Beeson podcast, episode 447 Charles T. Carter June 4, 2019 Announcer: Welcome to the Benson podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson podcast. I am really looking forward to this podcast because I have sitting across from me here in the studio one of my dearest friends in the world, my pastor of many years, Dr. Charles T. Carter. He is the James H. Chapman Fellow of Pastoral Ministry, long time pastor in the state of Alabama, a leading in Southern Baptist convention and the Alabama Baptist convention, many other ways his ministry has blessed so many thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people in the years of his life. Timothy George: He's been associated with Beeson Divinity School as a faculty member since 1999, 20 years, and we're going to talk about Dr. Carter and his life and his ministry and his perspective, just a few insights, we don't have time to give this subject the time it needs, but we're going to plunge right into it, and Dr. Carter, thank you for being here with us today. Charles Carter: Honor to be here. Timothy George: Let's begin with how you became a Christian. Charles Carter: Always, I'm happy to share that. Contrary to what many people have, I did not grow up in a Christian home initially. My dad was not a Christian at all, my mom was but had been way out of fellowship with the Lord, and I happened to bring a picture. This little girl here who was 13 years of age lived across the street from us and she was a Christian and she came across the street and asked my mother could she take me to Sunday School at the Calvary Baptist Church. Carl Whirley was the minister of music, whose picture is here in our hall at Beeson Divinity School. Charles Carter: I'd never been to church and went there. Heard an old, old man, he must have been at least 40, tell me that God loved me, Christ died for me, and the gift of eternal life was available if I would believe. I did and August 15, 1943 after the witness of this little girl. She never gave me a Bible, she never witnessed to me, all she did was take me by the hand and got me to church where I could hear the Gospel and then she got me home safely. That was when I was seven and a half years old. I was saved immediately and saved eternally and I will forever be grateful that that experience occurred. Charles Carter: Now that very same morning, to show the sovereignty of God, my mother had begun to attend church with me, was a Christian but was way out of fellowship with the Lord, we had two services. The kids went to church first and then the adults came to the 11:00 service and in that service, she came down the aisle, rededicated her life and moved to membership and the pastor, Dr. John Maguire said, "Vernice doesn't know, but her son, Charles, was saved in the early service." So on the same day under the sovereignty of God, we both... she became active in the church, renewed fellowship with the Lord, I became a child of God. Timothy George: Isn't that wonderful? What a great story. Now you became a Christian seven years before I was born. I was born in 1950, so you were already a believer seven years before that, and very early in your life God had His hand on you and called you to serve Him in the ministry of the word of God. We remember you in so many ways, but I think primarily as a great preacher and pastor and also a very stellar Baptist. I'm going to come to your Baptist roots in a minute, but how were you called into the ministry? Charles Carter: Well that's interesting, Dr. George. At that same church, as a young 12-year-old boy, the church had a very active youth program and I became involved in everything that was going on in the Southern Baptist Church at that time, and as a 12-year-old boy we had a new pastor. My heart fell out for the man that had led me to Christ left, I didn't know... I never heard of a preacher leaving the church. So yet God's sovereignty brought a new man in, Dr. James Harris, who was a wonderful preacher and later became a leader of Texas Baptist. Charles Carter: He was our pastor and as I watched him and listened to him preach, sitting down on the front row as a little boy, I felt the tug of God in my heart. Sometimes he would say things and I would think in my little mind, "Well, I'd like to say that." At 12 years of age I made a commitment to go into the Christian ministry. I've never aspired to do anything else. That's been my heart and life ever since then. A couple of years later, I preached my first sermon right here in Birmingham at the old West End Baptist Church over in Princeton. Timothy George: Yeah. Charles Carter: I was 15. I preached on Revelation 3:14 to 21, the Church at Laodicea. I called it lukewarm Christians. I don't remember what I said, but I remember preaching. Timothy George: That's a great text. Absolutely. A lot of people may not know that you were also early in your ministry, very involved in the leading of worship and music. Charles Carter: Yes, that's right. Timothy George: How did that happen? Charles Carter: Well, as a young teenage preacher boy, I'd go anywhere people would let me go and during that time, I became... I got contacted from a church out at Warrior, New Temple Baptist Church. They wanted me to come out for a youth rally and lead the music, so I went out. That very night a young preacher who was about six years older than I but was a pastor, Harper Shannon, was preaching that night. It just so happened that his church had lost their minister of music. He saw this young kid, I was 16 years old, a senior