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.

 

A Forty-Year Crime Spree by Steve Clemens

Near the end of March marked the 40^th anniversary of my first arrest beginning a life of crime that has averaged about an arrest per year – or arrest-able actions. Truth be told, it actually began three years earlier when I burned my Selective Service Registration Card after one of Nixon’s speeches and mailed the ashes back to my local Draft Board. I had registered as a Conscientious Objector when I turned age 18 in the fall of 1968 but then my lottery number was 254 when the military draft switched to that system in the government’s attempt to lessen the growing anti-Vietnam War protests. 

Despite the likelihood that my Draft Board would never be sending me an induction notice given my relatively “safe” lottery number and the withdrawal of combat troops from South Vietnam so, after I graduated from college and losing that “educational deferment”, I decided to do my “alternative service” by volunteering with the Mennonite Central Committee, first in rural Mississippi and then in Washington, DC. I arrived in the nation’s capitol city just a few weeks after President Nixon resigned in disgrace following the exposure of the Watergate scandals.

I soon was invited to join a Monday evening Bible study group at the Community For Creative NonViolence (CCNV) led by Phil Berrigan and Liz McAlister. We used Abraham Joshua Heschel’s provocative book, The Prophets, as a jumping-off point for our discussions on how we as Christians could embody the Gospel for our own times. The end of January 1975 found me helping as volunteer staff for “The National Assembly To Save The Peace Agreements” with thousands gathering to hear anti-war speakers and listen to Joan Baez and other musicians who arrived for the rally.

In February I joined my housemate John Swarr in going to the White House tour entrance and reading aloud a copy of the Paris Peace Accords to those awaiting entrance to the President’s home and office – highlighting the ways our government was violating the agreements we has signed. When threatened with arrest if we didn’t leave after being there for more than an hour, we both left – not ready (yet) to cross that line of deliberate civil disobedience. As our Monday night group processed our experiences, the radical Catholic couple from Jonah House – especially Liz – were gently urging me to consider risking arrest as a next step in my journey as a Christian peacemaker.

President Gerald Ford was asking Congress for more funds to support the flagging efforts of the South Vietnamese troops who had replaced the American soldiers under Nixon’s “Vietnamization” of the war. At the same time attempting to quell anti-war protests, he had also proposed what we called a “punitive clemency” program stating that draft resisters who had gone to jail or fled to Canada or other countries or had gone “underground” could have their rights restored and criminal records amended if they returned, surrendered to authorities, and completed two additional years of some approved community service. This “offer” was seen by many of us opposed to the war as a continued justification for what we felt was not only illegal but also counter-productive. Someone suggested we should respond to the President personally.

Little did we know that this proposed act of civil disobedience would be the last large arrest before the Saigon regime fell to the North Vietnamese and NLF troops the next month. The plan for the action was simple: a group of us would gather for the daily tour of the White House and once inside, we would gather on the lawn of the building and refuse to leave until we were granted a meeting with President Ford. I carried with me a typed letter to the President outlining why I was participating. Many of those joining the group had years if not decades of nonviolent arrests and expected that we would be given a warning to leave prior to arrest. Those not planning on going to jail that day should leave at that time recognizing that those remaining would likely be handcuffed and hauled to jail. I’m not sure any of us expected the President to meet with us.

There were 62 arrested that March 1975 afternoon, the largest mass arrest at the White House to that date. Human Rights activist Dick Gregory, Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan, former-nun Elizabeth McAlister, Ladon Sheats, and many others became my co-defendants that day. What a group to serve as mentors for a first arrest! It took several hours for the arrests and to be transported to the jail. As we were being booked, the elderly gentleman processed in front of me told the arresting officer his name and “occupation” when asked. He responded, “James Peck, war resister”. I hadn’t met him before but I knew well his steadfast commitment to justice and nonviolence when he was savagely beaten during the Freedom Rides in the Civil Rights struggle in the South as well as his opposition to nuclear weapons testing and drills in the 50s. It was an honor and privilege to be booked with an American hero!

