Listen to Clarence Jordan read from The Cotton Patch Gospel

Excerpts

Oh, I remember Clarence Jordan all right. And Florence, the children, and a dozen or so of the members of Koinonia Farm. There was always a mixture of dread and joy going to see them. Joy because it was exhilarating to spend a few days in the presence of what I considered authentic gospel living. Dread because one could not anticipate what sort of tribulation might be visited upon the community at any given time. Firing upon children at play. Burnings of buildings. Threats at all hours. The total boycott of what they produced and denial of the things they needed.

I first met Clarence in January 1946. I had been discharged from World War II a few weeks earlier and had just entered Wake Forest College. I had never heard of Clarence Jordan and Koinonia Farm. He was conducting a seminar on race relations during what was called religious emphasis week. As a youngster from Mississippi, I had developed a mild interest in racial discrimination during my three years in the war. But I had not heard the subject discussed in such fashion. Here was a man talking of pacifism, economic and racial equality, and other aspects of the gospel foreign to me. I was at once intrigued and threatened. He talked about a farm he and others had established in southern Georgia. Interracial. Interreligious. Communal. Pacifist.

It sounded like something I might want to be a part of or at least learn more about. I recall following Clarence Jordan during the remainder of the week and talking privately about the possibility of joining his little group when I finished ministerial training. But that was six years away. I recall Clarence encouraging me to stay in school, that the struggle wouldn’t go away before I finished.

That was one of the experiences that would shape the rest of my life. I never became a member of the community, but Clarence Jordan and I became dear friends and I stayed in close touch with each stage along the way.

It is not my purpose here to detail the persecution the little band of Georgia Christians endured. That will be familiar to anyone reading this. Nor will I exaggerate my role in the drama. I simply stayed in touch, visited as often as possible, and prayed....

Clarence Jordan was a man of relevance. He made God’s word relevant. Every situation in life was measured against the life and teachings of Christ. Clarence was aware of culture and tradition, but his life was lived out in obedience to the claims of Christ, even when those claims caused him to violate culture and tradition.

His Cotton Patch translations are one of the many contributions Clarence made to the world in helping people understand the message of the New Testament in the context of the world where people actually live.

For example, in the Bible, the story of the Good Samaritan involves a Jew, a Samaritan, and an unnamed victim of a robbery on a lonely road in the Middle East, and it took place 2,000 years ago. In the Cotton Patch translation, the Jew becomes a white man, the Samaritan becomes an African American, and the crime victim is robbed and beaten in Ellaville, Georgia.

Everyone loves the biblical account of that story. It is such a wonderful story, a safe distance away and a long time ago. Clarence puts the story “in your face.” He puts it up close and relevant to our situation. That’s the power of the Cotton Patch translations. The retelling of the well-known stories from Matthew, Luke, John, and other New Testament books are often amusing, but also jarring and disturbing.

Whether in person or through his writings, Clarence Jordan was not and is not a person to be ignored. To do so is to imperil our souls.

This humble man of the soil, whose usual dress was a denim shirt and blue jeans, was close to God, and he was steadfast and faithful to God throughout his life....

Why a “cotton patch” version? While there have been many excellent translations of the Scriptures into modern English, they still have left us stranded in some faraway land in the long-distant past. We need to have the good news come to us not only in our own tongue but in our own time. We want to be participants in the faith, not merely spectators. When Jesus told the story of “a certain man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho,” every person in his audience may have felt as though he himself were that “certain man” who fell among thieves on the familiar and oft-traveled road. But few of us would feel so personally involved. To give us a sense of participation or involvement, that “certain man” would need to be going from New York to Boston, or from Atlanta to Savannah, or from San Francisco to Los Angeles, or from our hometown to the next one. So the “cotton patch” version is an attempt to translate not only the words but the events. We change the setting from first-century Palestine to twentieth-century America. We ask our brethren of long ago to cross the time-space barrier and talk to us not only in modern English but about modern problems, feelings, frustrations, hopes and assurances; to work beside us in our cotton patch or on our assembly line, so that the word becomes modern flesh. Then perhaps, we too will be able to joyfully tell of “that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes and have felt with our hands, about the word of life” (1 John 1:1).

Another reason for a “cotton patch” version is that the Scriptures should be taken out of the classroom and stained-glass sanctuary and put out under God’s skies where people are toiling and crying and wondering, where the mighty events of the good news first happened and where alone they feel at home. We want Paul’s letters to have the simplicity, the humbleness, the earthiness which they had before Christians erected temples of mortar and stone.

