Breaking With the "Quiet-in-the-Land" Stereotype of Mennonites

Breaking With “The Quiet-in-the-Land” Stereotype of Mennonites-

Becketwood Midweek Gathering Talk by Steve Clemens, 1/31/24

 

People who followed a former Roman Catholic priest, Menno Simons, and were part of the movement referred to as the Radical Reformation were called Mennonites. In the early 1500s as Martin Luther and John Calvin and others were breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church, a group of mostly young “radicals” felt the Protestant Reformation did not go far enough in several ways: these groups often called for a separation of church and state, embraced nonviolence rather than using the sword to coerce religious “conversion”, stressed communal living or shared resources, often called for more Biblical literacy, rejected separateness of priests/clergy by stressing the “priesthood of all believers”, and often encouraged personal piety and sober living. A group of these radicals were called a slur- “Anabaptist” meaning re-baptizer - since they rejected infant baptism, insisting that only as an adult could one make a confession of faith.  They were routinely persecuted as heretics by both Catholic and Protestant leaders and governments. Infant baptism was the way one became a member of that “state”. These small movements were identified by nicknames - often after so-called “leaders” of the groups Mennonites after Menno Simons; Amish after Jacob Ammon; Hutterites after Jacob Hutter; Schwenkfelders after Caspar Schwenkfeld von Ossig; Swedenborgians after Emmanuel Swedenborg; Moravians after the area of Europe from which they fled. Because they were considered by church and governmental leaders to be heretics, they often could not own land and were subjected to persecution and torture; many, in fact, were martyred for their faith.

 

Some of these groups found a new home in the early 1700s in the colony given to William Penn by the King of England as a reward for Penn’s father, an Admiral who saved the king’s life and his throne. Admiral Penn’s son, a convert to the Quaker movement in England, was determined to populate his colony with others who embraced a separation of church and state and did not want to “use the sword” nor pay taxes for the purpose of supporting an army or armed militia. Mennonites and others of these small movements were offered land and religious freedom in Penn’s colony. We can discuss later how this movement gradually and then more rapidly displaced the Lenape/Delaware indigenous peoples from their homelands – mostly through purchases of land but also by deceit rather than armed force.

 

Mennonites are considered one of three “Peace churches” along with the Quakers and the Church of the Brethren because traditionally their members refused military service and were recognized as conscientious objectors. Mennonites stressed that they were “citizens of the Kingdom of God” rather than claiming to be citizens of whatever governing state they lived in. They often said the state “rules by the sword” and it made no sense to them to vote because the President was also the “commander-in-chief” and, as pacifists, they would not weigh in on who might be a better leader of the military. Because of their refusal to carry weapons and their abstaining from voting and, instead, sticking to farming or other “useful” trades, they were often known as “the-Quiet-in-the-Land”. Some governments, including Catherine The Great, and Canada in the late 1800s, sought out Mennonites to settle there because they were good farmers and would not rise up in arms against the government.

 

My ancestors were recruited by William Penn to come to his colony and arrived in 1709, settling 30 miles north of Philadelphia. The Clemens families have remained on this land within 10 miles of that original homestead. My parents were raised in the Franconia Conference, one of the more conservative of several Mennonite conferences in eastern Pennsylvania. Despite his upbringing, my father went into the Army during WWII rather than declaring to be a conscientious objector. My parents had been “liberalized” by the Sunday School movement – rebelling against Mennonite traits such as hair coverings for women, no jewelry, no musical instruments in worship - but also insisting that they should proselytize others rather than just keeping their faith as a private matter between themselves, their church, and God.  They helped found a new congregation which was called Mennonite but never affiliated with any of the Mennonite conferences. I was baptized a Mennonite at age 12 but most of my Christian formation was in the form of evangelical theology.

 

I went to a Christian college prep school where I was exposed to other “Christians” – some were even Democrats! At the height of the US War on Vietnam, I entered Wheaton College in 1968 and I was enrolled in mandatory Army ROTC. A month and a half later, I turned 18 and registered for the draft as a Conscientious Objector. The next year I started participating in Draft Board demonstrations led by Maryknoll priest from the Catholic seminary in Glen Ellyn, IL, the town next to Wheaton.

 

 While at Wheaton I learned about the Anabaptists in a Church History course- a history mostly ignored in my childhood.

 

After graduating from Wheaton, I learned that a farmer-neighbor was now head of the Mennonite Central Committee’s Peace Section during the Vietnam era. I had been reading John Howard Yoder, Art Gish, William Stringfellow, and the Post-American which later became Sojourners Magazine and decided after a year of Grad School to embark on a year or two of “voluntary service” since my lottery number was too high to be drafted. Walton Hackman, that former neighbor, recommended that I consider spending a summer in rural Mississippi. Living in a poor Black neighborhood in the rural Mississippi Delta was an eye-opening, formative experience! Then I followed that with a year placement in Washington, DC at the Mennonite office on Capitol Hill.