in high school, and the next week his secretary called, asked if I could meet them. I did and they did and I went to that church in September of 1952. I was 16, Harper was 21. Timothy George: Yeah. Charles Carter: But we had a wonderful time together. Timothy George: A great friend of yours and of ours. When we started Beeson back in 1988, Dr. Harper Shannon was the Director of Evangelism for the Alabama... He preached I think at our very first pastor's conference. Charles Carter: I wouldn't be surprised. A great preacher. Timothy George: Great preacher, great encourager. Tell us a little bit about your experience as a student, because you were a student at what was then Howard College before we moved onto this beautiful campus where we're located today, back in the East Lake section of town. What was it like to be a student at Howard back in those days? Charles Carter: Well, mine was somewhat different. We had very limited funds and so I lived at home, which was in Birmingham and drove every morning out to the old campus of Howard and East Lake. I had gone to my first church when I was a senior in high school, so I was already in a church and so I had that responsibility on Sundays and Wednesdays and then sometimes through the week, so about all I did at the old Howard College, I would go there and go to class, go home and study, and go to work at the church, and go home and sleep, go back. Charles Carter: I spent very little time on the campus, and I regret... one of the things I regret in my time in college was that I really didn't get to know a lot of the students like I would like to have. I got to know the faculty, Dr. Vernon Davidson was head of the Religion Department, became a dear friend. During my last year at the old campus, Dr. Sigurd Bryan who's still living and here and Dr. [inaudible 00:08:05] both came on the faculty my last year there and I had both of them in class, but it was more working at the church, going to school, getting an education, and leaving and I didn't really get to know the students. Contrary to that, when I got to the seminary, my dearest friends became seminary students because I was there living on the campus. Timothy George: Now I think it was the first year of Beeson Divinity School in 1988, you were elected unanimously by consent, a unanimous consent, as the president of the Alabama Baptist State Convention. That's a very unusual thing to happen. We usually have horse races, this one, that one. You were the choice across the board, no opposition and you had a very formative role I would say in the work of the Alabama Baptist State Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention over the years. Why are you a Baptist, Dr. Carter? Charles Carter: Well, I was surprised that it was by, as consent, but the background of that was I also know how to be defeated. In 1973, they had asked me to preach the convention sermon and that's when I did my detailed study on the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and that's what I preached on at the seven to three, it was the Bicentennial and met in Tuscaloosa. After preaching that sermon, there was a great response so someone got up and nominated me to be president. I was only 37 years old and Dot Nelson who was a dear friend already and became a closer friend was nominated and he beat me in '73. But it was providential. I didn't need to be president of the state convention as a 37-year-old guy. Charles Carter: The acclamation election was a surprise to me. I didn't even know. It had never been done before but I was told probably the reason I got elected, Dr. Rick Lance did the nominating speech. Timothy George: Of course who's today the executive director of the state of Alabama convention. But you haven't answered my question really, why are you a Baptist? Charles Carter: A simple answer to that, Dr. George, I believe, would be that I think what we espouse as Baptists is the nearest, in the denomination I know, to the teachings of the scripture. Now, everything Baptists do is not biblical, some of our in-house fighting has brought embarrassment to me, but I still think given the whole picture in the ecclesiastical spectrum, our interest and our centrality of Christ, salvation by grace through faith along missions and evangelism, the inspiration of the scripture, all to me are things that bring Baptists together and I've never had a desire to be anything else. I at times wish I could help reform some of the things of Southern Baptists, but I'm sure people have felt that way all through the years. Timothy George: One of the many, many things I admire about you is the fact that you're a person of both conviction and charity and so you reach out to other people with whom you don't always agree 100%, but you have a core of conviction that's really defining of who you are as a minister of the Gospel. So I appreciate that spirit that you bring that's made you a wonderful friend and colleague and ally for our work at Beeson Divinity School. That's what we try to do here as best we can. Timothy George: Now you mentioned reform and one of the ways in fact I think you've had a very important role in helping to reform, it's an ongoing project, the Southern Baptist Commission, has to do with racial reconciliation. In 1995, you were asked by our president of the SBC, Dr. Jim Henry, to be the chair of the resolutions committee and that's the committee that brought a resolution on racial reconciliation, that was the 150th anniversary of the Southern Baptist Convention, in which we made a