The nation’s leaders will gather to honor Carter at Washington Cathedral

A week-long series of tributes to former President Jimmy Carter culminates Thursday with a solemn state funeral in Washington that will bring together all five of the country’s living presidents, who will temporarily lay down their party swords to say goodbye to one of their own.

Mr. Carter, who has lain in state for the past two days at the Capitol, will be brought to the Washington National Cathedral for a service at 10 p.m. 10 with all the rituals of a national broadcast. He will then be flown back to his hometown of Plains, Ga., for burial outside the modest ranch house where he lived most of his life and died last week.

The service represents the pinnacle of America’s tributes to its 39th president, who sought to heal the nation from the trauma of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War when he presided over a tumultuous time, from 1977 to 1981. President Biden will deliver a tribute, as will Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson, and Stuart E. Eizenstat, a longtime friend and White House adviser. Mr. Carter.

Eulogies, which former President Gerald R. Ford and former Vice President Walter F. Mondale wrote before their own deaths, will be read by their sons, Steven Ford and Ted Mondale. Mr. Carter defeated Mr. Ford in the 1976 election, but they later became friends, while Mr. Mondale was his close partner for four years in the White House.

Readings will also be offered by Jason Carter and Joshua Carter, another grandson, and Andrew Young, the civil rights leader who served as Mr. Carter’s ambassador to the UN, will give a sermon. Among the musical offerings, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood will sing John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

Former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama are also expected to participate in the service, as well as the newly elected president Donald J. Trump, who is providing the first gathering in the so-called presidential club since Trump’s election victory in November. The same group is expected to gather again just 11 days later for his inauguration.

Mr. Trump will be the odd man out among the presidents who see him as a dangerous force and in some cases have harshly condemned him. Even Mr. Bush, the only other Republican in the group, has written other candidates instead of voting for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump has no speaking role and is not a favorite of the Carter family. He has regularly belittled Mr. Carter over the years and especially during last year’s campaign when Mr. Trump used the former president as a foil to attack Mr. Biden. Since Mr. Carter’s death, Mr. Trump has offered a few words of grace, but also has not hesitated to excoriate his predecessor for his decision in 1977 to hand control of the Panama Canal to Panama.

Mr. Biden, who may be the surviving president who was closest to Mr. Carter, has declared Thursday a national day of mourning and closed the federal government to all but essential operations while flags fly at half-mast. Mr. Carter’s casket will be brought from the cathedral to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland for his final flight aboard a presidential jet that was used as Air Force One.

After a final private service at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, where Mr. Carter taught Sunday school well into the 90s, a hearse carrying the casket will make one final journey through the Plains to Carter’s home.

Navy jets will conduct a flyover in missing man formation, and then Mr. Carter will be buried in a family plot next to Rosalynn Carter, his wife of 77 years, who died in late 2023.