Yes, I was nervous that day. Other than a parking ticket while in college, I prided myself in being a law-abiding, conscientious citizen. To not “obey” a police officer or Secret Service officer went against everything I was taught – and the decision to do so did not come easily. I was greatly relieved to discover that we were being “released on our own recognizance” (ROR) after being booked, photographed, and fingerprinted. I felt proud that I survived the close to 6-hour ordeal and especially grateful for my companions.

It wasn’t until our debriefing time the following Monday evening during our regular Bible study that I discovered that not all of us were released: apparently 3 of the group remained in jail because they felt that if they weren’t white and well-educated with jobs they wouldn’t have been offered ROR. They chose to act in solidarity with the poor black men who so frequently populated those DC jails. Boy did I have a lot to learn – I never even considered not acting on my privilege!

Liz delivered her first child before our trial and was nursing infant Frida Berrigan in the courtroom. I clearly remember her standing up in that courtroom with her newborn resister and telling the Judge she was compelled to act on behalf of the future generations. (That mother’s milk –and example - has obviously nurtured Frida’s exemplary activism for peace and justice in her own right).

We were given a 60 day jail sentence which was suspended provided we weren’t arrested again during our probation period of 15 months-2 years. It was a good start and introduction to a life of crime and punishment – but also one of deep joy and commitment. I can’t say our world is better off today but I’m certain it would have been worse if not for groups of nonviolent seekers of justice, peace, and compassion. I’m so grateful for this mentoring.

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 Ladon Sheats, Peacemaker

Ladon Sheats, Presente! By Steve Clemens. August 2012

It is now 10 years that have gone by since my friend and mentor Ladon Sheats passed over to the other side after a brief but significant battle with an aggressive cancer at age 68. Shepherded through hospice care by my friends Ched, Catholic Workers, and many others, his body was buried in a simple hand-dug grave similar to his own mentor, Clarence Jordan. Ched told me how an eagle flew overhead during their service, a sign of welcome for this gentle peacemaker to the great cloud of witnesses.

My first encounter with Ladon Sheats was during my week of orientation in Akron, PA in September 1974 for my up-coming year of Voluntary Service with Mennonite Central Committee. After spending my summer in rural Mississippi with MCC and MDS (Mennonite Disaster Service), my friend and neighbor Walton Hackman asked me if I was willing and interested in spending a year volunteering at the MCC Peace Section's Washington, DC office on Capitol Hill. Just weeks earlier President Nixon had resigned in disgrace as the Watergate scandal exposed the rot at the center of our national government.

Ladon was on a speaking trip from his home at Koinonia Farm outside Americus, GA and he spoke with passion (and compassion) and conviction. He showed a multi-media presentation using two slide projectors, music by cassette tape, and his spoken narrative which contrasted the values of "The Kingdom of God" and that of America in the final years of the war against the people of Vietnam. Quoting liberally from Clarence's "Cotton Patch" translation of the New Testament, Ladon showed and told us that the American values of "rugged individualism" (exemplified by a photo of John Wayne and Simon & Garfunkel's song, “I Am A Rock"), materialism, and militarism were thoroughly contradicted by the values put forth my Jesus about the Kingdom of God. Interdependence, cooperation and sharing, and compassion with nonviolence were the marks of a radical follower or disciple of the Man From Nazareth – what a contrast with America’s values!

As the slide projector screen flashed pictures of Madison Avenue ads, lynchings of black men and boys, napalm and bombs being dropped from the skies over Indo-China, I could hear Ladon weeping as he told us we had to Choose which values we would live by. The song by Cat Stevens, "Father and Son" played in the background with the refrain "It's not time to make a change, just relax, take it easy; you're still young, it's not your fault, there's so much you have to go through" : the voice of the father trying to salvage for his son the remnants of the crumbling American Dream. But the son tells him, "I have to go away."

