Lawrence Edward Carter
B.A., M.Div., S.T.M., Ph.D., D.D., D.H., D.R.S., D.H.C.
In 1958, Martin Luther King Jr. privately recruited Lawrence Edward Carter as a 10th grader to come to Morehouse College. Twenty-one years later, Dr. Lawrence Edward Carter became the first Dean of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel in 1979. Today, he is a tenured Professor of Religion, College Curator and Archivist at Morehouse College. For fifty-five years, Dr. Carter has studied and worked in fourteen American universities, colleges, and professional schools, spoken at over one-hundred different colleges, universities, and seminaries, and received over one thousand speaking engagements from eighteen Christian denominations, including Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist communions, and traveled to thirty-eight foreign countries. He has made over eighty radio and television appearances, including nationwide in The United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, India, China, Malaysia, Oceania, Australia, South Africa, and continent wide in Africa.
Lawrence Carter was born in Dawson, Georgia, and reared in Columbus, Ohio. He holds the B.A. degree from Virginia University of Lynchburg in Social Science and Psychology, the M.Div. degree in Theology, the S.T.M. degree in Pastoral Care, and the Ph.D. degree in Pastoral Psychology and Counseling from Boston University. He did further study at Andover Newton Theological School, The Ohio State University, Harvard University, Georgia State University, New York University, The University of Wisconsin at Madison, Brown University, Spelman College and George Washington University. He holds certifications in multi-disciplinary clinical training, clinical pastoral education, the editing of historical documents, and community nonviolent training. He is also a licensed and ordained American Baptist minister. Carter was a 1994 Fulbright-Hayes Scholar in Brazil, and twice a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, in 1993 and 1996. He is a 33 o degree Prince Hall Mason.
Currently, Professor Carter teaches Introduction to Religion, Psychology of Religion, Religion and Ethics, World Religions and The Life and Thought of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Daisaku Ikeda at Morehouse College. He is preparing to publish his fourth book on The Baptist Preacher’s Buddhist Teacher: How my Interfaith Journey with Daisaku Ikeda Made Me A Better Christian and a fifth book titled, Gandhi, King and Ikeda: Being Peace, The Thing Itself. He was honored with a festschrift, edited by Echol Nix Jr. titled In the Beginning: The Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College, 2015.
Dr. Carter is the founder and sole fundraiser for Morehouse College’s International Hall of Honor, consisting of over 200 oil portraits honoring civil and human rights activists internationally. He also founded the five-hundred member Martin Luther King, Jr. Chapel Assistants Preseminarians Program at Morehouse in 1979 and the MLK College of Pastoral Leadership. He has raised over two-hundred fifty thousand dollars in scholarship funds for the Morehouse Chapel Assistants. On April 1, 2000 he founded the WorldHouse Institute for Global Ethics and Reconciliation on Millennium Sunday, unveiling larger than life busts of Mahatma Gandhi and his wife Kasturbai, a gift from the people of India. Carter received three grants totaling three million fifty thousand dollars from the Lilly Endowment for A Program for the Theological Exploration of Vocation.
Dr. Carter is married to Dr. Marva Griffin Carter. Dr. Carter is currently a tenured Associate Professor of Music History and Literature at Georgia State University where she has served as Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Music. The Carters are the parents of one son, Lawrence Edward Carter, Jr. Young Carter is a sixth generation Georgian and a graduate of Morehouse College, in Economics with a minor in International Affairs. He has also studied at the London School of Economics and earned an M.B.A. degree from Strayer University. He is an accountant for the Grand Hyatt Hotel Corporation.