The World and Everything in It: January 1, 2025

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Happy New Year!

Today the big political stories from the year that was, including Republican changes to mail-in voting.

CIARROCCHI: The biggest change is the recognition that without adapting to this extra tool, that we weren't going to win.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead today on Washington Wednesday.

Also today World Tour.

Later, Cal Thomas reflects on Jimmy Carter, and we’ll remember other notables who influenced politics, law, and government.

INHOFE: Climate has always changed and it always will change—there’s archaeological evidence of that, there’s biblical evidence of that, there’s historical evidence of that.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, January 1st. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

MAST: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

SOUND: 3-2-1 [Cheers]

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: New Years celebrations » Crowds in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia welcomed the arrival of 2025. It was one of many cities to ring in the near year with everything from spectacular light shows in Mumbai …

SOUND: [Mumbai fireworks]

… to ice plunges in the Netherlands, and, of course, the famous ball drop in Times Square.

SOUND: [Times Square ball drop]

The Times Square Alliance, which puts on the annual event in Manhattan says they retired the old 6-ton crystal ball this morning. It will be replaced with a new ball with “more bells and whistles.”

Speaker Johnson » No holiday break for House Speaker Mike Johnson this week. He’s working overtime in hopes of winning over some skeptical House Republicans.

Members will vote on Friday to elect a speaker for the 119th Congress. And Congressman Andy Biggs says he does not believe Johnson has the votes needed to hold onto the gavel.

BIGGS: I’m talking to different people from different factions in the conference. All of us want to see at least procedural change.

But Congressman Russell Fry of South Carolina noted that President-electTrump has thrown his support behind Johnson …

FRY:  We should honor President Trump's request, select Mike Johnson as speaker, uh, and go about the business of enacting his America First agenda.

Johnson has served as speaker since October of 2023 after then-speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted by a small group of Republicans, including some of the same members thus far withholding support from Johnson.

Danon on Israeli hostages » The calendar turns over once more, with many Israeli hostages still in the clutches of Hamas terrorists. And Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon says he's hopeful that they’ll finally return home in the new year with the support of the incoming Trump administration.

DANON:  I think the statement of President-elect, President Trump, that he wants to see them as soon as possible is very helpful, but you know, in the Middle East, the only language that those evil animals understand is power and strength.

President-elect Trump vowed that there would be "hell to pay" if the hostages are not released by the time he takes office on January 20th. He did not expound on what that might mean.

Woman burned to death on NYC subway identified » New York City police say they’ve identified the woman who died on Dec. 22 after being set on fire while inside a New York subway train. The victim is a 57-year-old Debrina Kawam.

Mayor Eric Adams told reporters:

ADAMS:  She resided in New Jersey. She had a brief stint in our homeless, uh, shelter system, our shelter system. And, you know, her house goes out to the family, a horrific incident to have to live through.

Authorities previously said they were using forensics and video surveillance to identify the victim.

The man accused of lighting her on fire, Sebastian Zapeta, is a Guatemalan national in the country illegally.

South Korea to inspect Boeing aircraft involved in crash » A team of U.S. investigators including representatives from Boeing have examined the site of a plane crash that killed almost 200 people in South Korea on Sunday. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: South Korea's Chief of Aviation Policy Joo Jong Wan … said eight US officials have joined 11 South Korean government safety investigators probing the crash.

Authorities meanwhile are conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines.

The plane was seen having engine trouble and preliminary examinations also say the pilots received a bird strike warning from the ground control center and issued a distress signal.

But many experts believe a landing gear issue was likely the main cause of the crash.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Puerto Rico outage » Nearly everyone in Puerto Rico welcomed the new year in the dark last night.

A major blackout on Tuesday left more than 1.3 million homes and businesses without power. And service might not be restored until tomorrow.

Officials say it appears a failure in an underground power line triggered the outage.

Puerto Rico continues to struggle with chronic power outages blamed on a crumbling power grid that was razed by Hurricane Maria in 2017.

I'm Kent Covington.

Just ahead: The top political stories from the year that was— on Washington Wednesday. Plus, Cal Thomas with a personal story about Jimmy Carter.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 1st of January.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re glad you’ve joined us for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Time now for Washington Wednesday.

The books are closed on 2024, and what a year it was in politics!

FLAVIN: Donald Trump wins big in the first in the nation caucuses.

COVINGTON: Washington is deeply divided over the Supreme Court's historic ruling Monday on presidential immunity.

