Can lessons from Plains reach beyond Mr. Jimmy's Sunday School class?
(The Christian Science Monitor) When the Methodist church in Plains, Georgia, puts on its annual fish fry, the congregation is usually nearly the whole town of 700 people. Baptists like Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are sure to be in attendance, as is mechanic Chris McGrady, a young black man who calls Carter “probably the best president ever.”
Before Mr. Jimmy, as he is called here, became president, Plains was cloven by race, if not religion, and Carter breached protocol and tradition and risked a political career in the 1960s by voting against a resolution to exclude black churchgoers. Carter’s focus on human rights, especially post-presidency, came to touch millions around the world. But its success can be perhaps most easily seen in Plains, a town so flat that “water don’t know which way to run,” and where residents say Carter “sets the tone” and “keeps our mind open.”
Carter and his hometown are “seeing a revival,” said Bob Strong, a Washington and Lee University political scientist, partly because of Carter’s advancing age, but also because the values that the town embodies—hard work, duty, grace, faith, dignity, and equality—are poignant counterpoints as a country polarized by race, class, and opportunity begins to seek its 45th president.
