Jimmy Carter did not shy away from his faith, and he was genuine about it. His religious beliefs guided him during and after his presidency.

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.”

As the world pays homage to former President Jimmy Carter, some people overlook a primary source of inspiration for his politics: his distinctive brand of White evangelical Christianity, which remains hidden from most Americans.

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.

Things shifted in 1978, however, over an issue that seems obscure now, but was a big deal to white evangelicals at the time: school desegregation. In January 1976, the IRS revoked the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University,

Tony Lowden served as former President Jimmy Carter's personal pastor. He joined CBS News to remember Carter's life.

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.