Siloes of Like-Gospeled People

Pecan Orchard at Koinonia Farm (photo from Emerging Communities - Ancient Roots)

A Fellowship of Brokenness

Bill Leonard
(Baptist News Global photo)

Dr. Bill Leonard, of Wake Forest University School of Divinity, has written an editorial about things that are happening with the CBF (Cooperative Baptist Fellowship). The CBF was formed as a place where more moderate Southern Baptists could find refuge in the wake of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. Leonard describes a “fellowship of brokenness” among the Baptist faithful.  His essay indicates that perhaps even the CBF cannot hold together that community that was hurt by the intolerance of the conservative/fundamentalist wing that wrested control of the Southern Baptist Convention some 35 years ago.

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.”

Clarence Jordan looking at his
peanut crop (photo from
Koinonia Farm website)

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)

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.

Florence Jordan in 1976 (photo
from Koinonia Farm website)

On my second night there, it was my good fortune to have dinner with none other than Clarence Jordan's widow, Florence. It happened to be her turn to host the guests. That evening was a remarkable time as I sat and talked with her about the history of Koinonia and the trials they endured in the early years as the farm developed.

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.


_________________

* 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.  

-

Hooray for the Nuns!

Both in my personal encounters and in my reading of what American nuns are doing,  I have seen that the nuns represent what is best about the church as well as what is best about Christianity in general.  They are educating people, helping the needy, ministering to the sick and bringing hope to the hopeless.  On matters of theology, they are never stagnant but always caring and relevant.

One Benedictine nun explained an interesting phenomenon regarding nuns and their theological education. Most priests get all of their theological training in a time frame of four years of seminary. After that they are off to the parish and many get no further education beyond that.  Nuns, on the other hand, are often busy teaching in the schools and to get their theological studies they must go during the summer. The process takes much longer, but as a consequence their education is much more current than that of the typical priest.

Service and Integrity

Nuns have consistently provided much needed service in matters that contribute toward the common good.  They are the most reliable group for distributing charitable funds.  While other charities are sometimes plagued with men at the top embezzling funds or allocating monies away from the needed service and into administrative offices, you never hear of a nun absconding with cash or goods intended for the needy!

These are some of the reasons I applaud the “nuns on the bus” and celebrate their recent statement that they are rejecting the Vatican’s plans for a take-over/conservative make-over.  In these times, we should lament that there are fewer women choosing to be nuns rather than cracking down on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious over a few single-issue rallying points of some stogy old men.

A Witness from the Baptists

In the denomination I grew up in, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Women’s Missionary Union (WMU) was among the strongest and most reasonable voices within the denomination. On top of that they consistently did good work. The beauty of that organization was that it was an “auxiliary organization,” meaning that it was beyond the administrative reach of the denominational leadership. They gave 100 % of their efforts to the denomination, but they were their own separate organization. That arrangement became even more beautiful when the conservative (and fundamentalist) wing of the Southern Baptists took control of the denomination.  The all male leadership that wanted to keep women “in submission” had no way of touching the WMU because it was not a part of the SBC institutional structure. It was self supporting and served to raise money for missions (which the SBC gladly accepted) but the SBC leadership had no means of “reining them in.” They could not fire officers or withhold money they way they were accustomed to operating.

Carry On, Sisters

So to the nuns and all women out there I say, don’t lose heart, keep on doing what you are doing. 
Both the church and the world are better each day because of you!

*

G92 Immigration Conference: Seeking a Just and Ethical Solution to the Immigration Dilemma

This is my fourth blog post on immigration. My first post on the subject was to tell what I thought about Alabama’s harsh anti-immigration law. Later I told about what one Episcopal parish is doing in response to that law. Shortly after that, I related what one Catholic writer was saying about the topic.  Last Thursday I attended the G92 Immigration Conference at Samford University and was able to hear what Evangelicals are saying about our country’s immigration problem.

Looking to Biblical Texts

The G92 in the conference title refers to the number of times the Old Testament scriptures make reference to how we should treat the alien in our midst (ger, the Hebrew word for alien, or stranger, is used 92 times in scripture). Indeed, there was no indication that the Bible calls for anything other than welcome, respect and mercy, in ones dealings with alien sojourners.

The conference had two concurrent tracks, a Student Track and a Pastor Track. The opening session was a combined gathering at Reid Chapel for a student convocation led by Matthew Sorens and Jenny Yang. Sorens and Yang have co-authored a book, Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion & Truth in the Immigration Debate, which outlines a biblical basis for how immigrants should be treated. Their presentation demonstrated that in biblical times as in our own day, 1) immigration was often necessitated by famine and hardship, and 2) immigrants were of benefit to their host country.  Calls for hospitality toward the stranger in our midst are a recurrent them in scripture.  The presenters made the point that helpful immigration reform would make illegal immigration more difficult while making legal immigration easier.  The point being that immigrants come to this country because they have a need to provide for their families, and we need the labor those immigrants can provide.