 

In the fall 1974, enroute to my Washington, DC assignment, I met a man named Ladon Sheats at our Voluntary Service orientation. He showed a multimedia Values Presentation – contrasting values of God’s Kingdom vs US Culture. Using photos of current and historical events, advertising, music, and text like “I Am a Rock, I Am an Island” by Simon and Garfield and songs by the Moody Blues and Cat Stevens - he contrasted the values of interdependence vs independence; community and cooperation vs competition; brotherhood/sisterhood vs racial separation; simple living vs materialism; nonviolence vs militarism. (I clearly remember hearing the refrain of Cat Stevens’ song, Father and Son: “It’s not time to make a change, just relax and take it easy; You’re still young, that’s your fault, there’s so much you have to know …”). This presentation told us we must “CHOOSE which values you will live by.” It was a clear call for me to live out the values of my faith rather than being co-opted by the culture.  

 

My voluntary service assignment in DC was at the Mennonite Central Committee’s Peace Section Washington Office. It was designed to inform and educate Mennonite congregations around the country about national and foreign policy issues from a perspective of Christian discipleship. We focused on world hunger, the Vietnam War, the death penalty, food stamps and supplemental programs for the poor, criminal justice, US relations with other nations, civil and human rights, nuclear weapons, … It was a small 3-person office, but we networked and worked with other Protestant and Catholic church agencies; and Quaker, and Jewish advocacy groups as well. I attended many Congressional hearings, read legislative briefs, and attended meetings and conferences where these issues were discussed. We took Mennonite students on tours of the Pentagon, the CIA, and Congress.  

 

That year also saw me joining a weekly Bible Study group with former Catholic priest, Philip Berrigan and former nun, Liz McAlister where we discussed Biblical scripture in the context of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book, The Prophets. Discussions with that study group led me to my first arrest - at the White House – in the last major demonstration against Vietnam War in March 1975, a month before the Saigon government fell. 61 of us were arrested including Dick Gregory, Jim Peck, Dan Berrigan, Liz McAlister. During the six hours in jail awaiting processing, I was meeting Ladon Sheats again -this time behind bars. He told me more about the intentional community he was part of in southwest Georgia and suggested I consider moving there after this year of service. I applied to become a volunteer there starting in September 1975, just before I turned 25.

 

Koinonia, the name of that intentional Christian Community, was founded in 1942 to be a “demonstration plot”- a group trying to live out the ideas of Jesus and the values of the Kingdom of God. One of the four adult founders was a Southern Baptist farmer who went to seminary and became a Greek scholar, Clarence Jordan. He became well-known for his “CottonPatch” translations of the Christian New Testament and as a powerful, yet humorous, preacher.

 

To become a member of that community, one was expected to embrace 5 values : Nonviolence, racial reconciliation, service to others, simple/compassionate living, and economic sharing - all under the umbrella of following the Way of Jesus. The community was ecumenical, lay-led, with people working and worshipping together. An active farm (raising pecans, peanuts, grapes, peaches, soybeans, and corn), an organic garden, an early childhood nursery and education center, and an affordable housing ministry were areas where we worked. A mail order business selling pecans, fruitcake, and candy was a significant source of revenue for the community as well as a source of jobs for local residents. Because of its embrace of racial reconciliation – with Blacks and whites working side-by-side, it became a target for the Klu Klux Klan and many other racist southern whites at least until the late 1970s.

 

Koinonia was the birthplace of the Habitat For Humanity movement which was modeled after the community’s housing ministry. A School of Radical Discipleship formed basis of Volunteer Program where people came for 3-4 months of work, study, and reflection. After completing those initial sessions and volunteering for at least a year, one could apply for Resident Partnership - the term used for members of the community. As a Partner, one was to practice divesture -you could not own your own house or car and were expected to live off a small monthly living and food allowance. The community provided housing, shared transportation, and a common noon meal. Our practice was one of a “common purse”. The joke was said that “we hold all things in common except our spouses!” The membership commitment was into the indefinite future – until one felt called elsewhere or died. The Partnership varied between 20 and 35 adult members plus 8-20 volunteers at any given time while I lived there from 1975-1990. Especially in the 1950s through the early 1970s, many Mennonite young men came there to do “alternative service” as conscientious objectors.

 

With nonviolence as a central tenant of Koinonia’s values, and with the War on Vietnam abruptly ending several months before, the community wrestled with creative ways to express our peacemaking values in the broader society. One area of major concern was the proliferation and threatened use of nuclear weapons. Even though our neighbor, Jimmy Carter, recently became the President, a group of us from the community drove 20 hours north to Groton, CT to protest the christening by Rosalynn Carter of the USS Georgia, a new US Trident ballistic missile nuclear submarine.   

 

In March of 1980 we heard word of Archbishop Oscar Romero’s assassination while saying mass in San Salvador; later in December of that year, 4 US Catholic nuns were raped and murdered there as well. A few years later we learned that the soldiers involved in these atrocities were trained at the notorious School of the Americas run by the US Army.

