Baptist leaders are remembering Jimmy Carter as an example of faithfulness, compassion and justice and advocate for religious liberty.

Carter, an outsider even as he sat in the Oval Office as the 39th U.S. president, is being honored with the pageantry of a funeral at Washington National Cathedral.

Jimmy Carter was an evangelical. A liberal evangelical. A liberal evangelical in the age before the Christian Right supported a conservative revolution that swept Republican Ronald Reagan into power.

Mr. Carter said his spiritual rebirth was an “evolutionary thing” rather than “a flash of light or a sudden vision of God speaking.”

I can tell you without any equivocation that the number one abuse of human rights on Earth, strangely not addressed quite often, is the abuse of women and girls,” the former President said.

The service, which lasted roughly two hours, was packed with heartfelt and vivid remembrances that recalled both a powerful president and politician as well as a thoughtful and giving man of faith.

Chuck Leavell, keyboardist for the pioneering Southern rock band, said its members saw their fellow Georgian as an honest, inspiring figure.

Jimmy Carter, a progressive Baptist, balanced faith with politics, advocating for church-state separation while evolving on social issues, shaping evangelical roles in U.S. public life.

In his eulogy, Biden said Carter’s faith overlapped with broadly held American ideals such as the idea that ‘we all are created equal in the image of God.’

Carter was widely known as a man of faith, with his post-presidency defined by images of the Baptist Sunday School teacher building homes for low-income people.

Lesser known, and particularly relevant for American politics today, is our 39th president’s commitment to the Baptist value of religious liberty. The United States’ most religious president in recent memory was also the most committed to the separation of church and state.