Reminiscing About Jimmy Carter

 Reflecting on Jimmy Carter by Steve Clemens

 

With word of former President Jimmy Carter entering hospice care, I thought back on my (limited) interactions with him and his family.

 

When I moved to Sumter County, GA in the fall of 1975, I became aware that a former Governor of the state had decided to enter the race to become the nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the US in the upcoming 1976 election. The former governor was not all that popular with a number of white residents of the county where he was born and now prided himself of being “from Plains, GA”. The intentional community I had joined (Koinonia Partners) was located midway between the county seat of Americus and the small town of Plains and the local children attended school in Plains.

 

Because my wife Christine was a nurse, she had a particular interest in a Plains resident who had worked at Koinonia in the 1950s and 60s (at great physical risk to herself) because she also labored as a midwife. Christine loved her work with new mothers and babies and sought out “Miss Gussie” Jackson who regaled us with her stories of all the babies she helped deliver. But one story stuck out for us when she told us about the time her home was firebombed by local racist white men because of her connections to Koinonia. Fortunately, only the porch was destroyed and she was not injured but she told us a “local white man”, a school board member, Jimmy Carter, publicly denounced the White Citizens Council for their racial violence. In the late 1950s in Plains, that took tremendous courage. She told us how proud she was that this man was now running for President! Later on, we found out that one of her daughters, Oculia, now worked as a cook for the Carter family.

 

So, when the local newspaper or radio station announced that the Carter family was inviting anyone to come to the old train depot in Plains on Tuesday nights in 1976 to watch the primary campaign returns, I decided to join in and sat with Chip, Billy, Gloria, Miss Lillian, or other family members in a rocking chair for several of the early primaries before many people believed Carter had any chance of winning. (I didn’t tell them that I really supported Governor Jerry Brown as my preferred candidate – a more progressive contender at the time.) The sign over the train depot read “Jimmy Carter Presidential Campaign Headquarters”.

 

When Jimmy came back home between campaign rallies, it was funny to see big men wearing new bib overalls and flannel shirts in the crowd. The Secret Service assigned to candidate Carter were told to “wear what the candidate was wearing” to better blend in – thus the new clothes. I approached one of the agents to ask how he liked this assignment and he was casual and friendly, taking time to answer my questions as he continued to scan the crowd for possible threats. As Carter began to win more and more primaries, the Secret Service agents assigned to him became much less friendly and more “business-like”. By the time he got the nomination, those agents were much less “friendly” – no bib overalls now and fewer smiles or conversation!

 

Again, in the early days of the campaign, TV networks or newspapers sent their top reporters to cover other candidates. But as Carter racked up more support, the likes of Sam Donaldson and Kenley Jones came to Sumter County to report on this unique candidate. Because there were no hotels in Plains, the reporters stayed in Americus. They had per-diem allowances for lodging and meals but there were no 5-Star restaurants nearby. A local woman opened up a double-wide trailer on the outskirts of Americus with a sign that read “Faye’s Bar-B-Que Villa”. When Christine and I went to eat there one Saturday evening when Carter was in town, we were surprised to see both Donaldson and Jones come in with several other reporters, carrying bottles in brown bags because Faye didn’t have a license to serve alcohol. We could overhear them complaining about the lack of any “nightlife” in Sumter County. Soon, I’m sure at their request, steaks were added to her menu!

 

As the campaign continued successfully, there was more and more interest in the candidate’s brother, Billy and his sister, “go-go” Gloria (she rode a motorcycle). Even more intriguing was Carter’s mother, “Miss Lillian”. She always had an opinion and freely shared it. Rosalynn’s family seemed a lot less memorable to the media.

 

My hesitancy in supporting Carter stemmed primarily to his embrace of his Naval service under Admiral Rickover with nuclear submarines. Having recently been part of a year-long Bible study group with Phil Berrigan and Liz Macalister before moving to Koinonia, I had been mentored into the anti-nuke movement by some of the best activists. Carter didn’t emphasize cutting the military budget, didn’t eschew nuclear energy plants, and was not known for taking a strong stance against the debacle of our war and policy on Vietnam in comparison to other candidates. Senator George McGovern was my candidate just four years prior and I still had hopes for that kind of political courage.

 

But there was an incident that made me realize that Carter did have some guts. Right in the middle of the campaign, July 4, 1976 was the Bicentennial of the Declaration of US Independence. But it also fell on a Sunday and many “Christian” churches unfortunately got swept up in a celebration of civil religion. Carter was in Plains that weekend and attended the services at his Plains Baptist Church. He was asked to give the opening prayer – and to be honest, it was the only redeeming part of a service which devolved into a “God Bless America” rally which assumed the “Prince of Peace” was now a cheerleader for the American way of life. (Soon after his inauguration, the Carters joined a new church down the road, Maranatha Baptist, founded specifically on a principle of racial inclusion as an expression of the gospel. Plains Baptist had quietly voted to continue its policy of “discouraging”, if not preventing the attendance of people of color at its services.)

 

During the campaign, Playboy Magazine ran an interview with Carter where he famously admitted to having “lusted in his heart”. What particularly interested us at Koinonia was the assertion of Carter’s support for the interracial community down the road, Koinonia Farm, during the racial tensions in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, … By the time the interview came out, Clarence Jordan, the co-founder of our community had been dead almost 7 years. Florence, his surviving widow was asked by reporters about details. She told them he didn’t make a public defense of the embattled community during the time of the attacks against it by the Klan and other white racists. However, it became clear a year later when the Ku Klux Klan held a rally just outside of Plains city limit in protest of Carter’s policies. (I was called to testify at a trial of the man who drove his car into the speaker’s platform to protest the KKK. Before taking the stand, I was sequestered in a room with the Imperial Wizard of the Klan, Bill Wilkinson. He was joking with the sheriff deputies and handing out his business cards to them.)

