Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals. -Colman McCarthy link
What is pacifism?
I am not a pacifist as it is defined in some Christian circles and, to be quite frank, I experience regular guilt that I am not. Pacifism as it is defined in Merriam Webster seems to fit me.
Inclined to live in peace and to avoid war
The antonyms for pacifism,from the same source, do not describe me.
bloodthirsty, hawkish, martial, warlike
However, Christian pacifism is another thing altogether. Peace Theology defines it this way.
We might best think of “pacifism” as the conviction that no value that could justify the use of violence takes priority over the commitment to peace. Hence, “pacifism” is more than simply approving of peace, which everyone in some sense would do, it is the conviction that the commitment to peace stands higher than any other commitment.
The early Christians were nonviolent.
I have studied the persecution of the early church during the reigns of emperors such as Nero, Diocletion, Severus, Decius and Galerius. Something that has stuck with me for years is that the early Christians were brave, loving and nonviolent. They went to their deaths in the Coliseum and as Nero's torches with joy and peace.
In 203, Perpetua, a noblewoman who had converted to Christianity and had just given birth to a daughter and her Christian servant, Felicitas, who was 8 months pregnant, were sent to face the lions. Perpetua was led into the arena, her breast dripping with milk standing beside Felcitas. Those who were to be killed were often unclothed. She faced her end with such dignity, even guiding the gladiator's sword to her neck, that many in the crowd began to question such treatment. The Romans slowly began to turn away from such entertainment.
Each time I espouse the just war theory, I always think of Perpetua and realize that there are differing ways to view things. Perhaps the most well known theologian who defined and espoused the theology of Christian pacifism is John Howard Yoder (1927-1997.)
Who was John Howard Yoder and why does he matter?
Wikipedia does a good job giving the particulars of John Yoder's educational and career background on which I will not linger. I have highlighted his transition from Associated Mennonite Seminary to Notre Dame because this had something to do with the abuse allegations.
Yoder earned his undergraduate degree from Goshen College where he studied under Mennonite theologian Harold S. Bender.He completed his Th.D. at the University of Basel, Switzerland, studying under Karl Barth, Oscar Cullman, Walther Eichrodt, and Karl Jaspers.
…Yoder began his teaching career at Goshen Biblical Seminary. He was Professor of Theology at Goshen Biblical Seminary and Mennonite Biblical Seminary (the two seminaries that formed Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary) from 1958 to 1961 and from 1965 to 1984. While still teaching at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, he also began teaching at the University of Notre Dame, where he became a Professor of Theology and eventually a Fellow of the Institute for International Peace Studies.
Yoder developed the theology surrounding Christian pacifism.
Here is a bit more on his pacifist scholarship. It is important to see that his dedication to this ideal apparently did not extend to his view and treatment of women. His most well known book is called The Politics of Jesus. According to Theopedia
In it, Yoder argues against popular views of Jesus, particularly those views held by Reinhold Niebuhr, which he believed to be dominant in the day. Niebuhr argued a particular view of just war philosophy, which Yoder felt failed to take seriously the call or person of Jesus Christ. After showing what he believed to be inconsistencies of Niebuhr's perspective, Yoder attempted to demonstrate by an exegesis of the Gospel of Luke and parts of Paul's letter to the Romans that, in his view, a radical Christian pacifism was the most faithful approach for the disciple of Christ. Yoder argued that being Christian is a political standpoint, and Christians ought not ignore that calling.
The Politics of Jesus was named by evangelical publication Christianity Today as one of the most important Christian books of the 20th century.
Interestingly, his view on pacifism became more nuanced near to his death. Again from Theopedia
Needless to say, Yoder's account of Christian faith and ethics has been controversial. Towards the end of his life, interestingly, he began to think about the use of a global police force as a limited instance where Christians could support the use of coercive force.
It is important to understand that Yoder's work on pacifism greatly influenced a couple of generations of theologians not the least of which is Stanley Hauerwas link and link who Time Magazine declared is the greatest theologian of our generation.
Yoder had a long history of sexually harassing and abusing women.
So, we have a man of peace who influenced countless others in the way of Christian pacifism. However, this well regarded theologian had a dark side. Unfortunately, it appears that the Mennonite leadership turned a blind eye to the countless reports of sexual abuse and harassment. After all, he put Mennonite theology on the map.
Michelle Van Loon wrote an excellent post Content Trumps Character? The Real Message Of Disclaimer Labels On Theological Books in which she succinctly defined the issue with Yoder.
For all of his intellectual brilliance, he was a man of deeply flawed character who abused a number of women from his position of power. His brilliance rationalized those actions by relying on the notion that a spiritually-mature man could engage in intimate, “healing” physical touch just this side of intercourse with a woman, insisting that this contact wasn’t sinful if he didn’t feel lust prior to or during the contact. He managed to repackage his own needs and appetites by deconstructing Scripture with his well-trained mind while insisting that his more evolved spirituality was the reason he could give his non-sexual luvin’ to his cross-gendered friends. He was a peacemaker, after all.
Well, except for the sexual assaults.
…it took years for the rumors of his abuse to come to light, and for the victims to discover that they had plenty of company. Shortly before he died in 1997, Yoder affirmed that he’d uh, probably crossed a few non-blurred lines and went through some sort of formal restoration process with his home church. None of the women he’d assaulted received an apology, nor was there any sort of counseling or financial remuneration follow-up offered them as far as I could discern.