 

In 1981 Ladon Sheats invited me to join him as part of a non-violent prayer pilgrimage to Pantex, the final assembly plant for all US nuclear weapons located outside Amarillo, TX. Our intent was to go to a place of great spiritual darkness with an act of public prayer to shine a light on the evil we perceived there. That style of witness was foreshadowed by Fredrick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King who said they were “praying with our feet”. It was there I met Fr. Larry Rosebaugh, an Oblate priest from Wisconsin as one of the 6 of us who scaled the 12’ fence surrounding the nuclear weapons plant. After spending six months in jail and federal prison for that witness, I returned to Koinonia.

 

In 1983 we learned that the US Army was training soldiers from El Salvador at Ft. Benning, GA – an hour and ½ west of Koinonia. Groups from Atlanta scheduled a march and protest, but it quickly turned into an “us vs them” style of chanting: “2,4,6,8, it’s the junta that we hate”; “Alexander Haig, how many nuns did you kill today?” Some of us from Koinonia didn’t feel the chants were an appropriate way to protest so we started a Quaker-style candlelight prayer vigil on Thursday nights which we held weekly for the next 5 or so years before it became a monthly vigil.

 

In August 1983, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest, and Fr. Larry Rosebaugh came to Koinonia to share with us their plans to nonviolently protest the training of Salvadoran troops at the base. We invited them to join our weekly vigil. After having been arrested 4 times earlier in the week for various protests on the base and being removed from the base after arrest and given a “Ban-and-bar” letter, Roy and Larry invited our vigil group to join them in what became their final protest before they were hauled off to jail. We planted a cross on the Base Commander’s front lawn. I joined them with 3 others from our weekly vigil group and then was held under arrest for 6 hours before being released with a lifetime Ban and Bar letter. Roy ended up getting 18 months in prison, Larry got 1 year in prison.

 

After our family moved to MN in 1990 for a sabbatical year, Father Roy founded the School Of the Americas Watch which began an annual vigil in November held for more than 25 years at the main gate to Ft. Benning. It started as a prayerful fast outside the main gates with a handful of Veterans For Peace. The annual vigil grew in size every year, from 8 to more than 20,000. Actor Martin Sheen, singer Pete Seeger, and other “celebrities” came to protest this “school” which trained Central and South American soldiers in what was euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques”, “counter-insurgency”, and assassination. Especially after the revelations of the torture conducted by US troops at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, large crowds started to “connect-the-dots” to what the SOA had been teaching for many years. So, in 2005, I decided it was time again to risk arrest and prison with another prayerful protest. I expected a 6-month prison sentence but ended up with only 3 months due to a technicality. But those stories can wait for another time.

 

My parents had warned me about Roman Catholics as I was growing up – “Don’t ever date a Catholic because you might fall in love and the Bible says, ‘Do not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever’.” How ironic that many of my closest friends (and fellow convicts) are Catholic nuns, priests, and former priests who married nuns! I’ve also learned that being “quiet” in the face of violence and injustice can be easily construed as being complicit or acquiescing. As Dr. ML King said, “Never allow it to be said that you are silent overlookers, detached spectators, but that you are involved participants in the struggle to make justice a reality.” Being “The-Quiet-In -The -Land” was no longer a virtue despite that rich, Mennonite heritage.

 

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.

 

 

Remarks at the Open Door Community's 25th Anniversary

Clarence Jordan, Koinonia, and The Open Door Community

Remarks by Steve Clemens, July 16, 2006 at 25^th Anniversary of Open Door

Clarence’s Biography

Clarence Jordan was born in 1912 into a fairly-prominent, well-to-do, white Southern family in Talbotton, GA. His brother went on to serve on the Supreme Court of Georgia and his nephew, Hamilton Jordan served as Chief of Staff for President Carter.  So Clarence came from this good Georgia stock and somehow something changed in him. In The Cotton Patch Evidence, which is a biography of both the Koinonia Community and of Clarence, Dallas Lee talks about an experience Clarence had when he was twelve. He recalled singing “Love Lifted Me” at the local Baptist Church on Sunday and when he went home at night, his house was only a block or so away from the county jail. And he heard the screams at night coming from the man pulled on “the stretcher”, a rack with a pulley and a chain, stretching the man out who was then beaten,  knowing that the Warden, the man beating the prisoner (who was most likely a black man), was a member of the choir at that Baptist Church. The dissonance between the song and the subsequent actions made a mark on the conscience of that young boy.

At age 17, Clarence enrolled in the Agriculture school at the University of Georgia. Like fellow members of the white, male, ruling class, Jordan signed up to become an officer in the ROTC unit – that’s the heritage of the old Confederacy. Just before graduating with an officer’s commission in the cavalry, while practicing shooting and stabbing at cardboard and straw dummies from his horse, Clarence realized he couldn’t keep doing this because he recalled from his Sunday School heritage the words of Jesus to love one’s enemies and that dissonance between the two caused him to resign his commission. His interest in following the call of Jesus led to a call to seminary and after graduation he enrolled in the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, KY. While there, he started doing work in the African-American community and churches in Louisville and fell in love and married Florence Krueger, a local librarian. He and Florence had four children, Jan, Jim, Eleanor, and Lenny.

