A morning with Mr. Malaise

This past Sunday morning, I had a truly unique experience: Sunday School with a former President of the United States.

Jimmy Carter, the 39th President, was born about nine miles from my little outpost in southwest Georgia, in the tiny hamlet of Plains.

Plains is nuts; it's nuts about Jimmy Carter; it's nuts about nuts.

Carter was actually a peanut farmer as a youth, living on a farm just down the tracks from downtown plains--the tracks that young Carter would take most every day to sell his peanuts.

Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, have only owned one home since they married in 1946--a ranch just off highway 280 in Plains, only a few hundred yards west of his brother Billy's old service station.

Carter had attended Plains Baptist Church, situated right across the street from the town's high school, since his childhood. Only after a controversy in which a black man from Albany, Georgia, was denied membership in the church (on dubious grounds) did the Carter's rescind their membership (this came after he "involuntarily" left office in 1980).

The Carters moved no more than 1000 yards down the street to Maranatha Baptist Church, where they have been attending ever since.

Carter, who has been teaching Sunday School regularly since the age of 18, routinely packs more than 300 people into the sanctuary at Marantha. Those who fail to get there early, so I was warned, have to sit in the overflow room and watch Carter on television.

I arrived an hour early to find cars, trucks and buses parked all over the church yard. I drove around the rear of the church looking for a spot in the high grass, popping ground nuts with my tires all along the way.

Walking up to the church, I immediately noticed the jet black SUVs parked out front. This would be the first time I would get a pat down on my way into church. The Secret Service gentlemen really look the part--stone-faced, all business.

I walked into the back hallway and, after being greeted by two elderly ladies, was led to the overflow area where I thought I would have to watch the television with the rest of the Johnny and Jane come-latelys.

After about 20 minutes, one of the deacons of the church came in and said that Carter doesn't like to have anyone in the overflow unless it is absolutely necessary. Since I was there by myself, I was one of the first stragglers to be led into the sanctuary.

Maranatha is the quintessential 1970s-era protestant church, complete with the lime green carpet to clash with nearly everything in the room. The choir loft sits no more than a foot off the main stage to accommodate about 20 people--plenty, one would think, for a church of only 30 members.

A clock hangs high on the back wall of the sanctuary as a reminder to those who would dare become haughty and long-winded--time waits for no one, not even a former president. (The New Testament precept that everything should be done in a "fitting and orderly way" now, at least unofficially, also reads "timely".)

After a FAQ session with a deacon in which she assured the congregation (comprised mostly of visitors) that the Carters weren't just symbolic members of the church--"they're as involved as anyone else"--Maranatha's heavy-set young pastor did a quick devotional.

Mr. Carter arrived, preceded by three Secret Service agents, and, after placing his Bible on the lecturn, commenced politicking with the audience.

(Everyone, at this point, who had a camera decided to use it. The sound of cranking film cameras merged to mimic the washboard section of a jug orchestra. I abstained. For some reason, I thought it was just a little uncouth to do such a thing.)

"Where are y'all from?" asked Carter, still not looking his age (83).

An honest question, considering there were nearly as many people in that small church as live in the entire town.

Folks from Michigan, Wyoming, Utah, Ohio, Indiana, Alabama, Florida, Canada and even England piped up to represent their home states and countries.

After a couple minutes, Mr. Carter offered quick update on his recent trip to Sudan and their tenuous (if not feckless) peace agreement. (You might remember that Carter was involved in a highly-publicized donnybrook with one Sudanese official at the outset of his trip to Darfur.) His jet-setting comrades, known, if only colloquially, as the "Elders", teams Mr. Carter up with other visionaries like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.

Mr. Carter's lesson was taken from the 28th Chapter of Genesis--a snapshot of the life of Jacob, a swindler, whom God loved.

For a geography junkie, listening to Mr. Carter teach the Old Testament was truly a pleasure. Mr. Carter has walked the streets of the towns I've only read about--Beersheba, Bethel and Ur.

For a political junkie, hearing Mr. Carter talk about his relationship with Anwar Sadat was fascinating. Sadat, the former president of Egypt who lost his life when he was ambushed by Islamist militants in 1981, was the last best hope for peace in the Middle East.

Sadat, as Mr. Carter correctly pointed out, wasn't an avowed secularist like Nasser before him or like Turkey's Mustafa Kemal. He was a moderate Muslim (a nationalist, to be sure) who dared to suggest that all three "children of Abraham" (Jews, Muslims and Christians) could worship together, and in peace. He dared to make peace with Israel, and it cost him his life. (Egypt's current President Hosni Mubarak, for his part, has staved off six assassination attempts thus far as he continues an ugly crackdown on Islamist groups in Egypt.)