Mennonite World in Peaceful Theology, Violent Acts documents some of the claims.
During the last 25 years of Yoder’s life, his sexual behaviors toward many women caused significant harm. A highly mobile professor and churchman, 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 a 1974 solicitation in which he appealed to women to engage with him, Yoder wrote: “Only thanks to your friendship, sisterhood, can I do the theology.” Remarkably, he was conveying that they were tools for him to use in his quest to perfect Christian theology.
Precise numbers will never be known, but two mental health professionals who worked closely with him from 1992 to 1995 as part of Indiana-Michigan’s disciplinary process believe that more than 100 women experienced unwanted sexual violations by Yoder, ranging from sexual harassment in public places to, more rarely, sexual intercourse.
Yoder develops theology to justify his actions towards women.
The blog, Thinking Pacifism, in a post titled Word and Deed: The Strange Case of John Howard Yoder (addendum) gives us Stanley Hauerwas' perspective. He describes the development of Yoder's theology of intimate relations between men and women.
Stanley Hauerwas’s memoir, Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir (Eerdmans, 2010), 242-47, provides some fascinating background on this episode. Hauerwas was a colleague and close friend of Yoder’s at Notre Dame, though by the early 1990s he had moved on to Duke. These are some of his comments (from pages 242-7):
I had long had in my possession unpublished papers of John’s in which he argued that the mainstream church was wrong to assume that the only alternative available for men and women in the church are celibacy or marriage. John, who thought that, first and foremost, Christians are called to be single, argued that for brothers and sisters in the faith there should be other ways of relating bodily with one another. In short, he thought there might be ‘nonsexual’ ways that Christians could touch one another short of intercourse. It seems he set out to test his theory” (244).
“John began his seductions of ‘weighty’ Mennonite women—women of intellectual and spiritual stature in the community—by asking them to help him with his work. He would then suggest that they touch him, and that he touch them, without engaging in sexual intercourse. John was intellectually overwhelming. He may have convinced some women that what they were doing was not sexual, but they later came to recognize that John was clearly misusing them. They somehow made contact with one another, compared notes, and John was in a heap of trouble” (244).
In January 2015, Mennonite World Review published New sources give clearer view of abuse by theologian. The Mennonite Church USA commissioned an historian, Rachel Waltner Goossen, to carefully look into the history of the claims of abuse surrounding Yoder.
She used her experience as a scholar of 20th-century U.S. history, with focuses on peace and Mennonites, to independently delve through extensive Mennonite conference records, seminary presidential files and correspondence with victims. She conducted 29 interviews with Yoder’s seminary colleagues, Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference workers, mental health professionals and victims.
Goossen found a theologian who over many years experimented with what he considered a new theology of sex.
“He didn’t concede that [it was wrong],” Goossen said. “Yoder wasn’t blithely doing this once or twice. He was deeply engaged with this for a very long time, even when people very close to him, including his seminary president, directly challenged him over a number of years. . . .
“Part of his project was he believed that as a Mennonite theologian he could help women sexually. I know that sounds strange, but he had a very high sense of what he could do for women, and he engaged with very many women who he believed that he was helping.”
The New York Times quotes from a five part series by Yoder defending his theology of nongenital affective relationships.
In his memoir, Professor Hauerwas alludes to what Tom Price, a reporter for the newspaper The Elkhart Truth, described in a five-part 1992 series as Mr. Yoder’s defense of “nongenital affective relationships.” Mr. Yoder said that touching a woman could be an act of “familial” love, in which a man helped to heal a traumatized “sister.”
Mr. Price quoted from “What Is Adultery of the Heart?” a 1975 essay in which Mr. Yoder wrote that a “bodily” embrace “can celebrate and reinforce familial security,” rather than “provoking guilt-producing erotic reactions.”
Ms. Heggen, called Tina in the newspaper articles, told Mr. Price that Mr. Yoder had a grandiose explanation for his advances, which he tried out on multiple women.
“We are on the cutting edge,” Mr. Yoder would say, according to Ms. Heggen. “We are developing new models for the church. We are part of this grand, noble experiment. The Christian church will be indebted to us for years to come.”
Interestingly, Yoder used Matthew 18 (which TWW believes is often one of the misused verses in the Bible), to slow the discovery process down. Goossen remarks
Since Yoder’s death, some admirers of his theology have offered explanations for his behavior. By keeping the focus on Yoder rather than on the consequences of his actions, these speculations deflect attention from institutional complicity.
Yoder had lectured extensively about the mandate of Matt. 18:15 for individual responsibility in confronting wrongdoing, and seminary president Miller, along with an entire generation of ordained leaders, had imbibed lessons on church discipline — in the biblical phrase, “binding and loosing” — from Yoder through his books and teaching.
Tragically, in seeking to apply the Matthew 18 mandate for resolving conflict, Miller and others in positions of authority responded with painstaking slowness to Yoder’s abuse of power. Years of wasted time, energy and denominational resources enabled the victimization of women living and studying on the seminary campus and beyond. The peace theologian’s perpetration of sexual violence had far-reaching consequences among families, within congregations and throughout agencies — from AMBS, to Mennonite Central Committee and missions programs, to Mennonite-affiliated institutions across the globe.