Clarence also fell in love with the Greek, koine Greek, the everyday language in which most of the New Testament was written, “street Greek”. So when he was teaching or preaching, Clarence carried his Greek New Testament and he’d just translate it on the spot. He stayed on to earn his doctorate in that language, studying it to more fully understands the message of Jesus and the early group of disciples and believers. But he didn’t remain a scholar in that ivory tower because, while at seminary, he had to do some practicum assignments and he ended up working in African-American churches and started meeting people and saw their needs and had his heart changed. In 1942, during WWII, he met Martin and Mabel England, American Baptist missionaries to Burma who had returned to the U.S. because of the war. Clarence and Martin shared ideas and wondered aloud what it might be like to live in a way that replicated the life of the early church to see if it could be done – committed to nonviolence, economic sharing, and racial reconciliation. They were excited about the Sermon on the Mount. They said we gotta try this out – to see if we could live like the early church did.  After looking for a potential site to practice their ideals, they purchased a rundown farm in Sumter County in southwest Georgia, about 2 ½ hours south of Atlanta at today’s driving speeds. They purchased it “on faith”. Joyce Hollyday’s Clarence Jordan: Essential Writings contains Clarence’s re-telling:

            When we started that thing, we were supposed to pay the fellow twenty-five hundred dollars down. And Martin England, who was a missionary under the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society to Burma – he and I agreed on the common purse – we were going to pool everything – and I had the idea Martin was loaded. I don’t know why I should think that – [he] being an American Baptist missionary. But he talked “Let’s do this” and “Let’s do that,” and I said, “Yeah, let’s do,” and I thought he had the money.

            So when we finally pooled our common assets, we had fifty-seven dollars and thirteen cents – and both of us had resigned our jobs. But on the first day of November 1942, right on the button, we walked in that real estate office and put down that twenty-five hundred dollars. A fellow brought it to us, said the Lord had sent him with it. I didn’t question him, where he’d been talking to the Lord or anything like that. We’d take it right quick, before the Lord changed his mind. (Hollyday, pg. 18-19)

So Clarence and Florence, Martin and Mabel, and their kids moved to Sumter County Georgia. For the first five, six, seven, eight years, Clarence was still the “golden boy” -in demand as a preacher in the local churches. He also played the trumpet. But Clarence could talk and talk but when he “put flesh” on those words, there was a different reaction. One Sunday, in 1950, a man from India was visiting Koinonia so Florence and Clarence took him to church with them. Since the dark-skinned foreigner was a convert to Christianity because of the work of Baptist missionaries, the Jordans didn’t even think it would raise any issues with the members at Rehoboth Baptist Church, just up the road from the farm community. But the people at Rehoboth said, “We don’t allow ‘colored people’ to worship with us. The church felt the Koinonians were trying to “integrate” their fellowship and voted the next week to expel Clarence and Florence from that Baptist church. Tensions kept rising and the reason why they were kicked out of the church was not just because they brought a man of color into worship, it is because the word started getting around –“hey this guy not only talks this Christianity stuff but they’re eatin’ together at Koinonia. These black and white folk are eatin’ together and workin’ together. And that was the radical thing.” Clarence could talk all he wanted to about racial reconciliation –that didn’t matter- but when they started eatin’ together – that was the issue. And that was the crux of getting kicked out of the church

In 1956, Clarence “sponsored” two black students to attend a business college in Atlanta. When the newspaper carried the story that this white man from outside Americus was trying to “integrate” the University system, “all hell broke loose”. A grand jury was impaneled to try to close Kamp Koinonia that the community ran in the summer with black and white children participating together. The County Commissioners claimed the camp had health code violations. (From their perspective, it wasn’t “healthy” for blacks and whites to be together.)  The GA Bureau of Investigation (GBI) was asked to investigate these “race mixers” and see what “illegal” activities they might be charged with. The Klu Klux Klan held a rally and a long line of cars drove out to Koinonia to intimidate and get the Koinonians to move. Finally, they tried to disrupt the community economically.  The local produce stand run by the community was dynamited. An economic boycott was declared and Koinonians could not buy or sell anything in the entire county. Members had to travel 45 miles to Albany to purchase parts for the tractor, groceries and gas. They couldn’t purchase seed. The chickens who provided eggs to sell for community income had to be slaughtered because they couldn’t sell the eggs. And ultimately the economic boycott got to a point where they also threatened anyone who would consider selling anything to them so when one of the businesses in town talked about selling some feed to Clarence and the community, that business was dynamited as well.  People supportive of the work of the community came from all over to try to help out because the community was under seige. There were bullets flying at night. Clarence, because he was speaking around the country wrote to friends saying “help us out”. There were stories about the violence directed at the community in Life, Time, and the Saturday Evening Post. Some sent money as support. Others came. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement took her turn on “night watch” duty during Holy Week in 1957 and had a flashlight shot out of her hands. Fortunately she wasn’t killed or injured but she was frightened by the experience. When asked if she wanted a coat or a blanket because she was shaking, she replied, “that ain’t cold – that’s scared!” Shots were fired into many of the community buildings. And that was the reality Koinonia faced late in the fifties and into the early sixties. Community members were called “communists, nigger –lovers, …”  I’d encourage you to get copies of what Clarence wrote or listen to some of the tape recordings made by him during this time to hear some of these powerful stories.

