Remembering John M. Perkins: From Sharecropper’s Shack To National Ministry
(ANALYSIS) John M. Perkins died on March 13 at the age of 95. His death has drawn wide attention, including from places such as The New York Times. He was many things — a husband of 74 years, the father of eight remarkable children, an evangelist, a Bible teacher, a community organizer and an activist for racial reconciliation.
He wrote many books, including “One Blood: Parting Words to the Church on Race and Love,” “He Calls Me Friend: The Healing Power of Friendship” and “Count it All Joy: The Ridiculous Paradox of Suffering.”
All this as an orphan with a third-grade education.
Perkins was born in Mississippi in 1930. His father did not stick around, and when he was just 7 months old, his mother died while he was in her arms. She died of pellagra, which is caused by an inadequate diet. After that, he was raised by his grandmother, who took in all five of the Perkins' family kids to her shack after raising 19 children of her own.
His extended family were sharecroppers. They worked on a white man's land and received a share of the crops and very little money. Their income was supplemented by bootlegging, and their home was raided in searches for illegal liquor. But often the searches were cursory since many of their customers were white and they didn't really want the trade to end.
They worked a wide range of crops throughout the year. This left only about two months for schooling. But John didn't like attending school — and eventually quit.
In 1947, his revered elder brother Clyde, a decorated veteran, was killed by a deputy marshall for talking back to him. The family was worried that the 16-year-old John would react violently and shipped him off to Southern California with lunch, one change of clothes and just $3.
California is where he thrived as a diligent worker, moving on to better and better jobs. He asked Vera Mae, his sweetheart from Mississippi, to join him. She did, and they were married and began to raise children in a twelve-room house.
His family back in the South was not religious. John later said that he had looked down on and was even hostile to the African American churches for being overly emotional and not taking concrete steps to improve the lives of their members. But Vera Mae and the children went to church in California.
One day in 1957, three-year-old Spencer came home and sang a song he had learned there:
Jesus loves the little children,
All the little children of the world.
Red and yellow, black, and white,
they are precious in his sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
Given his own racially-charged background, John broke down when he heard this, began to go to church and gave his life to the Lord. Not one to do things by halves he soon became a bible teacher and preacher.
Among those to whom he ministered were black teenagers who had come from the South and were in trouble with the law. John believed then that God was calling him back to Mississippi to address these problems at their source. Vera Mae was not happy about this, to put it mildly, but in the end, she agreed.
In 1960, they moved back to New Hebron, Miss. John reported that much of the town came out to greet them since no one who had managed to get out of there before had ever moved back.
This move embodied the first of John's threefold model of Christian Community Development, which he steadfastly maintained was relocation, redistribution and reconciliation. Relocation meant that if you were going to work in a community, you should move and live there. After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, many wonderful people voluntarily drove their own supply trucks to help the people who were ruined there. Those inspired by John also went there in moving trucks: they were going to live in the ruins.
In New Hebron, he worked as an evangelist, especially with children. He also sought to improve education and job training. John started a church, school, thrift store, health clinic, daycare and, before Habitat for Humanity, started community home building. All this was based first on reconciliation with God through Jesus, and then reconciliation with each other. He stressed that what people needed was “Jesus and a job.”
Despite beatings and harassment from the authorities for his civil rights work, the ministry there grew and started attracting attention from churches, development groups, and foundations throughout the country, who saw it as a possible model to be imitated and, of course. adapted to the local situation. This led to the formation of the Christian Community Development Association, eventually bringing together over a thousand organizations. Through World Vision and others, his ministry also developed internationally.
Throughout this amazing story, John remained humble and well able to laugh at himself. He once remarked that “Vera Mae and I have had only one fight in our marriage, and it's still going on.”
John was always rooted in Christ. This meant that he could sometimes be challenging to interview, since if you asked him a practical question, he might quickly recall what Jesus had said about it and then reflect deeply on the Bible's teachings. The original question might be forgotten. This was not a show. It was simply how his mind and his heart worked.
He was a great man. A man God mastered.
Paul Marshall is Wilson Professor of Religious Freedom at Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion, director of the Religious Freedom Institute’s South and Southeast Asia Action Team, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and author of over 20 books on religion and politics. His latest book is “Called to be Friends: Called to Serve,” on the unlikely friendship of John M. Perkins and Howard F. Ahmanson Jr.