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 25th 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.
