"What religious figure most inspires you?"

Recently, I was asked to contribute to a weekly feature in a local newspaper. Below is my response to the question: "What religious figure most inspires you?"

Aside from the obvious influence of Jesus Christ and all the well-known heroes and heroines of Christian history, I would say that the religious figure who most inspires me is Clarence Jordan.

Jordan held a Ph.D. in biblical languages (which he used in translating The Cotton Patch Version of the New Testament), yet he spent most of his life on a farm in Americus, Georgia, a community he and his wife started with another couple in 1942. The name of their new community was Koinonia, a Greek word meaning “fellowship” used in the New Testament to describe the gathering of believers. Koinonia was (and still is) a place where people of all races were welcome to live in a community grounded in the love of Christ. It began during a time when racism was considered a virtue by many in the South.

Jordan understood the gospel as more than a creed by which to judge one’s neighbor. He saw the gospel as a call to love one’s neighbor—and that means everyone—through action: “It is not enough to limit your love to your own nation, to your own race, to your own group. You must respond with love even to those outside of it, respond with love to those who hate you. This concept enables people to live together not as nations, but as the human race.”

CPT