Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
When Baptists Were Radical

When Baptists Were Radical

Last updated on: April 2, 2019 at 1:41 am by Chris Gehrz

When Baptists Were Radical 2019-04-01T21:50:30-04:00 Chris Gehrz

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The whole company of believers stuck together and held all things in common. They were selling their goods and belongings, and dividing them among the group on the basis of one’s need. Knit together with singleness of purpose they gathered at the church every day, and as they ate the common meal from house to house they had a joyful and humble spirit, praising God and showing overflowing kindness toward everybody. And day by day, as people were being rescued, the Lord would add them to the fellowship. (Clarence Jordan’s “cotton patch” translation of Acts 2:44-47)

In tandem with teaching a course on World War II this semester, I’ve been reading Alan Jacobs’ The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis. A colleague of Philip’s and Beth’s at Baylor University, Jacobs has helped me better understand the wartime work of W.H. Auden, Simone Weil, and Jacques Maritain, and what they had in common with more familiar (to me) figures like C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot. But now that I’ve come to the end of Jacobs’ book, I actually find myself thinking far less about his literary protagonists — whose “uncanny clarity… and incisive intelligence” led to “prescriptions [that] were never implemented” — than about someone whom Jacobs mentions only in passing: Clarence Jordan, the Baptist preacher, writer, and activist who co-founded Koinonia Farm, an intentional, interracial Christian community in Sumter County, Georgia.

I don’t mean to denigrate the intellectual efforts of Jacobs’ Christian humanists. In fact, Jordan was an academic himself. After initially training as an agronomist (training that would come in handy at Koinonia), he completed a doctorate in Greek at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. According to Baptist ethicist Henlee Barnette, Jordan liked to joke that “he had learned a lot of New Testament Greek in spite of his teachers. He discovered in the Greek New Testament a scriptural basis for his moral passion and social action.”

So while Jordan would put his advanced training to use in translating the New Testament into the Southern vernacular of the Cotton Patch Gospel (in which Jesus came from Valdosta, Georgia and the Crucifixion was a “lynching”), koiononia could never be simply a Greek term for him. Even as a seminary student, Jordan sought to build a 20th century version of the church of Acts. After marrying in 1936, he and his wife Florence formed an experimental community in Louisville, joining with other students interested in pacifism, racial justice, and communal living.

But the Jordans’ most enduring koinonia started to take shape in 1941, when Clarence began to talk with Martin England, a Northern Baptist missionary forced by war to leave Burma. Hoping to fuse their passions for racial equality, rural reform, communal living, and home mission, Jordan and England purchased a 440-acre plot of red clay soil near Americus, Georgia and founded Koinonia Farm in November 1942.

The community soon drew interest from students at universities like Auburn and Furman, young white Southerners who had already begun to question Jim Crow. They wanted, in the words of Koinonia Farm historian Tracy Elaine K’Meyer, to respond “by living a Christian life and doing something about the race problem of their region.” The Jordans, Englands, and other Koinonians reached out to their rural neighbors — twice as many black as white — with offers of economic and spiritual assistance: everything from a seed cooperative to Vacation Bible School. K’Meyer reports that most African American participants “consciously remained separate” — in part because they preferred to work for wages than to “accept voluntary poverty” as part of Koinonia’s unique economy — but some did join the community.

K'Meyer, Interracialism and Christian Community in the Postwar South

Simply by sharing meals, paying equal wages, and expanding educational opportunities, the Koinonians “laid the groundwork for change in Sumter County.” Opening a 2012 symposium on what would have been Jordan’s 100th birthday, former president Jimmy Carter (whose hometown of Plains is not far from Americus, where Habitat for Humanity grew out of Koinonia) highlighted one legacy of Jordan’s community: “No longer are churches the last holdouts in bringing about the integration and equality of the races.”

But Jordan and the other Koinonians had a complicated relationship with more established churches. While K’Meyer notes that early Koinonia outreach like VBS was initially acceptable to area whites “because it was pursued through traditional southern Protestant practices,” tensions mounted in the late 1940s as the Koinonians sought to integrate not just their small community, but local churches. In 1950 they were expelled from Rehoboth Baptist Church, where Clarence had occasionally preached and Florence regularly taught Sunday School. “May there be a ready willingness for reconciliation,” Clarence responded, “which would involve no sacrifice of conscience or compromise of our Lord’s truth.”

(In Jordan’s “cotton patch” translation of Acts 5:17-42, the Sanhedrin becomes the “Conservative Party” leaders of the town, who join “all the prominent white citizens” in tormenting the apostles. Gamaliel — the man who advises them to leave the Jesus-followers alone, in case they truly do represent God — is no longer a Pharisee, but a Baptist Sunday School teacher.)

