Quotes from Clarence Jordan

What the poor need is not charity but capital, not caseworkers but coworkers. And what the rich need is a wise, honorable and just way of divesting themselves of their overabundance.

The crowning evidence that he lives is not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship. Not a rolled-away stone, but a carried-away church.

Now faith is the turning of dreams into deeds. It is betting your life on the unseen realities

Fear is the polio of the soul. Faith is the life based on unseen realities; it is the word become flesh.

The measure of a Christian is not in the height of his grasp but in the depth of his love

The measure of a Christian is not in the height of his grasp but in the depth of his love

Faith is not belief in spite of evidence but a life in scorn of the consequences.

Even though people about us choose the path of hate and violence and warfare and greed and prejudice, we who are Christ's body must throw off these poisons and let love permeate and cleanse every tissue and cell. Nor are we to allow ourselves to become easily discouraged when love is not always obviously successful or pleasant. Love never quits, even when an enemy has hit you on the right cheek and you have turned the other, and he's also hit that.

God is not a celestial prison warden jangling the keys on a bunch of lifers--he's a shepherd seeking for sheep, a woman searching for coins, a father waiting for his son.

Fear is the polio of the soul which prevents our walking by faith.

Only those who come within the church, who take on the name of Christ, can take his name in vain. Now, you do not do it with your lips; you do it with your life.

It's the people on the inside who say, "Yes, we are Christians," and then live as though Christ had never lived.

My child, I've given you my name. Don't take it in vain. Keep it clean. Let it mean something when you are called a Christian. Don't let my name fall into disrepute because of you.

But I will tell you truly, I have never seen alcoholics go to such great lengths to get liquor as people on Main Street will go to get money. It is a thirst, an addiction, which can crush and kill people. Many, many people who would think twice about getting drunk on alcohol will go on a big old greedy binge trying to buy up every piece of land they can get.

Jesus did not want to be economically vulnerable. He wanted to be poor so that he could make his decisions clearly without any distortion of vision. Because Jesus wanted to see clearly, because he didn't want to be vulnerable, and because he wanted to deal justly and to walk humbly with his God, he was a pauper.

He is not commanding us to demand our rights. The only right that love has is the right to give itself.

Love is not merely a weapon. It is not a strategy, and it may or may not work. To do good to those who hate you is such stupendous folly that it cannot be expected to work. Love didn't work for Jesus.

One day, when Mr. Lincoln was advocating binding up the wounds of the nation, forgiveness, and reconciliation, Thaddeus Stevens pounded the table and said, "Mr. Lincoln, I think enemies ought to be destroyed!" Mr. Lincoln quietly said, "Mr. Stevens, do I not destroy my enemy when I make him my friend?

For the mistletoe of prejudice thrives nowhere better than on the economic oak.

It would be better to never teach them anything at all about God than to teach them the word of God and then bring them up in a society that nullifies the whole thing.

There is nothing that can tear a person to pieces like religious hypocrisy – teaching one thing and practicing another.

The original function of a deacon, then, was not to call a preacher nor to dictate his message, but simply to serve as a member of a scrupulously honest ration board.

So then, the virgin birth is not proof of the deity of Jesus, but rather, evidence of the humanity of God.

So the resurrection of Jesus was simply God's unwillingness to take our no for an answer. He raised Jesus, not as an invitation to us to come to heaven when we die, but as a declaration that he, himself, has now established permanent, eternal residence on earth.