Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

-----

Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Music Videos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music Videos. Show all posts

Friday, January 20, 2023

WinterJam 2023 - Live Concert Vids

 

https://www.youtube.com/@Winterjamtv/videos


WinterJam 2023
Select Videos for Worship & Viewing

by R.E. Slater

Concert Date: January 19, 2023
  Upload date: January 20, 2023

*Below are videos from the January WinterJam 2023 Bands' Concert held in GRR, MI. Those few vids which are not mine I've marked as "official vids" from the artists' themselves. These vignettes are not intended for profit but for viewer worship. I found all the bands quite enjoyable and were best experienced with the teens and college kids which we were very happy to be a part of. For a fuller selection of the artist's works go to the links provided below in their pictures. Special shout outs to the bands Disciple, Andy Mineo, and Jeremy Camp. They were Awesome! - RE Slater





We the Kingdom
Jeremy Camp


Andy Mineo
Anne Wilson

Disciple
 
Thrive Worship
Sean Be
Renee

Pre Jam Party starts at 6:00PM.

Line-up features Jeremy Camp, We The Kingdom, Andy Mineo, Anne Wilson, Austin French, Disciple, & more. Hosted by Newsong.

We The Kingdom will join Winter Jam following their Fall 2022 tour and the release of their new namesake album We The Kingdom. The band received the awards for Contemporary Christian Artist of the Year and Pop/Contemporary Album of the Year for Holy Water at the 2021 GMA Dove Awards and is known for #1 songs like “Holy Water” and “God So Loved.”

Jeremy Camp is a chart-topping, Grammy-nominated artist with 40 number one hits. He is known for songs like “I Still Believe,” “Walk By Faith” and current hit “Keep Me In The Moment” and is the subject of the 2020 inspirational biopic I Still Believe. Jeremy joins the tour following the release of his 2021 album When You Speak and his Fall 2022 tour.

No tickets needed. $15 donation accepted at the door.





WinterJam 2023 - Thrive Worship 1

WinterJam 2023 - Austin French 1

WinterJam 2023 - Newsong 1

WinterJam 2023 - Newsong 2

WinterJam 2023 - Disciple 1

WinterJam 2023 - Disciple 2

WinterJam 2023 - Andy Mineo 1

WinterJam 2023 - Andy Mineo 2

WinterJam 2023 - Jeremy Camp 1
Opening Set - "When You Speak"

WinterJam 2023 - Jeremy Camp 2
"A New Song"

WinterJam 2023 - Jeremy Camp 3
"Show Me What Matters"

WinterJam 2023 - Jeremy Camp 4
"Greater is He"

WinterJam 2023 - Jeremy Camp 5
"Great Are You Lord"

WinterJam 2023 - Jeremy Camp 6
"Getting Started"

WinterJam 2023 - Jeremy Camp 7
"Dead Man Walking" Finale

Anne Wilson Official Video
"Hey Girl" 

WinterJam 2023 - We the Kingdom
Full Concert Vid from Tampa, Florida




Sunday, November 28, 2021

For King & Country - Little Drummer Boy Christmas


https://www.forkingandcountry.com/




for KING & COUNTRY - Little Drummer Boy (Official Music Video)
Premiered Oct 30, 2020


for KING & COUNTRY






The for KING & COUNTRY LIVE CONCERT FILM
Fundraiser
Premiered Mar 25, 2021


for KING & COUNTRY
On March 25th , four-time GRAMMY Award-winning duo and Curb | Word Entertainment recording artist for KING & COUNTRY will be showcasing The 'for KING & COUNTRY' LIVE CONCERT FILM- a full-length concert performance from the duo’s internationally acclaimed Burn The Ships I The World Tour. The one-hour concert special will give fans an exclusive perspective of for KING & COUNTRY’s last arena show before the COVID-19 pandemic, giving a close-up view of the incredible live show that the duo has become known for. From intimate backstage moments to passionate singalongs with the sold-out audience, this is the most complete chance to see for KING & COUNTRY’s fully produced live spectacle.






Monday, December 28, 2020

Miley Cyrus - The War Is Over


✩🎄★Happy Xmas (War Is Over)★🎄✩
Miley Cyrus & Mark Ronson feat. Sean Ono Lennon
Dec 12, 2019

Miley Cyrus & Mark Ronson feat. Sean Ono Lennon
- Happy Xmas (War Is Over)



Lyrics ★🎄★

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young


A very merry Christmas
and a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas (war is over)
For weak and for strong (if you want it)
For rich and for poor ones (war is over)
The world is so wrong (now...)

