"America! America!": Vanishing Time and Space in Clarence Jordan's "Things Needed for Our Peace," Furman University, 1969

Luke D. Christie

Luke D. Christie Furman University

Keywords: rhetoric, communication studies, textual criticism, rhetorical criticism, religious studies, humanities

Abstract

Best known for his Cotton Patch version of the gospels and radical Christian community at Koinonia Farms, Clarence Jordan, a white Southern evangelical minister, translocated the events of scripture, physically mapping the life and times of Christ’s Jerusalem onto those of the 1960s American South. In so doing, Jordan aimed to implicate Southerners in the biblical narrative in a way that would not allow them to back away from the issues of racial and economic inequality plaguing the region at that time. In this paper, I track Jordan’s interweaving of past and present, analyzing the way in which he uses progressive form, metaphor, and dialogue to claim the sacred space and time of the gospel for the Civil Rights-era American South, thereby endeavoring to evoke a sense of divine responsibility to address the racial and economic inequality facing Southern communities.

Author Biography

Luke D. Christie, Furman University

Luke D. Christie graduated from Furman University in 2015. In the fall of 2016, he will begin a doctoral program in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Georgia. His research looks at the rhetorical formation and contestation of regional and national identities, particularly those forged by dissenting political and cultural voices in the American South. He is the author/co-author of several articles on Southern rhetoric and regional criticism.