Ladon's passion was so great because of what he had given up when he left the corporate ladder-climbing as an up-and-coming executive of IBM (today we'd say he was punching his ticket to enter the 1%) to move to southwest Georgia to be part of a small, struggling inter-racial community committed to economic sharing, nonviolence, racial reconciliation, service to others, and "simple living" as an expression of Christian discipleship.

It was the first time I had heard about Koinonia Partners and the experiment in Christian intentional community that Ladon told us Clarence Jordan had described as a "demonstration plot" of what living out the values of God's Kingdom could look like. It created such a strong impression in this life of a young man about to turn 24 the next month that I moved there as soon as my 1-year commitment in Washington was complete.

I didn't encounter Ladon again until the following March when we shared a jail cell together for the 5-6 hours it took to book us for our arrest on the lawn of the White House in what was to be the last mass arrest of the Vietnam War. There were 61 of us including Liz Macalister, Dan Berrigan, Jim Peck, and Dick Gregory - but it was Ladon Sheats who helped bolster my courage that day in my first attempt to risk arrest for the sake of the Gospel and it's values.

What I discovered (and later re-discovered 6 years later when we spent a week together in a 6-person cell in a county jail in Amarillo, TX after praying inside the fence of the plant that was the final assembly point for all US nuclear weapons) was that Ladon's intensity as a nonviolent resister melted into a joking, hilarious cell mate who loved to relax and laugh.

Many of my friends told me they found Ladon too intense, too serious, always challenging himself and others to "take the next steps" in nonviolent resistance to the American way of death - but had they shared a cell with him, they could have discovered a whole different dimension to him. I think it was because he knew he was in the place where he knew he should be. He had learned from Clarence Jordan that if you hadn't been called a "communist" or had your life threatened, you probably weren't following the Jesus he experienced in the pages of the Bible.

After spending many 1-year sentences for nonviolent resistance in Federal Prison, Ladon would go to the monastery in Snowmass, CO to have time to pray, reflect, and gain strength for the next witness for peace. He often traveled around the country visiting friends and working odd jobs like house painting to earn some of the little money he needed. All his possessions were in his backpack.

One of my favorite memories was when he came through Minneapolis after our family had moved here and my sons were still quite young. I had a wordless children's story book called "The Great Escape" which showed a very determined prisoner escaping from his jail cell or prison over and over again. Ladon would have Zach sitting on his knee while Micah looked on from the side as Ladon turned the pages and together the three of them would make up the stories of this intrepid resister.

Ladon was a man of compassion. Gentle. Humble. With a clear vision of a call to be a Peacemaker. 10 years have passed. I miss him deeply, yet he is ever-present. Ladon Sheats, Presente!

Remembering Clarence Jordan on 100th Anniversary of His Birth

Clarence, I Hardly Knew You by Steve Clemens

I arrived at Koinonia Partners in 1975, six years after co-founder Dr. Clarence Jordan died of a heart attack while working on his “Cotton Patch” translation of The Gospel of John. His widow, Florence Jordan was one of about 21 “Resident Partners” of the re-established intentional Christian community that she helped found in 1942. Even though Clarence was not physically present, his spirit permeated the 1400-acre farm.

In the mid-1970s, Koinonia had a vibrant Volunteer Program that drew people from all over; most, like me, were under age 30 anxious to explore alternative ways to live in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the Watergate political scandal, and the social upheavals of “the 60s”. But it wasn’t just young people; in my volunteer group which arrived in the fall of 1975, two couples of “retired” missionaries were part of the group of 17 who came to experience Koinonia’s style of community together.

The Volunteer Program was designed as a work-study experience in which the group gathered three times a week for two hours of input and discussion focusing on “radical Christian discipleship”, living in Christian community, and social and moral concerns. The 4-month program served as both an introduction to the community as well as an entry point for those who wished to begin the process of becoming members (“Partners”). We worked in assigned areas: home construction, farming/gardening, maintenance, early childhood education, or part of the mail-order business which provided most of the income for the community. The latter included working in the pecan processing plant, the fruitcake bakery, the order assembly and shipping department, or order processing and other office clerical duties.

