Koinonia Farm

Koinonia Farm is a Christian farming intentional community in Sumter County, Georgia.

The farm was founded in 1942 by two couples, Clarence and Florence Jordan and Martin and Mabel England, as a “demonstration plot for the Kingdom of God.” For them, this meant following the example of the first Christian communities as described in the Acts of the Apostles, amid the poverty and racism of the rural South. The name Koinonia is an ancient Greek word, used often in the New Testament, meaning deep fellowship. Koinonia members divested themselves of personal wealth and joined a "common purse" economic system. They envisioned an interracial community where blacks and whites could live and work together in a spirit of partnership.

Based on their interpretation of the New Testament, Koinonia members committed to the following precepts:

Other families joined, and visitors came to “serve a period of apprenticeship in developing community life on the teachings and principles of Jesus.” Koinonians, visitors, and neighbors farmed, worshipped and ate together, attended Bible studies and held summer youth camps. When resources allowed the hiring of seasonal help, black and white workers were paid equally. Additional spiritual stewards of the community in the earlier years included Connie Browne and Will Wittkamper.

These practices were a break with the prevailing culture of Jim Crow-era Georgia, and were challenged by many citizens of Sumter County, most intensely during the 1950s, and with diminishing intensity for years thereafter. A boycott of the farm occurred during the mid-1950s. The local Chamber of Commerce met with the Full Members of The Farm to request that Koinonia sell its property and disband. The 1950s also saw acts of terrorism such as dynamiting Koinonia's roadside produce stand, firing shots into the compound, and threatening phone calls and letters. The local Ku Klux Klan drove a 70+ car motorcade to the farm as an act of intimidation. Koinonia members discerned that their religious views called them to bear these acts nonviolently; members responded by writing editorials to the local newspaper clarifying the farm's position, maintaining an unarmed watch at the entrance to the community during the nights, and other acts of nonviolent witness.

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