Jordan lamented that Southern Baptist churches had become “enclaves of racism… concerned with petty programs of self-enhancement.” But as I’ve re-read his story, I’m struck that the roots and fruit of Koinonia Farm are inseparable from Southern Baptist life and institutions. K’Meyer emphasizes that Jordan and his colleagues “organized Koinonia like a Southern Baptist personal service mission” and sought “to use common Baptist forms” to advance racial cooperation. Even as they protested Southern Baptist complicity in racial and economic injustice, Koinonian rhetoric and actions reflected core Baptist ideals: that the Bible is the sole authority for a church in which “all believers are equal and are priests to each other”; that “Christians should live in communion with other believers” while still “being ‘of the world’ [in order to] to save it.” Much as Jordan made light of his education at Southern Baptist Seminary, K’Meyer emphasizes the influence of professors like Edward A. McDowell, Jr., “who inspired [Jordan] to look more deeply into the Greek New Testament for the meaning of the Word,” which McDowell believed “must come alive in currents of history and social change.”

David Stricklin identifies Jordan as part of a “genealogy of dissent” among early-to-mid-20th century Southern Baptists who did not regard the former Confederacy as a “Baptist Zion” but sought to offer a prophetic critique of Jim Crow. That “genealogy” goes back to a North Carolina pastor named Walter Nathan Johnson, who hoped to see “the South brought under the leadership of Jesus.” His network of supporters advocated for civil rights, organized labor, women’s ordination, and the abolition of the death penalty.

Stricklin then sees Jordan as a link between Johnson and the later ethicist Foy Valentine, who served as the liberal conscience of the Southern Baptist Convention as the longtime director of what’s now the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. After graduating from Baylor in 1944, Valentine spent the summer working at Koinonia Farm, where he found in Jordan “a kindred spirit, a preacher deeply committed to scripture, and a Christian tenaciously committed to its radical teaching” (So says Larry McSwain in his collection about Twentieth-century Shapers of Baptist Ethics. For the rest of his life, McSwain adds, Valentine carried a blank check that Jordan signed and gave him on his departure from Koinonia.)

I’m not a Baptist myself, but I teach at a (Swedish) Baptist university and have been influenced by Stricklin’s “genealogy.” My late mentor, G.W. Carlson, often told me of his life-changing encounter with Clarence Jordan, who spoke at Bethel College near the end of GW’s sophomore year, in 1963. “He represented a third option in the civil rights movement,” GW recalled. “Beyond securing rights within the legal system and using nonviolent protests as a tool for demanding change, Clarence Jordan advocated that the Christian church model a community that would look like the kingdom of God.”

At the 2012 symposium opened by President Carter, GW’s talk defined Jordan — with Walter Rauschenbusch and Martin Luther King, Jr. — as a “radical Baptist.” For GW, that Baptist heritage had nothing to do with white supremacy, or culture wars over an ostensibly Christian nation. Instead, it started with “early identification with people in need or people who are unacceptable to mainstream societal norms” and “a serious discontent with the witness of the established Christian church and a desire to recover a more authentic faith.” Ultimately, it led such Radical Baptists “to follow in the footsteps of Christ and faithfully to live out the principles of the Sermon on the Mount” — in which, Clarence Jordan once wrote, Jesus preached of a kingdom whose doors “are open to all people without respect to race, class, caste, color, nationality, education, or wealth. The children of God are under divine compulsion to accept as a sister or brother anyone who repents and believes. Inside the kingdom there are no partitions. The ones who would erect them thereby declare themselves to be on the outside.”