 

In December 1976, the President-elect welcomed many dignitaries to his modest home in Plains while he interviewed potential Cabinet members. Two of my friends, Phil Berrigan and Ladon Sheats traveled from their Catholic Worker House in Baltimore to outside his house in Plains to protest against Carter’s lack of opposition to nuclear weapons. I didn’t join them.

 

Soon after taking office, with Plains now becoming a destination on the map, a newspaper was started called The Plains Monitor to cover the news in Carter’s home county. Besides local news and news about the Carter family, it became an avenue for me to publish Letters to The Editor, commenting on national and international policy. They printed my open letter to President Carter on why I was withholding part of my income tax as a conscientious objector to our military budget. When Rosalynn Carter was asked to attend the keel laying of a new nuclear ballistic submarine carrying nuclear weapons in April 1979, I wrote a letter to the editor of why I was driving to Connecticut to risk arrest in protest. The paper later printed an article and photo about some school children from Plains school who traveled with me to the protest. (They and their parents were members of our community at Koinonia).

 

During Carter’s presidency, I got to know Miss Lillian better when we both attended Fellowship Baptist Church in Americus. When Plains Baptist refused to integrate, Miss Lillian sought out a local Baptist church which welcomed all and this small congregation (compared to the First Baptist Church of Americus) fit the bill for her. In Sunday School class she was often outspoken and clearly had a deep commitment to her faith. The church also tolerated my statements during announcement time when I asked for prayers before getting arrested at the submarine dedication or when I refused to pay war taxes. The fact that the pastor and his wife and several other members of the church attended my wedding in 1978 at Koinonia showed their willingness to be public about their witness for racial inclusion.

 

Because of all the attention now being paid to the small town of barely 650 people that was home to a US President, and possibly due to the efforts of the new First Lady, Plains opened the Plains Primary Healthcare Clinic just across the street from the train depot, the former campaign headquarters. It was a welcome addition to this small town where healthcare resources particularly for many of the local Black residents was sorely lacking. And they were looking to hire a local nurse as part of the staff. Christine jumped at the opportunity and worked there for several years. Big crowds often developed when the President was in town, so any extra infrastructure was welcome. The local gas station now hawked cans of “Billy Beer”, named after Jimmy’s brother who was well known for his love of that beverage.  

 

As the end of his first term approached, several crises loomed: a Soviet invasion into Afghanistan to prop up a failing socialist-leaning government, the Americans held hostage by a revolutionary movement in Iran after Carter allowed the former Shah to receive medical treatment in the US, inflation, gas shortages, … Then an intra-party struggle led by Senator Ted Kennedy to challenge him for the nomination of the Democratic Party found the President looking for ways to shore up his standing. He called for a boycott of the summer Olympics scheduled for Moscow, and to appear less weak against his militaristic Republican opponent, he reinstated mandatory registration for the US Military draft for all males ages 18-26 who had not previously served in the military. As a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, I decided to write President Carter a letter refusing to register. I did not include in the letter the fact that I was past the age of requirement, only that for reasons of religious belief and conscience I was publicly refusing. It wasn’t until after he was soundly defeated by Ronald Reagan that I received a formal reply – a letter from the Department of Justice stating the consequences if my refusal continued: I think it was 5 years in jail and a fine. I received several other letters the next year or two before two FBI agents showed up at the Koinonia office asking to interview me. I told them I would continue to refuse to register and politely declined to tell them my Social Security number, my mother’s maiden name, or my birthdate. After about ½ hour, the one agent said to the other, “he appears to be older than 26 to me so I think we needn’t continue [with pursuing a prosecution for draft evasion].”

 

But it was in his post-presidency where I met him outside his role as a candidate. Our intentional community, Koinonia, was also the birthplace for Habitat for Humanity. After he was out of office, whenever he was in Plains, Jimmy taught Sunday School at his Maranatha Baptist Church. Christine was close friends of a Hutterite couple, having spent a month at their community in North Dakota in the early 70’s. When Solomon and Sarah Maendel came to Americus to lend their skills and labor to the growing Habitat movement, they chose to attend Jimmy’s Sunday School sessions. After several weeks, and noticing their peculiar dress, the former president invited them to join him and Rosalynn for lunch after church. Jimmy remarked that as President, he found Quakers and Mennonites who served overseas to be some of the best sources for information about what the people thought about US foreign policy. Hutterites, being cousins of Mennonites (and more easily identified because of their distinctive dress), intrigued him. Solomon told Jimmy about his work with Habitat, and, as only someone who eschewed voting, scolded the former president for not being involved with Habitat and its work. The next day Jimmy called Millard Fuller to ask how he might be involved.

 

In 1983 when the Carters became “involved” with Habitat, they were quite generous with both their time and talents. They even joined an awareness and fundraising walk for Habitat’s 10^th anniversary from Americus to Kansas City in 1986. Christine and I only walked the first 8 miles to Plains – but we had a friend, Carolyn Schurr who walked all 1000 miles with the Carters and others, staying in churches en route overnight. Ten years later, on the 20^th anniversary, I helped build the house next to the one the Carter’s worked on during a “blitz build” in Americus. Jimmy was always one of the first workers on site in the morning and didn’t quit early. When reporters came by to talk with them, he suggested they talk to the new homebuyers so he could continue to work. He was skilled and dedicated and used his “star-power” to bring many others to worksites as volunteers.

