Though unpopular as president, Carter left a legacy of service

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, died today at home in Georgia after entering hospice care in February 2023, according to the Carter Center. He was 100 years old.

Born in rural Plains, Ga., James Earl Carter Jr. was the eldest son of a businessman who owned a store and farm. His father also dabbled in local and state politics. The younger Carter started college in Georgia before transferring to the U.S. Naval Academy, where he graduated in 1946. That year, he also married Rosalynn Smith. Before becoming president, Carter served four years in Georgia’s Senate and four years as the state’s governor.

Elected president in 1976, Carter tried to free the United States from dependency on foreign oil and improve human rights abroad, but poor domestic decisions and botched international efforts doomed his term. He was unable to stem rising fuel prices and runaway inflation that ignited a serious recession.

Escalating tensions with Iran led up to his loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980. After Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Tehran, Carter offered sanctuary to the overthrown Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, inciting student militants to storm the U.S. Embassy and take more than 50 Americans hostage. Carter authorized a disastrous rescue attempt, and although Iran eventually freed the hostages the day he left office in 1981, the incident led many to conclude Carter had failed with Iran, as well.

But Carter did have successes, both during and after his presidency. He successfully engineered a historic peace accord in 1978 between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat at Camp David in Maryland. The Camp David Accords hold to this day. A professing Christian, Carter was the first U.S. president to declare himself “born again,” bringing the term into the mainstream American lexicon.

Carter wrote more than two dozen books on topics ranging from his work in U.S. politics and global humanitarian crises to his Christian faith. Despite his perceived political failings, Carter said he never wavered in his faith.

“There’s no way I could ever separate my Christian belief from my obligations as a naval officer, as a governor, or as president, or from my work now,” he said in a 2012 Christianity Today interview.

Some of his beliefs contradicted orthodox Christian teachings, and Carter did not always see eye-to-eye with his church. He twice renounced his affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention, once in 2000 and again in 2009. He voiced disagreement with the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy and said the church should allow women to be pastors.

But he continued to attend and teach Sunday school at his home congregation of Maranatha Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist affiliate. Later, Carter also echoed growing cultural acceptance of homosexuality, saying in a 2012 HuffPost interview, “Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born, and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality.”

After his term ended, Carter not only chose to stay in the limelight, but he also successfully reinvented himself as a global humanitarian in his own right—leading some to argue Jimmy Carter, model citizen, may have done more for his fellow man than Jimmy Carter, president.

In 1982, just a year after leaving office, Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, started the Carter Center in Atlanta, a human rights organization that addresses global conflict and fights disease. The center played a key role in setting international standards for election monitoring to support vulnerable democracies around the world. In the developing world, it led the campaign to eradicate preventable illnesses such as Guinea worm disease. Carter was heavily involved in Habitat for Humanity.

As a freelance diplomat, Carter attempted to broker difficult international agreements, most notably in North Korea. In the 1990s, he won nuclear concessions from former leader Kim Il-sung, and he helped secure the release of an American prisoner in 2010. It was for those efforts, both humanitarian and political, that he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. He remains the only president to win the award for work done outside his term in office.

Carter survived a bout with cancer in 2015. He recently had a series of hospital stays and decided to enter hospice care, according to The Carter Center. He was preceded in death by his wife of 77 years. Former first lady Eleanor Rosalynn Carter died at 96 years old on Nov. 19, 2023. They are survived by four adult children, and over 20 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.