UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage
William D. Lindsey
Several days ago, I published an essay here by the distinguished Mennonite scholar and abuse survivors’ advocate Ruth Krall, responding to her erasure from the record of Mennonite scholarship and activism regarding the legacy of John Howard Yoder in a recent National Catholic Reporter article about these matters. Today, I’m delighted to add to this discussion an excellent essay written by a young Mennonite scholar, Stephanie Krehbiel, who strongly defends Ruth and her contribution to the discussion of Yoder’s legacy, noting,
If Krall were some sort of fringe player in the Yoder drama, . . . younger scholars could be forgiven for glancing over her name. But—for the love of the historical evidence, people, please!—Krall has been at the center of the struggle to make people take Yoder’s abuse seriously for almost forty years. There’s no excuse for ignoring her work.
Here’s Stephanie’s essay:
There was something refreshing about reading the opening line of Kyle Lambelet and Brian Hamilton’s recent NCR piece, “Engage Survivors More, and Yoder Less.” Right there at the outset, they write,
Over the course of his acclaimed career, Christian theologian and ethicist John Howard Yoder (1927-97) stalked, harassed and sexually assaulted more than a hundred women.
The language in this sentence is evidence of a feminist victory. For years, survivors’ advocates in the Mennonite church pushed back against the sanitized and indistinct language that people used to talk about what Yoder did to women. “Misconduct.” “Boundary crossing.” There may be times when that kind of non-specific language is necessary, but for the women who knew how violent John Howard Yoder actually was, it added another layer of abuse to the violations already committed.
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