The Inconvenient Gospel: A Southern Prophet Tackles War, Wealth, Race, and Religion is a collection of writings by Clarence Jordan published by Plough Publishing in their Spiritual Guides series. Edited by Frederick L. Downing with a forward by Starlette Thomas, this collection provides a powerful selection of Clarence Jordan’s thoughts on a wide variety of topics.
Here is a collection of reviews, articles, podcasts, and other resources about the book and Clarence Jordan himself.
I highly recommend this deeply inspiring book to teach Clarence Jordan’s radically biblical vision to a new generation of peacemakers, community builders, and social activists.
Miriam Jacobs
Ronnie McBrayer
Clarence Jordan often described the kingdom of God as a few ounces of gasoline compressed by a piston; or a bit of black powder squashed into a combustible coil. In tight, constrictive places and circumstances, it only took a little dose of such material to manifest great, explosive power. This is a proper analogy for Plough Publishing House’s latest volume about Clarence Jordan.
Clarence Jordan often described the kingdom of God as a few ounces of gasoline compressed by a piston; or a bit of black powder squashed into a combustible coil. In tight, constrictive places and circumstances, it only took a little dose of such material to manifest great, explosive power. This is a proper analogy for Plough Publishing House’s latest volume about Clarence Jordan.Here we have a Southern Baptist-trained preacher (with a Ph.D. in NT Greek) who embraced nonviolence, racial integration, and communal living decades before the Civil Rights movement picked up steam! Utterly countercultural, monitored by the government, harassed by the Klansmen… his story is so gripping that when Martin Luther King Jr. heard Jordan was practicing what King was preaching, he said, “I went to Koinonia [Jordan’s community] to see it for myself and couldn’t wait to leave because I was sure the Klan would show up and kill us both.” The Koinonia project, a gospel-centered, interracial, alternative economic project, struck me exactly as the title suggests—an “inconvenient Gospel.”
Bradley Jersak
Clarence Jordan, Georgia Baptist preacher and the best kind of trouble-maker, was preaching and starting up Koinonia Farm and drawing the wrath of the KKK and publishing a new version of the Bible and keeping entirely busy in the middle of the twentieth century, and we’re here to talk some about what he said and what he wrote, compiled in the recent Plough Publishing House book The Inconvenient Gospel. Joining me is Bren Dubay, who runs Koinonia Farm today (and who no doubt will correct that verb as soon as I shut up here), and Christian Humanist Profiles is glad to welcome her on the show.
Nathan P. Gilmour
In episode 194 of the Sectarian Review Podcast, Danny Anderson talks with Dr. Frederick L. Downing, scholar and editor of a new book for Plough Books called The Inconvenient Gospel. … Downing discusses how Jordan’s theology and activism was years ahead of his time and how mainstream Christianity has finally come around to his thinking on these issues.
Join Christianity Today’s Russell Moore, Koinonia Farm director Bren Dubay, and Baptist minister Starlette Thomas to discuss what one unlikely Southern Baptist preacher had to say about wealth, war, race, and religion. The conversation will be moderated by Bruderhof member David Johnson.
