The Rev. Tony Lowden often goes back to the voice message.
It was March 25, 2019, a day after Lowden, who had pastored at churches in Macon and Warner Robins, served as a guest preacher at Maranatha Baptist Church, the home church in Plains of former President Jimmy Carter.
Maranatha Baptist, founded in 1977 after several members of Plains Baptist Church left because of that church’s slow and reluctant embrace of Black members, was in search of a new pastor.
With Carter sitting in the front row, Lowden’s 2019 sermon, in which he encouraged tolerance and a welcoming spirit toward women and the LGBTQ community, was somewhat of an audition.
He got a phone call later from a number he didn’t recognize it, so he sent it to voicemail. When he finally listened while driving to work, the voice was very recognizable.
“Would you be interested in being the interim pastor? And if it works out, we’d like you to be our pastor?” Jimmy Carter asked.
Lowden pulled over on the side of the road and called Carter back. They talked for 45 minutes.
“I was just blown away that President Carter, one of the greatest human beings in the world, would call me and ask me to be his pastor,” Lowden said.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Carter joined Maranatha in 1981, shortly after returning to Plains following his defeat to Ronald Reagan. For years, Carter famously taught Sunday school at Maranatha.
But along with asking him to become Maranatha’s first Black pastor, Carter asked Lowden — who calls himself “a kid from the trap house” — to be his personal preacher.
“He talked about the fact that he wanted me to help him and his wife, in their latter days, as they get ready to go to heaven,” Lowden said. “And it brought me to tears. I didn’t think I was deserving. I didn’t think I was worthy. He could have called the Pope or anybody in the world. To this day I’m just in awe that he chose me, and why I’m still trying to figure out.”
Credit: ccompton@ajc.com
Credit: ccompton@ajc.com
Lowden is no longer Maranatha’s pastor, having left that role in October 2021. But he continued as the former president’s personal pastor until Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100.
On Thursday, Lowden is set to deliver the biggest sermon of his life as he delivers the eulogy at Carter’s Maranatha Baptist funeral, which will be followed by the 39th president’s burial on the Carters’ property in Plains.
Lowden also delivered the pastoral prayer at the Washington, D.C., service at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, after helping lead a funeral procession down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Between Saturday and Tuesday, more than 23,000 people visited the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta to pay their respects as Carter lay in repose.
“I always thought this was going to be big,” Lowden said. “It’s just been unbelievable — to watch the people who have made their way to come and see him lie in repose has been extraordinary. All of these moments have been incredible.”
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
In November 2023, Lowden presided over the Plains funeral of former first lady Rosalynn Carter.
“It was tough with me with Miss Rosalynn, but it is heavy now,” Lowden said this week. “I haven’t been able to sleep because I don’t want to miss what he wanted to happen.”
Lowden grew up in rough-and-tumble North Philadelphia, the oldest of Ruth Ann Lowden’s six children. He says his mother ran a “speakeasy” and raised her children on public assistance and mayonnaise sandwiches.
He never knew his father.
“I can’t tell you what his voice sounds like. I don’t know what he looks like,” said Lowden, who moved to Georgia in 2006 to preach. “But President Carter treated me like a son, and I’m grieving like a son.”
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
After that 45-minute phone call in 2019, Lowden knew that he would be delivering Carter’s eulogy one day. He said he has been writing and rewriting it constantly.
He has titled the eulogy, “Called by Two Books.”
The first book is the Bible, which calls on Carter’s deep Christian faith. The second is a giant tome called, “The Duties of the President,” which sat on a shelf outside of Carter’s office at the Carter Center, the Atlanta-based nonprofit cofounded by the former first couple.
Lowden and Carter talked about both books often.
“President Carter is a man who’s been called by two books,” Lowden said. “Faith and hope were the guardrails of everything that he’s ever done — from leadership, to building homes, to helping those in Africa have clean water to combat the Guinea worm, to making sure that democracy stands strong around the world.”
Lowden, who was with the family when the former president died at home in Plains, said he was often reminded by Carter to do everything that he could to get all kinds of people to worship together.
If he forgets, he says, he always has that voicemail, which he never deleted.
“If I had to tell him today, on Jan. 9 he’s going to get Black and white and others to worship together, all because of him,” Lowden said through tears. “I couldn’t do it, but he did it.”
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