Southern Baptist Convention

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Previous Post

April 1, 2019

Green Pastures

Next Post

April 3, 2019 The Comfort of Historical Prayer

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abolitionism Abortion Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Kuyper Abraham Lincoln Academia Activism Adam Renberg Advent Adventist africa African American Religion Agnes Howard Albert Camus American History American Religious History American Revolution American West Anabaptists Ancient History Andrea Turpin Andrei Tarkovsky Anglicanism Annales Ansley Lillian Quiros anti-Catholicism Antisemitism Anxious Bench apologetics Apparitions Arash Azizi Archaeology archives art Artificial Intelligence Asia Asian Americans Augustine Authors Bad Bunny Baptism Baptists Barack Obama Battle of Hastings Benjamin Franklin Bernard-Henri Levy Beth Allison Barr Beth Moore Bethany Mannon Bible Bill Cunningham Billy Graham Black Music Bob Dylan Body Boenhoffer Books Breastfeeding Bruce Springsteen C.S. Lewis Calvinism Cancel Culture Capitalism Carmelites Catholicism Cedric Robinson Cesar Chavez Charismaticism charity Charles Dickens Charles Lindbergh Che Guevara Chicago Children Chinese Christianity Chris Gehrz Christ Christian death Christian Higher Education Christian life Christian Nation Christian Nationalism Christianity Today Christmas Church life Church Practice cinema Civil Religion Civil Rights Movement Civil War civility Classics Climate Change Cold War Colonial Mexico colonialism Comer Communism community complementarianism Conference on Faith and History Congregationalism Conspiracies Conspiracy Conversion Narratives Coronavirus Costa Rica Council of Nicaea Covid-19 Creation Critical Race Theory Crusades Culture culture wars Daniel K. Williams David Barton David Swartz Death Ways death with dignity DEI democracy Democratic Party Devotion Digital Age Diplomacy discipleship diversity Donald Trump Drama Dua Lipa Early Church early modern Early modern Catholicism Easter Eastern Christianity economic exploitation Education elections Elie Wiesel Elizabeth II Elizabeth Taylor emotions Empire Engineering England enslavement Entertainment Episcopal Church Erica Ramirez eschatology Eurocentrism Evangelicalism Evangelicals Exegesis Family Feminism Film Flannery O'Connor folk music Food Foreign Policy founding fathers Franciscans Franciscus Junius fundamentalism Funerals G.K. Chesterton Gender Genocide genre geography George W. Bush George Washington George Whitefield Global Christianity Global church Grief Guadalupe guest post Guest Post gun control gun violence Gustavo Gutierrez Hamid Dabashi Harold John Ockenga Harvest Hate Hawaiian Christianity Healing health care Heather Cox Richardson Hell Heresy Hermeneutics Higher Education Hinduism Hippocratic oath Historical Fiction Historical Methodology Historical Profession Historical Profession Historical Theology Historical Thinking historiography Holidays Holocaust horror movies Human rights Humanitarian Work humanities Hummingbirds Hungary hymns Imago Dei Immigration Injustice Interviews Iran Islam Islamophobia Israel Ivan's Childhood Jacob Randolph James Bratt Janine Giordano Drake Japanese history Japanese Literature Jean Paul Sartre Jesse Miranda Jesus Jesus Christ Jimmy Carter Joan Baez Joan Didion Joanne Freeman João B. Chaves Joao Chaves Joey Cochran John Calvin John Fea John Tillotson John Turner Johnny Cash Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Tran Joseph Smith Josh Howerton Journalism Jr. Judaism Jürgen Moltmann Just War Justice Justin Brierley Karl Barth Katelyn Beaty koi ponds Kris Kristofferson Kristin Kobes Du Mez Latin American Religious History Latino Americans Lectio Divina Leisure Lent Leonard Cohen liberal arts liberalism Liberation Theology Linda Ronstadt Lisa Clark Diller Literature Lou Reed Lynchings Lynneth Miller Renberg Mainline Protestantism Malcolm Foley Marilyn Monroe Maritime history Mark Noll Marriage Martin Luther Martin Luther King Martyrdom Marxism Mary Masih Alinejad mass shootings material culture medieval Christianity Medieval Ethiopia Melissa Borja memory Mennonites Mental Health Mental Illness Methodism Mexican Americans Mexicans Mike Madrid Miles Mullin Min Jin Lee Miscarriage Missionaries Mister Rogers Mitt Romney modernity Monasticism Mormonism Motherhood Mothers of the Church Moving Music Musicals Nadya Williams Nahua Christianity Native Americans Natsume Sōseki New Contributor New England New Year New York Nico Non-Violent Protest Orthodoxy pacifism Paleo Evangelicals Palestinians Parenting Patti Smith Paul Kingsnorth Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pentecostalism Philip Jenkins Phillis Wheatley physician-assisted suicide pilgrimage Pilgrims pluralism Plutocracy Poetry Politics Pope Francis Pope Leo XIV post-modernism prayer preaching Presbyterians prosperity gospel Protest Public history Publishing Puritans purity culture Quakers race Race Massacres Racial Capitalism racial reconciliation racialization Racism Raha Bahloulipour Re-Enchantment reading Reformation Refugees religion and the university religion and war Religious Freedom Religious Nones Religious Pluralism Religious Symbols religious violence Republican Party Revival Rita Coolidge Ritual Roger Williams Roman Catholic church Royalty Russell Moore same-sex marriage Sarah Irving-Stonebraker Scandinavia Science Science and Technology Scopes trial Scriptural Interpretation secularism Selena Quintanilla seminary Seventh-Day Adventists sexual morality Sexuality Sikhs Silence slaveholders theology Slavery Slavoj Zizek social justice Social Media Southern Baptist Convention Southern Religion Spain Spiritual Autobiography Spiritual but not religious Spiritual Discipline Sports Stanley Hauerwas Suffering Summer Camps Sunday Night Odds and Ends Supernatural Supreme Court Syriac Christianity Tal Howard Taylor Swift Teaching Technology Television Thanksgiving The Beatles The Mission theater TheoBros Theology Thomas Dixon Thomas Jefferson Thomas Kidd Thomas Merton Tim Gloege Tim Walz Tom Holland Tourism tradition Tragedy Translation Transnationalism Travel Trump Ukraine Uncategorized Unitarians United Methodist Church US History Vanessa Chan Velvet Underground Verónica A. Gutiérrez Veronica Gutierrez Vikings Violence Virgin Mary Virtue Virtue ethics Visions Voting War WCTU Wendell Berry Westminster Assembly White Evangelicalism Wildfires Winnie the Pooh Witches women Women in Ministry Women's and Gender Studies Work Worship writing Yasunari Kawabata Zena Hitz

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who prayed in the lions' den every day?

Select your answer to see how you score.

David Daniel Solomon Paul