KIRCHER: President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump clashed on stage at CNN's Atlanta headquarters.

MELLINGER: The pressure on President Biden to give up his reelection bid is intensifying.

COVINGTON: This year's convention in Milwaukee will be unlike any other, kicking off just hours after a would-be assassin’s bullet pierced the right ear of the former president.

COVINGTON: Party leaders say Vice President Kamala Harris will be the nominee replacing President Biden at the top of the ticket.

MELLINGER: Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will square off in at least one presidential debate.

COVINGTON: Former President Donald Trump is now once again president-elect Donald Trump. He declared victory early this morning, shortly after Fox News called the election for the 45th and soon to be 47th president.

MAST: Here now to talk through a few of the big stories of last year, and what’s coming up this year are Carolina Lumetta and Leo Briceno. Both of them from WORLD’s Washington Bureau.

Good morning!

CAROLINA LUMETTA: Good morning Lindsay.

LEO BRICENO: Good morning.

MAST: Carolina. Starting with you, the presidential campaign was a whole saga of stories. What stands out to you from the reporting that you did last year?

LUMETTA: Well, it certainly was a wild presidential election cycle. We had a embattled president in the courts. We had assassination attempts, we had a switch of the candidate at a very late point. So what I had heard throughout the year was that this was going to rely on turnout, whichever side could convince more low propensity voters to come out and vote.

One thing that really stuck out to me, though, is that the Republican Party decided to embrace mail-in voting. That was a surprising shift from 2020 where the party and President Trump claimed that mail-in voting led to election fraud, or the very least irregularities in the 2020, presidential election. However, this year, they really changed their tune, and said that not only are we going to improve the system, but we want voters to use that. I covered a story about mail-in voting back in April, and I'm especially focused on Pennsylvania, where Republicans were really hoping to flip that crucial swing state from blue to red. I spoke with Guy Ciarrocchi, who is a former congressional candidate and a senior fellow at a Pennsylvania think tank. 

GUY CIARROCCHI: The Democratic party saw this as an educational tool to increase and improve voter turnout, having little or nothing to do with COVID. And the Republican party still, I think up until the recent past, saw it as an outgrowth of COVID and didn't want to do it. The biggest change is the recognition that without adapting to this extra tool, that we weren't going to win.

LUMETTA: So the Republican National Committee then stepped in and created this system that went through several name iterations, but ended up with "Swamp the Vote," where they were convincing Republican voters to turn out well before election day, either through early voting or that mail in voting. Along with that, they set up an aggressive litigation team that swept the country with lawsuits anywhere that they saw any voting irregularities the state not enforcing the law as defined on the books or trying to add new laws to safeguard the mail in voting practice that left Trump's campaign team free to work on those low propensity and undecided voters across the swing states. Fast forward to election night. We all saw that Trump was on the glide path to win as soon as Pennsylvania flipped, and then he ended up carrying every single swing state.

MAST: Of course, on election night, it was Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris, but for most of the year that was not the case. Can you walk us through what stood out to you leading up to the switch in candidates?

LUMETTA: So actually, as early as the New Hampshire primaries in January, Democratic voters told me that they didn't love Biden as their option. They had a couple concerns about his age, but they trusted that he was the only one who could beat Donald Trump, because he has before. They also weren't thrilled with they also weren't thrilled with Vice President Kamala Harris's track record so far and nationally, neither of those moods seemed to change over the year.

Then we had the presidential debate in June between Trump and Biden, and that's when the age issues really catapulted to the forefront of the presidential campaigns. President Biden stumbled over his words frequently. He struggled to complete sentences and thoughts, and he had a very raspy voice from what the campaign said was a cold. I watched the debate with the Georgia Republican Party at a watch party just outside Atlanta, and I spoke to Chairman, Josh McKoon right after that debate ended.

MCKOON: Tonight really painfully, put it on display for an hour and a half that there's some appear to be, some real deficits in being able to lead and being up to this challenge, and so I certainly expect you'll hear more of that as well.

It really marked this pivot point for the Democratic Party, even though President Biden didn't drop out until nearly a month later, that put the whole party on the defensive roughly 100 days before an election with a lesser known candidate, with Vice President Kamala Harris, who voters were already not that thrilled about.

MAST: Well, Leo, you've been watching Congress. What was the biggest story there in 2024?

BRICENO: Obviously, many different stories that we could touch on, but probably the single biggest change that happened in Congress happened over in the Senate, where Senator Mitch McConnell has represented the state of Kentucky since 1985 he's led that chamber since 2007 but in February of this year, he announced that he would be stepping down from the role and letting someone else take his place.

