Jimmy Carter Funeral Imagines No Heaven

Gary gives some little known background information about John Lennon and how he actually grew to become “embarrassed” by the words to his famous song.

When Jimmy Carter was hand-picked by David Rockefeller and the Trilateral Commission (which was formed in 1973) to become a candidate for President, few people outside of Georgia had ever heard of him. The humanists within the Trilateral Commission sensed a shift in the political wind. The public was ready for a self-professed “political outsider,” a new face totally unconnected with Washington’s establishment, Carter’s campaign was successful. He freely admitted that he was a “born-again Christian.” The fundamentalists were happy to receive attention at long last (although a majority of white voters in the South actually voted for President Ford), and few of them realized that Carter’s preferred theologians were liberals: Karl Barth, Tillich, and especially Reinhold Niebuhr. He was also appreciative of the existentialist philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. It took a non-Christian, libertarian columnist Jeffrey St. John, to point this out in his 1976 paperback, Jimmy Carter’s Betrayal of the South. It was St. John who wrote, prior to the November 1976 election: “A Carter victory in 1976 would usher in an administration led by various liberal-to-left activist groups who have long pleaded for vast government powers over the private sector of industry and over middle-class Americans. In short, Carter appears to be leading a coalition of political and economic radicals who would go far beyond the massive expansion of the powers of the federal government Franklin Roosevelt instituted in 1933.” His words were prophetic. The Carter administration had not a single self-proclaimed born-again Christian in the Cabinet, or in any other high position. It was staffed by liberals and Trilateralists, along with some old hands from the Council on Foreign Relations who had not entered the inner sanctum of Trilateralism.

By 1980, the New Christian Right knew how little Carter’s self-identification of himself as a born-again Christian really meant. It meant about as much as the same claim by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, who was “converted” by the President’s sister. The New Christian Right spoke for far more of the fundamentalists than the Trilateral Commission’s incumbent did in 1980. The fundamentalists decided to “come out of the closet” and send the Baptist from Georgia back to Plains.

The Complete Christianity and Civilization

Christianity and Civilization is the foundation of a full-formed Christian world and life view. Each volume represents a broad area of study and many different authors in many different articles bring light to the topic. But these aren’t dry academic articles sent down from the lofty ivory tower of boring theology—these are down-to-earth and immediately practical. The authors recognize that living the Christian life is where real societal change takes place. While these articles are far from light on thought and research, they are definitely heavy on useful information and advice for the living the life.

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Gary discusses the recent funeral for former President Jimmy Carter. Garth Brooks and Tricia Yearwood sang John Lennon’s song “Imagine” at the funeral at Carter’s request. Gary gives some little known background information about Lennon and how he actually grew to become “embarrassed” by the words to his famous song.

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