PITTSBURGH (TNS) — Watching Jimmy Carter’s state funeral at the Episcopal Church’s National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., felt like viewing a portal to the past. Men with names like Ford and Mondale delivered eulogies, and Republican and Democratic leaders at least playacted as (mostly) chummy members of the country’s most exclusive club.

The person who seemed most out of place was Donald Trump, and not just for the obvious reasons. More than anyone else in the presidents’ pews, he represents America as it is, rather than as it was.

But the aspect of the proceedings that felt most dated didn’t have anything to do with the presidents, past or present. It was Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood belting out John Lennon’s anthem of nihilism, “Imagine,” at the funeral for one of the most religious presidents in American history.

SONG OF CONTRADICTION

It’s said that “Imagine” was the shared favorite song of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, at whose funeral it was also performed. The principle of nil nisi bonum (speak no ill of the dead) demands that I tread carefully here, so I’ll just say that this is probably the point on which the late president and I differ most profoundly.

Of course, people can enjoy a song for a variety of reasons: they like the tune, or they associate it with a good memory, or they take something personal away from the lyrics that’s detached from the meaning of the words themselves. I have to believe the Sunday school teacher didn’t dwell a great deal on “Imagine there’s no heaven, / it’s easy if you try.”

I also have to believe that even if the Carters liked the song for whatever reason, at some level they must’ve realized the particular incongruity of singing these words at the services meant to commend their souls to heaven. There’s cognitive dissonance — everybody holds some beliefs or tastes that are in tension with one another — but then there’s outright contradiction.

Performing “Imagine” in the Episcopal cathedral or any house of worship is, simply, a contradiction. More specifically, doing so represents a kind of religiosity, embodied by Carter himself, that is increasingly of the past.

NOTHING TO LIVE FOR

“Imagine,” despite the passion of its devotees, is not a song for all time. It’s the product of a particular moment in time — 1971 — and it’s kept alive largely due to nostalgia (and the catchiness of the music), not the wisdom of its message.

The song’s concept of a post-religion, post-borders, post-property, post-everything utopia reflects the preoccupations of the hippie wing of the Boomer generation as the promise of the 1960s slipped away. It’s a sensibility that goes back to Rousseau and his noble savage: If everything is stripped away except our very bodies, we will be free and we will be perfect.

It is very, very stupid.

For me, the worst lyric — worse than the boring atheism — is “nothing to kill or die for.” That world would be a world without sacrifice, without friendship, without love. If there’s nothing to die for, there’s nothing to live for.

The world of “Imagine” strips away everything beyond the self. The brotherhood it describes would be impossible, because fraternity requires a principle, a cause, a shared objective — something to bind people together.

But here, there is nothing.

ONE OR THE OTHER

Jimmy Carter knew this was wrong. He clearly responded to the sentimentality of the song rather than a close reading of its silly lyrics. He once said that he understands the song is “against religion,” but appreciates that “the impact it has on people is profound.” I’m not here to judge him for that.

But it’s striking how the kind of Christianity represented by Carter — absolutely sincere, yet so expansive that it included embracing its own pop-culture negation — has retreated in recent years. The truth is, it was always a product of a particular moment in history, and was never going to last.

Bringing an anti-theistic pop song into a Washington cathedral may seem very 21st-century, but it’s really the last gasp of the 20th, when America’s grand tradition of progressive Christianity thought it could metabolize secularism without losing anything of itself. Placing to one side my own theological speculations, purely as a matter of demographics this has not worked.

Carter, by all accounts, persevered in a genuine Christianity confidently merged with secular liberalism until the very end. But in this, he is unusual. The contradictions have proved impossible to reconcile, especially for younger generations.

Churches that have attempted to preach the promises of Christ and the 1960s are aging and dying. Meanwhile, among young people especially, tradition is increasingly in vogue. In my own Catholic Church, if you want to find the young people, you’re generally going to have to follow the smell of incense, not the sound of a tambourine.

At the funeral, immediately after singing along with “Imagine there’s no heaven / it’s easy if you try,” the congregation intoned the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”

Eventually, you have to choose one or the other.

(Brandon McGinley is the editorial page editor for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.)

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