Still another reason is that the locale of these letters is the South. Cotton has figured prominently in the problems of this region—problems to which the letters eloquently and pointedly and compassionately speak. But by so pinpointing the South, there is no intention of hoarding or limiting God’s wisdom to any one section of the world. The gospel is not provincial, even though its birthplace was a remote province of the Roman Empire. People from afar understand this, for the wise men from the distant East are frequently more sensitive to starlight than is the local innkeeper who flashes his “no vacancy” sign.

Perhaps the main reason, though, is that the major portion of my life has been spent on a farm in southwest Georgia where I have struggled for a meaningful expression of my discipleship to Jesus Christ. With my companions along the dusty rows of cotton, corn and peanuts, the Word of Life has often come alive with encouragement, rebuke, correction and insight. I have witnessed the reenactment of one New Testament event after another until I can scarcely distinguish the original from its modern counterpart. And because the present participants are for the most part, like their predecessors, humble people, I have longed to share God’s word with them. So in making the translation, I have kept in mind the little people of great faith who want to do better in their discipleship but have been hindered by big words they don’t understand or by ancient concepts they don’t grasp....

5. In the days when Ole Gene was governor of Georgia, there was a preacher by the name of Zack Harris. His wife was a very aristocratic woman named Elizabeth. They were both strict church members and were careful to observe all the rules and regulations of the Lord. They had no children, since Elizabeth was barren and by now they were both quite old.

8. One day when it was his turn to conduct services (the ministers had worked out a schedule among themselves), Zack went into the study to meditate, while all the people waited prayerfully in the sanctuary for the hour of worship. He looked up and saw a messenger from God standing just to the right of the desk. When Zack Harris saw him, he was quite alarmed and frightened.

13. But the messenger said, “There’s no need to be afraid, Zack Harris, since your prayers have been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, whom you’ll call John. He will be your pride and joy, and his birth will bring gladness to many people. He’ll be a great man of God. No wine or whiskey will touch his lips, but he’ll be full of holy ‘spirit’ while his mother is still carrying him. He’ll turn a lot of church people toward the Lord their God. God himself will go in front of him with the spirit and power of Elijah. His job will be to turn the hearts of fathers toward their children, and to bring the stubborn around to the thinking of the devoted; in short, to get a dedicated band ready for the Lord.”

18. Zack Harris said to the messenger, “How am I to believe all this? You see, I’m an old man, and my wife is well along in years.”

19. The messenger replied, “I am Gabriel, God’s attendant. I was sent to speak to you and to break the good news of these things to you. Now listen, you’ll be silent and unable to talk until the day all this happens, because you didn’t believe what I told you, which will surely come to pass in due season.”

21. Now all this time the people were waiting for Reverend Harris, and they were amazed that he was staying so long in the study. When he did come out, he was unable to speak to them. They recognized that he had had a vision in the study, for he was gesturing to them and remained speechless.

24. When he had wound up his church duties, he went home. Shortly afterwards his wife Elizabeth became pregnant, and for the first five months she didn’t go out in public. She was thinking, “The Lord did this for me, to take away the stigma of my sterility.”

26. During the sixth month of her pregnancy the messenger Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Georgia by the name of Valdosta, to a young lady named Mary. She was engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, from one of the old-line families. The messenger went in to her and said, “Hello, you blessed one. THE LORD IS WITH YOU!” She was nearly bowled over by this, and wondered what to make of such a greeting.

30. The messenger said to her, “Don’t be so alarmed, Mary, for you have been chosen for a special favor from God. Listen, you’ll become pregnant and have a baby boy, whom you’ll name Jesus. He’ll be a great man, and will be called ‘The Almighty’s Son.’ The Lord God will set him on the throne of his father David, and he’ll always be head of the faithful. His movement will never end.”

34. Mary said to the messenger, “How can this happen when I’m not even married yet?”

35. The messenger replied, “Holy Spirit will lie upon you, and Power from the Almighty will impregnate you. For this reason the child, sired from on High, will be called ‘God’s Son.’ Now listen, your cousin Elizabeth has also become pregnant with a son, despite her age. And this is now the sixth month for her who was thought to be barren. God will see to it that every word of this will actually happen.”

38. So Mary said, “All right then, I am at the Lord’s service. I want it to be just as you have said.” At that the messenger left her.