And so happy Christmas (war is over)
For black and for white (if you want it)
For left and for right ones (war is over)
Let's stop all the fight (now...)


A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Oh, let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas (war is over)
And what have we done (if you want it)
Another year over (war is over)
And a new one just begun (now...)

And so happy Christmas (war is over)
We hope you have fun (if you want it)
The near and the dear one (war is over)
The old and the young (now...)


A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

War is over, if you want it
War is over now!

Happy Christmas everybody!
★🎄★




New Years Require Better Resolutions

by R.E. Slater
December 29, 2020

I have been enjoying Miley Cyrus a lot lately. I love her voice, how she thinks and envision's life, her need to speak out against civil and human injustice, and for the beauty she sees all around her. Miley is sounding better to me the older she gets and the more she discovers who she is and what she wants to speak to. And though she's very good at capturing cover songs like the one here, I am more interested in her edginess and how she sees humanity in all its vices and colours.

With the onset of a new year coming in three days I'm asking that we commit ourselves to healing. To the healing of our hearts, our friendships, our community, our country, and our world.

To redirecting all our nervous, sometimes exasperating, sometimes agitating, energy, into goodness and wellbeing for all things human and earthly. Mere wishing for, or singing of, "Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men" are but empty words if we don't actually practice these qualities at all times through all our seasons of life.

Over the last several years we've seen the ugliness of hatred and division and what it does to leaderless people who follow those dark souls who are destroyers of present goodness. They have vexed our hearts and our relationships with one another. They are a scourge to be remonstrated against and removed.

Let us today, this coming year, take up the challenge of our destroyers to rebuild a truer equality and justice for all around us. For each other as well as for nature. So often rebuilding cannot come without deconstructing our past and present. Black Lives Matter has challenged us to do just that. And we will. These are the fundamental challenges we must step up to. Let me share an all too frequent example of expectations versus reality.

The Challenges of Loss

Several years ago I naively bought a house thinking it needed remodeling. I had met the builder and the owner, sent an inspection company out to confirm the site, and read what was written in the contracts. But I couldn't have been more wrong. The house was fundamentally built wrong, found akilter with itself upon it's several elevations, and with a craftsmanship absently confounding. It all was hidden from view innocently enough but the structure was fundamently flawed behind its rustic beauty. The words on the contract which I needed for clarification weren't written down but kept off and hidden (as keeping to the letter of the law of the county but not its spirit of full disclosure). And the inspecting agency counted the nails on the roof, the missing electrical safety features but missed the foundations which were rotting and sagging. These were drywalled over from the inside and packed with gravel around the perimeter making it seem aesthetic when it was actually functional fifteen feet all the way down. A simple tapping of an iron rod through the gravel would've confirmed further discovery. Or a screwdriver through the furnace walls would've told of a wooden foundation. But none of this was disclosed or confirmed. The result? It was all on me. Everything. It was not a good place to be.

An older man, my neighbor, whom I came to know, spoke wisdom confirming what my own heart was saying, against all the others who spoke contrary. I took it as a word from God and proceeded to destroy-and-rebuild and never looked back. It would be another loss in life. Unexpected. Injurious. But something to be overcome. I told my neighbor the house needed a deep renovation - including a completely new, and much stronger foundation, and not the rotting foundation it was lying upon which I had perchance discovered midway through remodeling the lower floor as a front end loader removed the dirt from the buried walls so we could add an extra bedroom and bath to the end of the house. I remember that weekend as being grievous. We were facing a total loss.

Bottom line... I would have to deconstruct the house before reconstructing it properly. It would cost a good deal of money, personal time I didn't have, and the labor of many talented trade workers to overcome the obstacles and oppositions I was facing. And I would have to live with my decisions good or bad. However, the Lord has gifted me with the ability to create investments out of loss. It has been true with lay ministries as it has been true in my life. My gifts it seems is to take challenges and create beauty. Which also means I've had a lot of experience with losses. Or with shoddy envisioning of what beauty means. Or with people or institutions content with the trauma they are living out.

My website, Relevancy22, is a postmodern Christian testament to recreating, or reimagining, a Christianity I was deeply blessed and trained in to maintain its traditional structures. It's classic forms. It's unmitigating foundations. But those structures and foundations needed demolishing - keeping the good as I could while trashing all that withheld seeing God's love truly through the biblical passages and churchly histories and otherwise actions of its people. I had to go through dark days to get there. But the Lord sent me His Holy Spirit to guide through a challenging wilderness to find a way to His light and beauty. It was done by learning to unlearn so that I might re-learn.

