The dissonance of ‘Imagine’ at Jimmy Carter’s funeral

Jimmy Carter helped put “born-again” Christianity on the map in America. He made a big deal about his having accepted Jesus as his Savior and Lord. Many conservatives were disappointed with his governance, but no one could deny his consistent profession of faith.

When the 100-year-old former president’s funeral service was held in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., it was odd that there was a mixture of beautiful Christian sacred music, along with Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood singing John Lennon’s atheistic ballad, “Imagine.”

“Imagine” encapsulates a secular worldview very well: “Imagine there’s no heaven / It’s easy if you try / No hell below us / Above us, only sky.”

Wow – no accountability. We can make up all the rules. Live any way we want to, and we’ll never have to answer for it. As Church Lady might say, “How conveeeeeenient!”

“Imagine” croons on: “Imagine all the people / Living for today … Imagine there’s no countries / It isn’t hard to do / Nothing to kill or die for / And no religion, too.”

Some of these lyrics seem to be clearly at odds with Carter’s professed faith in Jesus.

In his Jan. 10, 2025, edition of “Gary Varvel‘s Views from the Right,” the syndicated political cartoonist comments: “The song, ‘Imagine’ is the opposite of what Carter said he believed. Look, I have some doctrinal issues with Carter’s position on abortion and marriage but he claimed to be born-again, which requires faith in Jesus Christ’s death, burial and resurrection. Based on that, I assume Carter also believed in life after death and a literal heaven. So why on earth would Garth sing the song, ‘Imagine’?”

I agree with Varvel that this seems like cognitive dissonance.

But John Nichols wrote in The Nation the same day that Carter did like this particular song. In fact, Brooks and Yearwood also sang “Imagine” at the 2023 funeral of Carter’s wife, Rosalynn.

Nichols notes: “The late president celebrated the impact and influence of the song, which decries war, nationalism, and the excesses of capitalism.”

Nichols adds: “Carter spoke more than once about his enthusiasm for the song.”

The sentiment of “Imagine” may sound nice. But the reality is very different. The problem with the song is that it attacks the solutions to the stated goals. If the goal is world peace, the last thing you want is the absence of God holding sinful human beings to account. Just ask the victims of Fidel Castro.

What Lennon and Yoko Ono’s song does is to undermine the very solution to the problems that plague humanity – which have been demonstrated over and over by the atheistic regimes (Mao in China, Stalin in the USSR, Pol Pot in Cambodia, etc.) that engineered the deaths of over 100 million people in the 20th century alone.

America’s founders and early leaders recognized the sinfulness of man and that God would hold us to account one day. That’s why the Constitution has proved so durable.

Most of the original state constitutions, notes historian Bill Federer, author of “The Original 13: A Documentary History of Religion in America’s First Thirteen States,” required that those who held public office be believers in God, lest they advocate lawlessness.

For instance, Federer cites the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, which required officeholders to acknowledge “one God, the Creator and Governor of the Universe, the Rewarder of the good and the Punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine Inspiration.” Ben Franklin signed this.

Federer told me, “Later, Pennsylvania’s 1790, 1838, 1874 and 1968 constitutions contained the wording: ‘That no person, who acknowledges the being of a God and a future state of rewards and punishments, shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold any office or place of trust or profit under this commonwealth.'” Knowing our accountability to God should change how we act.

The more self-government we practice, the less need we have for external government. And the opposite is true, too. The less self-control, the more external control is needed.

And where does self-government come from? From voluntary religion.

Robert Winthrop, a speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in the mid-19th century, once put it this way: “Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet.”

The problem with the song “Imagine” is that it is predicated on the goodness of man – a chimerical idea at best.

I’ll take the hymn “Be Still My Soul,” set to the music of Sibelius’ “Finlandia,” which was also performed at the former president’s funeral, any day over “Imagine.”