After a few of these geopolitical tangents, all of which fascinated me to no end, Mr. Carter returned to his theme of the week--perhaps, more correctly, the theme of his life.

Grace.

God's grace was evident in the life of Jacob, and there are plenty of corollaries in the New Testament--the life of Christ is one long case study in grace.

God loved Jacob, in spite of himself. (In fact, Jacob is the only person in the Old Testament whom God said he loved.)

In short, Mr. Carter's life in Christ is nothing if not full of grace. He is at-once loved and hated for his willingness to believe in the goodness of all people, often ignoring their fruits to believe in their roots.

He believes that God's grace is universal and transcendent.

That was his lesson.

The clock on the wall said 10:45, and after more than 80 years in the Baptist Church, Mr. Carter, perhaps more than anyone, knows the rules.

He snatched his Bible off the lecturn and exited stage right before remembering one last thing: "If anyone wants to get their picture taken, Rosalynn and I would be willing to do that outside after the service. I used to say 'delighted', now I'm just willing," he quipped.

The controversial Carter

No president is without fault. The system of politics in this country is, increasingly, driven by the moral equivalent of the survival of the fittest--only in reverse.

My opinion of Carter, as a man, is exceedingly positive. He is a statesman, a gentleman and a servant of his God and country. He is the genuine article, and my personal disagreements with him on geopolitical issues need not affect my respect for him as a man--a perspective rightly considered lost in our hyperpartisan society.

In a depraved world, living a life directed by grace will lead you to sup with some unsavory characters--and Mr. Carter has entertained more than his fair share: Yasser Arafat, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Omar al-Bashir, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Kim Il Sung, and members of ETA (Basque separatists) just to name a few.

As President and leading diplomat, however, grace hasn't proven to be an effective foreign policy in many cases. Mr. Carter's pacifist (read full of grace) stance on Iran after Reza Shan was deposed earned for the world the Islamic Republic of Iran, the most dangerous country since Hilter's Germany. (It's an unpopular, though legitimate, assertion that western--chiefly U.S.--trifling in the affairs of oil-rich countries in the Middle East led to the rise of Islamism in the region. In much the same way, U.S. foreign policy in Latin America led to the rise of what could be labeled militant populism.)

His grace toward Omar al-Bashir in Sudan may prove to be shrewd diplomacy or dangerous glad-handing of a cruel dictator. Mr. Carter's insistence on not labeling the catastrophe in Darfur as a "genocide" belies (at best) an understanding of what the term really means--it's more than just a body count.

And while Mr. Carter might be able to see some shred of goodness in the lives of men like Bashir, Mugabe, Eyadema and their ilk, most of us cannot or will not even consider the possibility.

Most of us prefer to veto grace at various times, replacing it instead with justice.

Further, Mr. Carter's ardent critiques of the Bush Administration's foreign policy do, at least on the surface, seem brazen when placed in the context of his own failures on the world stage.

That being said, however, it is clear that President Bush was, indeed, co-opted by the Neoconservatives in the White House and Pentagon in the run-up to war. Further, failures do abound in the aftermath of the "shock and awe" campaign at the outset of the war in Iraq. After the plan of attack, it seems, the planning stopped. The United States government, at least ostensibly, is no more adept at protecting the Iran-Iraq border than the border with Mexico.

This is simple discourse.

The policies of the Bush Administration, it appears, are more regrettable than criminal. They are worthy of critique and, to be sure, some bit of incredulity about our future in Iraq is reasonable.

There is grace in fighting for the termination of the United States' embargo against Cuba (more correctly, against Cubans); it's a good fight and one that is worth winning for us, and them. (Do most Americans even understand why China is our most favored nation when it comes to trade and Cuba is locked out?)

Who's talking about Cuba other than Mr. Carter?

There is grace (not to mention several other fruits of the spirit) in attempting to broker peace deals between rival factions in Darfur and Palestine, where common people are being used as pawns in a geopolitical chess game.

There was grace in handing over the Panama Canal to Panama--there just wasn't a lot of money (or electoral votes) in it.

Presidential historians won't remember Carter as a particularly great politician. In fact, he'll probably take his place behind "memorable" presidents like Chester Arthur and Martin Van Buren.

Even so, he is a shining light inside a most exclusive fraternity.

He was a sitting president and a standing civilian.