If Clarence Jordan could speak today
For the past thirty years, it has been my privilege to portray the person of Clarence Jordan, the farmer, minister, theologian, activist for justice and founder of Koinonia Farm. Clarence possessed a penchant for speaking the truth regarding his understanding of identifying oneself as a Christian. Being a person of faith was not only about getting one’s soul saved, faith was also about practicing justice in the world. This enlarged focus of Jordan’s compelled him to speak about issues that were largely ignored by pastors of local churches, particularly, pastors of Southern Baptist churches. Greed, peacemaking and racism subjects which pastors in southern churches felt reticent to address in their weekly sermons. The sin of greed was broached as he often stated, “we don’t kick a person who makes too much money out of the church, we make ‘em a deacon. Well, that is, if they tithe.” About war, Clarence would say, “I think we’re raising spiritual schizophrenics in our churches. Yes, we teach our little children to love your enemies and blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons and daughters of God, and yet, you know, we haven’t seen a war yet in this nation which we weren’t mighty ready to send our sons (and daughters) off to fight in.” About racism, Clarence talked a good deal about an incident where he walked into a feed store to make some purchases. The owner refused to sell him anything with one proviso. The owner said, “if you’ll publicly renounce your views on integration, I’ll sell you anything in this here store.” Clarence replied, “I didn’t come in here to sell my soul, I came to buy some feed.” Recently, I added some lines to my portrayal of Jordan, words he never, as far as I know, ever spoke, yet sentiments with which I think he would fully agree: “The greatest violence that American Christians are committing are the ones that are carried out in those voting booths in every election, Christians voting for only those candidates who’ll line their pockets without any regard for what those candidates will do, politically, to take much needed funds from the poor, giving hefty tax breaks to the haves and heartless cuts to the poor and underrepresented in this nation. The poor don’t have a lobbyist. In fact, it ought to be the churches, but churches don’t want to rock the boat, since they themselves are being richly benefitted by government tax cuts. They’ve been bought out.