very blunt statement about the impact of racism in our own life, in our own culture, in our own denomination. You led that effort. Say a little bit about how that came about and as you think back on it now, some years later, what was the influence and the importance of it? Charles Carter: Well the background to it I think is that Dr. Jim Henry, who asked me to chair that committee, knew a little bit about my life. He and I were good friends, he had preached for us at Shades Mountain, and I told him a very sad episode that I had as a young teenage pastor of a little country church. We had begun in that county, Chilton County near Clanton, a county-wide youth rally every other Saturday night. This was in the mid '50s, kids didn't have many places to go so the youth rally gave them something that was kind of a centrifugal force to hold them together and so we were doing that for over a year and had maybe 300 kids and their parents and adults would come. Charles Carter: One day I got a call from a black young preacher in Chilton County. I don't even remember his name and he said he had heard what we were doing and some of the pastors, African American pastors, had decided they would like to have the same experience but they didn't know how to go about it. Could he come and just observe? I said, "Sure, come. We'd be delighted to have you," and I can take you to the church today where he came. In fact, I was in the home of someone yesterday that grew up in that church, Colonel Carl Cooper, 99 years old at Shades Mountain but he's a product of that church. Liberty Hill Church in Clanton and he came and the only thing he did, he sat down with me on the front row. At the end of the service, I recognized him and told them who he was and what they were planning to do, let's pray for them. I asked him to come and lead in prayer. He left and I've never seen him before or since. Charles Carter: However, the aftermath of that was exactly two weeks later as it turned out that county-wide youth rally was meeting in my little country church, Providence Baptist, out from Jemison and Montevallo, and in the middle of that service, there walked in 10 hooded Ku Klux Klansmen. I have to say I was shocked to begin with and then I have to confess I got very, very angry at the way the devil had gotten into people and the disruption of a worship service. They placed $10 in the offering plate, prayed a white supremacy prayer, and walked out. Timothy George: You didn't know who any of these people were? Charles Carter: I didn't know who any of the people were. Later I learned who some of them were. Incidentally, of those 10, three were dead within a year. I don't know whether the sin of the death means that God said, "That's enough," took them home, but at times I've wondered if that were not the case. But anyway, the friend of mine who had helped me start the youth rally, he and I had a Sunday morning radio program. Every other Sunday I preached, every other Sunday he preached. I guess as providence would have it, it was my time to preach the next morning after this had happened. I stayed up most of the night and wrote out a sermon, God is no respecter of persons. It's in your and Dr. Smith's volume of A Mighty Long Journey, and I know with preachers, we're supposed to speak the truth in love. I have no question what I spoke was truth, but I didn't do it in love. I was still angry. If I could have sent the 10 of them to eternal torment, I probably would have. Charles Carter: But I told the whole county on the radio that were listening exactly what happened, how unbiblical it was, how un-Christian it was, and how those who love Jesus and knew that the Bible taught God was no respecter of persons, that I hope they would stand together and see things change. Well, I got all kind of negative response to that as you would imagine, and as a young 19-year-old preacher as I was at that time, I really didn't care about that time. I got one or two life threats and that was... I passed off as a grain of sand. I think some good was done, but it was too slow. Charles Carter: It just so happened in March of '98, the year that I retired at Shades Mountain, I was at revival in that county seat town of Clanton at First Baptist, and that week, this would be 1998 what I'm telling you happened in 1956, so 42 years later, they received their first African American member. I went out and hugged his neck and asked the pastor to let me say a word. I told them what I've just told you, and I said, "Folks, that's progress, but it's all together too slow." Charles Carter: That was the beginning of mine and Jim Henry knew about this and asked me to chair the committee. He selected the committee, I had nothing to say with it. We had lots of heartfelt discussions behind closed doors about the resolution, but it was unanimous by the committee when we brought it to the convention and when Jim asked for the vote, it wasn't unanimous, but it was like 99%. There were a few hands in opposition, but overwhelmingly it was approved and I think it is... it made the headlines of the New York Times the next day I'm told. Timothy George: A significant event, I think in the life of the Southern Baptist Convention and American Christianity in some ways and it's still an ongoing project as I say. We haven't solved this problem and that's the title of our book. You mentioned the book, Dr. Smith and I edited. It's a book of sermons on racial reconciliation, half by Anglo, half by African American pastors. You're one of them that let us publish that