The Constitution and Society

The next session I attended was led by Constitutional law expert, David Smolin, of Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law. He began by pointing out that there have been test cases across the country in which laws were written to push the legal envelope regarding immigration. Alabama’s anti-immigration law pushes the envelope farther than other state laws have done so far.  It was designed to make life unlivable for undocumented immigrants.  Smolin mentioned two constitutional problems with the Alabama law: the matter of whose job it is to enforce the law, and the problem of interfering with how local law enforcement prioritizes its duties.

Immigration is a federal policy. It is the Federal government’s job to enforce immigration law – immigration is not within the state or local government’s authority.  Furthermore, the Alabama law interferes with local law enforcement by making the processing of undocumented immigrants take priority over all other aspects of law enforcement.

Smolin added that the worst provisions of the Alabama law have not been put into effect. One provision of the law enlists private citizens to notify authorities of undocumented aliens. Courts, however, have already determined that you cannot prevent an undocumented person from attending school. Moreover, written law prohibits profiling.  Another provision yet to be implemented is the Harbor provision. The law as written goes far beyond the notion of hiding someone out from the authorities.   As currently written, the law makes all citizens responsible for determining immigrants’ status.

While some parts are not in effect, and others have not been enforced yet, Smolin pointed out that the Alabama anti-immigration law is designed to instill fear. 

Before beginning his presentation, David Smolin, to get a feel for his audience, asked how many of us were not sure whether Alabama’s anti-immigration law is good or bad. A few people raised their hands. When asked how many thought it was a terrible piece of legislation, most in the room raised their hands. When asked how many thought it was a good law, no one raised a hand. In counterpoint to the audience’s sense of the legislation, toward the end of his presentation, Smolin said that now is the time to contact our state representatives, because they are still under the impression that most citizens support of the new law.

A Panel Discussion

In the afternoon there was a panel discussion moderated by Noel Castellanos, CEO of Christian Community Development Association.  The panel was made up of local pastors. Included on the panel were Dr. John Killian, of Maytown Baptist Church (and Vice President of the Alabama Baptist Convention); Dr. Michael Wesley, of the Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, Rev. Carlos Gomez of First Baptist Church in Center Point, and Rev Ron Higey, of Birmingham International Church.

The opening statements from each pastor set the stage for discussion. Dr. Wesley, who pastors an African American church, stated that as an African American, he understood the disparity and disenfranchisement felt by the immigrant community. Dr. Killian said he did not think the county could economically sustain the current level of immigration and that the current law does not affect ministry to people. Rev. Higey asked the question, how can Christians defend an oppressive law?  Rev. Gomez stated that many have left our state out of fear because of the way the Alabama law criminalizes people. Those same people are able to live in Mississippi or Florida, so they leave Alabama.

Moderator Noel Castellanos pointed out that in Alabama, the Catholic, Episcopalian, and Methodist Bishops have come together to speak out against Alabama’s Immigration Law. He added that sometimes the sense is that Evangelicals are not out weighing in on the issue and asked what pastors can do.  Killian stated simply that we just needed to reassure people that churches will not arrest people and there is no reason to fear since all the Alabama law does is to reinforce the federal law.  Higey countered that immigrants do indeed have reason to fear when they cannot even pick their children up from school for fear of getting pulled over by the police.

Wesley stated that what is needed on the part of Christian leaders is vision, courage, discipline and endurance. He emphasized that discipline and endurance are needed because we must make difficult choices and changes now so that things can be better in the future, and that that is the only way for things to get better. He framed it as “scheduling the pain first so you can enjoy the benefits later.” He stated that the African American community supports immigration reform, adding that “there is no chance that we [African Americans] will go back to those hard labor jobs. It is in the country’s best interest to allow immigrant labor.”

I posed a question to the panel by framing Alabama’s immigration law as a continuation of the old attitude that was seen in the Jim Crow laws, and that since evangelical churches did virtually nothing to reverse Jim Crow, did we have any hope that churches today will be any different? Dr. Killian’s response was first to admit how terrible Alabama’s segregation laws were and how we have, thankfully, moved past that awful period.  He then begged to differ that the anti-immigration law was anything like the Jim Crow laws since “those were laws that oppressed our own people, and the current law has to do with illegal aliens.”

One person in the audience named Antonio identified himself as a pastor who grew up in Nicaragua under the Samoza regime and lived during the conflict between the Contras and the Sandinistas. He had made his way to the U.S. where he has now lived for several years.  His comment was simple and profound: “Mercy and opportunity is something that everyone should have at least once in his life.”