 

In the mid-1980s he often came by our farm community to give greetings to Florence Jordan and have tea with her. It was hard to miss the Secret Service agents milling about as he visited. He even detoured on a planned trip to China to stop by to pay his respects to the co-founder of Koinonia when she died in 1986. At the request of some Partners who regularly attended his Sunday School class, Jimmy agreed to speak at one of Koinonia’s worship services which always took place on Sunday evenings. While I admired all that he had done for Habitat and other projects in his post-presidency, I couldn’t help but reflect that this man had also threatened to use nuclear weapons against the Soviets. So, after he spoke, I wrote him a letter describing the tensions I felt. I addressed him as “a brother in Christ” and shared my discomfort on this particular issue. He sent me a card back suggesting I read his recent book where he described how he tried to put his faith into action during his presidency. I had already read that book and noticed how his chapter on standing up to the Russians was devoid of references to Jesus’ teaching on loving our enemies. We also had strong disagreement about his acceptance of the Death Penalty at that time but over the years, he came to agree with Rosalynn and began to call for its abolition.

 

One thing I was grateful for was his willingness to use his “celebrity” status to help even “minor” causes. The public school system in Sumter County was woefully underfunded as many of the white citizens send their children to a private, segregated “Christian” school and then elected school board members who tried to keep taxes low. In the mid-80s, the local school in Plains decided to have a Festival to raise funds for classrooms, supplies, and other needs. Koinonia was invited to have a stand to sell our organic strawberries with fresh whipped cream. But the big attraction was a free concert Jimmy initiated on the school grounds featuring his friend Willy Nelson. At the end of the wonderful event, Jimmy and Rosalynn joined Willy on the stage to sing “Amazing Grace”.

 

Jimmy was proud of his hometown and often joined events to support it. One event that sticks out in my mind included a 5K run for children out of town and then circling back to a finish line right by the train depot. Our oldest son was encouraged to run by the son of a friend from Habitat who loved running. Micah was not known (at that time) as a distance runner but we were shocked when he placed third, ahead of his friend Josh and was awarded a trophy by the former president. When he got off the stage, we remarked that we were surprised he did better than his friend. Micah told us, “Well I got tired and stopped running once we got out of town and just ran back to the finish when the others returned.” Needless to say, we asked him to go back to the stage and return the trophy so the proper kid could receive it!

 

I never did vote for Jimmy Carter. In the primary I supported Jerry Brown. In the general elections of 1976 and 1980, I wrote in Daniel Berrigan for President. But, reflecting back after all these years, Jimmy Carter did more good as President than any others in my lifetime. As he passes on to become one of our ancestors, I’m grateful for his life and witness, warts and all.

 

 

Remembering Ryan Karis

 Remembering Ryan Neal Delp Karis - by Steve Clemens

I knew him first as Ryan Delp, the quiet Quaker from rural Indiana who was one of the mainstays of the Koinonia Partners Construction Crew when we first met in 1975 in rural southwestern Georgia. A “gentle giant” – he was taller than any of the other construction crew – Ryan, trained as an engineer at Purdue, laid out the corners of the lots and helped direct the design and construction of the single-family homes they helped build, first in what became known as Koinonia Village and then Forest Park for families who became homeowners for the first time. Some of them were former tenant farmers and these houses became their first opportunity to actually own a home and begin to build generational stability.

I was there when Karen West was in my volunteer group in 1975 and as their relationship blossomed into a marriage, they chose a new name, Karis, a word from the Greek New Testament meaning Grace of God, as their identity of this partnership which has blessed many others these past 45 years.

Ryan was one of the first three or four Habitat for Humanity international “volunteers”, surveying Ntondo, a small village in Zaire at the invitation/encouragement of Millard Fuller. How about that for a honeymoon?

He helped design and build the first passive solar house for Koinonia and then he and Karen invited Christine and I to move in with them as its first residents. If memory serves me correctly, we ate popcorn every night! It also marked the beginning of our long tradition of playing cards and telling stories.

He and Karen were two of the six inaugural members of Jubilee Partners, pioneers – helping build the first structures of this community in northwest Georgia through which thousands of refugees have come. Their living in tents while the first houses were built are warm memories Christine and I share with them.

Ryan and Karen regaled us with stories of their living in a refugee camp in Thailand to better understand the refugees coming from southeast Asia in the aftermath of the US War on Vietnam; then going to Cuernavaca, Mexico to learn Spanish to better work with a growing flood of refugees and asylum seekers from Central America; and then helping coordinate the Ano de Jubileo program that helped hundreds if not thousands of families and individuals find a new home and safety in Canada after the US shut the doors of compassion in the 1980s. He and I shared many bus trips to the southeast Texas border with Mexico and returning to Jubilee in north Georgia with a bus-load of refugees – or trips from Jubilee to Winnipeg, Manitoba, or to London and/or Toronto, Ontario to their new asylum homes.

