Jimmy Carter and the Demise of Progressive Evangelicalism

A Conversation with Randall Balmer and Tom Gjelten

Thursday, April 10, 2025
12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. EDT
Location: Copley Hall Copley Formal Lounge Map

Ronald Reagan’s defeat of President Jimmy Carter in 1980 marked a turning point in Christianity’s role in U.S. politics. Carter, a Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher, was at the time the most prominent representative of progressive evangelical Christianity, a century-old religious tradition that sought to reform American society in line with Jesus Christ’s call to care “for the least of these.” Ronald Reagan, his successor, came to power with the support of a far more conservative strain of Christian evangelicalism embodied by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, and other figures from the emerging religious right, a faith tradition that more than four decades later still represents a loyal core of the Republican Party.

With his newly revised book, Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter (2014, 2024), historian Randall Balmer sets the story of Carter’s life and presidency squarely in his Christian faith. Carter, Balmer writes, “sought to live and to govern according to his love for God and for other people.” In a conversation with Sakka Family Religion and International Journalism Fellow Tom Gjelten, Balmer reviewed how evangelical Christianity journeyed from its politically progressive roots toward an angrier and more resentful posture centered on opposition to abortion, diversity mandates, and the welfare state.

Center Director Thomas Banchoff introduced the event.

This event was co-sponsored by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs; the Center on Faith and Justice; and the Georgetown Journalism Program in the College of Arts & Sciences.

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Thomas Banchoff, executive director of the Berkley Center, introduces the event.

Tom Gjelten in conversation with Randall Balmer.

Randall Balmer addressing the audience.

Tom Gjelten moderating the discussion.

Audience member asks a question to the speaker.

Participants

Randall Balmer Toggle

About Randall Balmer

Randall Balmer, the John Phillips Chair in Religion at Dartmouth College, is a scholar of American religious history and the author of more than a dozen books, including Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter (2014, 2024). He earned a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1985 and taught as professor of American religious history at Columbia University for 27 years before coming to Dartmouth in 2012. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton, Yale, Northwestern, and Emory universities and in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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Thomas Banchoff Toggle

About Thomas Banchoff

Thomas Banchoff is director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and serves as vice president for global engagement at Georgetown University, where he is a professor in the Department of Government and the Walsh School of Foreign Service. He is a co-convener of the Georgetown Global Dialogues and co-chairs the Task Force on Global Citizenship of the International Association of Jesuit Universities.

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Tom Gjelten Toggle

About Tom Gjelten

Tom Gjelten is a veteran journalist who was most recently religion and belief correspondent at National Public Radio (NPR), reporting on the changing religious landscape in America, the formation of personal identity, the role of religion in politics, and social and cultural conflict arising from religious differences. During spring 2025 he was the Sakka Family Religion and International Journalism Fellow at Georgetown University, a tenure which concluded in June of that year. Gjelten’s nearly four-decade NPR career included overseas reporting in Central and South America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He later covered U.S. diplomacy and military affairs from the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon. He is the author of, among others, Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege (1996), Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause (2008), and A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story (2015). He is the recipient of two Overseas Press Club Awards, a George Polk Award, a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and a National Headliner Award. Gjelten is currently a contributing writer at Moment Magazine, where in 2022 he earned the “Religion Story of the Year” award from the Religion News Association. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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