UNITED STATES
Winnipeg Free Press
By: John Longhurst
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.
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