But refugees were not Ryan’s only concern. As the Reagan White House years “progressed”, Ryan and his fellow Jubilee members decided to find ways to track and protest the shipment of nuclear weapons through our state and the southeastern part of the country as, what was then known as the “White Train” carried nuclear warheads from the assembly plant, Pantex, outside of Amarillo, Texas to the submarine base at Charleston, South Carolina and later to a new Trident submarine base built at Kings Bay, Georgia. I remember more than once Ryan called me in the middle of the night to tell me a train-load of nukes was headed our way – it had just left Memphis, or Anniston, or some other point and would soon be coming down Main Street in Montezuma, GA so we could gather our signs, candles, and banner to vigil along the tracks. That banner, a full-size sheet was emblazoned with the Scripture passage: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit.” So Ryan’s passion for nonviolence was one of influences that warmed my heart as I sat in a cold jail cell after blocking that train.

As work and ministry continued to evolve at Jubilee, so did a family grow. Ryan and Karen invited us to join them at the Atlanta airport as they met their new son, Andrew, as he was carried off the airplane after arriving from his native Korea. We also celebrated with them as Rebecka joined their family.

Christine and I made numerous weekend (and occasionally months-long) trips to north Georgia to help build more structures at Jubilee for the growing community as well as the refugee ministry. With a mutual friend, Robbie, we would drive into nearby Athens for a dinner or to go to the food bank and end up in the parking lot of the discount grocery store with a ½ gallon of ice cream and 6 spoons. We’d sit, laugh, tell stories, and enjoy being together. Later, as Robbie fell in love and married a refugee from Cambodia who had come through Jubilee with her family, Chou also joined us when we’d visit.

Ryan’s birthday, December 28 th , always fell on what is called in the Christian calendar, The Feast of the Holy Innocents – when the church remembers the story of Jesus fleeing with his family to Egypt as a refugee to escape the murderous intent of King Herod. We would often have a public witness against nuclear weapons (which threatened children all over the world) or for immigrants and refugees or those on death row on that day. So, after a solemn vigil (or occasional acts of civil disobedience) during the day, we switched gears and celebrated Ryan’s birth in the evening – usually with ice cream, occasionally with cake too..

After 10 years of service at Jubilee, they moved to the Twin Cities just prior to the birth of Emily, their third child, in 1988. They joined a growing, fairly-new, faith community, the Community of St. Martin, that embraced their convictions of nonviolence, service to others, and simpler or compassionate living. When Christine and I were ready to take a Sabbatical year away from Koinonia, Ryan and Karen asked us to join them in the Twin Cities where the Community of St. Martin could provide us space in a hospitality house and help us find work and be part of their worship group. Ryan was already continuing his former construction work with a local Habitat for Humanity affiliate and when that organization decided to grow its capacity, he asked me if I’d like to consider coming to work with him. Christine and I decided the community and the employment prospects were a good change for us and we decided to put down roots in the neighborhood where many of the faith community lived – and I went to work at Habitat with Ryan as my new supervisor.

Ever since I’ve known Ryan and Karen, they have had a special passion for the mountains, streams, and beauty of Karen’s home state of Montana. When they returned from a road trip to the Bozeman/Livingston area, Ryan would haul out the slide projector and give us a report on their adventures. Karen relished the wonders of nature and the creatures, especially the birds, they encountered, and Ryan often had the visual record made with his camera. Those adventures would include not just hacking out a village site in central Africa near the Congo River, or the stark challenges of a refugee camp in Thailand, but also trips to South Korea they took as each of their three adopted children traveled with them to see their own homeland; then a trip to Iceland, taking Christine with them.

Since Karen finally retired from teaching in the Minneapolis Public Schools, and with a brief (apparent) lull in the Covid crisis, we planned to finally take them with us for a week in Cancun, Mexico at the end of January. Alas, it was not to be.

Ryan embodied the Quaker roots he had - comfortable with silence, looking for consensus, committed to nonviolent actions and solutions. People relied on his dependability and, when he shared his thoughts, others realized how engaged he was in the decision-making process.

I love you, Ryan. Thanks for being a valued friend, companion, example, accompaniment, and leader. You were often a calming present in a storm while also providing direction for not only surviving it but finding a way out. As you transition to that “great cloud of witnesses”, may your gentle spirit guide your way home. Rest in that grace of our Creator.

Remembering Koinonia on the Community's 70th Anniversary

Fertile Soil For Faith Formation: My Life At Koinonia Partners 1975-1990 by Steve Clemens. October 2012

When I arrived at the 1400-acre farm in south Georgia in September 1975, the first person who greeted me was the young woman who became my wife 2 ½ years later. Christine Haas told me I was late for lunch and pointed me in the direction of the community’s dining hall. I was one-month short of my 25^th birthday and had agreed to serve as a “volunteer” for the next two years. It was to serve as my “unofficial voluntary service” assignment as a conscientious objector even though my military draft lottery number was too high to be drafted and the Vietnam War had just ended in a resounding defeat of South Vietnamese forces several months before.

I arrived at this “intentional Christian community” as a young man already on the pathway of “radical Christian discipleship” as I had understood it. Having been raised in an evangelical/fundamentalist family in southeastern Pennsylvania, schooled at Wheaton College – proclaimed to be an evangelical “Harvard” (but, in reality not very challenging academically) – and followed by a year of graduate school in Social Work at Temple University, I had already thrown off the “shackles” of that fundamentalism and was exploring my Anabaptist heritage and its understanding of pacifism and nonviolence. Immediately preceding my arrival at Koinonia, I had spent a year in voluntary service with the Mennonites in Washington, DC coupled simultaneously with a year of Bible Study with radical Christian Catholics from Jonah House and the Community For Creative Nonviolence.