Finally, the community started a mail-order business in order to survive economically because it would be protected by federal agents (post office) rather than the local “law-enforcement” people who were in collusion with the Klan. The motto for this mail-order business of selling fruitcake, pecans, and peanut products was “Help us ship the nuts out of Georgia!” Insurance companies dropped their coverage – even Lloyds of London would cover Koinonia - so Koinonia turned to the wider community asking people to pledge money, $25, $50,  as a form of “common insurance” in the event of a need arising due to the boycott and violence. Out of that also came the idea which became the idea for a “Fund for Humanity” which I’ll get to in a minute.

After the physical violence died down by ’63, people started to leave. By 1968, only the Wittkamper family and the Jordans remained. Clarence died in 1969 just as the first house under the new housing ministry was being completed. He was working on his Cotton Patch translation of the book of John when he slumped over from a heart attack. He was 57.

Clarence’s Theology and Ideas

There are several words or phrases that Clarence Jordan used that help summarize his theology. The word Koinonia is a term used in the Greek New Testament which described the early church and has been defined as “fellowship”, “community”, and refers to the practice of “holding all things in common”. So when the Jordans and the Englands wanted to begin their “experiment” they thought this term could help capture what defined the early church – that passion of holding all things in common, of loving one another, of being in fellowship with one another, and being on fire with the Holy Spirit.

As a student of agriculture, Clarence often used the term “demonstration plot” where farmers use test acreage to show the efficacy of various brands of seed, fertilizer, or farming techniques. So, you’d set up a demonstration plot and plant five rows of corn with one seed or fertilizer and then plant another five next to it with the competing brand, and so on. Clarence said what we need is a demonstration plot of God’s Kingdom. We need to see if it is going to work out. We need to try it. We need to live it. So that’s what Koinonia was to be: a demonstration plot – a visible manifestation of what the Kingdom of God, the Reign of God, might look like.

When translating the New Testament directly from the Greek while preaching, Clarence said that the word metanoia, used to describe the early part of John the Baptist’s and Jesus’ ministries as “repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” is a terrible translation because metanoia is not about “feeling sorry for getting caught doing wrong” but is much closer to the English word metamorphosis. A caterpillar doesn’t get sorry because he’s about to become butterfly, he’s getting prepared for a new way of life, his day of liberation. Metanoia/metamorphosis is changing so you can get equipped for the new order. “Change your whole way of thinking because the new order of God’s Spirit is impinging upon you!” So, the decision to follow Jesus is not one of getting sorry, being repentant, as much as it is rather getting equipped to be about the loving relationships, the sharing, and the reconciliation that Jesus is a part of.

Clarence talked a lot about faith and there are these wonderful, pithy quotes of his like “fear is the polio of the soul” Jordan often contrasted faith with fear: “Fear is the polio of the soul which keeps us from walking by faith.” “Faith is not a stubborn belief in spite of all evidence but rather a life lived in scorn of the consequences.” He said what faith is is “betting one’s life on the unseen realities”. They are still realities – they’re just not seen – and it is our job to make those realities visible by the way we live our lives.  Clarence used the phrase incarnational theology to remind us that we have to live out our beliefs in our everyday practice. Theology isn’t just an academic exercise but has to inform how we live. He talked about incarnational evangelism in that our lives speak more than our words. We give witness to what we believe by how we live our lives. We speak more with our lives than with our words, “turning our convictions into deeds.”

Clarence reminded us that the New Testament was originally written in a language that the common person could understand. For us to better understand the message of the Gospel, it needs to be translated into our time and culture – thus Clarence’s “Cotton Patch” version. He translated the texts into 20^th century Southern vernacular so local folk could relate to the stories and concepts. The New Testament was written in the everyday, common, street Greek and its not all this flowery language – it’s the language the common people would understand – and it was written in a local time and a local place so to translate it into our time and place today, we have to help people understand what the geography was like, what the relationships were like, and so in the Cotton Patch translations you find the story of the Good Samaritan was recast as a white businessman traveling from Ellaville to Albany. Now Clarence’s listeners would know there was one town between those two places – Americus. So when the businessman is robbed and beaten and left for dead on the outskirts of Americus and first a traveling evangelist and then the gospel choir director pass by the victim, the man who stops to help is a local black farmer in an old beat-up pickup truck. He helps bandage the victim and takes him to the hospital. When Jesus asks his listeners “who was the neighbor to that man?” (the “Good Samaritan”), we get, “Ooh, I don’t want to answer that question. It was the nigg … - I mean it was the colored man …” The Good Samaritan in the context of the 1950s and 1960s in the South, and today, is that poor African-American brother, is that man on Death Row, is that homeless person down the street, is that person with mental illness – that’s the Good Samaritan for us today. So that’s what Clarence helps us understand with his Cotton Patch translation.