 [Later in the evening I had opportunity to talk with Antonio in between sessions. He told me that he is a minister to the Hispanic community at Victory Baptist Church in Jemison, Alabama. I asked him about the fear element among Hispanics, and he confirmed that there has been a great deal of fear in the wake of Alabama’s new law. He added that living here as an Hispanic is now much like it was living under Samoza or the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. “I see people who get stopped by the police, and they end up having to pay a $3,000 or a $5,000 dollar fine. If they pay it then they are okay. That is a lot of money for someone who is a laborer. It reminds me of in Nicaragua, everyone knew that if you pay money to the police, they will leave you alone. Whenever you give too much power to the police, then you have trouble.”]  

Throughout the discussion, Dr. Killian was the only one who reinforced the stereotype of a white conservative out-of-touch Christian. I am assuming that since he is a Baptist he calls himself a Bible-believing Christian.  Apparently he did not bother to take note of biblical injunctions on hospitality to the alien in our midst. In fact, he never quoted scripture to back his claims, nor did he even refer to scripture. The only thing he quoted was state and federal budgets and budget deficits as reasons why we should proceed not only with the status quo, but also that our harsh immigration law is just what we need. I am glad he was there to give that extra dynamic to the discussion, and to highlight that there are those in our state who continue to think that everything is just fine (for white citizens). He was very instructive in demonstrating the wrong side of the debate, in my opinion.

A Word from Georgia

After dinner, Paul Bridges, Mayor of Uvalda Georgia, told the group about his experience in Georgia with that states anti-immigration law.  Mayor Bridges was a delightful man who related to us how important agriculture is to his rural town. He emphasized how important immigrant labor is to them. The Vidalia onion is a major multi-million dollar product grown in his area, as are numerous other vegetable crops. There is a very short window of opportunity in which to harvest the crops to get them to the market. Bridges shared with us how efficient and skilled the immigrant workers are in their harvesting, how hard-working they are, and how family-oriented they are.

When he and other farming colleagues saw Georgia’s new immigration law, they were appalled by the implications and what it would do to the farm industry. He identified himself as a Republican, but was very displeased by what “some hot-shot Republicans in the State House” had done in passing the law. His closing words were, “I went back and read the Bible – I just read the red-letter parts of what Jesus said. I have read Georgia’s law and let me tell you there is nothing Christ-like about it. I have also read Alabama’s law, and there is nothing Christ-like about it, either!”

A Southern Baptist Resolution

During the closing session, Dr. Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, led the “Public Forum on Immigration and Evangelicals.” He presented a resolution that was passed by the Southern Baptist Convention which met in Arizona in 2011 (you’ll remember that Arizona was among the first to pass anti-immigration legislation). The resolution cites numerous references from scripture which advocate hospitality toward the alien and other passages which denounce exploitation of workers and mistreatment of the poor. It also recognizes the rule of law and the increasing diversity of the U.S. along with the acknowledgement that many come to this country desiring a better future for themselves. The resolution does not support any kind of amnesty, but decries any form of bigotry, harassment, mistreatment, or exploitation as inconsistent with the message of Christ. There is also a call for the government to do more to secure borders and to hold businesses accountable for hiring practices “as they relate to immigration status.” (You can read the entire resolution here)

Dr. Land, in his concluding remarks suggested that one way for our government to deal with the immigration problem would be to implement something akin to the Marshall Plan for Mexico. By assisting Mexico to creating a better life for its citizens, fewer people will be forced to cross the border in search of jobs and income.

[Side note: I had never met Richard Land until this conference, but knew of him. I had always had a negative, visceral reaction in mind and body whenever I saw him as a guest on some cable news talk show. The reason for that reaction is that Dr. Land came into his position after the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. I left that denomination in 1983, and Dr. Land always brought to mind those days of conflict with the far right.  Listening to his presentation, however, at least on the subject of immigration, I was able to find points of agreement. Afterwards, I went up to Dr. Land, shook his hand and told him I liked him a lot better in person than on those news/talk shows.]

Dispelling a few myths

Among the discussions throughout the day, there was an attempt to clarify some misunderstandings regarding undocumented immigrants. One is the notion that they are a drain on the economy. In fact, undocumented immigrants do pay taxes which support local schools and other services. Every time they pay rent or buy groceries, they are paying taxes. One participant noted that immigrants pay more taxes than necessary because they want to avoid any possibility of being audited or noticed by the government. Richard Land pointed out that economically, we need immigrant labor and we need immigrant taxes. He added that the government “makes out like a bandit” by collecting Social Security taxes from immigrants who will not collect social security benefits, and that the same is true with state taxes.

The take away points for me from the G92 Immigration Conference were: 

• We are more dependent upon immigrant labor than most of us realize.
• We are in dire need of immigration reform which will make it easier for immigrants to work legally in our country. 
• We must do some self-inventory and correction regarding our mistreatment, exploitation, and bigotry toward immigrants.
• It was beneficial for me to meet with people more conservative than I am to realize that there are indeed areas of common ground.
• Most beneficial was my personal interaction with Antonio, who has lived the struggle to come to our country in order to find a better life. I was fortunate to be able to get his perspective on things and to hear his words, “Mercy and opportunity is something everyone should have at least once in his life.”