UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage
William D. Lindsey
A must-read article from this past week: Stephanie Krehbiel on the “Woody Allen Problem”: how is it possible to read pacifist Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder now, now that we know that Yoder was a serial sex abuser? Here’s the problem:
Small wonder, then, that Mennonite church leaders wanted nothing less than to deal with the evidence, mounting throughout the 1980s and 90s, that Yoder was a serial sex abuser. Many of his victims were women students at what is now the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), and at the University of Notre Dame, where he was also employed. Dozens of women lodged complaints with seminary officials and church leaders, who seemed by and large helpless or unwilling to control his predatory behavior. Yoder died in 1997 without any formal charges ever having been filed against him. The secrecy with which church leaders and administrators dealt with his behavior meant that many people who were influenced by his theology had no idea that women had accused him, repeatedly, of sexual violence.
As Krehbiel goes on to point out, it’s not just that the Mennonite church did nothing to deal with Yoder: “[W]hat they did do was too little, too late, and more about institutional damage control than about justice or healing for Yoder’s victims.” And, of course, as Krehbiel also notes, the re-emergence of the story that Woody Allen sexually molested his step-daughter Dylan Farrow raises questions all over again about what we do with Yoder’s legacy–just as it is raising questions for many of us about how to interpret Allen’s work.
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