President Carter: Naming the Demon of Racism

President Carter announcing his cancer diagnosis.

Then the whole town came out to meet Jesus; and when they saw him they begged him to leave their neighborhood.
Matthew 8:34

I said they refused Jesus, too, and he said, “You’re not him.”
Bob Dylan

They asked Jesus to leave because he had been casting out demons.

The Gospel stories of demons and demon possession are hard for us to understand. The pre-scientific world view of the first century is in many ways very different from our own. But the demon stories leave us with some enduring truths:

1. The demons recognize Jesus. They see the truth in him and they are afraid.
2. He names them and by this naming and identifying, he takes away their power.
3. People get nervous when demons are cast out.

This last point was apparent in the response to President Jimmy Carter’s remarks about racism and our first African American President.

Jimmy Carter has been on my mind a lot lately. He is 90 years old, so his death cannot really be a surprise. But when he announced, with typical grace and humility, that he has brain cancer, it brought me up short. I will miss him. I wish him a long but pain free good-bye. I do not want him to go quickly into that good night.

Whatever else one might say about Jimmy Carter, “Jimmah,” as Rosalynn always seems to pronounce it, he was our most self-consciously and consistently Christian president. More than any other president, he tried to put his Christian faith into practice in the White House. And that was always his problem. As a country we demand that our presidents profess their faith, but we are generally uncomfortable if they try to put it into practice.

Over the next few weeks I want to look back on some brief episodes in the long and good life of a man we have so often under-appreciated.

The first episode comes from the summer after President Obama took office when Carter was asked why he thought there was so much criticism of the President. Much to the chagrin of the White House, he said that although there were many legitimate policy issues to debate, he attributed the virulence of the reaction to racism.

Speaking from his experience growing up in the South, he correctly identified the demon of racism, which has possessed our country for so long, and he has been vilified for it. I remember watching a video of him being asked about this. Carter sat solemnly, his shoulders hunched and his posture bent by age, as the commentator talked about him “intimidating” and bullying those who disagree by calling some of it racism. Apart from the gentleness of his demeanor, it was hard to imagine this elderly man intimidating or bullying anyone. But when a person has the courage to name the demon, we say that he or she is “playing the race card.” The one who names the oppression is called the oppressor. That is our way of begging Jesus to leave our neighborhood.

Racism does not surprise me. What surprises me and troubles me, is the inability (or unwillingness) of people to call it what it is and cast it out.

The issue was in the news at the time of Carter’s interview because of an incident earlier that summer when Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested at his home in Cambridge, when a police officer thought he was a burglar. President Obama commented critically on the officer’s behavior and then invited both the officer and Professor Gates to join him for a conciliatory beer in the Rose Garden.

In an attempt to refute the charge of racism, the Providence Journal ran an editorial comparing Bob Dylan’s encounter with a police officer in Atlantic City with the Henry Louis Gates incident in Cambridge. If only Professor Gates had been as calm as Bob Dylan, said the editorial, there would never have been a problem. And except for a few small details, the circumstances are remarkably similar:

• Bob Dylan was trespassing on someone else’s property, while Professor Gates was in his own home.
• Dylan was wandering in the middle of the night and Gates was coming home in the middle of the day.
• Dylan was dressed like a street person and Gates was dressed like Henry Louis Gates.
• Gates showed his identification, and Dylan had no ID.
• They both got a ride in a police car. Gates was handcuffed, Dylan was not.
• Gates was taken to the police station to be booked. Dylan was taken to his hotel to see if someone could verify his identity.
• And in the Dylan case, the police officer apologized.

Other than those minor details, the cases were identical.

In an interview with Brian Williams, President Carter said, "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American.” Sadly, the issues of racism have intensified over the years since President Carter first had the courage to speak that painful truth.

President Carter named the demon and there were (and are) lots of people who want him to leave the neighborhood. He did not call it racism because he disagreed with the criticisms made by President Obama’s opponents. He was naming the demon. We need to have the courage to cast it out. Then we can get back to debating the issues.

Jimmy Carter and Biblical Christianity

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”Matthew 5:11-12
Jimmy Carter has probably endured more ridicule than any other living President of the United States. He is the punch line of a thousand jokes.

One of the things I admire about him is that he doesn’t seem to care. Not caring what people think about you is not a helpful character trait in a politician. And the truth is that he never was a very good politician. But he is a remarkably faithful Christian. His statements and actions seem odd to many political commentators because Christianity is at odds with popular politics and culture.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, Senior Religion Editor for the Huffington Post, and great grandson of Walter Rauschenbusch, one of the greatest leaders of the Social Gospel, recently interviews President Carter about his new book, “NIV Lessons from Life Bible: Personal Reflections with Jimmy Carter.” I want to share two of those exchanges.

