I decided to clip this section on my early readings in Charles Marsh’s The Beloved Community from an earlier post to bring this work to a greater focus. What a tremendous book (through 72 pages thus far. The narrative of both King and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the first half of the story of Clarence Jordan and Koinonia Farm is a treat and a moving story.

I have started into The Beloved Community, Charles Marsh’s book on “How Faith Shapes Social Justice, From the Civil Rights Movement to Today”. Marsh introduces his book with this:

Although a boycott was neccessary in Montgomery to bring an end to discriminatory laws, King urged the church people in the movement to keep in mind that a boycott and its achievments do not in themselves represent the goal. “The end is reconciliation, the end is redemption,” he said, “the end is the creation of the beloved community.”

I’m just in the first chapter, but I ‘m reading with new awareness what I read about back when MLK first captured my attention folllowing an NBC minii-series in 1978 called KING. Marsh follows MLK from his upbringing through his education, and how the moment of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the threats that ensued shook him to his core and brought him to a moment of surrender and seeking God. This shook him out of his dependence upon his “liberal education” and sophistication and thrust him in with the lot of his community, and took him places he had not planned to go.

The next chapter deals with Koinonia Farm, a Christian Community Clarence Jordan began in the late 40’s in rural Georgia after he garduated from University of Georgia with a degree in Agriculture and from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary with a degree in New Testament Greek. Jordan is the author of The Cotton Patch translations, an NT Bible translation using Southern lingo and sets the entire gospel and rise of the church in the South where Jerusalem is Atlanta, Washington DC is Rome, and Jesus is born in Valdosta, Gerogia. Jordan’s interracial Christian community actually pre-dates and spills over intot he early Civil Rights movement. IN the Cotton Patch translation, the Kingdom of God is “The God Movement”. The Chapter in Marsh’s book is titled: ” nN the Fields of the Lord: The God Movement in South Georgia”

I’m only on page 35, but I have not been able to put it down for long. And I gotta finish After Christendom, since its due back next Tuesday.