What did those in leadership over Yoder do? Not much.
Attempts at intervention began as early as 1979. Mennonite World in Peaceful Theology, Violent Acts reports:
By 1979, Yoder’s supervisor at the seminary, President Marlin Miller, was documenting a surge of disturbing incidents involving Yoder from as far away as South Africa and Mennonite World Conference headquarters in Strasbourg, France. At the time, U.S. courts had not yet consistently defined sexual harassment, and employers rarely called in law enforcement to respond to sexual misconduct.
Rather than firing Yoder, who was his intellectual mentor and predecessor in the seminary presidency, Miller kept meticulous records about what he learned. He summarized calls and letters received — mostly from English-speakers, but also some in German and French — about women’s encounters with Yoder. Miller’s diary-like entries included details about his informants’ marital status and whether they had reported “total disrobing,” as well as their rationales for engaging with Yoder in his project. Miller also kept notes about women who reported that they had rebuffed Yoder’s sexual aggressions.
So, they did what many churches and denominations have done when they wanted to get rid of a predator while protecting the reputation of the institution. They let him go to Notre Dame without sharing information about his sexual abuse. Again from Mennonite World in Peaceful Theology, Violent Acts:
Although Yoder and Miller, hoping to avoid potential for blackmail, destroyed an unknown number of letters in 1980, surviving documents reveal not only the egregious behavior of Yoder toward some women but also the power Miller used to enforce their silence. From 1976 to 1984, engaging with Yoder via theological disputation became the hidden agenda of Miller’s presidency. Hoping to save Yoder’s marriage and career, he used the data he had gathered to repudiate his star faculty member’s notions about sexuality.
In 1980, Miller established a disciplinary process with a small group at Goshen Biblical Seminary in an unsuccessful attempt to bring Yoder to accountability.
In 1984, Miller and members of the Covenant Group, having failed to stop Yoder’s behaviors, recommended his departure to the seminaries’ boards. He was allowed to resign, and he informed the theology department at Notre Dame he was leaving his adjunct position at Goshen Biblical Seminary, adding that the decision had “delicate dimensions.”
For the coming decade, seminary insiders maintained confidentiality, and Yoder, whose profile as theologian and ethicist would grow with his base at Notre Dame, was no longer welcome at AMBS events.
A less than successful intervention
Eventually, there was an intervention which was spurred on by Stanley Hauerwas. In 2013, the New York Times published A Theologian’s Influence, and Stained Past, Live On
In 1992, after eight women pressured the church to take action, Mr. Yoder’s ministerial credentials were suspended and he was ordered into church-supervised rehabilitation. It soon emerged that Mr. Yoder’s 1984 departure from what is now called Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, in Elkhart, Ind., had also been precipitated by allegations against him. He left for Notre Dame, where administrators were not told what had happened at his last job.
But Mr. Yoder emerged as a hero of repentance. His accusers never spoke publicly, and their anonymity made it easier for some to wish away their allegations. And in December 1997, after about 30 meetings for supervision and counseling, Mr. Yoder and his wife were welcomed back to worship at Prairie Street Mennonite Church in Elkhart. To cap a perfect narrative of redemption, he died at 70 at the end of that month.
Without denying the wrongness of his acts, his supporters continued to celebrate Mr. Yoder and the Mennonite leaders who had rehabilitated him.
“How John’s community responded to his inappropriate relations with women” was “a testimony to a community that has learned over time that the work of peace is slow, painful, and hard,” wrote Stanley Hauerwas, a retired Duke University professor and Yoder’s heir as the leading pacifist theologian, in his 2010 memoir.
Reconciliation with victims was a bust.
However, reconciliation was not achieved. In fact, Yoder became somewhat belligerent about the discipline process. Again from Mennonite World in Peaceful Theology, Violent Acts:
Yet into the 1990s, the secrecy that had veiled Yoder’s actions began to collapse. Some women who had experienced his sexual aggressiveness leveraged their collective will to force Mennonite leaders to stop his abuse. Their efforts at whistle-blowing culminated with several dramatic events in 1992 — including the withdrawal of an invitation for him to speak at Bethel College in North Newton, Kan. — a turning point in the denomination’s dealings with Yoder.
Over the next several years, Yoder sharply contested Mennonite conference officials’ right to retain records documenting his abuse. In 1996, concerned about the implications of the sexual abuse charges on his legacy, he informed Indiana-Michigan Conference officials that he was consulting a lawyer about the conference’s plan to retain hundreds of documents — correspondence, meeting minutes and mental health records — that they had used in determining not to reinstate his credential.
Yoder’s dispute with those officials signaled that their four-year disciplinary proceedings would miss the mark of reconciliation. A year before his death in 1997 at age 70, Yoder declared that “the initially stated goal of restoration has been abandoned.”
Confession, honesty and repentance by the Mennonite Church may be in the near future.
However, there appears to be some light at the end of this dark episode. It appears the Mennonite Church USA will have a ceremony of confession, repentance and reconciliation at their convention in March 2015.
Ted Koontz, a professor at Mr. Yoder’s old seminary and a member of the church’s discernment group, said the church needed to take stock of what was — or was not — done for Mr. Yoder’s victims.
