A carpenter and a builder
From a young age, Jimmy Carter watched both his parents faithfully attend church services and put the Christian values of fairness, discipline and compassion to work on their farm and in their community.
As Carter moved through life — from the farm to service in the U.S. Navy, then through business, the White House and humanitarian work — the lessons of faith he absorbed at an early age crossed the boundaries of race, income and gender. Beginning in 1984, those lessons found a practical outlet in Habitat for Humanity.
Carter’s involvement with Habitat was an exercise in breaking boundaries in the name of his faith. “I look on Habitat for Humanity as a movement for reconciliation, a breaking down of barriers between people who might be different,” he said at the 2001 Jimmy Carter Work Project in Asan, South Korea.
“We learn about service, we learn about love, and we talk about it. But Habitat lets us put it all into practice.”— President Jimmy Carter
An enduring faith in the love of God for everyone enabled him to work with joyous Habitat homeowners and volunteers with the same straightforward authenticity he employed with foreign heads of state.
The pragmatic details of his work — the blocks laid just so, the joints precise and tightly fitted — hinted at the profound motivations of faith and service that characterized his support for Habitat.
“From my rural boyhood, when I often spent the night with black neighbors who lived in unheated and dilapidated shacks, to my years in the White House when I saw the plight of the homeless and those trapped in poverty housing worldwide, I have known that shelter matters,” he said. “And I know, as a Christian, that I have a responsibility to serve where I can.
“Jesus was a carpenter, and a builder. Through Habitat, we have been privileged to become builders, too, not only of houses, but of families, lives and hope.”
