The Rev. Michael J.S. Carter is a native of Baltimore, MD. He moved to New York City in 1980, where he enjoyed a career in the professional theater before being called to the ministry. He graduated from the New Seminary Interfaith Temple in New York City, in 1997, as an ordained Interfaith Minister, and received his Bachelor's Degree, Summa cum Laude, from the College of New Rochelle, New York Theological Seminary Campus, with a double major in Letters and Divinity Studies. He earned his Master of Divinity from the prestigious Union Theological Seminary in New York City, in 2000. Before moving to Asheville, NC, Rev.

Carter served various Unitarian Universalist churches in New York City and surrounding areas, and he was trained as an anti-racism trainer by the denomination, for which work he was recognized by President Bill Clinton. Michael is also a board-certified hospital chaplain and has worked in that capacity in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, NY, as well as in Asheville. He also served as the Diversity Officer for Asheville's Mission Health System for three-and-a-half years. Since 2016 he has served as minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Swanannoa Valley in Black Mountain, North Carolina. He is the author of God Consciousness: A 30 Day Journey, The Metaphysics of Spiritual Healing, and other books.Rev. Carter often reminds his congregation that we are human beings, not human doings. It is who we are in life, not what we accomplish, that defines us and gives us value-while also shaping our values.

That belief in ourselves, and in the locus of something divine in all of us as human beings, echoes Dr. Felix Adler, founder of the Society for Ethical Culture in NY, who wrote that "the animating vitality" of every person can reach its highest level when these principles are most potent: 1) respect for all people; 2) kindness; 3) fairness; 4) honesty; 5) forgiveness. Thus, as human beings, we find our own "supreme being" within ourselves and reach our own supreme (state of) being. For "supreme being" is not a noun, but a verb.