Clarence Jordan

Our Topic for Today:

• A look at one example of how a southern protestant applied  the words and examples of Jesus to real life issues in the middle of the 20th century.

Clarence Jordan



Clarence Jordan (July 29, 1912 – October 29, 1969), a farmer and New Testament Greek scholar, was the founder of Koinonia Farm, a small but influential religious community in southwest Georgia and the author of the Cotton Patch translations of the New Testament. He was also instrumental in the founding of Habitat for Humanity.  

Clarence Jordan was one southern protestant who dared to take the words of Jesus seriously in southern Georgia in the years prior to the Civil Rights movement.. He risked his own safety, even his own life, by living boldly in response to his interpretation of the social demands found in the message of Jesus.

from: Theology in Overalls: 

The Imprint of Clarence Jordan

© Sojourners, December 1979, Vol 8, no 12  

by G. McLeod Bryan

Clarence Jordan was a strange phenomenon in the history of North American Christianity. Hewn from the massive Baptist denomination, known primarily for its conformity to culture, Clarence stressed the anti-cultural, the Christ-transcending and the Christ-transforming, aspects of the gospel. He was an authentic product of the Bible Belt, of the rural, agrarian heartland, of the people's church (he got his college degree in agriculture, graduating in the same class as Senator Herman Talmadge at the University of Georgia). Clarence pursued this tradition to its very end, ending at the top with a Ph.D. in the Greek New Testament from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
Clarence, like Martin Luther King Jr., another young Georgian with a Ph.D. to emerge a couple of decades later, rejected both his contemporaries' theological liberalism with its easy hope in human progress and others' Niebuhrian new-orthodox realism. That North American Christianity of the time could produce a Clarence Jordan and a Martin Luther King Jr. is remarkable; that they both originated in Georgia, among Baptists, is something of a miracle. Clarence was jailed with King at Albany, where he reminded a young black freedom-fighter in the next cell, who had just received his draft call, "Well, you're going to stay in jail for that too, aren't you?

(from:  Wikipedia)

Jordan was born in Talbotton, Georgia, to J. W. and Maude Josey Jordan, prominent citizens of that small town. From an early age the young Jordan was troubled by the racial and economic injustice that he perceived in his community. Hoping to improve the lot of sharecroppers through scientific farming techniques, Jordan enrolled in the University of Georgia, earning a degree in agriculture in 1933. During his college years, however, Jordan became convinced that the roots of poverty were spiritual as well as economic. This conviction led him to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, from which he earned a Ph.D. in the Greek New Testament in 1938. While at seminary Jordan met Florence Kroeger, and the couple were soon married.

Koinonia Farm

In 1942, the Jordans and another couple, Martin and Mabel England, who had previously served as American Baptist missionaries, and their families moved to a 440 acre (1.8 km²) tract of land near Americus, Georgia, to create an interracial, Christian farming community. They called it Koinonia (κοινωνία), a word meaning communion or fellowship that in Acts 2:42 is applied to the earliest Christian community.

The Koinonia partners bound themselves to the equality of all persons, rejection of violence, ecological stewardship, and common ownership of possessions. For several years the residents of Koinonia lived in relative peace alongside their Sumter County neighbors.

Click image to learn about
 the Koinonia Farms
 documentary film

But as the civil rights movement progressed, white citizens of the area increasingly perceived Koinonia, with its commitment to racial equality, as a threat. In the 1950s and early '60s, Koinonia became the target of a stifling economic boycott and repeated violence, including several bombings. When Jordan sought help from President Eisenhower, the federal government refused to intervene, instead referring the matter to the governor of Georgia. The governor, a staunch supporter of racial segregation, responded by ordering the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to investigate Koinonia's partners and supporters for purported Communist ties.

Interestingly, Jordan chose not to participate in the marches and demonstrations of the era. He believed that the best way to effect change in society was by living, in community, a radically different life.

Cotton Patch series

Click image to read the
 Cotton Patch Gospel Online

In the late 1960s, the hostilities gradually subsided, and Jordan increasingly turned his energies to speaking and writing. Among the latter are his well-known Cotton Patch series, homey translations of New Testament writings. Jordan believed it was necessary not only to translate individual words and phrases, but also the context of Scripture. Thus, Jordan retitled Paul's letter to the Ephesians "The Letter to the Christians in Birmingham." His translation of Ephesians 2:11-13 is typical:

"So then, always remember that previously you Negroes, who sometimes are even called "niggers" by thoughtless white church members, were at one time outside the Christian fellowship, denied your rights as fellow believers, and treated as though the gospel didn’t apply to you, hopeless and God-forsaken in the eyes of the world. Now, however, because of Christ’s supreme sacrifice, you who once were so segregated are warmly welcomed into the Christian fellowship."

Along with his rendering of "Jew and Gentile" as "white man and Negro," Jordan converted all references to "crucifixion" into references to "lynching," believing that no other term was adequate for conveying the sense of the event into a modern American idiom:

"there just isn’t any word in our vocabulary which adequately translates the Greek word for 'crucifixion.' Our crosses are so shined, so polished, so respectable that to be impaled on one of them would seem to be a blessed experience. We have thus emptied the term 'crucifixion' of its original content of terrific emotion, of violence, of indignity and stigma, of defeat. I have translated it as 'lynching,' well aware that this is not technically correct. Jesus was officially tried and legally condemned, elements generally lacking in a lynching.

Click image to read the
translation of the story of
 the Good Samaritan

But having observed the operation of Southern 'justice,' and at times having been its victim, I can testify that more people have been lynched 'by judicial action' than by unofficial ropes. Pilate at least had the courage and the honesty to publicly wash his hands and disavow all legal responsibility. 'See to it yourselves,' he told the mob. And they did. They crucified him in Judea and they strung him up in Georgia, with a noose tied to a pine tree."^[1]

The Cotton Patch series used American analogies for places in the New Testament; Rome became Washington, D.C., Judaea became Georgia (the Governor of Judaea became theGovernor of Georgia), Jerusalem became Atlanta, and Bethlehem became Gainesville, Georgia.^[2]

Jordan's translations of scripture portions led to the creation of a musical, Cotton Patch Gospel, telling the life of Jesus Christ using his style and set in Georgia, and incorporating some passages from his translations.

Excerpt from the New Introduction by Millard Fuller to four volumes of The Cotton Patch Gospel:

• Clarence Jordan was a man of relevance. He made God’s word relevant. Every situation in life was measured against the life and teachings of Christ. Clarence was aware of culture and tradition, but his life was lived out in obedience to the claims of Christ, even when those claims caused him to violate culture and tradition. His Cotton Patch translations are one of the many contributions Clarence made to the world in helping people understand the message of the New Testament in the context of the world where people actually live.For example, in the Bible, the story of the Good Samaritan involves a Jew, a Samaritan, and an unnamed victim of a robbery on a lonely road in the Middle East, and it took place 2,000 years ago. In the Cotton Patch translation, the Jew becomes a white man, the Samaritan becomes an African American, and the crime victim is robbed and beaten in Ellaville, Georgia.

Read More About
 Clarence Jordan at the
Heroes Found Faithful
website