The work often introduced us to tasks we had seldom encountered before our arrival on this south Georgia farming compound, but it was the theological ideas and how they were lived out which what drew me to Koinonia. My previous exposure was limited to meeting Ladon Sheats, one of the Partners who often was asked to speak about the community and Christian discipleship around the country in a similar manner that his mentor, Clarence Jordan, had done throughout the 1950s and 60s. Ladon, a rising IBM executive, chose to resign that position, coming to live and learn from Clarence. Ladon, Millard Fuller, and Don Mosley soon were thrust in the role of sharing the message of Koinonia to the wider world after Jordan’s death in October 1969. They are the ones from whom I first heard about Koinonia and Clarence’s theology. After I arrived, I discovered a treasure trove of records, tapes, and books of Clarence Jordan’s sermons and other speeches and talks and I loved to listen to his southern drawl, his infectious humor, and his frequent quoting of the Greek text of the New Testament with his own “cotton-pickin’” translation.

Having lived as part of the Koinonia community for 16 years before moving to Minnesota in 1990, I owe much of my Christian formation to this Southern Baptist Greek scholar who tried to put his faith and ideas into practice on a peanut farm in his home state. There are so many memorable phrases from Clarence’s books and tapes that remain fixed in my mind that it is hard to pick and choose a few to illustrate his impact on my own thought and discipleship.

“Fear is the polio of the soul that keeps us from walking by faith”, “Faith is betting your life on the unseen realities”, and “Faith is not believing in spite of the evidence but rather in scorn of the consequences” are three  phrases from Clarence that I find myself quoting a lot when describing my own commitment to nonviolence which Clarence not only shared but helped inform. I credit Clarence Jordan’s lively translations and explanations of the parables of Jesus, his retelling of Paul’s missionary journeys and letters into the geography and politics of the US south, and his obvious love of the text with my own re-engagement with the Bible which I had mostly put aside out of disgust with the way Christianity had abused and misused the text during my years at Wheaton College, the evangelical bastion which openly embraced American exceptionalism and American militarism during my undergraduate studies. Their practice of sewing on Wheaton’s motto, “For Christ and His Kingdom” on the compulsory ROTC military uniforms for their male students couldn’t have contrasted more with the active nonviolence of the Jesus proclaimed by Clarence Jordan and the community outside Americus, GA.

Clarence always told us we had to choose either to follow the way of Christ or the way of the culture. Like his southern contemporary, Martin Luther King, both men saw “the giant triplets” of racism, materialism, and militarism as major stumbling blocks to genuine Christian discipleship. Although they took very different strategies, (Clarence strongly disagreeing with tactics such as boycotts due to his community’s own experience at the hands of the Klu Klux Klan and other racists in Sumter County, GA), both of these Sons of Georgia were responsible for challenging and encouraging my generation to take sides in the struggle for hearts and minds as the American empire came into so much conflict with the teaching of the compassionate and radical Jew whose life and message exposed the brutality disguised as benevolence of the empire of his day.

While I never had the opportunity to meet Clarence in the flesh, I loved listening to Florence’s stories about the first 30 plus years of Koinonia before I arrived. I count him as a mentor even though we never met. I spent hours and hours, “sitting at his feet” (more accurately, listening to his voice over the reel-to-reel or cassette tape players), and learning from others he mentored: Ladon, Millard, and Don, among others.

“We worship the hind legs off Jesus – but we don’t do a damn thing about what he taught us to do” is just one of the many gems of Clarence Jordan. His 100^th birthday would be on July 29^th and I’m so grateful for his life and witness. “Clarence Jordan, presente!”

