John Howard Yoder

John Howard Yoder (December 29, 1927 – December 30, 1997) was an American Mennonite theologian and ethicist best known for his defense of Christian pacifism.

Yoder was born on December 29, 1927, near Smithville, Ohio.

He earned his undergraduate degree from Goshen College where he studied under the Mennonite theologian Harold S. Bender.

He completed his Doctor of Theology degree at the University of Basel, Switzerland, studying under Karl Barth, Oscar Cullmann, Walther Eichrodt, and Karl Jaspers.

After the Second World War, Yoder traveled to Europe to direct relief efforts for the Mennonite Central Committee.

Yoder was instrumental in reviving European Mennonites following the war.

Upon returning to the United States, he spent a year working at his father's greenhouse business in Wooster, Ohio.

Yoder began his teaching career at Goshen Biblical Seminary.

He was Professor of Theology at Goshen Biblical Seminary and Mennonite Biblical Seminary (the two seminaries that formed what is now called Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary) from 1958 to 1961 and from 1965 to 1984.

While still teaching at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, he also began teaching at the University of Notre Dame, where he became a professor of Theology and eventually a Fellow of the Institute for International Peace Studies.

Yoder sexually abused over 100 women during the 1970s and 1980s while at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary.

The abuse was widely rumored, but not acted upon even when board members became aware of the numerous accusations.

His most influential book was The Politics of Jesus, which was first published in 1972.

Yoder was a Mennonite and wrote from an Anabaptist perspective.

He spent the latter part of his career teaching at the University of Notre Dame.

Of his many books, the most widely recognized has undoubtedly been The Politics of Jesus (1972); it has been translated into at least ten languages.

In 1992, media reports emerged that Yoder had sexually abused women in preceding decades, with as many as over 50 complainants.

The Elkhart Truth first reported on the allegations June 29, 1992.

The seminary has acknowledged Yoder's crimes against women and has apologized for not acting on them at the time.

Yoder died on December 30, 1997, one day after his 70th birthday.

His personal papers are housed at the Mennonite Church USA Archives.

Yoder is best remembered for his work related to Christian ethics.

Rejecting the assumption that human history is driven by coercive power, Yoder argued that it was rather God – working in, with, and through the nonviolent, nonresistant community of disciples of Jesus – who has been the ultimate motivational force in human affairs.

When a Christian church in the past made alliances with political rulers, it was because it had lost confidence in this truth.

He called the arrangement whereby the state and the church each supported the goals of the other Constantinianism, and he regarded this arrangement as a dangerous and constant temptation.

He argued that the early Church was a socially subversive community because of their shared life focusing on the Kingdom of God rather than the kingdoms of any mere man, but later after the rise of Constantine the Great the more worldly focused Church came to covet temporal power and political influence.

Yoder called this the Constantinian shift.

He further argued that Jesus himself rejected this temptation, even to the point of dying a horrible and cruel death.

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead was, in this view, God's way of vindicating Christ's unwavering obedience, as well as setting the example of a life laid down in serving and loving others, for all who claim to follow Jesus.

Constantine Revisited: Leithart, Yoder, and the Constantinian Debate (2013), edited by John D. Roth, is a collection of essays by Christian pacifists addressing the scholarly debate between Yoder and Peter Leithart about the nature of the Emperor Constantine's impact on Christianity.

In his book Constantine Revisited, Leithart opposed Yoder's argument that God preferred Christians to focus on the spiritual needs around them and to build the Kingdom of God, rejecting coercion for a life of service, thereby remaining a politically powerless, physically defenseless minority.

Likewise, Yoder argued, the primary responsibility of Christians is not to take over society and impose their convictions and values on people who don't share their faith, but to "be the church."

By refusing to return evil for evil, by living in peace, sharing goods, and doing deeds of charity such as caring for widows and orphans as opportunities arise, the church witnesses, says Yoder, to the fact that an alternative to a society based on violence or the threat of violence has been made possible by the life, death, resurrection and teachings of Jesus.

The Kingdom of God comes to rule in a different way, by one heart at a time yielding to the love of God.

Yoder claims that the church thus lives in the conviction that God calls Christians to imitate the way of Christ in his absolute obedience, even if it leads to their deaths, for they, too, will finally be vindicated in resurrection.

In bringing traditional Mennonite convictions to the attention of a wider critical audience, Yoder reenergized stale theological debates over foundational Christian ecclesiological, Christological, and ethical beliefs.

Yoder rejected Enlightenment presuppositions, epitomized by Immanuel Kant, about the possibility of a universal, rational ethic.

Abandoning the search for a universal ethic underlying Christian and non-Christian morality, as well as attempts to "translate" Christian convictions into a common moral parlance, he argued that what is expected of Christians, morally, need not be binding for all people.

Yoder defended himself against charges of incoherence and hypocrisy by arguing for the legitimacy of moral double standards, and by pointing out that since world affairs are ultimately governed by God's providence, Christians are better off being the Church, than following compromised moral systems that try to reconcile biblical revelation with the necessities of governance.

The Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary acknowledged in a statement from 2014 that sexual abuse had taken place and it had been tolerated partly because he was the leading Mennonite theologian of his day and partly because there were not the safeguards in place that there are today.