There were concerns about his age. In particular, there were two separate freezing instances where the senator paused for multiple seconds after trying to give a response to the media during press conferences that left bystanders kind of shocked and really concerned about his clarity of mind, his state of health that year, he also suffered a fall that hospitalized him for a good bit. And so there were so many different concerns coming into his decision this year that it was just a matter of time before McConnell was probably going to have to relinquish this role.

Now taking the reins of McConnell is Senator John Thune, who was voted in by his party this past November following the November elections, and so kind of an institutionalist like McConnell. McConnell has said and maintained that the filibuster is a very important component of the Senate and how it functions. Thune takes a very similar approach in opposition to kind of, maybe some of the changes that Trump would like to see in the Senate. It's going to be really interesting to see how Thune rises to the challenge in 2025.

MAST: And what about big stories from the other side of Congress?

BRICENO: Yeah, I think a predominant theme throughout the 118th Congress was just kind of the small majority that you saw over on the other side of the building, over in the House of Representatives. US House Speaker Mike Johnson and his predecessor US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy both had to contend with, historically, the smallest majority in the House of Representatives ever. And so that majority started out at about five seats, and at one point, shrunk down to just one seat, that continued to cause headaches and problems for the leadership team there at the GOP, because really, they could only afford to lose 1-2-3-4, votes, depending on who was in the chamber at the time. That was a headache for for Republican leadership all throughout the 118th and it's also a very relevant story to bring up, because it's going to be, again, a big headache for the Republican party going into the 119th where they are looking at just a two seat majority to start the year. And so definitely something that raised its head throughout the year in 2024 and something to keep an eye on going forward.

MAST: Well, looking forward now…as Donald Trump heads back to the White House later this month, what stories are you watching, Carolina?

LUMETTA: Well, most immediately, we have several confirmation hearings to get through. As Trump tries to staff his second term, he has some very controversial picks for key cabinet positions, and so we will be. Covering that very closely from January into February, hopefully not into March, but we'll see. I'm also looking closely at Trump's tariff proposals. He suggested that he would impose heavy tariffs against China, Mexico and Canada to combat the flow of illegal fentanyl. However, Washington lawmakers are concerned that this will cause economic headaches here at home, it's already also causing shifts with allies like in Canada, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is facing calls to resign over his response to Trump. He's already battling a very high cost of living there, his finance minister resigned because they disagreed on what to do about this threat of tariffs. And so I'm interested to see the ripple effects that a second Trump presidency will have. I'm also interested to see how he intends to follow through with a lot of his campaign promises, which include closing the southern border and improving the economy.

MAST: What about in Congress, Leo?

BRICENO: A Lot of different priorities coming in for the Trump administration in the first 100 days, everything from border policy to cutting government waste and inefficiency, but definitely one of the biggest priorities the Trump administration will want to hit right away is extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. This was a length. This was a land not a land mine. This was a landmark piece of legislation for the Trump administration in 2017 it cut taxes in virtually every area. And so if this doesn't get extended, you're going to have a kind of fiscal cliff type situation where you know the amount of taxes that businesses, that individuals pay could go up. But coming into the election, one of the biggest questions was, well, can they do that in divided government? Will these tax cuts get extended? That was one of the things that we knew that Congress was going to have to deal with in 2025 what we didn't know was that the Republican Party was going to have the benefit of having the House, the Senate and the White House, all under the same party control. And so the question now isn't so much, are these tax cuts going to get extended, but really, how and in what form do they stay the same, or are there going to be changes? But really, what it boils down to is, Can Republicans get on the same page to pass their priorities as far as tax goes, and can they do it in that first 100 day window when they're also going to be struggling to deal with government spending and some of the other priorities that they've also got on their plate.

MAST: Leo Briceno and Carolina Lumetta cover politics for WORLD’s Washington Bureau. Thanks so much, and happy new year!

LUMETTA: Thanks, Lindsay.

BRICENO: Happy New Year.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour with our reporter in Africa, Onize Oduah.

ONIZE ODUAH: The past year brought more than 70 elections globally, with millions of voters heading to the polls. The votes brought some expected and unexpected changes.

AUDIO: Cheering crowds

India organized an elaborate electoral process that lasted six weeks and involved nearly 970 million registered voters. They cast their ballots for all of the more than 500 members of the country’s lower house of parliament.