What attracted me to Koinonia was the opportunity to work and worship with a group of people who shared a vision of discipleship which embraced nonviolence, racial reconciliation, simpler living, economic sharing, and service to others. The community was small enough to make one feel valued and included but also large enough to try to make a difference in the local community. Koinonia ran a Volunteer Program which was a work/study experience where one lived in a shared community household, was given a work assignment in farming/gardening, the pecan processing plant, fruitcake bakery and candy kitchen, home construction crew, or the mail order business operations.

Through the Volunteer work/study program – both as a participant (September –December 1975) and then later as one of its co-coordinators (for 8-10 years in the late 70s and 80s), I got to experience the deep faith of Ethel Dunning, Deacon Ludrelle Pope and his wife, Mamie, Correnza Morgan and Mazie, and Miss Gussie Jackson – residents of one of the two residential housing “villages” created by Koinonia’s housing ministry begun in 1968 or living nearby.  To hear the stories of the harassment and personal travails they endured because of their relationship to Koinonia and their desire for reconciliation with white folk was a life-altering experience. There wasn’t a lot of sophisticated seminary-induced Bible learning but rather a “trust-and-obey” simplicity to their faith and how it was to be lived out. “Peoples is my hobby” is a refrain that sticks in my mind when I took volunteer groups down to the Forest Park neighborhood to meet with Ethel and Ladon Sheats at her house. Deacon Pope would always have a Bible story or drawn-out prayer whenever Christine and I would visit, coupled with his homemade buttermilk biscuits, after Mamie had “passed”.

Mamie, who was employed as the community cook for noonday meals for many years, had to put up with the plethora of new white folks coming into her kitchen. They often suggested she make the latest culinary fad desired by these “hippies” and counter-cultural volunteers who arrived fresh every three or four months. Even the Resident Partners would discuss the noon meals and give Mamie their input for her menus. Since the farmers were growing soybeans, could we incorporate more of that vegetable protein into our meals, lessening the amount of meat we consumed, was the query that the Products Manager George Worth asked. His solution? Ask Mamie to substitute soy grits or soybeans for the hamburger she normally put into her chili. Mamie’s solution to that request? - she asked the “new boy” who was now in charge of maintenance on the farm, a college-educated young man from Pennsylvania (me), to taste the chili for the proper flavoring of the spices since she didn’t want to taste it herself: “After all”, she told me, “soybeans are what you feed to hogs, not people!”

The faith lessons we learned sitting with “Miss Doris” were especially poignant; she had suffered so much in her own life having had her husband die at a young age in a car accident, her husband’s uncle shot and killed by “white folk”, becoming a mother at age 13 and a grandmother at age 26. By age forty, she was a great-grandmother as generation after generation seemed to repeat the pattern of having babies in one’s early teen years. Her daughter, Nadine, battling what seemed to be insurmountable health obstacles; her son Leonard, dealing with the racism of the deep south; her daughter Linda with her struggles as a teenage mom, … Miss Doris, whose job and passion was running the community’s pre-school Nursery, would pour out her love and warmth on all the children she was charged with, depending on the deep spiritual well-springs she drew upon.

Meanwhile, having witnessed the lived-out faith of the local black residents, I spent much of my time reading and listening to the theology and insights of Clarence Jordan, one of the co-founders of the community back in 1942. Fortunately there were dozens and dozens of reel-to-reel tape recordings of Clarence’s sermons, speeches, and story telling preserved as well as the several books he had published over his 27 years at Koinonia. Truly a gifted orator and storyteller, I would sit for hours listening to Dr. Jordan’s southern drawl, marveling at both his Biblical insight and his infectious sense of humor. What always came through was a combination of both compassion and a passion for justice. Clarence often concentrated on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and his parables.

Equally instructive were the stories about Clarence and his family that were frequently shared by his life partner, Florence. Although Clarence died suddenly of a heart attack in 1969, Florence survived her husband by another 18 years and often told the stories of the earlier days of the Koinonia “experiment”. Clarence often referred to the community as a “demonstration plot” of what the Kingdom of God could embody. Educated as a scientific farmer at the University of Georgia before hearing “a call” to attend the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Clarence often drew on his agricultural knowledge and experience in his sermons and stories. Because of his extensive knowledge of koine Greek, the language of the New Testament, Clarence would translate directly from the Greek text when he preached, putting the stories and teachings into the local vernacular and settings for what would become his “Cotton Patch” version of the New Testament accounts.  

Although my politics were radical when I arrived, my theological positions hadn’t evolved as quickly. It was in seeing how others lived their lives that helped break down some of the walls I had constructed from my upbringing and my Wheaton College indoctrination. Clarence Jordan said very clearly on one of the many tapes I listened to over and over that we are not called to “judge others” but we are called to be “fruit inspectors” – noting how Jesus remarked, “By their fruit shall you know them.” In our volunteer group, George and Coffee Worth, lifetime Presbyterian missionaries who arrived at Koinonia the same week as I had, would often scoff at a Bible verse someone quoted, especially if it came from the writings of Paul (or those claimed to be by him). It was clear that they believed neither in the inspiration or inerrancy of “God’s Word” as I had it drilled into me by the bastion of evangelicalism at Billy Graham’s alma mater. Wheaton would have me believe that with such “heretical” views, even missionaries who did not believe in the infallibility of scripture were not “saved”. Yet, using the fruit inspection standard promoted by Clarence and Jesus, it was very clear that the Worths evidenced their “salvation” by the way their lives reflected the life and values Jesus proclaimed. (And Coffee shared the story with me about how she was bitten by Billy Graham’s dog!)