“There are a lot of different opinions about what was done and wasn’t done to hold him accountable,” Professor Koontz said.
The committee will probably conclude its work, he added, in time for the Mennonite Church USA’s 2015 convention in Kansas City, Mo., where there may be a ceremony “of confession, repentance, reconciliation.”
Michelle Van Loon also documents the following in Content Trumps Character? The Real Message Of Disclaimer Labels On Theological Books.
Now, after years of discernment meetings and discussion, Yoder’s publisher, Herald Press, will be publishing a disclaimer, acknowledging his history of sexual sin while continuing to commend his writing to readers.
The public views an attempt at nuance with disdain.
There was a recent attempt by Mark Yoder to nuance John Yoder's behavior in a post at Eastern Mennonite University. I call this the "John Yoder was weird anyway" defense.
And then, who among those who knew John would have been surprised that his approach to extra-marital, intimate “relationships” would have been awkward or even weird and that he would have been quite unaware of how he was being perceived?
However, this attempt at nuance was not well received as indicated by the comments to that post. For example:
One woman's story that says it all.
I leave you with one woman's story of her abuse, how she was ignored by the leadership in spite of a tape recording, and her advice to women who have been abused in the Mennonite Church. John Howard Yoder -My untold story after 36 years of silence. Please read the full story of Sharon Detweiler. Here is an excerpt.
In 1992, I happened upon an article that reported that Yoder was being investigated for inappropriate sexual activity. After reading the article I contacted Marlin Miller whom I had known personally through my previous work with the Church. I told him what I had experienced with Yoder and he asked me to send the cassette tape to him that I told him I possessed; I had transported the tape with me all the way to California from Pennsylvania in 1981.
What was on that tape? Yoder had recorded his unique sexual philosophy for me in no less than 60 minutes, as his deep sonorous voice repeated intellectual-sounding theories about how the Mennonite Church, because it is so limited in its thinking, doesn’t understand sexual intimacy and how it was to be played out in the true community of believers. He sent that tape to me, admonishing me to keep it private, never share it with anyone, and then record over his words with my own thoughts and reactions to what he had said.
I was then to send it back to him. As I listened to his recording, I heard what appeared to be an office chair noisily creaking in the background. It was, needless to say, very, very creepy.
So, at Marlin Miller’s urgent request, I agreed to send the cassette tape to him for his committee to [images] confront Yoder with proof of his actions. I waited. Nothing happened. No one contacted me. Nothing, as far as I knew, was being done. I finally concluded that, as it turns out, way back in 1981, my intuition had been correct—no one in the church would listen to my story and respect my experience. Yoder’s position and reputation—and the Mennonite Church’s position and reputation—had seemingly been the paramount concern.
The tape went missing, of course. Sharon addresses Mennonite women.
My personal opinion is that Yoder was a very sick man who was coddled by the Mennonite Church and feared by many. He was not held accountable by church leaders who, by not exposing his behavior, were complicitous with his behavior. By not doing anything, these church members repeatedly and knowingly exposed Yoder’s predatory sexual behavior to young Mennonite women.
The leaders were not only naive, they were proud, self-righteous men who could not, and would not admit defeat. They would never confess to themselves, or the church, that they had no ability to lead. Simply put, these church leaders had been out-manipulated by a man who wore the mask of a respected intellectual but was really just a very sick man mired in his own deceit.
For the women who suffered at the hands of Yoder I feel deep compassion. I personally experienced what it was like: creepy, awful, shameful, disgusting, shocking. I also know that the deepest suffering comes in the years long after the abuse. The initial shame, followed by deep feelings of complete and total abandonment by one’s church of origin is simply not something that can adequately be put into words. It can certainly not be shared with anyone who would possibly misunderstand. For these women, I tell my story. I understand. I get it.
If you are in the Mennonite Church and suffering, for whatever reason, as result of self-righteous, ponderous leaders who will not listen to your humanity, your story, I would suggest that you consider exploring the depths of your faith elsewhere. Perhaps in that “elsewhere”, wherever it may be, and with whomever it may be, know that ultimately, and most assuredly, truth and love will prevail. You are loved by God. Nothing is more important than that.
It appears that the Mennonite Church, along with other denominations, is slowly waking up to the pain of sexual abuse. We have a long way to go. TWW expresses its heartfelt wishes for healing and truth for those who were abused.
Lydia's Corner: Exodus 30:11-31:18 Matthew 26:47-68 Psalm 32:1-11 Proverbs 8:27-32
First?
I just posted that!! Impressive reflexes!
Interestingly, Yoder used Matthew 18 (which TWW believes is often one of the misused verses in the Bible)
This is a whole chapter…
@ srs:
(Ok I just needed to read further down…)
So religious authorities first learned of Yoder’s misbehavior in 1979, waited until 1992 to hold him accountable, failed to address the needs of victims before he died in 1997, and are hoping to resolve this situation in some way this year? 36 years and no justice for victims. This is surreal.
This is making me shiver. Back in the mid-80s, Yoder was a big deal in the crowd I moved in. I’m glad I didn’t do more than read books.
Marsha wrote:
YEP!!!
Why did he (Yoder) say ‘Lord, Lord’, and not do what he said? Surely as he passed from this life to the next he couldn’t possibly have thought his theology would earn him a ‘good and faithful servant’ verdict from God.