The virgin birth for Clarence Jordan was less about whether or not Mary was sexually “pure” but the proper emphasis on the story was the idea that her offspring was “sired by God”. Clarence complained that the church too often over-emphasized the deity of Jesus, obscuring the radical concept of the humanity of God. Clarence talks about the ancient church heresy of Gnosticism – of only seeing Jesus as divine and he said the real error of the church is seeing that God has taken on humanity and as Clarence translates it, “The Word became flesh and God parked his mobile home next to ours” adding, yeah, and the black bastard drove down the property values. That’s where the Gospel comes home for Clarence.

When Clarence spoke about the resurrection, he said:

            The good news of the resurrection of Jesus is not that we shall die and go home with him, but that he has risen and comes home with us, bringing all his hungry, naked, thirsty, sick, prisoner brothers [and sisters] with him. … The proof that God raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb, but the full hearts of his transformed disciples. The crowning evidence that he lives is not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship. Not a rolled-away stone, but a carried-away church. (The Substance of Faith pg.28-29)

That’s the incarnation.

The Communities of Koinonia

The Koinonia Community was really two separate experiments. From 1942 until 1968, it was known as Koinonia Farm. Koinonia Partners was the name of the community that existed from the dissolution in 1968 until the mid-1990s. The Koinonia Farm community, designed to be a demonstration plot, had a strict policy of personal divestiture before joining. You had to give your money away – it couldn’t be given to the community. Clarence remarked that if you gave it to the community, you would either want to have a greater say in how things were run or the community would be tempted to sit around and “talk about theology all day” rather than working. “Give it away and then come join us.” Community aspects included shared meals and shared work. The common purse was the vehicle for economic sharing – you didn’t have your own possessions, you shared economically. There was an expectation of a commitment to gospel nonviolence based on Jesus’ dictum to “love your enemies.” And the term that Clarence used before many of us were educated in the late 60s by our sisters to use inclusive language, Clarence talked a lot about “brotherhood” and what he meant by that was that equality of all of us but being in relationship with each other, and for Clarence, especially that meant in the South healing that racial divide.

Although the original expression of the community in 1942 expected a life-long commitment – you were in it for the long haul- by 1968, only two families remained. So obviously, with a lifetime commitment, something changed but that was the original intent. Numerous conscientious objectors to the Korean War came because it was a safe haven for people who refused to fight or the draft could receive a respite and hospitality. People supportive of the witness for racial reconciliation during the turbulent 50s and 60s came and went. By 1968, with only two families left, Clarence asked what should we do. Clarence deemed the demonstration plot of this community a failure. Clarence had given up on community being able to happen in that time and that place and he was ready to pack his bags and head to Atlanta to finish his Cotton Patch version and continue the speaking engagements which became a regular endeavor. But, you know, Clarence’s speaking would not have been the same – because the power of Clarence’s speaking was always backed up by that demonstration plot. Even the failure of it could be said “here is a place where we’re trying it out, where we’re trying to live it out, where we’re trying to incarnate it” – you can’t talk about the incarnation if you’re not trying to do it. 

However, the group of friends Clarence called together in 1968 to help discern the future developed the idea of making Koinonia into a service organization which featured “Partnership Industries” as a way to continue to build bridges between whites and blacks in rural Sumter County Georgia. Despite the fact that the reorganization of Koinonia did not anticipate the reforming of an “intentional Christian community”, many of those who came to join this service organization in the early 70s were looking for a change and wanted to experience an alternative lifestyle, to challenge the structures of society, to deepen relationships and had been inspired by the stories of the witness of Koinonia during the late 50s and early 60s. There developed a distinction between “Resident Partners” (those who had moved to Koinonia from elsewhere to be part of this ministry) and “employees” (mostly local black folk who participated in Koinonia activities for wages but did not choose to live in community-owned buildings). Although the original design of Koinonia Partners called for all the workers to be “partners” and share in the decision-making as well as the risks (profits or loss), many of the local residents preferred to have a steady income as wage-earners rather than as “partners” in a risky business venture.

The “Partnership Industries” over the years included farming row crops and fruit and nut trees, a mail-order business with a bakery selling pecan and peanut products, fruitcake, and books and tapes of Clarence’s work, a short-lived sewing industry selling shorts and slacks, a handcrafts and pottery industry, an Early Childhood education program with a pre-school and nursery, and a housing ministry which served as the fore-runner of what became Habitat For Humanity.

The organization was designed as a hierarchical structure with a “Director” appointed by the Board of Directors and s/he made decisions affecting the industries and also decided who could stay and do what jobs. As more people arrived who were interested in “community”, this old structure needed changing. Under the leadership of Don Mosley, the Director position evolved into a “Coordinator of Activities” for business and economic decisions, a Residency Committee for determining who could stay, a Fellowship Team responsible for the worship and community life, and a Housing Committee for who lived where-type of decisions. Decentralizing the leadership and helping share the responsibilities became the new model for community.