Voters in South Africa also brought historic change as they removed the African National Congress party from office for the first time since the country gained its independence in 1994.

I spoke with Christopher Vandome a senior research fellow with the Chatham House Africa Program.

CHRISTOPHER VANDOME: That's what's really striking about this election and that's why it's been billed as the most contested election for 30 years. Pluralism in every form is kind of a new thing in South Africa and that's what's really exciting about this election.

And in Botswana, voters elected Duma Boko as president, ending the ruling party’s nearly six decades in power. Boko’s victory brought a seamless power shift welcomed on a continent that has seen some contentious handovers.

DUMA BOKO: Thank you very much. I am humbled to sit here. I accept it with humility. I accept it with some trepidation knowing that it’s a very very big assignment.

More elections are ahead … with voters in Belarus heading to the polls later this month. Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko will be running for a seventh term.

This year has also brought some political uncertainty beyond elections, In West Africa, military-led countries have distanced themselves from the regional bloc.

Back in January, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger announced their plans to withdraw from the regional Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS. Their departure threatened to break apart the group, which provides some economic stability in the region.

By July, the countries organized the first summit of their new bloc: The Alliance of Sahel States.

Abdourahamane Tiani is Niger’s ruling general.

TIANI: [Speaking French]

He says here that the new alliance is the only way to tackle terrorism in the current geopolitical climate.

In December, ECOWAS gave the military leaders until next July to reconsider their membership. But they have said their decision is irreversible.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong continued to crack down on pro-democracy activists. In a significant November ruling, a court found 45 former lawmakers and activists guilty of subversion. Their prison sentences range from four to 10 years. Western governments and international rights organizations criticized the sentences as politically motivated.

Chris Tang is Hong Kong’s security secretary.

CHRIS TANG: [SPEAKING CANTONESE]

He says here that the sentences match the severity of the crimes … and show the city has zero tolerance for any acts endangering national security.

In many countries, Christians faced extra challenges this year.

In Rwanda, authorities are still enforcing regulations mandating churches to meet basic building standards and maintain sound regulations, among other requirements, in order to remain open.

Authorities shut down more than 56-hundred churches for failing to meet the regulations … after a five-year grace period.

Peter Gitau is the Central Africa regional administrator for Africa Inland Mission.

GITAU: No one is saying you cannot meet in each other's houses for fellowship. They're just saying, fix your fix your place. And you know you can meet there.

Meanwhile, Christians in Nicaragua face increasing pushback from President Daniel Ortega’s government. Authorities there have shut down thousands of churches and exiled many church leaders. The crackdown intensified after churches provided shelter for protesters back in 2018.

The targeted Christians include some 13 members of Mountain Gateway, a Texas-based evangelical ministry. Authorities released them along with other political and religious prisoners back in September.

Kristina Hjelkrem is a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom International … who represents Mountain Gateway.

HJELKREM: Of course from a human perspective we are really glad and grateful to God that these people are no longer deprived of their freedom for arbitrary and unjust reasons.

Despite this good news, the government is still suppressing religious freedom. Authorities ordered all Roman Catholic nuns to leave the country last month.

Meanwhile in Nigeria, Islamist insurgents and armed bandits have continued attacks on civilians. But Christians in northeast Nigeria are rejoicing after a judge acquitted a Christian woman of blasphemy charges last month.

Authorities detained Rhoda Jatau, a mother of five, two years ago for sharing a video that showed the lynching of a young Christian student. She was released on bail last December as her trial continued. Her case drew condemnation from international groups that also criticized the country’s blasphemy laws.

And finally, we wrap up in Syria, where a coalition of rebels has regained control of the country, bringing President Bashar al-Assad’s leadership to an end.

Hussein Abdul Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

HUSSEIN: So far the few days that have passed by, I think you know, things have been better when compared to other Arab Spring or Iraq War change, no looting, no burning, no breaking. But moving forward, I wish, I hope, that things continue going in this direction.

The return of an Islamist group to power has also raised concerns of what the future holds for Christians.

Martin Parsons is the CEO of the Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution.

He told WORLD last month that he’s not optimistic that Christians will stay safe for long.

PARSONS: We’re not going to see an immediate massacre of Christians, but we are going to see that tightening noose and we will see a few Syrian Christian leaders probably losing their lives, and it will get to the point where it will become—life will become intolerable for Christians in Syria.

That’s it for this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Oduah in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Magnus Carlsen may be a chess grandmaster, but just like you and me, he puts his pants on one leg at a time—even when the pants violate the dress code.

