Posted on March 26, 2021 by PLT Staff

Lecture given by Ansley L. Quiros at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA (March 25, 2021). The lecture begins at 4:30. Quiros describes how activist and Koinonia Farm founder Clarence Jordan’s vision of the Kingdom of God, or what he called “the God movement,” forced confrontations in the small town of Americus, Georgia. By interacting with Americus’ Black rural residents and practicing theologically based integration, the Koinonia Farm agricultural community challenged the theological rationalizations held by many white Protestants about maintaining segregation and the closed society. Quiros also explains how although they never met in person, Jordan and Martin Luther King, Jr. exchanged letters throughout the late 1950s. And although Koinonia Farm never officially joined the Civil Rights Movement, the farm nevertheless supported the movement by hosting students and SNCC workshops as well as by participating in movement events. To find a listing of all our Occasional Lectures, click here.

Excerpt: “Twenty years before the Civil Rights Movement had arrived in Americus, Koinonia Farm had engaged in the same theological freedom struggle. And that’s another significant effect of Koinonia’s presence in Suffolk County, the undeniable theological challenge it presented to Americus’ sanctioned racism. In a familiar voice, its members spoke slowly, gently to white Christians of love, peace, of Christianity’s racial demands…Koinonia Farm was a voice crying in the wilderness that offered Americus and the American South a foretaste of what was to follow: a bitter theological struggle over race and religion.”

• Video Information
• Date Recorded:March 25, 2021
• Location Recorded:Charlottesville, Virginia