30 Years Ago I Climbed A Fence and Went To Prison

30 Years Ago I Climbed A Fence and Went To Prison by Steve Clemens. February 2011

At the dawn of the Reagan Presidency, just after the death of my father-in-law, I was sentenced to 6 months in Federal Prison because I climbed a fence. Five months earlier 8 peacemakers committed what was to become the first of many “Plowshares” actions, a nonviolent attempt to “beat [nuclear] swords into plowshares”. The where and why of the story explains the consequence.

After the end of American involvement in Vietnam ended with the fall of Saigon [later renamed Ho Chi Minh City] in 1975, Phil Berrigan and Liz Macalister turned their peacemaking focus toward nuclear weapons. As part of the Bible Study group they facilitated at the Community for Creative Nonviolence in Washington, DC in 1974-75, I was inspired and challenged to consider nonviolent direct action in my own peacemaking efforts. We carried full-scale models of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945, to the steps of the US Capitol to mark the week of the 30th anniversary of those war crimes. Shortly after that, I moved to southwestern Georgia to join an intentional Christian community outside Americus called Koinonia Partners.

The genesis for the prayer witness at Pantex began for me with a conversation with Ladon Sheats in Washington, DC in September of 1980. I had just participated in a week-long group of peace actions at the Pentagon as part of Jonah House’s call for “The Year of the Election”. Peacemakers were urged to “take their vote to the Pentagon” for a week of actions since neither President Jimmy Carter nor Republican nominee Ronald Reagan were advocating movement toward disarmament or peaceful solutions to the world problems confronting us. Ladon Sheats was a former Resident Partner and Director of Koinonia Partners, living at the that Christian community from 1968-1975. From there, he joined the Jonah House Community in Baltimore and remained active in a life of resistance to the power of the war machine until his death in August of 2002.

Ladon discussed with several friends and me the possibility of conducting a prayer vigil at the heart of the nuclear weapons empire - the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, TX, the final assembly point for all nuclear weapons produced by the US government. He envisioned a small group of committed Christians who would travel to Texas, meet to pray and reflect for several days, and then attempt to enter the plant to pray in or around the buildings where the bombs were assembled. Participants would covenant together ahead of time to be committed to nonviolence and the group would agree not to notify the press ahead of time nor to cooperate with providing any defense of our action other than to state clearly why we were there. We would not defend ourselves with legal arguments but only statements about our faith and convictions.

When I returned to south Georgia and my community at Koinonia, I first discussed the proposed witness with my wife, Christine, and then with a smaller group of Partners who were committed to nonviolent direct action. As we were discerning my participation, we received word of the first Plowshares witness at King of Prussia, PA. While in support of that creative witness, it was clear that our planned witness would not involve any attempts to disarm or damage weapons we might encounter but rely solely on the power of prayer. As I continued in the discernment process, I had conversations with my parents and my wife’s parents. It was a very difficult time as my father-in-law, Benton Haas, was dying of leukemia and my wife spent most of her fall helping to care for him at his home in western Pennsylvania. While neither set of parents was enthusiastic about this proposed witness, I tried to communicate to them my sense of “call” to take this action of faith and witness.

In early February 1981, the Koinonia Resident Partners had a time of prayer during our weekly Partner’s meeting as a blessing and send-off. My wife, Christine, and Gail and Edwin Steiner and I drove the 20 + hours to Amarillo, Texas where we gathered with about a dozen others for a time of reflection, prayer, and sharing before the witness at the plant. The times of Bible study and prayer were very uplifting, helping to calm some of my fears and anxieties. Especially difficult was taking the time to write letters to my parents and to our community in the event we did not return. We tried to face the fact that this facility was one of the most heavily guarded facilities in the nation and that the guards confronting us would be armed with deadly weapons. Facing one’s own death and still choosing to act is the most liberating feeling in the world!

Yet not all the preparations were so serious. We had a “trial-run” of the two ladders we built to scale the 12’ chain link fence topped with barbed wire that we would encounter. When we set it up to scale a local baseball field backstop, the ladder collapsed under our weight and had to be rebuilt with heavier wood. We ended up in a heap, laughing at ourselves and the “folly” of our witness.

