{"product_id":"the-presidents-pastor-hardcover","title":"The President's Pastor - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eTony Lowden\u003c\/b\u003e (Author), \u003cb\u003eDavid Phillips\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\"Hey, Tony, this is Jimmy. I just want to let you know we enjoyed your preaching Sunday. If you like us and we like you, I'd like for you to consider being \u003c\/em\u003emy pastor.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThirty-one seconds. A 229 area code. A voicemail Tony Lowden almost didn't play. He was a preacher from North Philadelphia now living in Georgia, driving his usual commute into Atlanta, running prison reform work for the governor of Georgia. The Sunday before, he had preached in a small church at the edge of a cotton field without knowing whose church it was - or that the congregation had been founded in 1977 by twenty people who walked out rather than keep a Black man from the pew. Within the year he would be its first Black pastor. Within six he would stand before the nation and preach the man's eulogy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe President's Pastor\u003c\/em\u003e is the account of that covenant, told in Lowden's own voice. It is Saturday after Saturday inside the compound at Plains: a president wrapped in a blanket printed with Psalm 23; gospel music played from a pastor's phone into a dark bedroom; orchids and butterflies set around the house so Rosalynn would remember whose house it was. It is Jimmy Carter planting wild roses along a fence so his bride would have flowers every Mother's Day. It is a ninety-nine-year-old man dragging himself to his wife's funeral and closing his eyes so he could hear every word said about her. It is a call from Bill Clinton, an apology forty years late and accepted on the spot, and a frail former president still asking whether he could be of use.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd it is eleven days in January - the hearse leaving Plains, pickup trucks lined up on the overpasses with signs reading He was one of us, and a kid from the projects riding in the car behind the body of the thirty-ninth President of the United States, carrying a eulogy he had been writing for six years.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUnderneath all of it runs the question Carter handed to Tony every time they met - Where have you been? What have you done? Who have you helped? - and the one he asked of himself first: Why not the best?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLowden hands both questions to the reader.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 242\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.56 x 9.61 x 6.69 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e October 06, 2026\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67869770907806,"sku":"9798997796204","price":53.06,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7748\/8030\/files\/MOWtBRPAH9798997796204.webp?v=1793314679","url":"https:\/\/theword.com\/products\/the-presidents-pastor-hardcover","provider":"TheWord.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}