wonderful sermon you preached back in Clanton. It's called "A Mighty Long Journey," and it's taken from a spiritual. It's a mighty long journey, it's a mighty long journey and we're not there yet but we're on the way. Charles Carter: It's not a marathon, it's a journey. Timothy George: That's right. Now let me ask you a little bit about your connection to Samford and Bees, because you have been a trustee of Samford University. You've known probably every president at least back to Major Davis, right? Charles Carter: Absolutely. Timothy George: So you continue in that role. Say a little bit about that and then your perspective, 31 years after we began Beeson Divinity School. Charles Carter: Well I'm happy to do that. I did know Major Davis. He was president when I was a student and I knew Dr. Wright and knew Tom Corts very well and of course was on the search committee that brought Andy Westmoreland here. I was elected a trustee at Samford right after I completed my service as president of the State Convention. I came on the board in 1990 and a while back was elected a life trustee. I guess that's what they do when you get old, but it's been a joy to get to know the university and the inner workings of the university. Charles Carter: I feel as much love for Samford as I do for Beeson Divinity School because it was the university that gave birth to Beeson Divinity School and it was a wonderful trustee, Gerow Hodges, who was such a good friend with Mr. Ralph Beeson and who also was a dear friend of Tom Corts who helped build the bridges between the two of them and brought about the wherewithal to establish the divinity school. Bill Hull and Tom Corts had the foresight and the divine sovereignty of God in asking a young man named Timothy George to become our dean and in October of 1998 thereabouts was the first time I met you, but it was a great day for the divinity, it was a great day for Samford. Charles Carter: Samford is a great university and the day and time in which we see so much liberalism on campuses across the nation and particularly in secondary schools, but even some of our formally Christian schools have drifted way away from their foundings, so I'm grateful to Samford is unapologetically Christian, even though it's a Baptist university it has diversity, and especially am grateful for Beeson Divinity School. It's Christian centric, it's based on the Bible, it's committed to training young people in Christian ministry and Mr. Beeson said in his will, he wanted us to turn out pastors who could preach and I can resonate with that. I think it's a great school, great faculty. Charles Carter: The one thing I think very unusual about Beeson, I think it demonstrates in concrete reality that you can blend in the same Christian personality, a deep love and devotion to the scriptures and to the Lord Christ and to intellect and to pursue... there's no conflict or dichotomy between loving God with all your heart and loving God with all your mind, so I'm grateful that Beeson particularly espouses that wedding of those two. Timothy George: You made a great contribution to our students, to our faculty, to our whole spirit here at Beeson Divinity School and I'm very grateful for that in so many ways. We are better because of our connection to you, your friendship with us, and you prayed the prayer when I was installed as the dean of this school. Charles Carter: I have a picture of that in my office right now. Timothy George: Thirty years ago, and I wonder as we bring this podcast to a close if you'd say a prayer now for the school, for its future, for its usefulness in the kingdom of God. Charles Carter: I would be honored to. Heavenly Father, we stand in awe when we look at the mystery of the sovereignty of God. Lord, we thank you that your providence and your sovereignty has been in operation in the founding and the ongoing of Beeson Divinity School. We look back and we realize only you could have equipped a layman like Ralph Beeson to have the financial resources that he had and the willingness to give half of his estate to this wonderful school. We thank you for him, for his family and their investment here. Charles Carter: But also we thank you for the vision of Dr. Corts and Dr. Hull to search out a brilliant young scholar to come and lead us in the person of Dr. George. Thank you for leading him and Denise and their family here over 30 years ago now. Father, we give you the gratitude of our heart. I thank you for the faculty that he's amassed here who have amalgamated deep devotion to the scripture and deep commitment to the best of scholarship. We thank you for that. We pray that in the years to come that we'll be able to maintain unapologetically and uncompromisingly that commitment. Charles Carter: We thank you that you've led faculty members here today in this year to be a part of the Beeson family. We thank you for the relationship we have with students. Thank you especially for leading students from all walks of life, different ethnicities, different backgrounds, and even different denominations to put them under the umbrella of Beeson Divinity School, but we see a microcosm of what the family of God is all about. Thank you, dear Lord, for your goodness and your grace and your mercy at Beeson Divinity School. In your name we pray, Amen. Timothy George: Thank you Dr. Carter. God bless you. Announcer: You've been listening to the Beeson podcast with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Benson podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson podcast.