{"id":102,"date":"2012-09-28T05:53:57","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T05:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/keepingthefaith\/?p=102"},"modified":"2012-09-26T13:03:24","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T13:03:24","slug":"a-demonstration-plot-remembering-clarence-jordan-part-1-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/keepingthefaith\/2012\/09\/a-demonstration-plot-remembering-clarence-jordan-part-1-of-3.html","title":{"rendered":"“A Demonstration Plot” – Remembering Clarence Jordan, Part 1 of 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I am speaking this weekend at the Clarence Jordan Symposium<\/a> at Georgia Southwestern University. It is a celebration and reflection of the life and words of Clarence Jordan who would have turned 100 years old this year. To commemorate this event, and the man who has been more of an influence on me than any other single theologian, I am posting a three part blog on Clarence Jordan. Enjoy, and I hope you come to love this man as I have. \u2013 RM<\/p>\n

# # # # #<\/p>\n

More than regularly I meet people who laugh at my use of Southern colloquialisms. These are sayings I have heard my entire life, and while I cannot share all of the colorful expressions of my childhood, here are few:<\/p>\n

\u201cEven a blind hog finds an acorn every now and then.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re getting too big for your own britches.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat boy is as a crazy as a road lizard (or as crazy as a run-over dog).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s better than snuff and not half as dusty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because a cat has her kittens in the oven, don\u2019t make \u2018em biscuits.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat girl is so buck-toothed she could eat an apple through a picket fence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t make a silk purse out of a sow\u2019s ear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s raining like a cow peeing on a flat rock.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing between here and the North Pole but a barbed-wire fence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was smiling like a mule eating in the briar patch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s so ugly she would knock the buzzards off a meat wagon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I get through with you, the seat of your britches won\u2019t hold shucks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur preacher is as full of hot air as a corn-eating cow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, try on a few of these southern sayings from the New Testament:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThis guy John was dressed in blue jeans and a leather jacket, living on cornbread and collard greens. Folks were coming to him from Atlanta and all over north Georgia\u2026As they owned up to their crooked ways, he dipped them in the Chattahoochee River.\u201d (Matthew 3)<\/p>\n

\u201cJesus began to make clear to his students that he had to go to Atlanta and to go through terrible things at the hands of the leading church people \u2013 to be killed and three days later to be raised. But Rock collared him and began to take him to task. \u201cNot on your life\u2026I\u2019ll be dad blamed if this will ever happen to you.\u201d Jesus whirled and said, \u201cGet away from here you devil; you are gumming up the works for me.\u201d (Matthew 13)<\/p>\n

\u201cJesus said, \u2018I\u2019m telling you a fact; a rich person finds it extremely difficult to come into the God Movement. I say it again, [you can push] a pig through a knothole easier than a rich person can get into the God Movement.\u201d (Matthew 19)<\/p>\n

\u201cJesus went into the First Church of Atlanta, pitched out the whole finance committee, tore up the investment and endowment records, and scrapped the long-range expansion plans. \u2018My house shall be known for its commitment to God,\u2019 he shouted, \u2018but you have turned it into a religious racket.\u201d (Matthew 21)<\/p>\n

\u201cSo they left the vault, and filled with both fear and great excitement, they ran like mad to tell his students. And what do you know, Jesus met them. And he said, \u201cHowdy! Y\u2019all quit being so scared and run along now\u2026into Alabama, and [you\u2019ll] see me there.\u201d (Matthew 28)<\/p>\n

\u201cSaul was harassing and threatening to kill the followers of the Lord. He got some papers for the Chattanooga City Council, asking them for permission to arrest and return to Atlanta any men and women he might find who were taking Christianity seriously. When he stopped for gas just outside Chattanooga, all of a sudden a flash from the sky surrounded him. He fell to the pavement, and heard a voice asking, \u201cSaul! Why are you so mean to me?\u201d (Acts 9)<\/p>\n

The above words, translated from the Greek New Testament into the rough and tumble dialect of South Georgia is the work of Clarence Jordan and his Cotton Patch Gospel. There is no one who has had more influence on my own religious views than this man. And not just because he was from Georgia, considered himself an ex-Baptist, and talked with the same southern accent as my own. I am challenge by the courage of his life and wish I was half the man he was. I wish I could read the words of Jesus and take them with a fraction of the seriousness in which he took them. Allow me to introduce you to this fantastic, slow-talking, PhD-carrying, peanut farmer-prophet from South Georgia.<\/p>\n

With a Bachelor\u2019s Degree in Agricultural Science, Clarence Jordan attended and graduated from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, with his PhD in Greek, when he was only twenty-six years old. At seminary he met the woman who would become his wife, Florence. He said to her, \u201cIf you want to be the wife of a pastor of the First Baptist Church, you don\u2019t want to marry me. I\u2019m going back to Georgia and farm and do something for the poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Florence married him anyway, and in 1942 Clarence and Florence Jordan bought 440 acres outside of Americus, Georgia and established Koinonia Farms. Koinonia is the Greek word for community or fellowship. The Jordans set out to create just that: a farming community where men and women, blacks and whites, rich and poor would live together following three simple principles:<\/p>\n

1) All humanity are related under the parenthood of God;<\/p>\n

2) Love is the alternative to violence; and<\/p>\n

3) Those who lived at Koinonia would share their possessions in a common purse.<\/p>\n

Clarence describes his intentions best. It was his dream, and what a dreamer he was, that Koinonia be a \u201cdemonstration plot for the kingdom of God.\u201d It would be a place where followers of Jesus would take Jesus\u2019 words seriously and actually practice them.<\/p>\n

(Continued…)<\/p>\n

To learn more about Clarence and Koinonia Farms, see\u00a0Briars in the Cotton Patch<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, directed by my friend Faith Fuller<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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