Didn’t he know that God’s kindness was meant to lead him to repentence? But by his hard and impenitent heart he was storing up wrath for himself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. Wrath, fury, distress and tribulation rather than glory honour and peace.
I know in the end God alone knows the truth on this, he will be the judge, but we evangelicals ought to think hard about what kind of a God we really believe in.
Here’s just my initial reactions to one paragraph that stood out:
I have a 160IQ. I KNOW not to trust anyone who considers himself “intellectually brilliant”; I KNOW the “Intelligence 18, Wisdom 3” phenomenon from the inside, as well as from encounters with intellectual snobs.
Another example of “If it’s not Tab A in Slot B, it isn’t really sex”?
“I did not have sex with that woman.” — William J Clinton
“I did not know that woman in the Biblical sense.” — Doug Phillips ESQUIRE
And the NSFW song “Loophole” by Garfunkel & Oates.
Or another manifestation of “I am So Spiritual I Can Do No Wrong”?
(op cit Gnostic “Pneumatics”)
“More Evolved Spirituality”? This sounds like the Gnostic Pneumatics, so Spiritually Evolved that nothing they did in the physical realm could possibly be sin.
And “deconstructing with his well-trained mind” sounds like hyper-intellectual rationalization. Even the phrasing is similar to Reichsminister Speer’s phrasing of “Arranging my mind to see nothing wrong.”
P.S. And the “contact wasn’t sinful if he didn’t feel lust prior to or during the contact” is creepy. Creepy in the sense of “Our Duty to the Party” and/or sex without any emotion whatsoever — just Intellect.
Don’t know much about Yoder at all beyond an article I read some years ago about Just War theory. I guess this just shows again that no label or belief system is immune from abuse by powerful persons. And that includes the powerful people who turned a blind eye or actively covered it up.
Our hope is not in humans, thankfully.
__
“God will fight for whom?”
hmmm…
“Those looking to salvage something of Yoder’s theology will find themselves confronted by the blatant inconsistencies between his sexual violence and his longstanding commitments to nonviolence.” ~David Cramer [1]
__
Inspirational relief: From Da Dust: Kaleb Moore: “A Love Like This”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0hCx1fhuBg
[1] http://theotherjournal.com/2014/07/07/scandalizing-john-howard-yoder/#comment-1530328850
^^^
—
Which casts suspicion upon all those of us who are “weird” but NOT sexual predator weird. Beware Thou of the Mutant with overtones of HyperCalvinist “You’re Totally Depraved too, so you can’t blame me.”
dee wrote:
I’ve been interviewing cats on how they do it.
Gram3 wrote:
Amen, and amen.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
That sounds like some sort of anti-lust/base sexuality practiced by a secretive, powerful group of people in a fantasy or SF novel.
SEXUAL PREDATOR SPEAK. The “limited thinking” of those who “do not understand”.
That sounds like a predator’s pickup line to steer his target into his personal kink.
The attitude is also reminiscent of “Ours is a High and Lonely Destiny” in The Magician’s Nephew.
So this is sounding even more alarm bells.
Rhythmic creaking, like what’s called “Rinky-Chow” in Boont?
(You can guess which direction my head went on reading that description. And the Spock-unemotional intellectual-theoretical discussion in the foreground just makes it creepier. This is serious nightmare fuel.)
Just another impression, but Yoder sounds like a guy who was living in his frontal lobes so much he ceased to be a human being in any other sense of the term. Like he detached himself from anything except Pure Intellect. A Giant Brain in a Jar, like some sort of post-human evolution in an old Outer Limits episode.
__
“No brain required?”
HUG,
in 1963 opposite the Outer limits TV show channel and time slot was the Beverly Hillbilliys.
Some competition, eh?
Sopy
__
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Doppe8yv6aU
^^^
I am afraid that the way women are viewed in most Mennonite circles has everything to do with the secrecy and continued enabling of Yoder’s predation. (I 1st found out about it via the NYT story back in 2013.)
The way all the men circled the wagons around him sickens but does not surprise me, if only because i used to know people who did what he did, albeit on a much smaller scale. Still, the damage they did was every bit as horrible. I knew people who were victimized.
@ Corbin:
I have heard that Charles Williams (he of Inklings fame) had some theories – and practices – along similar lines. not intercourse, but weird, supposedly non sexual conduct with young women that any sane person would interpret as sexual. But justified by a brilliant person with a mesmerizing personality via a bunch of intellectual and spiritual sounding mumbo jumbo.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
Err, no. A deliberate use of “theology” to justify sexual abuse is not the mark of someone who lives in their brain in the way you describe. At.all.
@ Karl:
That wouldn’t surprise me at all. And there have *always* been male profs taking advantage of female students. Some in my undergrad department were predatory, and i knew of quite a few others as well. So, sadly, an academic who thinks he can get away with supposedly high-minded reasons for sexual predation is nothing new.
It’s said that Augustine was a horn-dog with a theological axe to grind too. Why can’t we just realize and accept what we are without trying to it give a flowery coat of paint and then just deal with it with a pragmatism that doesn’t violate the boundaries of others?
