On the day after his 100th birthday anniversary, on 7/30/12 I posted a blog article titled "In Praise of Clarence Jordan.” This article is about Jordan’s Koinonia Farm which is celebrating its 80th anniversary tomorrow (on 11/26), and I am posting it in deep appreciation for their decades of faithful work.
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Clarence Jordan was a farmer with a Ph.D. in theology. Born
in 1912 in the small town of Talbotton, Georgia, about 90 miles south of
Atlanta, Jordan graduated with a degree in agriculture at the University of
Georgia in 1933. The following year, he was ordained as a Southern Baptist
minister.
Then, in 1938 Jordan earned a Ph.D. in Greek New Testament
from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, and four years
later he started Koinonia Farm near Americus, Georgia, about 65 miles south of
where he was born.
Clarence Jordan sought to be a
“demonstration plot” farmer. An article in the December
Sojourners magazine is titled “The Radical Southern Farmer White Christians
Should Know About.” In that piece, Jordan is cited as saying,
While I love books and have a passion for knowledge, I have thought the real laboratory for learning was not the classroom but in the fields, by farming, and in interaction with human need.
So, the 440-acre Koinonia Farm, named after the Greek word
for fellowship and joint participation, was designed to be a “demonstration plot”
of the Kingdom of God in the here and now of southern Georgia.
According to the Sojourners
article, Jordan conceived of the farm as being
cooperative and communal ... interracial, controlled by investment of time (life), rather than capital; based on the principle of distribution according to need; [and] motivated by Christian love as the most powerful instrument known to [people] for solving [their] problems.
Clarence Jordan has recently been hailed as the preacher of “the inconvenient Gospel.” Just last month a book containing some of Jordan’s writings and sermons was published under the title The Inconvenient Gospel: A Southern Prophet Tackles War, Wealth, Race, and Religion.
One of the three panelists on that webinar was Starlette
Thomas, a young Black pastor and journalist. Her opening remarks were largely
the same as the Introduction that she authored for the book. Starlette’s explanation
and praise of Koinonia is also printed
in the Autumn 2022 issue of Plough.**
Koinonia Farm has had influence far beyond southern
Georgia. In the 1970s not long after Jordan’s death in 1969, Koinonia Farm
began to market some of his sermons on long-play vinyl records—and I listened
to some of those, with considerable delight, in Japan.
I had heard of Jordan and Koinonia Farm while a seminary
student (at Jordan’s alma mater) in the 1960s, but it was after hearing his
sermons preached with a captivating southern drawl, that I became a big admirer
of Jordan and what he had done in Georgia.
The influence of Jordan and Koinonia Farm expanded beyond
Georgia in other, more important ways. Millard Fuller (1935~2009) was a self-made
millionaire by age 29, but he gave up his wealth and moved to Koinonia Farm in 1968,
where he and his family lived for five years.
Under the name Koinonia Partners, Fuller started Habitat for
Humanity in 1976, and in 1984 he enlisted Jimmy Carter as a hands-on supporter—and
Jimmy and Rosalynn continued to do volunteer work with Habitat into their 90s. (The
Carter home in Plains was about ten miles from Koinonia Farm.)
The number of people currently living at Koinonia Farm (see their website here) is small, but
they are valiantly working to keep alive Clarence Jordan’s vision of
maintaining a demonstration plot for the Kingdom of God. For that, I remain deeply
grateful.
And in reflecting upon Koinonia Farm’s existence for 80
years now, I am challenged to think about how June and I, and our church, can be
more intentionally a part of a demonstration plot for God’s Kin-dom.
_____
**
Starlette’s article is titled “The Raceless Gospel,” a concept she constantly
emphasizes. She is director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative at Good Faith Ministries and host
of the Raceless Gospel podcasts.
Note: In addition to the new book about
Jordan issued last month, I highly recommend Dallas M. Lee’s excellent book, The Cotton Patch
Evidence: The Story of Clarence Jordan and the Koinonia Farm Experiment
(1942–1970), first published in 1971 (3rd ed., 2011).