So too it is with our lives. We need the Lord's guidance and the discerning grit of hard decisions to be made when we do not know which way to go amid the cacophony of voices telling us what we should do. And for that God had brought to me the help of gifted craftsmen and trades people, a blessed general contractor of generosity and talent, and a small window of purchasing opportunity to buy discounted materials during America's worst times of hurricanes and wildfires. As I labored with the labourers I blessed God many times over during those long 14 months. From beginning to end it was fraught with difficulty personally, financially, health-wise, and emotionally. It was a hard time.

As another example of rebuilding out of neglect let's look at societal structures in their many ways of casual callousness to the suffering and neglect of people living with rot and difficulty on a daily basis. The dispensing of Covid-19 vaccines readily shows to us the struggles we are challenged with in a society when naively promoting our ideals over aiding those truly in need of the miracle vaccine. Rather than serving the homeless, ghettos, the essential, and enfeebled, our dispensatory systems have been prejudiced towards those who have the resources, class, wealth, standing, or perception to receive them. Yet, any nurse, social worker, school administrator, city mayor, priest, pastor, or even private industry boss will learn on their first day whether to choose for equality and fairness or to overlook it in their occupations. Let us chose the path less travelled. The one promising fuller resolve than capitulate to the norm such as profit over care, income over restitution, greed over generosity.

To Serve rather than be Served

Let us at all times be mindful in all things to serve those around us rather than be served ourselves. This is the mindset of Jesus. The challenges in Jesus' day were no different from ours today. So much of our best intentions get usurped by the politician, the greedy, the proud, the corrupt of heart. Their kind of world is dark and odious. But let us be of the light and not of their mindset of self-serving oblivion.

Even those words, or worlds, which might sound "Christian" or "righteous" to our ears can be anything be loving or divine. More like broadbills for waylaid sheep lost and looking for a shepherd but finding crooks and thieves of their souls. And yet, the Lord God has shown His real Self through His Incarnation in the Trinitarian personage of Jesus who opposed the wicked, granted release from bondage to the suffering, and ministered God's love until His death and resurrection into glory while renewing His Covenant of Love double-stamped by His Spirit that He abides with us moment-by-moment in this life and the next.

Those leaderless churches of another gospel are not God's churches of love and welcoming embrace. They are the churches of men who worship the idols of their cultural inheritance and the lies of their future. They protect their past to live as dead people to God in their present. They fear the challenge of change and run from its necessity to moderate, or minister, to the unfortunates in life. Such words, creeds, structures, societies of darkness we would remove, demolish, overcome and replace with love, truth, goodness, and light by leaning into God's continually evolving process of death for renewal, wreckage for reclamation, atonement for redemption, denial of self for resurrection, fear for transformation, and beauty for revival by His Spirit at all times.

Jesus is the benchmark for all humanity. He is the goal and perfector of one's faith. Not the church, not the unenlightened mobs which come and go to the distress of the world of God and man. But Jesus. He is the One we look to for example, truth, and love. Upon Jesus' uplifted Cross we can see the God of Love in full display.

Now this Christmas has come and gone. It's short season is over. Yet Christ has come to us in wintry celebration of His Incarnational Advental Coming. Let us then ask the Lord that Christ's "panpsychic being and becomingness" enters all the way into the deepest parts of our hearts, minds, and souls, as we approach new challenges in this coming new year. Let it be a year of healing. Of atonement. Of redemption. Perhaps, even, a year of hope becoming realized in the work of our hands and feet and lips. Amen and Amen.

And as Ms. Cyrus has well said, "The War is Over." But stop and think... it really is - if... we really want it to be. Thank you Miley.

R.E. Slater
December 28, 2020






Christmas Bells
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)


I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."






Peace and Goodwill

Since Adam ate from off that tree,
Earth spins without tranquility.
No golden age of ancient Greece
Nor Pax Romana gave us peace.
The Son of God and Mary brought
The hope that midnight angels taught.

If you’d find peace from Heaven’s King,
Then join the song the angels sing:
“To God the highest glory be!”
That’s goodwill’s faithful melody.
All sinners, willing to believe,
Alone that Prince of Peace receive.

-- David L. Hatton, 12/7/2018




Peter Drucker quote from President Abraham Lincoln


Peace and Goodwill

True peace on earth will never be, without The Lord of Eternity,
And goodwill towards all men, truly begins as we’re Born-Again.
Men sing that Christ has come, but they must embrace the Son,
God’s Son who came to earth, so all man could have New Birth.

