tell me he was one of “us.” What my daddy meant was President Carter was a Southerner, and what he truly meant was President Carter was a reflection of the parts of himself he was most proud of.
Which brings me back to churches.
To an untrained eye, a church in the South is just a church. I know from my own experience that’s not the case. I had a falling out of my own church when I was a teenager. I didn’t think they treated boys and girls the same, and I’m a loudmouth, so I let them know as much. It didn’t go over well.
Now, as an adult with a daughter of my own, I’m back in that community in a different way. Like anyone, the actions a church chooses to take often speak much louder than the message that they preach. Case in point: One local church takes on the ambitious task of keeping a community fridge stocked and available to anyone in need. People can come and take what they need. It’s a good use of their energy.
Another church, just a couple miles down the road, spends their time on a campaign against gay marriage with the slogan, “God Before Government.” Not everyone is going to agree on everything and that’s OK. But I question whether it’s more Christian to welcome people as they are, serve their community needs or do what this church did, which is to send members of their congregation to protest a small Pride event held by another congregation.
Protesting other people’s Christian beliefs is not how Jimmy Carter spent his time. He worked hard and was a Sunday school teacher. A man who practiced what he preached. A man who cared about the land. A man who loved his wife and family.
President Carter by simply being true to his beliefs became a shining example of what it meant to be a Southerner and a Christian in a region desperate to find a path to absolution.
Since Carter’s presidency, the people of the Southeast will often maintain that their values remain the same and that their actions reflect these values. On a regional and local scale we see this in North Carolina. Whether it is neighbors helping neighbors in the wake of hurricane Helene or something as simple as the local churches all working together to provide food to those who need it.
I can’t, however, recall a time growing up when spreading mistruths and promoting violence against Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) workers was ever taught in my daddy’s Sunday school class, or any other Sunday school for that matter.
When did truth and empathy become divorced from Christian morality?
The Southern Christian values that President Carter represented have become pawns in a larger national game. The exploitation of Christianity in North Carolina has created a cognitive dissonance between faith and politics and a constant shifting between lies and the truth. Our declaration of what our Southern Christian values are and our politics don’t seem to align.
How can we as North Carolinians go from rallying to help those in Western North Carolina to calling for the deportation of some of those same neighbors? That President Carter lived his life in a Christlike way that, whether you’re a Christian or not, should be aspirational.
While President Carter was from Georgia, I think he’d like North Carolina’s state motto, “Esse Quam Videri.” It means “To be rather than to seem.” Helping and supporting those in need regardless of our differences is not only what Jesus would have done, it would have made Jimmy proud as well.