When asked about whether gays and lesbians should be accepted in the church, he gave a direct, yet measured response:

“Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things -– he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.

“I draw the line, maybe arbitrarily, in requiring by law that churches must marry people. I’m a Baptist, and I believe that each congregation is autonomous and can govern its own affairs. So if a local Baptist church wants to accept gay members on an equal basis, which my church does by the way, then that is fine. If a church decides not to, then government laws shouldn’t require them to.”
In another exchange, Raushenbush noted President Carter’s commitment to peacemaking, and then asked how he interpreted Jesus’ declaration that he came, “not to bring peace, but a sword.” Carter responded:

“For the last 35 or more years, my wife and I have read the Bible last thing every night and just last week we read that passage and discussed it a little bit. . . . He was predicting what would happen, that his teachings might cause divisions among people as they decided to follow God’s ordained duties such as peace, humility, service to others, alleviation of suffering, forgiveness -- when we face those conflicts, we should adhere to the principles that never change, to the moral values that are taught through religion.”
Peace, humility, service to others, alleviation of suffering, forgiveness—those are not qualities that we often find in our leaders. And when we find them, we do not value them.

Racism is the Demon

Then the whole town came out to meet Jesus; and when they saw him they begged him to leave their neighborhood.
Matthew 8:34

I said they refused Jesus, too, and he said, “You’re not him.”
Bob Dylan

They asked Jesus to leave because he had been casting out demons.

The Gospel stories of demons and demon possession are hard for us to understand. The pre-scientific world view of the first century is in many ways very different from our own. But the demon stories leave us with some enduring truths:

1. The demons recognize Jesus. They see the truth in him and they are afraid.
2. He names them and by this naming and identifying, he takes away their power.
3. People get nervous when demons are cast out.

This last point has been apparent in the response to President Jimmy Carter’s recent remarks. He correctly identified the demon of racism, which has possessed our country for so long, and he has been vilified for it. I watched video of Jimmy Carter, his shoulders hunched and his posture bent by age, as the commentator talked about him “intimidating” and bullying those who disagree. When someone has the courage to name the demon, we say that he or she is “playing the race card.” The one who names the oppression is called the oppressor. That is our way of begging Jesus to leave our neighborhood.

Racism does not surprise me. What surprises me and troubles me, is the inability (or unwillingness) of people to call it what it is and cast it out.

Recently the Providence Journal ran an editorial comparing Bob Dylan’s encounter with a police officer in Atlantic City with the Henry Louis Gates incident in Cambridge. If only Professor Gates had been as calm as Bob Dylan, they argue, there would never have been a problem. And that makes sense, because except for a few small details, the circumstances are remarkably similar:

--Bob Dylan was trespassing on someone else’s property, while Professor Gates was in his own home.
--Dylan was wandering in the middle of the night and Gates was coming home in the middle of the day.
--Dylan was dressed like a street person and Gates was dressed like Henry Louis Gates.
--Gates showed his identification, and Dylan had no ID.
--They both got a ride in a police car. Gates was handcuffed, Dylan was not. Gates was taken to the police station to be booked. Dylan was taken to his hotel to see if someone could verify his identity.
--And in the Dylan case, the police officer apologized.

Other than those minor details, the cases were identical.

In an interview with Brian Williams, President Carter said, "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American.” He has named the demon and there are lots of people who want him to leave the neighborhood.

When President Bill Clinton undertook healthcare reform sixteen years ago, and Hillary Clinton led that effort, there was enough opposition to eventually derail the program. What was different was that the opposition did not have what President Carter called “intensely demonstrated animosity” currently directed toward President Obama. It was not as personal, nor was it as intense. It was on the issues. We expect debate. And we expect that debate to be heated at times. But this goes way beyond lively debate.

Racism is difficult if not impossible to prove. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the first time a member of the House of Representatives interrupted a Presidential address by shouting, “You lie!”, the President was Black. And the interrupter was a defender of the Confederate Flag. And that he had condemned Strom Thurmond’s Black daughter for smearing the late Senator by publicly saying that he was her father. That could all be coincidence.

Maybe Joe Wilson just had a bad day. And maybe the people carrying signs telling the “Lyin’ African” (juxtaposed with a “lion in Africa”) to go back to Africa are not racists. And maybe the people carrying pictures of the President as a witch doctor would have done the same thing if John Edwards had been elected.

President Carter is not calling it racism because he disagrees with those who criticize the President's policies. He is naming the demon. We need to have the courage to cast it out. Then we can get back to debating the issues.