That little baby born in a stall, isn’t a babe, but He’s King over all,
As songs about a baby man sings, Christ reigns as King of kings,
The Only True Prince of Peace, with a reign that shall not cease,
And while a babe, nations adore, The Savior, men simply ignore.

Christ came to grant all salvation, but they ignore His Revelation,
Being born of God from above, brings the peace songs speak of,
Born Again by the Spirit of God, while living upon this earthly sod,
Becoming part of God’s Family, with a Peace that lasts Eternally.

Christ did not come for Christmas, but, to redeem sinners like us,
Starting with lost sheep in Israel, then the Gentiles, per God’s will,
To bring the message of Salvation, not to some, but every nation,
A message lost in festive fray, as men sing about Christmas Day.

Jesus is why Christmas came, but songs seldom utter His Name,
In many songs what’s not heard, are those Truths in God’s Word,
Sadly many, enjoying the song, even observe this holiday wrong,
And without embracing the Truth, instead of joy shall see reproof.

Bob Gotti
(Copyright ©01/2011)








Tuesday, August 23, 2016

The Cotton Patch Gospel of Clarence Jordan



"A colloquial translation with a Southern accent" 

also known as
The Cotton Patch Version of the New Testament




Link - http://rockhay.tripod.com/cottonpatch/


Both a Biblical scholar and a prophetic man of action, Clarence Jordan lived out the New Testament in the soil of rural Georgia. A visionary during the struggle for the civil rights of all God's children, he founded an inter-racial community called Koinonia (fellowship). On this farm, folks worked side-by-side to make a living, following Jesus - a radical concept fifty years ago. They experienced a great deal of opposition, even from those who followed the same Lord. This community still exists, Koinonia Partners, even though the visionary who started it died unexpectedly on October 29, 1969, at the age of fifty-seven.

Clarence was a powerful preacher - "direct, Bible-centered, and sternly contemporary," as Edward A. Mcdowell, Jr. put it. "He spoke with the earthiness of Amos of Tekoa, the boldness of Jeremiah, but often with the tenderness of Hosea. There was something in Clarence of the asceticism and gentleness of Saint Francis of Assisi but he never deserted the contemporary scene and spoke and wrote with the dogged determination of Martin Luther." When he preached, Clarence would write his own translation of a scripture he wanted to use. "Only gradually did he realize he had hit upon a style of translation that brought the Word to the reader with a new contemporary power," McDowell wrote. "As time went by, he completed individual books of the New Testament which were widely circulated in pamphlet form. But eventually he had done enough to be able to publish The Cotton Patch Version of Paul' s Epistles."

Clarence didn't call it a translation, but a "version," for he sought to take the text out of the 'long ago and far away' and place it in the 'here and now' of those with whom he lived and worked - the task of any preacher. This Cotton Patch Version is firmly planted in the cotton fields of the southern United States, not Palestine. Paul's epistle to the Ephesians, for instance, became the Letter to the Christians in Birmingham, Alabama. And the early Christian church, which struggled to integrate both Jews and Greeks, became the movement which joined "white man and Negro" within the same Gospel mission. "We ask our brethren of long ago," Clarence wrote, "to cross the time-space barrier and talk to us not only in modern English but about modern problems, feelings, frustrations, hopes and assurances; to work beside us in our cotton patch or on our assembly line, so that the word becomes modern flesh. Then perhaps, we too will be able to joyfully tell of 'that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes and have felt with our hands, about the word of life' (I John 1:1)."

Of course, this "version" has its limitations. Clarence himself wrote, "obviously the 'cotton patch' version must not be used as a historical text. The Revised Standard Version and the New English Bible are excellent for this purpose." Today's reader also becomes aware that this version itself is dated. Many things have changed in the South since Clarence's death. Furthermore, this paraphrase came before the modern concern for inclusive language. So be it. The one who penned this version would probably challenge us to put the words into the soil of our own "Cotton Patch." Even so, much of this work is remarkably current. The words still speak with great clarity, revealing the meaning within the text. [p.s. when exploring the Cotton Patch, a good place to begin might be with the introductions to each volume by Clarence, or the brief biography found in the last one - see below.]

We (myself and the "scribes" who scanned or typed the text into digital format as an act of love and appreciation) originally placed the Cotton Patch Version online with the permission of Koinonia Partners. Smyth & Helwys Publishing, as holders of the copyright and full publication rights to the CPG, several years ago gave permission to keep this online version available provided that we kept links to the printed copies on their website. We thank them for doing so. Unfortunately, they have now asked for these pages to be removed, writing: "As the nature of publishing evolves from print to digital, so do the requirement placed on holders of copyrights for digital products. As Smyth & Helwys now has ebooks of each Cotton Patch Gospel for purchase through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple, we will no longer be able to allow your site's open access to this copyrighted material." Therefore, we have removed the texts with appreciation for their courtesy to us for many years.

