Clarence Jordan's Cotton Patch Kingdom

In 1942, Clarence Jordan — a man with a doctorate in Greek from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary — did something his colleagues found baffling. Instead of taking a prestigious pastorate, he bought 440 acres of depleted farmland outside Americus, Georgia, and invited Black and white families to live and work side by side. He called it Koinonia Farm.

The response was swift. Local stores refused to sell them seed or supplies. Night riders fired bullets into their roadside market. Someone dynamited their refrigeration building. Insurance companies canceled every policy. When Jordan asked his friend, the governor, for protection, the governor told him to leave Georgia.

Jordan stayed. He had translated the Beatitudes from the original Greek more times than he could count, and he believed Jesus meant exactly what He said. Blessed are the poor in spirit — those who abandon the world's scorecards. Blessed are the meek — those who absorb hostility without returning it. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness — those who ache for a world that looks like the Kingdom. Blessed are the persecuted — those who pay the cost of obedience and keep planting anyway.

A visitor once asked Jordan how he could endure so much hatred. He replied simply, "We didn't come here to do something remarkable. We came to live out the Sermon on the Mount."

Jesus never promised the Beatitudes would be safe. He promised they would be blessed. Clarence Jordan, with dirt under his fingernails and bullet holes in his barn, understood the difference.