Sundays With Jimmy Carter

Southwest Georgia is Baptist country. The back roads heading south out of Columbus are bracketed by red soil, scruffy pines, and clapboard buildings sporting names like Shiloh Marion Baptist Church, Zion Hill Baptist Church, Piney Grove Missionary Baptist Church, and Greater Good Hope Baptist Church. “Love Jesus No Matter What,” one roadside sign reads, and another: “Only Jesus Saves.” Outside of Preston, Georgia, still another sign implores, “Take Jesus for Your Saviour,” and the Preston Baptist Church has posted each of the Ten Commandments on a chain-link fence for the edification of travelers passing through town.

Just before crossing from Webster into Sumter County, signs on Georgia Highway 27 point toward Archery, the boyhood home of Jimmy Carter, and then the road eases into Plains, where it becomes Church Street. The business district, not much more than a block long, lies just beyond the railroad tracks, across the street from the former Seaboard Coast Line Railroad Depot that served as campaign headquarters for Carter’s improbable run for the presidency in 1976 and now as a museum commemorating that campaign.