Dispatch Faith: Pulpits and Playboy, by Mark Kendall:
On this day 50 years ago, during the home stretch of a tense presidential campaign, Playboy magazine gave America a glimpse of evangelicalism’s better side.
It didn’t seem that way at the time. The confession of “born-again” presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, given to a publication famous (or infamous) for its nude centerfolds, that he had “looked on a lot of women with lust” while committing “adultery in my heart many times” must have given his supporters palpitations. Carter, the former Democratic governor of Georgia, had a sizable lead in the polls over President Gerald Ford when Playboy provided the interview to news media on September 20, 1976. Much of the backlash came from fellow evangelicals such as Dallas-based Southern Baptist megachurch pastor W. A. Criswell, a supporter of Republican Ford. The president himself said he would not speak with a publication “featuring photographs of unclad women.” Carter won the popular vote by 2 percent, a result closer than it might otherwise have been if not for the Playboy uproar.
That’s the temporal take. The campaign-trail drama was part of a bigger mid-1970s cultural-spiritual phenomenon as the booming evangelical movement captured the interest of the national media. Relating earnest faith to seen-it-all reporters may have felt as awkward as Greg Brady’s hippie phase. But fervent Christians were largely given a fair shake, a chance to get across what mattered in their lives—a courtesy we evangelicals now need to extend to others. More broadly, in that cultural moment, thoughtful and heartfelt public discussions about faith were unfolding all the time in unlikely places. This hopeful recent history is something Christians should strive to recover, just as the chasms between camps in our society right now seem too vast for even Evel Knievel to jump. Kick-starting meaningful dialogue today might begin with taking a lesson from inquisitive journalists like those Playboy and other publications deployed 50 years ago.
Reading the full text (preserved online by the University of California, Santa Barbara) from the vantage point of 2026, Carter’s sometimes contentious Playboy interview elicits spiritual candor as Carter seeks to explain his beliefs in a humble way: “I’m human and I’m tempted.” The conversation stretches from abortion to Bob Dylan, from the Vietnam War to Carter’s marriage. But it’s onetime Ramparts editor Robert Scheer’s persistent questioning about the implications of Carter’s religion for his presidency that evokes the compelling responses. Seen as cagey in his policy views, the future president comes across as open on matters of faith, even if speaking directly to the racy mag’s fan base was calculated to counter concerns that Carter might seem morally uptight.
He describes reaching out to God: “If I feel a trepidation, if a thought comes into my head of animosity or hatred toward someone, then I just kind of say a brief silent prayer.” That prayerful approach applied to the campaign trail when, “I’ll be in the back seat of a car and not know what kind of audience I’m going to face. I don’t mean I’m terror-stricken, just that I don’t know what to expect.” In another moment in the interview, Carter is emphatic: “I can’t change the teachings of Christ! I believe in them, and a lot of people in this country do as well.”
Carter’s nod to his own lust, drawing on a portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, comes in a long monologue about sin, humility, and grace that is the best part of the interview. “What Christ taught about most was pride, that one person should never think he was any better than anybody else,” Carter said before paraphrasing the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. The candidate got more attention for using the then-edgy terms “screws” and “shacks up.” Scheer himself would later defend Carter over the lust uproar, crediting his “thoughtful answer.” …
Clenching his fist for emphasis near the end of his 800-word monologue, Carter responded with an intensity he hadn’t offered previously, providing what Golson would call a “fresh, impromptu declaration of what his religion really meant to him.” This last stretch of words with the infamous “lust” reference brought Carter grief at the time, but it holds up better decades later, setting an example of openness about our obvious human weaknesses even if there’s a cost. The journalists, for their part, landed a place in history. The hours of listening attentively were worth it.
Showing everyday non-famous folks real interest in what they have to say matters too. In a society plagued by isolation, where people are speaking less, asking questions and giving others the floor is a natural way to begin or revive a dialogue. Getting others interested in what we have to say may turn on our genuine interest in hearing them. But it’s deeper than that. French thinker-mystic Simone Weil is often quoted for her observation—paraphrased here—that attention is the rarest, purest form of generosity. She went further to say that “taken to its highest degree,” attention “is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.”
For Christians, the imperative of love also means the be-a-scribe analogy only goes so far. Our questions for others shouldn’t come in the rapid-fire manner required of journalists at a press conference, and we aren’t looking to broadcast inconsistencies and gaffes. Even the necessity of speaking up for the vulnerable and against injustice doesn’t mean we should see ourselves as relentless investigative reporters ferreting out the world’s wrongs, holding everyone accountable. We Christians are told to extract the towering redwood tree from our own eye before helping someone else remove a speck. When it comes to criticizing others, our default mode should be to hold our tongues and restrain our words, even if Jimmy Carter did just the opposite regarding his own faults.
Editor’s Note: If you would like to receive a weekly email each Sunday with links to faith posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.
