Clarence Jordan and the Red Clay of Koinonia

In 1942, Clarence Jordan — a Baptist minister with a doctorate in Greek New Testament — drove his family into the red clay countryside outside Americus, Georgia, and started a farm. What made Koinonia Farm scandalous was breathtakingly simple: Black and white families would live, work, and eat together at the same table.

Sumter County responded with fury. The Ku Klux Klan fired shots into the farmhouse at night. Local merchants refused to sell them seed or fertilizer. Insurance companies canceled every policy. A roadside market where they sold pecans was bombed — twice.

Jordan could have retreated to a seminary classroom. He had the credentials and the Greek to parse every syllable of Isaiah 58. But he believed the Prophet's words about loosing the chains of injustice and sharing your bread with the hungry required more than exegesis — they required dirt under your fingernails. When friends urged him to leave, he replied that faith not tested by fire was only theory.

For over twenty years, Koinonia Farm shared its harvest, sheltered the displaced, and kept its table open to anyone who came.

Isaiah 58 promises that when God's people stop performing religion and start practicing justice, they become "Repairers of Broken Walls." In Americus, Georgia, Clarence Jordan spent his life pulling down the walls that never should have been built in the first place.