ISTM that as long as people value theology, their supposed knowledge about God, more than their relationship with God, as measured by the Christ-likeness, then people will always be able to theologically justify just about anything.
And as long as people love to bask in the reflected glory of their theological heroes or in the glory coming from their own fans more than in the glory of their identities in Christ, then people will rationalize anything that keeps the glory shining on them.
Is it just me or does Yoder’s weird predation look a lot like Gothard’s?
Gram3 wrote:
The similarity is definitely there, the main difference being Gothard didn’t try to create a theological justification. But they both have the facade of purity and good intentions.
As somebody with a number of Quaker friends, I feel slightly obliged to point out that the title of “the most well known theologian who defined and espoused the theology of Christian pacifism” should probably go to George Fox. (Unless maybe we’re allowed to count Leo Tolstoy as a theologian, in which case it should go to Leo Tolstoy.)
Not that that makes Yoder any less of a scumbag, of course.
At the end of the day, a highly intelligent perv is…
…still a perv.
“From 1976 to 1984, engaging with Yoder via theological disputation became the hidden agenda of Miller’s presidency. Hoping to save Yoder’s marriage and career, he used the data he had gathered to repudiate his star faculty member’s notions about sexuality.”
++++++++++++++++++++++
huh….. to save his colleague’s marriage…. so, President Miller chose to sacrifice how many women on the altar of the marriage ideal?
is he still alive? are criminal charges in the picture? is there any reason why he can’t be tarred & feathered as well?
Yoder’s perverted sense of ‘non sexual’ behavior with women combined with sick & twisted “Theology” to attempt to justify his behavior sounds very like that of Ole Anthony–he of the cultic Trinity Foundation out of Dallas.
Yuck! and sin!!
so, my overall thought in response to all this…. what is it with people?!? why so slow in recognizing that women are human??!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“…1979…At the time, U.S. courts had not yet consistently defined sexual harassment, and employers rarely called in law enforcement to respond to sexual misconduct.”
–really?? things were this backward just 36 years ago?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Ted Koontz, a professor at Mr. Yoder’s old seminary and a member of the church’s discernment group, said the church needed to take stock of what was — or was not — done for Mr. Yoder’s victims.
“There are a lot of different opinions about what was done and wasn’t done to hold him accountable,” Professor Koontz said.
The committee will probably conclude its work, he added, in time for the Mennonite Church USA’s 2015 convention in Kansas City, Mo., <b?where there may be a ceremony “of confession, repentance, reconciliation.”
–oh, if they can fit it in, I suppose.
@ elastigirl:
Yes, they were definitely like that in the mid-late 70s. Sexual harrassment was highly controversial, as an issue, even though it was extremely widespread.
numo wrote:
Assuming it crossed the Pond, were you a fan of Inspector Morse? They have done a new series called Endeavour set in the mid 60’s. There was a scene in one episode I saw recently where a girl complained to the manager about some low-grade sexual harrassment, and was just fobbed off. They didn’t see it as a problem and she shouldn’t be so silly.
It struck me how this was probably authentic for the mentality of the time, and how different attitudes would be today.
@ Ken:
It makes one wonder if any of it would have changed if women hadn’t started standing up and demanding equal rights as human beings.
The sexual harassment issue is interesting in how things changed. In the late 80’s a big case was brought before the state courts from a woman who had been systematically harassed in her job by a quasi state employee. The award was so high that people took notice.
We brought in the defense attorney to do some training for us. A few things stuck out at me. Those she tried to report this to (her boss was pretty high up) thought she should have been “flattered” by his attention. That sort of sums up the thinking and the widespread problem. There was a “normal” to it that had to be overcome.
Sexual Harassment training started to become an issue with insurance and I saw things start to change because of that. In the end it is always about money, I think. Same with churches and prtoecting children. It is the insurance that requires them to have strict policies.
the difference with Yoder is not only the times in which he operated in but also the “spiritual” aspect he interjected into the abuse. Again, as we often see, he used his perceived spiritual status to perpetuate his own brand of creepy evil.
Lydia wrote:
This is so true.
__
“Rock da Dame?”
hmmm…
(justifying just about anything?!?)
Maybe da dude was a Mennonite ‘rockstar’ wannabe?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ3SSZ27Aks
🙁
^^^
—
Gram3 wrote:
Isn’t that the the truth! I think I am becoming down right Pelagian in some respects….because it seems to me, that what we DO or DON’T do to others as believers, matters. Not just what we say we believe. Behavior matters and we either believe people have a choice in how they treat others or not.
Everywhere I turn in Christendom, I am told that sinners, sin and it is blown off with some platitude that Jesus died for our sins (and future sinning) and there is not really a focus on changing. It seems that my atheist friends have a better moral compass these days. Or maybe they just don’t have the spiritual excuses that are promoted in Christendom so they own up to it? I don’t know. Just reading this post and from my own experiences knowing what leaders can get by with, I can imagine all the people around Yoder who looked the other way for years.
Lydia wrote:
And isn’t it that Jesus came to save us from our sins, meaning to turn our lives around? Not just the penalty but to help us stop sinning. If there is no long term change, it means we haven’t been ‘saved’.
