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Theologian's Awful New Legacy

By John Longhurst
Winnipeg Free Press
January 17, 2015

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/faith/theologians-awful-new-legacy-288911211.html

Four years ago, while visiting Elkhart, Ind., on business, my hosts decided to take me on a tour. We saw historic downtown buildings, the river walk, gardens and magnificent old houses. The tour concluded with a visit to the grave of Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder.

It wasn't surprising that they wanted to take me there; Yoder, who died in 1997, was possibly the most prominent North American Mennonite theologian of the 20th century. He was best known for his book The Politics of Jesus, for decades a standard text in many seminaries and Christian universities.

Through that book, and his many other works, Yoder influenced millions with his thoughtful and energetic promotion of Christian pacifism and non-violence -- including me. He changed the way I viewed how Christians should interact with the world.

So it came as a shock last week when the results of an inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse against him were published.

The allegations go back to the 1970s and 1980s, when Yoder was as a professor at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart. Confronted about his conduct in 1992, Yoder acknowledged that he had behaved inappropriately, but maintained he never meant any harm.

Following a four-year process, he was disciplined by his local church and conference, which concluded he had "violated sexual boundaries." He died a week after being welcomed back into fellowship at his church.

His death might have been the end of it. But over the years more and more women came forward with details of systematic abuse and impropriety by Yoder, and charges of a church coverup. In 2013, Mennonite Church USA -- the denomination to which Yoder belonged -- and the seminary initiated a discernment process to respond to survivors of the abuse.

As part of that process, historian Rachel Waltner Goossen was asked last year to research the nature of the abuse, and how the church responded to it. That report has just been published.

Titled Defanging the Beast: Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder's Sexual Abuse, the report presents a man who, over many years, deliberately experimented with what he considered a new theology of sex. It also presents a church that failed to adequately deal with him, or with his victims.

According to Waltner Goossen's report, beginning in the mid-1970s Yoder "embarked on an experiment in sexuality, devising his own guidelines and selecting his own subjects, whom he called 'sisters.'"

The report goes on to say that "during the last 25 years of Yoder's life, his sexual behaviours toward many women caused significant harm. A highly mobile professor and church leader, he approached mostly Mennonite women both near and far from home. Yoder's advances included making suggestive comments, sending sexually explicit correspondence and surprising women with physical coercion."

In an interview with Mennonite World Review, Waltner Goossen said that "Yoder wasn't blithely doing this once or twice. He was deeply engaged with this for a very long time."

Precise numbers may never be known, but she suggests that over 100 women, including at least one Canadian, experienced unwanted sexual violations by Yoder, "ranging across a spectrum from sexual harassment in public places to, more rarely, sexual intercourse."

Mennonite Church USA and the seminary are still digesting the report, and have not issued an official response. But they had earlier planned a service of confession and lament in March, to which representatives from Mennonite Church Canada -- which is headquartered in Winnipeg and part owner of the school with Mennonite Church USA -- will attend.

For Mennonites, and for anyone else influenced by Yoder, this news is hard to hear. Not only is there grief over the tremendous harm he caused, there is also anger that it was allowed to continue for so long.

It also casts doubt on his legacy. Can the writings of someone who preached and taught peace and non-violence be trusted if he was acting violently toward the women who looked up to him as a teacher and mentor? And what do you do now with a book like The Politics of Jesus?

Those are questions I am asking myself. I'm sure many others are, too.

[rpt from Waltner Goossen's report can be read on the Canadian Mennonite magazine website at http:]

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