Later, in the mid-80s, another Koinonia resident I had gotten to know came out as a gay man to Christine and me, taking a risk to share the pain and self-loathing he had endured for years while in the closet. Again, I was forced to re-think my theological understandings and the walls and exclusions which remained around my head and heart. Koinonia, as an institution, wasn’t quite ready to be “open and affirming” but at least the Resident Partners began dialoging about that possibility. A few years later we welcomed our first “out” Partner who was gay. But it was bittersweet in recognizing all who may have felt excluded or marginalized before then.

Living at Koinonia for 16 years, I got to meet many of the “legendary” people from Koinonia’s history – or people who knew them. I heard not only stories of inspiration but also you heard or witnessed some of their “warts” as well. Community living has a way of exposing our shadow-side as well as the persona we’d like others to see. Despite the flaws, sins, and shortcomings I often found a way to learn and grow from the privilege of working and worshipping with the same group of people. Koinonia’s size, never more than 25-40 Partners coupled with 5-20 volunteers (plus children) meant that we could relate to one another without bureaucratic boundaries and strictures. Koinonia had morphed from having a more powerful “Director” as it re-emerged in 1968 to a model featuring a more decentralized “Coordinator of Activities”, “Fellowship Team”, Residency Committee, and Housing Committee by the time I had arrived in the mid-70s.

The on-going power of the Koinonia experience for me was its counter-cultural vision and practice. Living in the intentional community was an invitation to reject the values of the dominant society and replace them with the ideas and values expressed in the Gospel and the early church as described by Clarence Jordan’s careful Biblical analysis. The U.S. cultural value of rugged individualism, the John Wayne “tough guy”, go-it-alone mentality was replaced with a value of interdependence rather than independence. American ideals of competition were contrasted with a Gospel of cooperation and community. The main focus of our society seems to be predicated on “consumption” and the best adjective for many Americans seems to be consumers. Koinonia’s emphasis on simple living (which was later recast as “compassionate living”) stressed a downward mobility economically while finding ways to befriend Mother Earth in the process. And arriving at Koinonia only months after the end of the war on Vietnam meant that the culture’s dependence on militarism should have been more readily questioned - but in the deep South that ideology of military solutions to most international programs continues to hold sway in most circles. Koinonia’s clear commitment to nonviolence and reconciliation often provided a sharp contrast to the social and political forces that dominated our corner of southwest Georgia.

It was a multi-media presentation by Ladon Sheats of the comparing and contrasting of American values with those of the “Kingdom of God” that was my first introduction to both Koinonia and Clarence Jordan just a year before I arrived as a volunteer. That “Values Presentation” continued to be used in Koinonia’s volunteer program a decade later as the struggle between the dominant culture and the counter-culture values espoused by Jesus continued to help define the community. Even though most Resident Partners embraced those values, there certainly were differences of styles and expressions of how one talked about and lived them out.

Another strength of the Koinonia “experiment” was its ecumenical nature in embracing and welcoming a variety of Christian denominational expressions. In my 16 years there, numerous individuals led worship, were elected to the Fellowship Team (providing leadership and coordination for the spiritual life of the community), and/or conducted Bible Studies or prayer groups. My Mennonite tradition was accepted alongside Roman Catholics, Quakers, Baptists, Swedenborgians, Presbyterians, Methodists, evangelicals, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and non-denominational Christians and even those who had given up on institutional expressions of the faith. Some infants were baptized; others were “dedicated”. What was “communion” for some was “Eucharist” for others. Some Resident Partners attended other churches in town while Koinonia’s own worship on Sunday evenings was seen as their primary “church” for many others. Speakers from outside the community were invited a couple of times each year to provide inspiration and challenge. Most notable for me were visits from Walter Brueggemann, Daniel Berrigan, Murphy Davis, and Joyce Hollyday.  

I am so grateful that I had the opportunity for much spiritual formation and grounding as a result of my years at Koinonia. It led to relationships with other intentional communities (Sojourners, The Open Door, Jubilee Partners, Reba Place Fellowship, New Jerusalem Community, …) and their members and, through our mailing list, thousands of visitors. The 1970s and 80s were a time of social and theological ferment and Koinonia was a helpful place not only for me but also a place to start a family and begin to raise my sons in an atmosphere of love and acceptance. Even though we lived almost a thousand miles from my family of origin, my sons had “aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and other relatives” among the other community members who served as surrogates for relatives in Pennsylvania. Community became family for us, making it very difficult for us to leave after 16 and 20 years respectively living at Koinonia.

If there are just a few things to mention about my experience in intentional Christian community between Plains and Americus, GA it wouldn’t be having a Presidential campaign anchored from the nearby town, nor the Ku Klux Klan gathering to protest and embarrass the new President a year later. Our visits over 10 years to a man on Death Row stand out as well as helping in the starting of three new communities: Jubilee Partners, The Open Door Community, and New Hope Hospitality House. The community support for Peace Pentecost, the White Train campaign, and anti-Trident submarine protests was impressive. Joining with the Jubilee Partners community working with their Año de Jubileo program to help Central American refugees gain asylum in Canada and Open Door friends with assistance and advocacy on behalf of the homeless and imprisoned was very satisfying for me. I was very moved by community solidarity when I was jailed for six months after the Pantex witness plus weeks in jail in DC, Atlanta, and Montezuma. Participating in vigils during state executions or in witness against the U.S. Army School of the Americas drew many of us together in prayer and protest. Witnessing the birth and growth of Habitat For Humanity. The list could go on and on.

