UNITED STATES
Religion News Service
Rich Preheim | July 6, 2015
(RNS) From seminars to a service of lament to a statement confessing its failure to offer healing for survivors, sexual abuse was a prominent topic at the Mennonite Church USA’s biennial convention, which concluded Sunday (July 5).
Not prominently mentioned, but on many people’s minds, was the denomination’s complicity in the rampant sexual violations by one of its most distinguished members, the late theologian John Howard Yoder.
The revelations of sexual violence committed by one of the most influential shapers of Christian pacifism have left many people grappling with the incongruity.
“The impetus for these initiatives was ‘We don’t want this to happen again,’” said Hannah Heinzekehr, director of communications for the denomination.
A lifelong Mennonite who died in 1997, Yoder was one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century. Many of his books remain in print, including the classic “The Politics of Jesus,” first published in 1972 and called one of the 10 best books of the 20th century by Christianity Today.
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