British Baptist David Pawson wrote a book entitled The Normal Christian Birth due to so much that was wrong behaviourly in British churches, which made him realise too many had had a shaky beginning or ‘birth’. It’s basic thesis is ‘becoming a Christian’ should involve repentence, faith in Christ, believer’s baptism in water and receive the Holy Spirit. With these you have started, you haven’t arrived.
Gospel presentations tend to avoid the first, good on the second, third is optional and the Holy Spirit often assumed to be ‘received’ simultaneously with the sinner’s prayer (of which no mention in the NT). He tried to get the book published in the States, and couldn’t get anyone to touch it. They wouldn’t risk publishing it. Now obviously such a book will tread on some theological and traditional toes, but isn’t this hardly a high price to pay for trying to make sure Christians start on a firmer foundation that just might result in a bit less of what TWW exists to help expose and deal with?
Muff Potter wrote:
Too true. In fact, The guy was a sex addict and when he became a Christian I think he blamed women as the source of his addiction and this reflected in his theology – women as evil temptresses who are bound to a subservient role to men. The early church fathers sure established a pretty solid foundation of misogyny in Christianity that we still suffer with.
1 comment not approved due to the explicit nature of comment and that it did not pertain to the subject matter at all. Also, unless there is a good reason, a commenter should not change their name. It becomes too confusing for the moderators.
Eric wrote:
Thank you for your input. on this. I admit that I am less than well read on the subject of Christian pacifism.
Eric wrote:
I certainly hope that Fox had a more noble personal life!
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Or Lewis’ That Hideous Strength, perhaps?
Sopwith wrote:
I loved both of them which probably speaks to my rather eclectic tastes. I can still sing the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies!
Lydia wrote:
It is a great example of bending theology to suit one’s purposes.
Thank you for this post. Very interesting and informative. And mostly, sad.
Bad behavior knows no theological bounds.
I will add that in the U.S. postwar years it is amazing how many people who have what the vanguard and elite consider to be enlightened politically correct positions (but usually unpopular with average people) seem to get a pass on so much wrongdoing. This guy is just another egregious example. These people usually are allowed to live out their lives with no accountability. And the victims suffer.
Ken wrote:
OT: Netflix has some of the British crime/mystery shows. Great stuff. My favorite is Foyle’s War. Also Midsomer Murders and Father Brown. I love the quirky characters as well as the plots.
@ Ken:
Good thoughts. I don’t know what traditions he would tread on, but your summary sounds about right to me. Maybe the believer’s baptism.
dee wrote:
I’m still mentally fox-trotting to Dinah Shore, thanks to Judge Tim on the last thread…Loved the Outer Limits and Twilight Zone.
dee wrote:
Gonna take me all day to stop that song from running through my head now 🙂
@ Bridget:
“It makes one wonder if any of it would have changed if women hadn’t started standing up and demanding equal rights as human beings.”
+++++++++++++
is the a sociologist/historian in the house? who can piece things together?
Marsha wrote:
Marsha, you said it so well. This is tragic and surreal.
Why do Christians fail to stand up for abuse victims?
Why are many unable to believe that just because a Christian Leader is well respected in their public life (published books, speaks at conferences, has a position of power) that in their private life they may not live with integrity and kindness and can be abusive to others? Why is this so hard to believe?
@ Gram3:
Foyles War is addictive.
@ Ali:
“…a Christian Leader is well respected in their public life (published books, speaks at conferences, has a position of power)…”
++++++++++++++++++
the last things the world needs is another book shelved in the Christian Living aisle, and expensive events based on canned sermons.
Gram3 wrote:
Calvinists – for claiming repentance is something we do, not something primarily God does in us. More so for claiming being saved is a process, it starts and has to continue, and the real risk if you subsequently abandon the faith you forfeit the salvation it provides. Believers’ baptism will of course not be popular with those who practice infant baptism. Receiving the Holy Spirit will antagonise evangelicals of the got-it-all-at-conversion persuasion, and will ríng alarm bells of being second blessing/charismatic in emphasis.
Surely to re-think these things cannot do any harm, you don’t have to agree with Pawson, but sometimes I wonder if evangelicalism can get as bogged down in its own traditions that it as bad as the Catholics such evangelicals criticise for being bogged down in their own.
Bit of a paraphrase here:
“You devour women and for justification make long complex theological arguments…”
Muff Potter wrote:
Many years ago, I came across a Web essay called “The Christian Sex Cult”, which the essayist (a “Mars Hill”, though I don’t think it’s the same one) traced back to Augustine and his baggage. The main point was Monica’s son Auggie started out as a horndog and ended as a monastic celibate; in neither case did he ever relate to women as people — only (before) as Sex Objects and (after) as The Forbidden Fruit. And his theology reflected this personal baggage he brought into it. And his dominance of theology for so long meant instead of taking that into account, theologians accepted it all at face value. Including his blind spots and baggage.
P.S. When he was a horndog, Auggie justified it by Manichean Gnostic theology. When he was a celibate in later life, could he be justifying that theologically as well? Especially since he’d still have the memories and urges; this could be a case of self-medication. (And again, for centuries nobody took that into account.)
Because with the flowery coat of paint comes Loopholes and Self-Justification.
elastigirl wrote:
Sociologist here. The civil rights and women’s movements of the sixties were very much an outcome of postwar prosperity. The US was the only industrialized nation to emerge with its production capacity fully intact and we made full use of it and real income climbed for whites. Inequality thus appeared even starker but at the same time there were good paying jobs that needed to be filled in the auto industry and elsewhere. The combination of activism and prosperity is responsible for the success of the civil rights movement.
