ATLANTA, Ga. — In his 19th year as founding dean of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College in 1998, the Rev. Dr. Lawrence Edward Carter Sr. was ready to be done.
“I thought the chapel was a failure,” he recalled during an interview in his office in late July. “I went home and I said to my wife, ‘We’re leaving.’”
Surprised, Marva Carter asked her husband why he wanted to go. “I’m expending a lot of energy, and nobody’s paying me any attention,” he told her. “On Sunday mornings, the chapel is almost empty. … There’s somebody out there who can come in here and make this place home. It’s not me.”
The Rev. Carter left town for a conference, trusting God would show him where he was supposed to go. But nothing felt right. Then, after returning home to Atlanta, a tumble down the staircase led to a few poignant experiences confirming he should stay at Morehouse.
“Something happened to me, something deep and spiritual,” said the Rev. Carter, now 83. “I knew that I was supposed to stay dean of the chapel, and I no longer was concerned about the attendance. I just did what I was doing, and here I am today.”
Last month the Rev. Carter announced his plans to retire June 30, 2026, concluding a remarkable 47-year tenure at the historically Black liberal arts college for men.
“For nearly five decades, he has been a central figure in shaping the spiritual, moral and intellectual ethos of the college under the leadership of seven presidents,” wrote David A. Thomas, former Morehouse College president who retired in June. “He has stewarded the chapel as a sacred space for scholarship, global peacebuilding, ethical inquiry and interfaith dialogue.”
In recent years, the Rev. Carter’s peacebuilding and interfaith efforts have included presenting the inaugural Morehouse College Gandhi-King-Mandela Peace Prize to President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2023 and spearheading a collaboration between the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square and the Morehouse College and Spelman College glee clubs.
Who is Rev. Carter?
Lawrence Edward Carter Sr., affectionately known as “Dean Carter” in the Morehouse community, was born in southern Georgia in 1941 and raised in Columbus, Ohio.
As a 10th grader in 1958, he had a chance meeting with Martin Luther King Jr., who privately recruited him to come to Morehouse College. Two decades later, he was appointed founding dean of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel in 1979.
The chapel is “home base for spiritual servants, scholars and thought leaders who are furthering the work of peace and justice in the tradition of Dr. King, Howard Thurman, Benjamin Elijah Mays and others who have for decades used the Gospel to manifest Christ’s teachings in the contemporary world,” according to its website.
The Rev. Carter is also a tenured professor of religion and the college archivist and curator. He has studied and worked in 14 American universities, colleges and professional schools, and he is a licensed and ordained American Baptist minister.
“He’s one of the smartest men that I know,” said M. Andrew Galt, a friend of the Rev. Carter and a former Area Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who was released Aug. 1. “I call Dean Carter my brother, and he calls me his brother.”
Galt said he admires how the Rev. Carter looks forward rather than backward. “For example, he’s familiar that the church at one point restricted Blacks from certain blessings. When he and I talked about that in some rather good detail, one of the things he said is, ‘We’ve just got to stop looking in the rear view mirror.’ He says, ‘Look what all the good is that that your church does today.’ … He defends us.”
‘Shattering stereotypes’
On April 13, 2023, a record 2,600 people filled the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel’s auditorium and overflow seating for the annual WorldHouse Interfaith and Interdenominational Assembly. Latter-day Saints across Georgia flocked to the chapel for the event.
“You can always count on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” the Rev. Carter said from the podium to cheers and applause. He later said it was the largest Caucasian audience ever to attend a Morehouse event.
That evening the Rev. Carter presented President Nelson with the Gandhi-King-Mandela Peace Prize in a prerecorded video played at the assembly. An oil portrait of President Nelson was inducted into the chapel’s Hall of Honor, which includes more than 200 portraits of civil and human rights leaders.
The Rev. Carter saluted President Nelson for his “noble efforts to heal and reunite the broken body of Christ” and noted the church’s relationships with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the United Negro College Fund, Morehouse College and Spelman College. Spelman College, located next to Morehouse College in Atlanta, is a historically Black liberal arts college for women.
Prerecorded music by the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square was shown at the ceremony, and the Rev. Carter hinted at a future collaboration between the choir and the Morehouse College and Spelman College glee clubs.
In October 2023, members of each glee club came to Salt Lake City to sing with the choir during the “Music & the Spoken Word” weekly broadcast in the Salt Lake Tabernacle.
For the Rev. Carter, bringing the choirs together to perform had been a dream years in the making. He said his appreciation for the Tabernacle Choir goes back to his childhood when he would hear the choir sing over the radio.
“I thought if I could get the excellence of the Morehouse College Glee Club and the Spelman College Glee Club to be projected on the world wide web with the Tabernacle Choir, that would be a powerful, unifying, surprising, shattering of a stereotype,” the Rev. Carter told media in October 2023.
The following year, the choir and orchestra performed with the glee clubs in Atlanta as part of the multicity, multiyear “Songs of Hope” tour stop in the southeastern U.S.
This is “more than I had envisioned,” said the Rev. Carter during the choirs’ performance at the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel Sept. 9, 2024. The groups singing together help share “a picture of what is possible — the continuation on a larger scale of shattering stereotypes,” he added.
Rev. Carter’s relationship with the Church of Jesus Christ
On a late July afternoon in his office in the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel, the Rev. Carter reflected on his relationship with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A Christus statue gifted from President Nelson was displayed on his desk.
“I don’t know that I can say accurately what that impact has been, but I guarantee you there has been a change,” said the Rev. Carter, referring to the perception of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Morehouse community.
Many were surprised and impressed by the performances with the Tabernacle Choir, he said. “‘How in the world did you pull this off? Why are you working so closely with the Mormons? They don’t like us.’ I’ve had many opportunities to address that, and when I finish, everybody falls silent with their mouths open. They don’t know what to say.”
These conversations are an opportunity for the Rev. Carter to “live in the present.”
“One thing that I say is my faith requires me to live in the outcome of what I pray for and dream about — not just preach about it and lecture about it, but to live it,” he said. “And not to hold people’s sins, mistakes against them because that’s the past. The past is gone forever and the future is not yet. Live in the present. And if you just live in the present, you get a lot done. …
“We don’t know each other, so we need to step over the Mason-Dixon lines, leave home and discover. Be pilgrims and not just tourists, but to learn to listen and discover how other people do things. God must like diversity since so much was created.”
The Rev. Carter quoted the Book of Mormon teaching “all are alike unto God” from verses he said President Nelson showed him (2 Nephi 26:32-33).
Not only has the Rev. Carter built relationships with Latter-day Saints, he has also welcomed Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, pagans, humanists and atheists to the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel.
“We have friends in all those groups,” he said. “How did that happen? Respecting the wisdom in all those traditions.”
Welcoming, listening to and learning from individuals rather than focusing on attendance at the chapel — it’s a vision the Rev. Carter didn’t have yet when he nearly left Morehouse in his 19th year.
Galt said: “Many times Dean Carter and I have talked about, ‘How do we make a difference?’ And the answer is, ‘One person at a time.’ Never give up. You keep teaching people and talking to people and loving people, and one person at a time it makes a difference.”