UNITED STATES
The Other Journal
by David Cramer & Jenny Howell & Jonathan Tran & Paul Martens on Monday, July 7, 2014
In the years following, some say preceding, the 1972 publication of his monumental The Politics of Jesus, the celebrated Christian ethicist John Howard Yoder emotionally manipulated and sexually violated numerous women.[1] Yoder’s conduct troubles us on multiple levels. Because these behaviors strike us as profoundly dissonant with the ways in which his thought has deeply influenced us, we spent the last year attempting to find out all we could about his actions and to reflect theologically on what we found. In this essay, we first report what we know about Yoder’s manipulations and violations and their histories at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary and the University of Notre Dame. Next we consider inconsistencies and consistencies between those behaviors and his theology. Finally, we utilize one aspect of his thought—his account of the fallen powers—to reevaluate his legacy in the terms of his theology.
Saying what we know is easy enough, because what we know with certainty remains minimal. Here is what we know, and we share it because it is important that readers of Yoder’s theology are aware of his conduct so that they can judge for themselves how to take his vision of Christian discipleship.
Initial reports put the number of women involved at around ten, but subsequent estimates have gone as high as one hundred. Yoder’s actions toward these women, including students, ranged from verbal sexual innuendo to physical sexual acts, including intercourse. Some commentators are convinced that these behaviors took place over most of his decades-long teaching career, whereas others believe they occurred during a fixed and much shorter period of time. In his interactions with these women, we understand that Yoder saw himself involved in a “grand noble experiment” with them even though some women use “harassment” and “abuse” to describe what he did to them.[2]
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