But what I remember most deeply are the words of Clarence Jordan: “Faith is not believing in spite of the evidence but rather acting in scorn of the consequences.” And “Fear is the polio of the soul which keeps us from walking by faith.” Those words, embodied by years of faithful witness while embattled by racists and other opponents, continue to instruct and inspire me more than 40 years after Clarence joined the great cloud of witnesses. My friends Ladon, Will and Margaret, George and Clara, Ray and Lois, George Worth, Art and Ruth, Miss Gussie, Ludrelle and Mamie, Correnza and Mazie, Jophie, Mary Ruth, Don, and many others have also crossed over but continue to live in my memory. The fertile soil of what was once 1400 acres of red Georgia clay may have grown peanuts, corn, soybeans, grapes, and peaches – but it also helped develop disciples, people choosing to embrace the nonviolent servanthood of Jesus of Nazareth and trying to make and be a difference in our world.

Remembering Millard: My Reminiscing About Millard Fuller

Remembering Millard - My Reminiscing About Millard Fuller by Steve Clemens. March 20, 2009

Even the name was memorable; how many of you know a person named “Millard”? Millard Fillmore, an obscure US President, comes to mind. But for those who encountered Millard Fuller, the first name sufficed to know to whom you were referring.

One of my first recollections of Millard Fuller occurred with a double dose of “Millards” – boy, that jury must have been confused, facing not one, but two Millards. Millard Farmer and Millard Fuller teamed up to defend five black teenagers accused of murder in the south Georgia town of Dawson in 1977. Fuller did the jury selection and planned to do the closing argument; Farmer handled the evidentiary part of the trial. It was more than 30 years ago so my memory isn’t exact; I just have broad impressions today.

What I remember of the man from that encounter as well as numerous others over our 34 year friendship was his ability to look you in the eye and challenge you to do more, to be more, certainly to give more. He called you to act on your beliefs, not just sit back in pious contemplation of them. “What good is your faith if it doesn’t have works/deeds to back it up?” is the way the Epistle of James, the reputed brother of Jesus, puts it in the Christian scriptures. It seemed to be the life force of Millard Fuller.

Oh, I’d heard the story of “Millard and Linda” soon after I arrived at Koinonia Partners in the fall of 1975. Millard and Linda Fuller and their kids had already left for Zaire (Congo) in Africa several years before. But the story still lingered in mythological tones: he made a million dollars before he was 30 – and then gave it all away and moved to Koinonia to learn at the feet of his new mentor, Clarence Jordan. Together, these two giant personalities came up with the vision of Partnership Housing “to provide decent, affordable housing for God’s people in need.” In 1968, the first house for Bo and Emma Johnson’s family was under construction and finished just before Clarence’s untimely death in 1969. Little did we know his collaborator in that effort would also succumb to the grave before his three score and twenty.

The Millard Fuller I knew wasn’t perfect; he was over-sized, he was packed full of zeal and energy, but he was fallible and had his foibles. One can concentrate on those weaknesses of the flesh or the abuses of power as a way to dismiss him and his message – but it is often a defense mechanism on our part to try to avoid his clarion call to do more, to be more, to give more. He could have had a celebrated and successful career as a lawyer. His presence in the courtroom was a sight to behold and experience. His gifts of word and presence made him a powerful advocate and a force to be reckoned with. I should know; Millard was directly responsible for getting me out of jail once, long after he had given up his legal practice to concentrate on his Habitat work. But this story is about him, not me.

Both Millards, Farmer and Fuller, persuaded that south Georgia court not only to forgo the death penalty but to drop the fraudulent, racist charges and freed the young men. It was a significant blow to Jim Crow and the rampant racism routinely dominating the “justice” system of south Georgia. With President Jimmy Carter’s home not far away in the next county, this case drew some national attention and Millard could have used that spotlight to further his legal practice. But Millard used his legal practice primarily to pay the bills while he nurtured his fledgling Habitat For Humanity program through its early years.

Millard and Linda had returned to Koinonia after their years in Zaire convinced that this radical idea that houses could be built by volunteers and sold for no profit and with no interest on a mortgage so that the poor could have a simple, decent place to live. The model had continued at Koinonia while they were in Africa. Several dozens of homes were owned by families next to Bo and Emma’s and more were being built as the Fullers moved back into the duplex house owned by this small, Christian community founded in 1942 in rural Georgia amongst the gnats, fire ants, and racists known to populate the region.

Millard’s style of leadership and personality had caused some tension in the intentional community that was trying to re-establish itself after a radical restructuring in 1968. Part of the Fuller’s decision to work in Africa arose from those tensions and their return to Koinonia was with the understanding that this new venture (which didn’t even have the name Habitat yet) would become a separate identity - lest this new project, an expanded housing ministry, completely overtake the community life and work in 1976.

The Fullers used Koinonia’s connections and mailing list (as well as some of it’s present community members) to form its own identity and moved it’s operations into the nearby town of Americus after its first year. Even with the seven-mile distance separating us, Koinonia and Habitat retained a close relationship during those formative years and we saw the Fullers often. We were pleased when they attended our wedding in 1978 and not terribly surprised that they brought along a couple of Habitat volunteers we had never met along with them.