Expectations for membership as a “Resident Partner” both echoed and differed from the expectations of the previous community venture. Instead of a life-long commitment, prospective partners would commit to remaining “into the indefinite future” (with no plans to leave within 2-3 years). It was recognized that God might “call” people elsewhere so even though departure of fellow Resident Partners was somewhat akin to divorce, it was recognized that a lifetime commitment was not realistic for this community. Instead of total financial divestiture, partners were expected to live off the resources of the community while you were there, not owning their own cars or houses. Although no Social Security-type wages would accrue to them as Resident Partners, those who came with pensions or retirement savings were not instructed to give them up. It was assumed that the community would endeavor to meet your financial and medical needs out of its “common purse”.

Besides a clear expectation that all prospective Resident Partners were committed to a general understanding of Christian discipleship, taking the life and teaching of Jesus seriously, the membership covenant also included five additional commitments:

• Nonviolence – Jesus’ call to love one’s enemies was seen as a central aspect of the Gospel.
• Economic Sharing – the common purse (as modified above) was also a central value.
• Racial Reconciliation – partners made a commitment to work on building bridges over the racial divide. Eating the common noontime meal together was an important public demonstration of this.
• Simple Living – later modified to be identified as “compassionate living” meant a desire and action to consume fewer of the world’s resources while living in relationship to others with less abundance. Instead of striving for “purity” (eating only organically, vegetarian, biking instead of driving, …), compassionate living also takes into consideration relationship building in the process.
• Service to others – although some communities are designed for self-help, contemplative or monastic orders, or other purposes, Koinonians were pledged to be engaged in service to others as a primary expression of their Christian commitment.

However, by the early 90s the community struggled with its identity. The original goal of the partnership industries was never realized as most of the people of color expressed interest in working for wages rather than getting involved in the risks and meetings that joint management would entail. Habitat for Humanity became a viable reality thus lessening the uniqueness and need for Koinonia’s housing ministry. The state of GA began to offer public kindergarten programs, making a valuable part of the KCDC (Koinonia Child Development Center) less necessary. The pottery had fallen into disuse after the primary potter left. It became more difficult to inspire new community members to get excited about marketing fruitcake and candy as part of the push for more mail order sales prior to Christmas and the dissonance between running a fall-oriented business and preparing for the advent of a radically socially-justice-oriented Messiah continued to cause tensions between “ministry” and “business” or self-sustaining endeavors. Koinonia always had great difficulty in attracting people of color to join the Resident Partnership so when the Board tried to address this failure in 1993 by ending the common purse and made all those working for Koinonia “partners”, within a few years the community had completely disappeared.

I don’t wish to end on such a negative note because despite, once again, the ideal of community ending in “failure”, the experience of participating in Intentional Christian Community at Koinonia was, for me, a time of deep spiritual formation, challenge, and inspiration for which I will be eternally grateful. One only needs to look at the level of violence and hostility directed toward them to realize how radical Clarence Jordan and the Koinonia Communities were. So I’d like to conclude with a reiteration of Clarence’s key ideas followed by my own “lessons learned” from my sixteen years in community.

Key to understanding Clarence Jordan and the Koinonia movement was taking Jesus seriously. There are four things that I wish to lift up as essential to Clarence’s ideas. Community, economic sharing, love of enemies, and, to steal Bonhoeffer’s term, the cost of discipleship.

Clarence said we have to demonstrate reconciliation by living in Community, by eating together, by working together, crossing all those lines that divide us: racial/gender/educational/generational. Whatever lines are set up, we need to cross them. We need to be reconciled and we need to demonstrate that reconciliation by eating together and working together, worshipping together. Economic sharing: for Clarence, materialism is one of the greatest sins of the American culture. By imitating the common purse of the early Christian movement, Clarence called for a radical disjuncture with the individualistic capitalistic ethic. Setting up the Fund For Humanity, setting up alternative structures, no-interest loans. Clarence even had a “cow-lending “library” where if your cow went dry, you borrowed another cow and you swap them out.  Also, peacemaking, love of one’s enemies: Peacemaking is essential to the character of God so it must be a characteristic of God’s people. It is a critical component of discipleship – especially in a nation which threatens the entire creation with its militarism and “the bomb”. Koinonia’s main contribution in the arena of nonviolence was in response to the attacks and constant threats it faced in the late 50s and early 60s. In the post-boycott era, when there was less physical hostility – there was still psychic hostility – it was some of Clarence’s disciples, especially Ladon Sheats and others took this discipleship commitment to nonviolence to a new level – nonviolent resistance to war and the arms race. Ladon helped mentor me and helped mentor many of us in this area.

I don’t think Clarence was ever thrown in jail for “protesting” (although he may have been jailed briefly while being harassed by the local “law enforcement” [sic] officials – he never deliberately went to jail like Dr. King did in protest - BUT he certainly inspired a lot of others to take those risks. In one of his sermons on “The Mind of Christ in the Racial Conflict”, Clarence questioned the process most churches use in selecting a pastor.