On the morning of Feb. 10, 1981, the six of us who covenanted together for this witness drove to the Pantex Plant to arrive in conjunction with the morning employee traffic, hopefully to allow us to get close to the area protected by 2 rows of chain link fence, separated by a 50’ “no man’s land” area between them. The radio station announced that visibility was “almost zero” as the blowing snow made it almost impossible for us to be seen as we briskly walked toward the fences with our two ladders.

After the first 3 scaled the fence and I threw their ladder over it so we could scale the second fence, all types of bells and whistles and lights were activated by sensory mines placed in the inner area between the fences. After all of us were inside the first fence, we noted that the second fence was electrified and security personnel had their automatic rifles pointed at us. We decided that it was as far as we were meant to go and so we gathered in a circle, read the passage from Ephesians about bringing light into darkness, and prayed for forgiveness for our complicity and trust in these weapons which threatened all of creation.

It took about 45 minutes for the security personnel to bring a van inside the fences to arrest us. Then they took us to the heart of that area of the plant (where we hoped to go anyway to pray) to question and process us. The Manager of the plant asked to meet with a couple of us to inquire why we were there. In the ensuing conversation, we discovered he was Jewish and one of us asked him how he would have felt if a group of people had sat on the railroad tracks leading into Auschwitz, challenging the Nazi plans for extermination. While he didn’t agree with our actions, he said he could understand [somewhat] our motivations.

After transfer to the local county jail, Federal Agents then transferred us again to the FBI building in Amarillo. After being questioned [and threatened] by the FBI, we were then taken to the Potter County Jail, our new home for the next 3 months. The two women in our group, Kathy Jennings and Mary Sprunger-Froese were sent to the women’s facility. Ladon, Father Larry Rosebaugh, Vince Scotti Eirene, and I were sent to maximum security in the men’s jail. After one week, Ladon and Larry were transferred to the minimum-security facility while Vince and I remained in the maximum lock-up. Vince and I only saw the other 4 when we went to court for arraignment, then our one-day trial, and then our sentencing. We also convinced two court-appointed lawyers assigned to our case to schedule two “pre-trial meetings” so we were able to see each other for a couple of hours before our trial.

Just before our trial began, the lawyers notified us that the US Attorney had filed several “Motions in Limine” aimed at preventing us from testifying about certain “irrelevant” issues. They asked the Court to disallow any testimony about “nuclear weapons or nuclear energy, US foreign policy, or our religious convictions” because they were not relevant to a simple criminal trespass charge we faced. This being only my second trial, I was nervous, wondering if the Judge would charge me with contempt if I attempted to talk about my motivation for our act of witness. Federal Judge Mary Lou Robinson had stopped both Ladon and Fr. Larry in the middle of their testimony stating that they could not testify about growing up in west Texas (Ladon) or his work on the streets of Recife, Brazil (Fr. Larry). While they were not charged with contempt, it was clear she had little patience with the prospect that the jury would hear any of this “irrelevant” testimony.

30 years later, I don’t remember what I said on the stand that day. I do remember talking about my faith and belief that Jesus called me to a life of nonviolence and that I had gone over that fence “to pray for peace”. I expected to be cut-off by the Judge at any minute but my testimony was short and to the point. The judge’s instructions to the jury left no doubt in my mind that our conviction was a forgone conclusion. She instructed the jury to disregard everything the defendants had said since our “motivation” was not important – only our intent: did we intend to enter the property and did we have permission to do so? It was all so neat and antiseptic. No need to “confuse” the jurors with complicated notions such as International Law and indiscriminate weapons. Did they trespass? If so, find them guilty. They did their duty and 45 minutes later returned to the Courtroom with their six guilty verdicts, one for each of us. Judge Robinson thanked them and announced she would sentence us in several weeks after court officers had a chance to research our prior records and come up with their recommendations.