At the World Rapid Chess Championship last week, Carlsen was fined for wearing denim.

A reporter confronted chess officials afterward:

REPORTER: But it’s only a pair of jeans. 

OFFICIAL: It may be. I don’t write the rules, I just apply them.

Carlsen refused to change, took a $200 fine, and stood his ground.

CARLSEN: I think the situation was badly mishandled. I didn’t agree with it. I didn’t want to comply. And I stand by that.

The gambit paid off … Carlsen’s move pinned the chess federation—which ended up rewriting the rules to allow for what’s now called “elegant deviance.” Checkmate.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, January 1st.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: notable deaths from 20-24.

Just this week, we remembered former President Jimmy Carter. Other big names we covered last year include Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. He died under mysterious circumstances in a Siberian prison camp.

EICHER: We also marked the departures of Senator and presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, and the youngest son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., Dexter King.

Today, a handful of others who left their mark on law and politics. Here now is WORLD’s Washington producer Harrison Watters.

HARRISON WATTERS: We begin today with Jean Carnahan, the first woman to represent Missouri in the U.S. Senate. She died in January at age 90.

In the year 2000, Jean was the First Lady of Missouri and her husband Mel Carnahan was leveraging his popularity as governor in a bid to unseat Republican Senator John Ashcroft.

But then, tragedy struck twenty days before the election.

SPOKESMAN: A plane believed to be carrying Governor Mel Carnahan, his son Roger, and senior campaign advisor Chris Sifford went down in Jefferson County. There were no survivors.

Jean was left to raise their three remaining children alone and finish the campaign Mel started.

JEAN: I determined that if the people would elect him, I would serve.

Missouri elected Carnahan posthumously and Jean was appointed by the new governor to take the oath of office in her husband’s place.

In 2002, Carnanan lost a special election to her Republican challenger and never returned to government, but two of her children found careers in Congress and Missouri state government.

Next, a man who made clothes for American leaders and celebrities.

GREENFIELD: I think that I make the finest clothing in the world. That's why they seek me out.

Martin Greenfield was born in 1928 in Czechoslovakia—14 years before his Jewish family was taken to Auschwitz.

GREENFIELD: Some were sent to the left and I was sent to the right.

Greenfield never saw his family again. But the camp tailor trained Greenfield to make clothes. In 1945, American forces under General Dwight Eisenhower liberated Europe. Sound here from ABC.

GREENFIELD: And I shook his hand, and I cried. I cried for joy.

Greenfield emigrated to America and started working in a garment factory. Here he is in a Jewish American Heritage interview.

GREENFIELD: I worked 30 years, and then I bought the business.

Greenfield’s business made fine suits for the likes of President Lyndon Johnson and basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal, but his first famous customer was General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Greenfield died at age 95 on March 20th.

Next…

JIM BAKKER: Our special guest today is none other than Beverly LaHaye.

In the 1970s and 80s, the wife of evangelical pastor and author Tim LaHaye made a name in her own right as founder of Concerned Women for America. As a wife and mother, LaHaye was frustrated to see traditional values mocked and undermined in popular culture and the public square.

LAHAYE: We did not have a voice. When the feminists spoke, they spoke, as they said, for the women of America, and we are not a single block group of women.

In 1979, LaHaye founded CWA as a political action group for conservative women to get involved in politics and school boards. They also took national stands on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion.

Here’s LaHaye at the organization’s 40th anniversary gala in 2019.

LAHAYE: I started Concerned Women for America when I was fifty years old. So it's never too old to start doing something for the Lord.

LaHaye died on April 14. She was 94.

Turning now to a lawmaker who challenged the reasoning behind climate change alarmism.

O’BRIEN: Let let's move on though let's talk a little bit about—

INHOFE: No no we can't move on because if you're talking about the science, the science is not settled.

O’BRIEN: Well all right let's move on now…

Jim Inhofe represented Oklahoma in the U.S. Senate from 1994 to 2023.

INHOFE: Climate has always changed and it always will change—there’s archaeological evidence of that, there’s biblical evidence of that, there’s historical evidence of that. It will always change. The hoax is that there are some people who are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful they can change climate. Man can’t change climate.

Inhofe argued against the United States joining the Paris Climate Accords in 2015. He said the deal put heavy burdens on the U.S. without addressing emissions from China and India. He also questioned the science behind global warming as a threat to human survival.

INHOFE: In case we have forgotten, because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, I ask the chair, you know what this is? It's a snowball… and that's just from outside here so it's very very cold out, very unseasonable so here.