            Actually, we’re looking more for an octopus from the seminary than we are a prophet from God. I think we ought to begin to investigate not so much how many years [one} has spent in the seminary diddling around on a doctoral thesis, but how many years s/he’s spent in jail, because somehow or other a [person] is better able to get up a sermon in a cell than in a church study. (Substance of Faith pg. 111)

And, taking a page from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Clarence always stressed the cost of discipleship. Following Jesus will cost you everything, but in the process, you gain a whole new “family”. Yes, you will get phone calls at 2AM threatening your life, getting threats, you will be visited and questioned by the FBI. Actually, in my case, it was usually Christine who answered the phone at 2 or 3 AM when I received death threats prior to blocking the nuclear train in 1985 when it came through Montezuma, GA. When we took the full-scale model of the electric chair to the Courthouse lawn in Americus every time the State of Georgia scheduled an execution, we would get phone calls at night or people would drive by and yell at you or spit at you. When the FBI came to inquire about why I refused to cooperate for the renewed military draft registration, I politely refused to answer their questions in front of the Koinonia volunteers working with me in the fall of 1982. In Clarence’s time he said if you haven’t been called a communist, you aren’t worth your salt. And so Clarence would say to us today, if you haven’t been called a terrorist, if you haven’t been called a bum, if you haven’t been called an agitator, you probably ain’t worth your salt.

In the community in Minneapolis where I live now, where we have turn-over, you always end up “reinventing the wheel”. We now recognize that people will always “come and go” so we’ve developed what we call a “turn-over file” so the next person who does this job or task has notes to follow how it was done before. So Neela can create such a file for Anniversary celebrations at Open Door so when you celebrate your 30^th or 50^th Anniversaries, you can see what Neela did to organize this weekend. Well, here is my “turn-over file” for my years at Koinonia – my “lessons learned” that I’ll pass on for what its worth. Not in any particular order, just some thoughts that came to me about my sixteen years in the south Georgia “commune”.

Community is the best way to end the schizophrenia in many of our lives – we have to learn to work and worship with the same group of people – and that’s the key to community is when you worship with the same group of people you work with, you build that bond. Lessons learned (in no particular order- these are the thoughts that came to me this morning): 

1. Leadership in community must be named, recognized, and held accountable. Every group will have leaders but those who aren’t named and recognized can’t be held accountable.
2. One must deal with the issue of “leaving community”. In our mobile culture, people come and go but in intentional community this is a hard reality which causes feelings of betrayal, abandonment, failure. And the longer one stays before leaving makes it feel something akin to divorce. When Christine and I left Koinonia – she after 20 years and me after 16 years – we we’re ready for the grieving process that we underwent and that the remaining community underwent. Clarence said it is a demonstration plot. Gandhi said it’s an “experiment with truth”. We have to give ourselves to these experiments and sometimes we are going to fail. Let’s confess it and move on. A community must learn to creatively deal with these transitions. Ritual might be helpful in this process just like when members join.
3. It is essential to resolve conflict within the community in positive ways instead of avoiding it and hoping it disappears.
4. The community focus and energy must be kept on the mission or else petty differences will work at your destruction. And that’s one of the bitter lessons for us at Koinonia is when we lost the focus. When Habitat started gaining credibility in the mid-80s and our housing ministry was no longer “cutting edge”. When the state kindergarten program made the KCDC less essential. When we tried to find people to “market” – encouraging people to buy more fruitcake and candy products to sustain us economically, we lost our values. And, in so doing, when you lose your sense of mission, then you focus on discussions over owning pets, how much or little (if any) meat to serve at common meals, whether co-ed use of the sauna is OK, … and those petty differences surface and it will only accentuate your differences rather than draw you together.
5. Vision and renewal are essential for the long haul. You have to have people calling out that vision, that renewal. That is where the Bible Study, the inspirational teaching, the mentoring, the pastoral help, all is essential for community. Where there is no vision for the future, the community flounders and dies or becomes irrelevant.
6. Stewardship of common property is difficult in an ownership society. Just because someone has a PhD in an esoteric academic field does not mean one is exempt from checking the oil level on the community-owned car. It’s hard because we are so used to private ownership. When it is common ownership, who takes responsibility for the maintenance, the upkeep? Cleaning the toilets – that’s the common property. 
7. Intergenerational aspects of community life are both a challenge and a blessing. One of the real blessings of living at Koinonia was being able to raise your kids with alternate grandparents, alternate aunts and uncles, peers – having that inter-generational aspect was such a gift. But, “We tried that - and it didn’t work” coming from a veteran of community (especially a founder) can kill a conversation with newer members. Elders in a community can be a wonderful blessing but can also be a drag on new endeavors.
8. Be open to change and growth. Gandhi called his life “experiments with Truth”. Beware of complacency and living on the laurels of the community’s past (now mythological) history. Remember, if you are faithful to the Gospel, you will be attacked. The Domination System, the system that runs the powers today, is always threatened by that faithful response to the Gospel. You will be attacked. If all speak well of you, you must not be clear enough about your collective discipleship.

Koinonia gave tangible evidence to the Open Door Community in its founding that intentional Christian community with economic sharing was possible. The Open Door, in exchange, continued to remind Koinonia not to get too comfortable or complacent. I think the relationship between these two communities was one of symbiosis, of giving and receiving. Together, we enabled each other to be more fully representative of the Body of Christ. For that I give thanks to God for you all and celebrate with you your 25 years of struggle and joy.