Clarence Jordan and The Cotton Patch Gospel

When I talk of treating Scripture less formally than we do, of allowing it to get down on the floor with us, or join us in the pub, I’m really talking about learning to “play” with it more. I hesitate to use the word “play”, however, because play is so often seen as a frivolous thing. In truth, play is a very serious matter. It’s how children develop the social, mental, emotional and physical skills they need for life. It’s how adults learn too; surgeons in cadaver class, and test pilots in flight simulators.

A great example of seriously playing with Scripture is The Cotton Patch Gospel by Clarence Jordan (pronounced Jerden for some reason).

Jordan was a Southern Baptist preacher and Bible scholar who, in the 1940s, began to “play” with the text. He translated the Sermon on the Mount, the Gospel of Mathew, and ultimately most of the New Testament, from the original Greek, into the contemporary idiom, culture, time and place of the American South. Jerusalem became Atlanta, Georgia; Bethlehem, Gainesville Georgia; the crucifixion, a lynching.

And, as he “played” with the Bible, the Bible “played” with him and his life. He and his wife, together with another family, developed a racially integrated community called Koinonia Farm, in the heart of Georgia. They survived the hostility of the surrounding community, the Ku Klux Klan, and the State Governor. They overcame terrorist attacks and a crippling boycott and, in the 1970s, became the birth place of Habitat for Humanity, a worldwide Christian ministry that partners with low income families to build simple, good quality, affordable homes.

There is a great musical play called The Cotton Patch Gospel inspired by the Clarence Jordan translation.

Clarence Jordan quotes:

“Faith is not belief in spite of evidence, but a life lived in scorn of the consequences.”

“We think of belief as a way of thinking, when the original intent was to describe a way of acting.”

“If there is any balm in Gilead; if there is any healing in God's wings; if there is any hope — shall we go off and leave people without hope? We have too many enemies to leave them. The redemptive love of God must somehow break through. If it costs us our lives, if we must be hung on the cross to redeem our brothers and sisters in the flesh, so let it be. It will be well worth it. To move away would be to deny the redemptive process of God."

I remember a 1993 CBC interview with Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States and former Governor of Georgia. He was in Winnipeg pounding nails with Habitat for Humanity.

This is the sort of thing that happens when people seriously and imaginatively “play” with the Bible, and let the Bible “play” with them.