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| Pecan Orchard at Koinonia Farm (photo from Emerging Communities - Ancient Roots) |
A Fellowship of Brokenness
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| Bill Leonard (Baptist News Global photo) |
Dr. Leonard's essay, “Baptist Brokenness: Reconciliation and revolution,” is a heart-felt and realistic assessment of a movement that is still in process. Anyone who has a connection with Southern Baptists or Cooperative Baptists, or who is a student of recent church history will find his assessment to be of interest. He describes his fellow CBF Baptists who are finding themselves torn yet again over matters of sexual orientation and equality for the LGBTQ community as creating for themselves “siloes of like-gospeled people.” You can read his essay here.
An Intentional Community
As a former Baptist who found refuge outside of the SBC in what I saw as a more historic expression of Christianity (yet still a “silo of like-gospeled people” for me), Leonard's
essay took me back to 1983 when I was trying to see my way through what
was happening in the SBC. I visited Koinonia Farm in Georgia and found
there a vibrant intentional community which I liken to Leonard's term, “silo of like-gospeled people.”
Koinonia Farm was founded by Clarence Jordan, author of The Cotton Patch Gospel. Jordan was a Baptist minister with a degree from Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville Kentucky. He also had a degree in agriculture. In 1942 he began to live out his calling by combining his agricultural and ministerial training to establish Koinonia Farm in rural Georgia. Koinonia was founded as an intentional Christian community where the people set out to follow Christ along the principals they found in the New Testament. They pooled their resources and shared everything in common.
They affirmed racial equality, taking a cue from the New Testament proclamation that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galations 3:27) They also advocated pacifism and non-violence (again based upon New Testament principles). Needless to say, their actions did no sit well in the Jim Crow South, yet they persevered in spite of the opposition and threats from the KKK as well as from the Southern establishment. (For a timeline and brief history of Koinonia Farm, go to the World Religions and Spirituality website here)
Florence Jordan told me that a few years earlier a new young pastor of Rehobeth Baptist Church, the church that had disfellowshipped the Jordan family back in the 1950s, came to talk with her. He had learned of how badly his church had treated them for their living a gospel of racial equality.* He came to her to say that his church owed her an apology. He even invited her to come back.
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| Clarence Jordan looking at his peanut crop (photo from Koinonia Farm website) |
They affirmed racial equality, taking a cue from the New Testament proclamation that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galations 3:27) They also advocated pacifism and non-violence (again based upon New Testament principles). Needless to say, their actions did no sit well in the Jim Crow South, yet they persevered in spite of the opposition and threats from the KKK as well as from the Southern establishment. (For a timeline and brief history of Koinonia Farm, go to the World Religions and Spirituality website here)
Visiting the Cotton Patch (and pecan orchard)
As a young man in 1983, I had a degree from a Baptist seminary and had spent two years on the mission field but was becoming more and more disheartened by the conflicts within my denomination. While I was “in between jobs,” I decided to visit Koinonia Farm to see what was happening in that radical faith community.
I had read Dallas Lee's book, The Cotton Patch Evidence which told the story of Clarence Jordan and Koinonia Farm, so I had a pretty good understanding of the farm's history and mission. I was eager to see what their life of faith was like first-hand.
Koinonia offers visitors the opportunity to enter into their life of work and faith. Visitors participate in some of the work of the farm during the day and share a communal lunch in their large meeting room. At night, visitors are hosted for dinner in one of the member's homes there on the farm (the host house rotates each day). At least that was the way it worked when I was there in 1983.
As a young man in 1983, I had a degree from a Baptist seminary and had spent two years on the mission field but was becoming more and more disheartened by the conflicts within my denomination. While I was “in between jobs,” I decided to visit Koinonia Farm to see what was happening in that radical faith community.
I had read Dallas Lee's book, The Cotton Patch Evidence which told the story of Clarence Jordan and Koinonia Farm, so I had a pretty good understanding of the farm's history and mission. I was eager to see what their life of faith was like first-hand.
Koinonia offers visitors the opportunity to enter into their life of work and faith. Visitors participate in some of the work of the farm during the day and share a communal lunch in their large meeting room. At night, visitors are hosted for dinner in one of the member's homes there on the farm (the host house rotates each day). At least that was the way it worked when I was there in 1983.
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| Florence Jordan in 1976 (photo from Koinonia Farm website) |
Florence Jordan told me that a few years earlier a new young pastor of Rehobeth Baptist Church, the church that had disfellowshipped the Jordan family back in the 1950s, came to talk with her. He had learned of how badly his church had treated them for their living a gospel of racial equality.* He came to her to say that his church owed her an apology. He even invited her to come back.
Ms. Jordan told me that, of course, she did not go back and had no intention of ever going back. As I sat at her dinner table, I realized that I was witnessing the life of someone who had endured much opposition and misunderstanding from the Southern cultural Baptists who could not get beyond their racism and nationalism long enough to hear the gospel that they claimed to preach. The people at Koinonia stood fast to their understanding of the gospel of Jesus in the face of bitter opposition from those who should have been their brothers and sisters in the faith.The story and the witness of Koinonia Farm brought an important question to my mind: How many of us, as we go about our lives, can see beyond our own cultural limitations to know the gospel of peace and justice without the example of those who hear a higher calling?
Ms. Jordan also spoke that evening of her children. None of them were living at Koinonia Farm, and she understood that that was their reasonable choice. The way she put it, she and her husband, Clarence, had made their choice, along with the others there at Koinonia to be in an intentional community. She understood that her children had to be free to make their own choices about how to live their lives.
In talking about her children, she told me that her eldest daughter, Eleanor, moved to Indiana and became the first female mayor of Elkhart. “She only served one term,” Ms Jordan told me, “but she spent that term making sure that permanent improvements were put in place – and she knew how to get the federal grants to make those things happen. She spent her time wisely while she was in public office to make changes that helped everyone.”
Finding those Like-Gospeled People
The people at Koinonia Farm had created their own silo of like-gospeled people. As I read Dr. Leonard's assessment of Baptist life today, I see that such may be the way of many from here on out –
finding that silo where they can live out the gospel as they are called
to do. The monastics and desert fathers did that as well way back
before the Baptists began their mission. Those early monastics understood that to be true to their understanding of the faith, they had to form an intentional community that was apart from the dominant cultural droning of their day.
Looking back, so many of those intentional communities – siloes, if you will – have served as road markers for the rest of us down through the years. Those communities, then and now, have often served as pathfinders for other seekers (at that point, the “silo” becomes a “beacon”). I would not tell you which silo to take, which community to gravitate toward, or even whether that is your calling. I would simply say, take notice that there are action groups and spiritual communities scattered throughout society. We are not all called to the same task, but if you find a happy band traveling in the same direction as you are, you may have found your silo.
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* It was not simply a matter of being shunned by the local Baptist church that the Jordans had faced. Koinonia Farm faced local economic boycotts of their products and persecution from the community in an attempt to drive them out. When Clarence died of a heart attack in 1969, no county official would agree to come out to the farm to examine the body to declare him dead. Friends there on the farm had to put his body in the back of a station wagon and drive it into Americus for the coroner write out the death certificate.
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Thanks for this perspective on recent Baptist history. Such a shame we have to live in such brokenness. Thanks for pointing a way forward, albeit not the ideal way.
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