Inhofe died in July. He was 89.

We end today with the conservative attorney who argued the Supreme Court case that decided the presidential election of 2000.

OLSON: What happens in Florida affects people all over the United States.

When Florida went to a contested recount, Ted Olson argued for the George W. Bush campaign.

Sound here from a CBS Sunday interview.

MO ROCCA: Why did the Bush side win?

OLSON: We were right.

Bush appointed Olson the Solicitor General of the United States. Several years after returning to private law practice, Olson surprised many by taking on a case in California. That case challenged the state’s ban on gay marriage known as Proposition 8. Here’s Olson on PBS.

OLSON: That was November 8th of 2008. Proposition 8 passed in California adding a provision to the Constitution that said marriage was permissible and recognizable only between a man and a woman.

Olson argued the case alongside David Boise, the attorney who represented Al Gore in the Supreme Court case Olson won nine years earlier.

BOISE: When Ted called me I immediately said yes.

The unlikely legal team succeeded in defeating Prop 8, legalizing same-sex marriage in California.

OLSON: I think I've always been a conservative. People tend to want to put people in boxes and people overdo the conservative or liberal thing.

On November 13th, Ted Olson died after suffering a stroke. He was 84 years old.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, January 1st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Up next, commentator Cal Thomas on the life and faith of America’s 39th president.

CAL THOMAS: When Jimmy Carter began attending the First Baptist Church in Washington after becoming president, I thought it a unique opportunity to better understand his faith. He taught a Sunday School class as he had done for years in his native Plains, Georgia and I joined it.

Carter was an excellent teacher. He knew the Scriptures well and on one occasion he asked me to teach the class, which was an experience I shall never forget.

After the service, we went downstairs for coffee. There was a basket on the table for people to pay twenty-five cents for the beverage. Carter reached in his pocket and found no money. He asked wife Rosalynn if she had brought any change. She had not. I said “How far have we declined when the President of the United States can’t pay for coffee?” I gave him a quarter and he laughed.

Years later after he had left the presidency we met at a function and I reminded him of that time in the church basement. He reached in his pocket and this time had a quarter which he handed to me and said “we’re even.” I kept that quarter on my desk for years, unable to prove he gave it to me, but we both knew.

When Carter announced during the 1976 presidential campaign that he was a born again Christian, most of the media were flummoxed. John Chancellor of NBC News announced that he had looked up the term and “it is nothing new.” If he had read the Bible that Carter read he would have known this. Carter’s announcement and faithful church attendance attracted many newly energized evangelical voters which helped him defeat Gerald Ford in the November election.

By 1980 most of those voters had abandoned him in favor of Ronald Reagan, not because they necessarily doubted Carter’s declaration of faith, but because they disagreed with his application of it. Carter had made Sarah Weddington part of his administration. Weddington was the attorney who argued Roe vs. Wade before the Supreme Court, resulting in the overturning of all state election laws restricting the procedure. He also hosted a “White House Conference on Families,” which included same-sex couples, anathema to most conservative Christians.

No one should question the sincerity of another person’s faith, but its application is fair game for analysis. Mark Tooley of the Institute for Religion and Democracy says Carter’s faith was more in line with liberal Protestantism: “Although he professed admiration for Christian realist Reinhold Niebuhr, Carter’s accommodation of foreign adversaries, pseudo-pacifism, undermining of allies, and endless faith in personal diplomacy all more resembled the Religious Left’s utopian aspirations. It’s appropriate that Carter’s controversial UN Ambassador, Andrew Young, whom he removed for prematurely meeting PLO chief Yasir Arafat, later served as president of the National Council of Churches,” a theologically and politically liberal organization.

In 1979 at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Roman Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen began his remarks this way: “Fellow sinners.” Turning to Carter, he added “and that includes you Mr. President.” Carter laughed along with the audience.

Carter’s faithfulness in church attendance inspired many who had given up the practice to return to Sunday worship. He focused on human rights as president and helped build houses for the poor after leaving office—two things in line with Jesus’s commands. He was a man of good character, kindness, and mercy. He expressed other characteristics Scripture calls “fruits of the spirit.” Whether you agreed with its application or not, his faith was genuine.

He also paid his debts. The quarter he gave me proves it.

I’m Cal Thomas.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The story of aid workers who were on the ground in Ethiopia four decades ago who saw firsthand the effects of the historic famine.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

Scripture records: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” —Genesis 1:1-5

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.