The hardcopy books are still available for purchase online. Buying them from this website helps support the ongoing mission of Koinonia Partners. The new edition of these four books (with new forewords by Tom Key, Tony Campolo, Will Campbell, and Henlee Barnett) is also available from Smyth & Hylwys. To purchase ebook versions, see Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), and Apple (ibooks apps for Ipad and Ipod).

By the way, Clarence has had a great influence upon many persons, including Habitat for Humanity founder,Millard Fuller. Furthermore, President Jimmy Carter grew up just down the road from the original Cotton Patch. The foreword to a recently published collection of Jordan's sermons - The Substance of Faith and Other Cotton Patch Sermons - was written by our former President.


* * * * * * * * * *


Cotton Patch Gospel
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Patch_Gospel


Some of this article's listed sources may not be reliable. Please help this article by looking for better, more reliable sources, or by checking whether the references meet the criteria for reliable sources. Unreliable citations may be challenged or deleted. (March 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Cotton Patch Gospel is a musical by Tom Key and Russell Treyz with music and lyrics written by Harry Chapin just before his death in 1981. Based on the book The Cotton Patch Version of Matthew and John by Clarence Jordan, the story retells the life of Jesus as if in modern day, rural Georgia. Though the setting and the styling of the language greatly differs from the original telling of the Gospels the plot structure and the message of the story stays true to the historical recording in The Gospel of Matthew.

Using a southern reinterpretation of the gospel story, the musical is often performed in a one-man show format with an accompanying quartet of bluegrass musicians, although a larger cast can also be used. A video recording of the play was released in 1988 with Tom Key as the leading actor.

Plot Summary

The story begins with the story of a young couple. Mary is engaged to Joe Davidson ("David's Son" referring to the lineage of Christ coming through the line of David). Even though she is a virgin, she is found to be with child before they are married. This child is conceived of the Holy Spirit. Joe considers not going through with the marriage, but is visited by an angel who tells him that it is the will of God that is occurring and not foul play, so he marries his girl. Due to an income tax audit, they must then travel to Gainesville; on the way, Mary suddenly goes into labor. There's no room for them at the Dixie Delight Motor Lodge, but the manager helps Joe break into an abandoned trailer out back, where the baby, Jesus, is born: "They wrapped him in a comforter and laid him in an apple crate". Jesus grows up like no other child in Georgia with his neighbors befuddled and his parents often at a loss as to what to do. Jesus then is baptized by a wild preacher named John the Baptizer, and begins to teach the people and convince the disciples. He shares with them the love and peace he offers, and miraculously heals and feeds many. During this time Jesus gathers a band of constant followers—known as the Apostles in the Bible. This group eventually heads off to Atlanta with a mixed air of excitement and foreboding.

Characters


Musical Score

The show's unique use of the live band on stage often incorporated into the acting adds to the entertainment of the performance and creates a fun and lively atmosphere.


Something is Brewing in Gainesville
+ all song selections



Songs

  • "Something's Brewing in Gainesville"
  • "I Did It/Mama Is Here"
  • "It Isn't Easy"
  • "Sho Nuff"
  • "Turn It Around"
  • "When I Look Up"
  • "Busy Signals"
  • "Spitball"
  • "Going to Atlanta"
  • "Are We Ready?"
  • "You are Still My Boy"
  • "We Gotta Get Organized"
  • "We're Gonna Love It While It Lasts"
  • "Jubilation"
  • "The Last Supper"
  • "Jud"
  • "Thank God for Governor Pilate"
  • "One More Tomorrow"
  • "Well I Wonder"

Memorable Adaptations

The rephrasing of well known scripture into the context and colloquial language of the south eastern region of the United States is creative and is the source of much of the humor in the production lines delivered out of their familiar scriptural language such as:

The Temptation of Jesus Christ

Jesus: [after being tested by the devil] "I passed." Matthew: "And then angels appeared with a sack of chili cheese dogs for him."

Instead of: Matthew 4:11 Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

Jesus: "Men don't live by grits alone."

Instead of: Matthew 4:4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’"


Cotton Patch Gospel Act 1 (Part 1 of 4)



Cotton Patch Gospel Act 1 (Part 2 of 4)



Cotton Patch Gospel Act 1 (Part 3 of 4)



Cotton Patch Gospel Act 1 (Part 4 of 4)