Because of our decision to refuse to give our Social Security numbers or other irrelevant information at the time of booking, neither Vince nor I were permitted any visits in the Potter County Jail for the three months we were incarcerated there. But that decision, coupled with the incompetence of federal bureaucrats who failed to find prior arrest records for Vince and me, even though they had our names, addresses, fingerprints, and photos, that led us to be sentenced as “first-time offenders” and only get 6 month sentences, half the maximum allowed. Kathy and Mary, who had previously been arrested at Rocky Flats, another Department of Energy facility in Colorado that made the triggers for nuclear weapons, got 9 months. Ladon and Fr. Larry both were given the maximum one-year in prison because of their prior acts of conscience that led to convictions.

Several more weeks after sentencing, we were transferred to the Federal Prison in El Reno, OK to finish our sentences in federal prison. Federal Prison guidelines called for us to be sent to low-security prisons close to our homes because we had been convicted of nonviolent offences with relatively short sentences. However, since the prison camps at Maxwell Air Base in Alabama and at Eglin Air Base in Florida both had nuclear weapons located there, the prison authorities decided to ship me to Texarkana, TX for the remained of my 6 months. When I arrived, the minimum-security camp was not yet opened so I was housed in the “big house” (a medium security, level 3 prison) for several weeks until the camp opened. I finally was able to get a visit from my wife, Christine, over the Memorial Day weekend, after she had a grueling 20+-hour bus ride to see me.

In early August, nearly 6 months later, I was given a new set of clothes, about $25 and a bus ticket to Americus, GA and released, just two months shy of my 31st birthday.

Reflection on the past

Before we were transferred to federal prison, we heard a rumor about a Pantex worker quitting his job for reasons of conscience. We also learned that the local Roman Catholic Bishop, Leroy Matthiesen, visited Larry in his Amarillo cell and then later called for all persons of conscience to quit their jobs at Pantex and started a transition fund for workers who quit for reasons of conscience.

If we had strategized about how to get religious leaders to denounce nuclear weapons or had concocted a scheme to get the Roman Catholic Bishop to make a public statement about the morality of Pantex, we wouldn’t have come up with what we did. In retrospect, I feel that God used the faithfulness of our witness to help move the conscience and courage of the Bishop. And while the Bishop’s statement caused a shock wave throughout the Amarillo community, in the long run I believe the witness had more of an affect on me than on others.

What I took from the Prayer Witness At Pantex was the conviction that when we choose to act on our faith rather than our fears, our faith increases. Clarence Jordan, co-founder of the Koinonia community used to say, “Faith is acting not in spite of the evidence but in scorn of the consequences” and “faith is betting your life on the unseen realities”. When we chose to place our lives into the hands of God’s grace over against the fear of the weapons of the Pantex security guards, it was a statement of faith and hope rather than a resignation to despair in the presence of “The Bomb”.

The time in jail and prison was grace-filled. There were moments when I was scared; times when I was “concerned”; a lot of the time was filled with boredom, loud noises, and way too much cigarette smoke from fellow inmates. I learned to sleep with a towel over my eyes since the 100-watt light bulb in our 6-person, 8’ x 14’ cell was on 24/7. I read through my Bible twice. Wrote scores of letters, one every day to my wife while in the county jail, less frequently when I hit the federal prison. Listened to the stories of my cellmates and grew to understand the powerlessness that an inmate experiences. Having survived it, I feel I am stronger for it. I had a vibrant, loving community praying and supporting me that goes a long way when one is locked up!

It gave me a new appreciation for what it can mean to be on the “receiving end” of the American Empire. Those nuclear weapons, protected by the barbed-wire-topped fences and the plant security guards, are metaphors for the length to which our nation is willing to go to “protect our way of life”. As such, they are idols to our god of National Security, Mars, the god of war, and Mammon, the god of greed. February 10, 1981 was a day to reject those idols, those false gods; the rest of my life is one of nonviolent resistance to them while at the same time an embracing the alternative reality my faith calls me to: what Jesus referred to as the Kingdom or Reign of God. I am thankful to have friends who continue on this journey with me.