The final event at the 2024 Religious Freedom Summit, hosted by Americans United (AU) for the Separation of Church and State, was a screening of the film “Bad Faith.” The documentary, produced and directed by Stephen Ujlaki and Christopher J. Jones, highlighted the history and current threats of Christian Nationalism to the United States.
The now infamous events of June 1, 2020, were featured prominently in the film. On that day, law enforcement cleared peaceful protesters with tear gas to open a path for President Trump to cross Lafayette Square from the White House and stand on the steps of St. John’s Episcopal Church. He stood in front of the church to hold up a Bible (upside down) for a photo op.
According to Trump, the Bible is his favorite book, slightly edging out his own “Art of the Deal.” However, perhaps due to his well-known Christian humility, he has refused to cite his favorite passage from the Bible, as that information is “very personal.”
Earlier in the day at the AU Summit, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin reminded attendees that Trump had violated all six First Amendment protections to get his Bible photo-op.
The next day, before our flights home, my colleague Bruce Gourley and I walked from our hotel to the First Baptist Church of the city of Washington, D.C. (FBCDC), another church with a history of a U.S. President using the Bible. There, we met with Christi Harlan, a veteran reporter whose new book, “Mr. President, The Class Is Yours,” introduces readers to President Jimmy Carter, Sunday School teacher.
Three days after his 1977 inauguration, Carter and his wife Rosalynn attended the couples Sunday School class at FBCDC. The class initially formed toward the end of World War II and attracted young married couples returning from the war. By the time the Carters joined, it had become a racially and economically diverse collection of white-collar and blue-collar workers and government employees.
Fred M. Gregg led the class. On the Carters’ first Sunday, the President told Gregg, “I’m looking forward to hearing you teach,” to which Gregg responded, “Well, how about you teaching?”
Whether Gregg’s question was a joke or a serious query is unknown. What is known is that from that moment until January 4, 1981, almost two weeks before the peaceful transfer of the Presidency to Ronald Reagan, Carter would stand in for Gregg as the substitute teacher of the class at least 17 times.
The reel-to-reel recordings of Carter’s lessons, given while leaning against a pillar in the balcony of the beautiful, neo-gothic sanctuary, have been in FBCDC’s archives ever since. In “Mr. President, The Class Is Yours,” Harlan shares the transcripts of 14 of these lessons, setting them against the historical context of Carter’s presidency.
April 29, 1979, was an especially poignant Sunday on which Carter taught the class. Sitting in the balcony was Georgi Vins, a Ukrainian Baptist pastor who had just days before been released from a Soviet prison. Carter had helped secure Vins’ freedom in an agreement with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
The class opened with prayer for Vins and his family. Then Carter gave a brief word f, acknowledging that just four days prior, Vins had been in a cattle car in a Siberian prison for preaching faith in Jesus. Carter then quickly transitioned to the lesson, which was from I Kings 21.
The lesson centered around King Ahab, Jezebel and the unlawful land seizure from Naboth. Carter ended the sermon by highlighting the sinfulness of Ahab, Jezebel and all the people who remained silent in the face of injustice. He said, “And I would like to remind you and be reminded myself that the people of God who know Christ must represent the cause of justice on behalf of the oppressed everywhere.”
The book is full of instances like this, where Carter would give an understated nod to the weight of his day job before pivoting, with reverence, to the biblical text of the week.
Our conversation with Harlan eventually turned to how little publicity this chapter in Carter’s presidency has received. How could we not know this?
According to Harlan, even some of those tasked with preserving Carter’s legacy were in the dark. “When I called to tell him about the tapes,” she said, “the public affairs director of the Carter Center told me, ‘I knew about him teaching Sunday school before and after the Presidency, but not during.’”
(Before his presidency, Carter taught Sunday school at Plains Baptist Church. After he left the White House, the Carters joined Maranatha Baptist, which had been formed after a vote to integrate the church had caused controversy.)
The cover of Harlan’s book shows one of the few photographs that exist of Carter teaching at FBDC. When I asked why there weren’t more, Harlan said she had asked the same thing of the folks at the Carter Center.
He told her, “He [Carter] said not only did he hate having his picture taken, but ‘we were trying to be respectful of the church.’ It’s like, when he came to church, he came to church.”
As we walked back to our hotel to get a ride to the airport, Bruce and I couldn’t help but note the dissonance between what we had just been learning about and the events at St. John’s, just a few blocks down the road.
The contrast could not be more stark–one president violently dispersing a peaceful crowd just to get a photo with a Bible he has likely never read, and another quietly opening and teaching from the text that has sustained him since he was a child, away from crowds and cameras.
“Mr. President, The Class Is Now Yours: Jimmy Carter’s Sunday School Lessons In Washington D.C.” is available on Amazon.
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