Interracialism and Christian Community in the Postwar South: The Story of Koinonia Farm

New
Paperback
2000
$34.41

Now available in paperback, Tracy K'Meyer's book is a thoughtful and engaging portrait of Koinonia Farm, an interracial Christian cooperative founded in 1942 by two white Baptist ministers in southwest Georgia. The farm was begun as an expression of radical southern Protestantism, and its interracial nature made it a beacon to early civil rights activists, who rallied to its defense and helped it survive attacks from the Ku Klux Klan and others.
Based on over fifty interviews with current and former Koinonia members, K'Meyer's book provides a history of the farm during its period of greatest influence. K'Meyer outlines the conceptual flaws that have troubled the community, but finds that Koinonia's enduring effect as a social movement--including Millard Fuller's founding of Habitat for Humanity, prompted by a 1965 visit to the farm--is far more meaningful than its internal conflicts. For anyone in search of a hardy strain of Christian progressivism in the Bible Belt, reading K'Meyer's book is an inspiring and intellectually fulfilling experience in its own right.

Synopsis

Now available in paperback, Tracy K'Meyer's book is a thoughtful and engaging portrait of Koinonia Farm, an interracial Christian cooperative founded in 1942 by two white Baptist ministers in southwest Georgia. The farm was begun as an expression of radical southern Protestantism, and its interracial nature made it a beacon to early civil rights activists, who rallied to its defense and helped it survive attacks from the Ku Klux Klan and others.

Based on over fifty interviews with current and former Koinonia members, K'Meyer's book provides a history of the farm during its period of greatest influence. K'Meyer outlines the conceptual flaws that have troubled the community, but finds that Koinonia's enduring effect as a social movement--including Millard Fuller's founding of Habitat for Humanity, prompted by a 1965 visit to the farm--is far more meaningful than its internal conflicts. For anyone in search of a hardy strain of Christian progressivism in the Bible Belt, reading K'Meyer's book is an inspiring and intellectually fulfilling experience in its own right.

$34.41

Quantity

2 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
Edition: New edition
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 31 Aug 2000
ISBN 10: 0813920027
ISBN 13: 9780813920023

Media Reviews

In this compelling book Tracy K'Meyer narrates the story of Koinonia Farm, which was founded in 1942 and is still in operation in Sumter County, Georgia.... Interracialism and Christian Community in the Postwar South succeeds not only as a history but as a primer for social action.

Tracy Elaine K'Meyer captures the intrigue of Koinonia Farm's history in her eloquently crafted book.... [Her] research is solid, the writing is lively, and the story is engaging. This book does remarkable service to the task of studying a significant religious and social movement in the twentieth-century South.

Author Bio

Eugene L. Stelzig, Distinguished Teaching Professor and Chair of the Department of English, SUNY Geneseo, is also the author of Hermann Hesse's Fictions of the Self: Autobiography and the Confessional Imagination and All Shades of Consciousness: Wordsworth's Poetry and the Self in Time.