{"id":20090,"date":"2014-01-07T13:47:56","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T18:47:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=20090"},"modified":"2014-01-07T13:47:56","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T18:47:56","slug":"readers-should-know-of-theologians-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/01\/07\/readers-should-know-of-theologians-abuse\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Readers should know’ of theologian’s abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

John Howard Yoder\u2019s The Politics of Jesus<\/em><\/a> is a remarkable book \u2014 challenging and inspiring, frustrating and exasperating. Reading Yoder is a bit like reading Thomas Jefferson. You encounter bold ideas stated with force and clarity, yet you\u2019re also forced to confront the enormous gap between those abstract ideas and the actual life of the person writing them.<\/p>\n

Yoder\u2019s writing offers a profound exploration of the relationship between love and power. His discussion of violence and coercion provides many valuable insights. And yet his own life often contradicted all of that.<\/p>\n

Herald Press, the Mennonite publishing house that produces many books by Yoder, has decided to acknowledge and confront this problem. Herald has announced<\/a>\u00a0that all future publications of books by John Howard Yoder will include this statement:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>John Howard Yoder (1927-\u00901997) was perhaps the most well-known Mennonite theologian in the 20th century. While his work on Christian ethics helped define Anabaptism to an audience far outside the Mennonite Church, he is also remembered for his long-term sexual harassment and abuse of women.<\/p>\n

At Herald Press we recognize the complex tensions involved in presenting work by someone who called Christians to reconciliation and yet used his position of power to abuse others. We believe that Yoder and those who write about his work deserve to be heard; we also believe readers should know that Yoder engaged in abusive behavior.<\/p>\n

This book is published with the hope that those studying Yoder\u2019s writings will not dismiss the complexity of these issues and will instead wrestle with, evaluate, and learn from Yoder\u2019s work in the full context of his personal, scholarly, and churchly legacy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Victoria Gaile Laidler<\/a> commends Herald Press for recognizing the need for such a disclaimer, and provides an excellent discussion of why abusive and predatory behavior by theologians like Yoder and Paul Tillich can\u2019t be shrugged off as irrelevant to the substance of their writing:<\/p>\n

One of the differences between \u201ctheology\u201d and \u201creligious studies\u201d is that theology is carried out from within the perspective of the believer, while religious studies takes a strictly historical\/sociological perspective. I am enrolled in a theological program: perhaps this is why my immediate response to learning of this theologian\u2019s persistent sinful patterns of behavior was to question whether and how it reflected on the value of his theology. It seems a screamingly obvious question to me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It seems an obvious question to me too. Herald Press has addressed the first part of that question \u2014 whether<\/em> such behavior matters when evaluating his theology. The publisher\u2019s disclaimer acknowledges that it does.<\/p>\n

The second part of that question \u2014 how?<\/em> \u2014 is more complicated. That needs to address not just how such behavior influences our estimation of the person, but how it may have influenced or shaped or deformed the substance<\/em> of that person\u2019s theology. That matters.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“John Howard Yoder (1927-\u00901997) was perhaps the most well-known Mennonite theologian in the 20th century. While his work on Christian ethics helped define Anabaptism to an audience far outside the Mennonite Church, he is also remembered for his long-term sexual harassment and abuse of women.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44,50],"class_list":["post-20090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-theology"],"yoast_head":"\n'Readers should know' of theologian's abuse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""John Howard Yoder (1927-\u00901997) was perhaps the most well-known Mennonite theologian in the 20th century. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"'Readers should know' of theologian's abuse","description":"\"John Howard Yoder (1927-\u00901997) was perhaps the most well-known Mennonite theologian in the 20th century. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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