Jimmy Carter's Baptist Church in Plains, GA, Hires Divorced Woman Minister


If it can come to a small place like Plains, Georgia, maybe it can come anywhere. Enlighted thinking is infiltrating the South. This church disaffiliated from the Southern Baptist Convention. Now it has stuck its finger in the eye of the SBC by the unthinkable, a woman as pastor.

This woman sounds like an interesting preacher. She has been divorced and now is raising two children. I wonder if she lives in Plains.

My wife and I spent most of a day in Plains several years ago. It is not a prosperous place, several boarded up stores. Driving around it is clear there is a part of town that is mostly where black people live and another where they mostly do not. There seems to be only one tiny restaurant where food was served in the kind of self serve hot pots we use in our own kitchens. There were no servers, a lady who seemed in charge walked around and looked at your plate and gave you a bill. There was several antique stores and Carter souvenir shops. When I saw the Carter administration being set up in an abandoned train depot in Plains. I thought was a big place. There was only room for a handful of employees. Carter's grade school was converted to a place where his books were for sale. If the new minister actually moved to Plains she is in a small and remote place.

The population of Plains is only about 550 people and, I assume, declining. That makes keeping any church open a challenge. I have read Carter's church is struggling to pay a minister and keep its doors open. I would predict it will close in a few years.

There is a Carter center in Atlanta and I've been there. It seems to have some extra nonprofits like his election monitoring group housed there sharing the overhead. Back in Plains, however, there is nothing like this. I suppose the Carter Center can do a bit to keep Plains alive with Carter history after he dies but there are limits. Probably the church is not on the list to fund.

Hiring this pastor, even if it does not save that church, puts a positive capstone on the life of Jimmy Carter. His is a devout Christian that does not weaponize the faith to harm women and gay people.

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