Of course, if you knew Millard, the phase, “You’all come now, you hear?” fit him to a T. Millard was always inviting more to come. It was certainly fitting to have Tony Campolo give the sermon/eulogy at the Memorial Service for Millard held in Atlanta last week. Tony always talks about how the Kingdom of God is a party! – and no one better exudes that spirit quite like Millard. He was always inviting more people to join in, much to the chagrin of any staffers or community members who were responsible for the planning of meals, bed-space, or other logistics. Millard truly understood the concept of God’s abundance and he did his best to incarnate that in his life and activities.

I couldn’t begin to estimate the number of speeches Millard must have given in his 74 years – especially during those last 33 years of Habitat For Humanity and The Fuller Center For Housing. He seemed indefatigable, bounding with his loping steps to a podium or into a room of people gathered to be engaged by his warmth, enthusiasm, and energy. I imagine his tall, lanky frame to be similar to our national hero, Abe Lincoln, unless you were still holding on to the dreams of the Confederacy.

Millard was born in the South and lived virtually his whole life in the Deep South but he was no son of the Confederacy. Millard always tried to find ways to include everybody. Although a deeply committed Christian, he made it clear that his “theology of the hammer” meant that everyone was to be enlisted – no matter your race, color, creed, gender, or nationality - no one was excused from the call to justice and compassion. His own faith drove him in his work but you didn’t have to share it to join him. And his enthusiasm was contagious.

President Jimmy Carter understood how infectious that energy was and he jokingly said at the Memorial service that probably all of us in that crowded Ebeneezer Baptist Church sanctuary had a hard time resisting Millard’s call to join him. Carter laughed as he recounted his initial meeting with Millard and Linda; Jimmy said he and Rosslyn had decided ahead of time that they would politely listen to Millard’s pitch and then nicely turn him down because they already had too much on their plates after his failure to be re-elected to a second term. “Millard came with a list of 32 items he wanted me to do, all written up on one of his yellow, legal pads. And before he left, I had agreed to all 32 of them”, Carter said. We all laughed because we too had had been challenged and cajoled by Millard Fuller, many of us not just one time!

Some of the past years have been bittersweet. Millard and Linda battled with the increasing corporatization of Habitat and its new leadership. It led to a messy public parting of the ways with Millard refusing to go quietly into retirement. Certainly he had earned a quiet retirement from all the millions of miles traveled in a ministry that had housed close to 1 ½ million people.

But Millard refused to quit. He and Linda started the Fuller Center For Housing to try to ensure the early principles of no-profit, no-interest remained at the heart of their work. It’s not that Millard didn’t take or seek corporate money and help – he just didn’t want the mentality of “the suits” to take it over. He knew down deep that the social and economic systems that caused the housing crisis in the first place couldn’t be trusted to solve the problem. He knew it would have to take a radical new approach that some would mislabel and confuse with “communism” or “socialism” -- no-profit and no-interest when it comes to relationship with “the poor”. This wasn’t out of some dreamed up ideology but because it was what God wanted/demanded in the Christian scriptures that Millard read and frequently quoted.

For me, the genius of Habitat was in getting the staff and volunteers to work alongside the families and developing a personal relationship with poor folk. Those personal relationships, in turn, would change us as we began to see poor folk as no longer “the other” but instead recognize our common humanity. As Habitat and its affiliates grew bigger and bigger, it became harder to keep a bureaucratic structure from overwhelming the original “Personalism”. In my own work with a Habitat affiliate, I longed for the days of that smaller, personal encounter with the volunteers and the families working together.

Part of the problem – and not just a small part- was Millard’s insistence of housing more and more families; when you set a goal of “eliminating poverty housing”, more and bigger sometimes gets into the way of relational styles. Efficiencies and economies of scale often trump what I call the Catholic Worker style of Personalism. But again, that is more my agenda than Millard’s. He was focused on the mission, the need. He left many of the details of how to do it to those he had inspired. Yet, often he didn’t. I remember hearing staffers at Habitat complain about “Millard’s meddling” in some of the everyday operations instead of just being “the visionary”.

Millard wasn’t an easy man to work with. His boundless energy, while initially empowering, also came with high expectations. Many staffers felt like they had “married Habitat” in that the commitment of time and energy expended and expected often conflicted with home and community life outside of Habitat. Some people felt consumed in the process; others could engage for several years and then had to pull back, lest they too be consumed. Did Millard ever really have much “down time”? Could he ever turn off that same drive that made him a millionaire but was now re-directed not toward making money and accumulating worldly goods but rather in service to others?

One thing that sticks in my mind from the moving Memorial Service last week: I never even knew Millard had a brother –or if I knew, I had forgotten. Doyle, Millard’s brother was close to a dozen years younger and doesn’t look too much like his older brother. But he movingly told how Millard was his “hero” while growing up. How Millard had carried him up a hill when Doyle’s legs were crippled. How he was such a graceful yet powerful baseball pitcher. How he made his million dollars. Hero. Hero. Hero.

But when he decided to “give it all away”, “I thought he was crazy”, Doyle continued. And then he announces he’s going to house the world! Crazy!. Doyle reminded us that Millard had his flaws. But he continued, “You don’t have to be perfect to do perfect things”. All of us in the room knew what Millard (and those he inspired) had accomplished in his life. All those families living in decent, affordable shelter around the world experienced that “perfect work”. And for that life, that witness, that modeling, I’m eternally grateful for my friendship with Millard Fuller.