About 20 minutes ago I received the following comments from Thinking Friend Glenn Hinson in Kentucky:
ReplyDeleteI applaud you for remembering. When Clarence met with the faculty at Southern Seminary around 1970 (I don’t remember the exact date), I made a comment about the problem of poverty. Clarence quickly picked up on that. He said, “Glenn, the problem is not poverty; it’s wealth. Too few people have got too much money. Too many of us don’t have enough.” Dale Moody told me that he met Clarence the first day he came to Southern. Clarence’s first question was, “Have you had something (or enough) to eat?” He bought Dale lunch. To him being Christian meant acting like one.
Thanks for sharing this, Dr. Hinson. It must have been between the fall of 1966 and October 1969 when Jordan met with the faculty at Southern, for I assume he gave some public talk on that visit. I was in graduate school through the spring semester of 1966, and I am quite sure he did not make any public talk while I was there, and he died in October 1969. I didn't know a lot about him when I was at Southern, but as I mentioned in the blog article, I heard about him when I was there and am quite sure I would have gone to hear him speak.
DeleteHere are comments from local Thinking Friend Ken Grenz:
ReplyDelete"I remember visiting Koinonia Farms. That after years of anticipating their annual catalog from which we ordered for ourselves and for Christmas gifts, chocolate, carob, peanut brittle, pecans, etc.!"
Thanks for mentioning their gift store, Ken. We also have bought some products from them in the past for Christmas gifts. They always seem a little pricey to me, but I keep reminding myself this is not just for the gifts themselves but money for support of the Koinonia Farm community.
DeleteHere is the link to the Koinonia store: https://koinoniafarmstore.com/
DeleteThanks for the reminder of this marvelous project of grace, one of those bright spots in the history of USAmerican evangelicalism.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your good words, Anton. Indeed, Koinonia Farm was, and is, a "marvelous project of grace," and I would say it is a bright spot not only for evangelicalism in the U.S. but for all of Christianity in this country--and beyond.
DeleteThinking Friend Eric Dollard in Chicago shares these comments:
ReplyDelete"Thanks, Leroy, for introducing me, and probably some other Thinking Friends, to Clarence Jordan. According to the Wikipedia article about Jordan, he died in 1969 at the age of only 57, but what a great career he packed into his relatively short life.
"Koinonia Farm seems to be in the pattern of first-century Christianity with an emphasis on practical skills. The Wikipedia article says that Koinonia Farm stirred up considerable opposition from whites in Georgia during the 1950's and 1960's because of its rejection of racial prejudice. It may still face opposition, but its ideals and practices are to be deeply admired."
Thanks for your comments, Eric, and for your interest in reading the informative Wikipedia article about Jordan as well as my blog post.
DeleteJordan and the others living at Koinonia Farm certainly did face considerable opposition from Whites in the county where they lived. That opposition/persecution is told in detail in Dallas Lee's book, and the new book I mentioned in this post includes some of what Jordan said about that opposition in his writings/sermons. (Even though you are in Chicago, I encourage you to encourage your church to get a copy of "The Inconvenient Gospel" for your church library.)
On Saturday, I linked to this blog post on Facebook and tagged Starlette Thomas, whom I mentioned in the post. Later on Saturday, I was happy to receive the following response from her on Facebook (as well as a couple of direct messages later):
Delete"I’m here at Koinonia Farm now. I posted some pictures on my timeline. It has been a full day and it’s not over."
My knowledge, such as it is, of Clarence Jordan is the result of hearing some of his Cotton Patch Gospel read at church years ago. He had a pithy turn of phrase with a very southern sound. The complete hardback set is sold out at the Koinonia Farm website, but just seeing the cover shows who cared about him: Introduction is by Jimmy Carter, Foreword by Will D. Campbell and Afterword by Tony Campolo. You can see the cover here: https://koinoniafarmstore.com/cotton-patch-gospel-the-complete-collection-hardcover/
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