The women’s movement had two roots in my opinion. One is the dissatisfaction of the middle class college educated woman who was not expected to work outside the home and had to give up her interests and was vulnerable without recent job experience if her husband decided to divorce her. The other is the experience of women in the anti war and civil rights movement where they were fighting in the trenches but were expected to defer to men. Both led to activism.
The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. Gender was added as an attempt to defeat the bill, not because Congress actually wanted to legislate against discrimination against women.
While federal troops were sent South to schools to ensure student safety during desegregation and to the polling places to ensure voter safety, enforcement of women’s rights lagged behind.
I graduated from college in the early seventies. The local newspaper had separate sections for jobs for men and jobs for women. The local school district refused to let teachers with children work until their children were two years old. A friend on maternity leave had to wait an extra year because her son was 23 not 24 months old at the start of the school district. There was no such thing as equal pay for equal work, after all men were the providers and needed those larger salaries. I was shocked in the early eighties when I was teaching and chairing a department at a business college and discovered that a male colleague was paid 50 percent more than me. I was told that this was fair because he had alimony and child support to pay and that my husband had a good job.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
A lot of the other early church fathers were very misogynistic; Augustine is by no means the only suspect, or the chief one, on this. However, his ideas about “concupiscence” became a *big* thing in medieval Catholicism, and that legacy is still very much with us (even though most of us Protestsnts aren’t aware of it, and i dont think the term is used much in the American wing of the RCC these days). Look it up and see what you get; i can’t explain it adequately, but reams and reams have been devoted to it, and there’s plenty available on the web.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Took the words right out of my mouth!
This fellow Yoder reminds me of so many others, still popping into my mind.
Let’s see, there’s Augustine, Charles Williams, Phillips, Gothard, Clinton, Ole Anthony, “The Head” of That Hideous Strength…..
Here are three more:
John Wesley– who had numerous highly affectionate platonics with women other than his guano-crazy-jealous wife.
John Humphrey Noyes– who invented “complex marriage” and said “God did not intend that love between men and women be confined to the narrow channels of conventional matrimony.”
Martin Luther King– “He freed a lot of people, but it seems the good, they die young”. If the Rev Ralph Abernathy is to be believed, on the night before Dr King died, he was visited by a couple of women and knocked a third across the bed. Don’t know if that’s true, but he certainly had a “weakness” for women.
(Continued) I recall in those same eighties being in a meeting with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company when sexual harassment was being discussed. He made a remark about having to tell his make executives to stop complimenting women employees on their attire as if that was actually the problem. In the 90s an acquaintance who worked for the Labor Department and investigated sexual harassment complaints said she was tired of men commenting that women should feel flattered. She would respond, “Would you feel flattered for your wife or daughter if their paychecks were withheld until they provided their employer with sexual favors?”
I think the backlash against women and blacks that we are seeing now is a result of the economic recession. The wealthy elite are getting wealthier at the expense of the middle class and the poor and we are encouraged to blame everything on minorities, women and illegal immigrants.
Yes, Martin Luther King had a weakness for women and if he was pastoring a church I would have had a problem with that. But his fight for civil rights was right and just and I am glad he persisted despite Hoover’s threats to expose his adultery.
@ Marsha:
Thanks, Marsha. That’s helpful.
@ Marsha:
Wondering if any women reported abuse and/or misuse of spiritual authority.
@ Marsha:
Very accurate, though i would like to add the following:
1. The actual “first wave” of the movement for womens’ equality (including womens’ suffrage) began in the mid-19th c. @and has its roots in (among other things) the abolitionist movement, in which women were key players.
2. I do not think the primary reasons for the Civil Rights movement are the ones you cite. But the combination of WWII and Korea (there wrre large numbers of black men in both conflicts) ccertainly kickstarted things. Even though the military was still segregated during WWII, a lot of black men had oppotunities during and after their military service that had been denied to them previously. One of these: the G.I. Bill, and possibility for some to attend college. (Really, the war wrought huge changes in US society on every level, due in no small part to the increase in educational opportunities available to all vets.)
Resistance to Jim Crow had been steadily growing, but reached a tipping point in the early 50s with the lynching of teenager Emmett Till. People were also tired of being effectively disenfranchised due to the myriad laws used by Jim Crow states (like tests for voter registration that nobody could pass, because the questions were so arcane. These tests were only given to black people).I cannot really add more info., if only because it isn’t my field, although there are some excellent books out there, should anyone wish to look into this further. The documentary series Eyes on the Prize is superb, but i don’t know if it is currently available. (1st shown on PBS in the 80s, rerun about 10 years ago – there were and probably still are major problems with rights to various film clips used, as well as music, which is why it could not be broadcadt during the 90s.)
3. Second wave feminism, which began in the 1960s, is a whole different ballgame to the 19th-early 20th c. first wave.
This is all very sketchy and broad-brushed, and blog comments don’t allow for more detail. But there’s lots out there, including Ken Burns’ documentaries on Susan B. Anthony/Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as well as the one on Prohibition – see early episodes of the latter for womens’ activism in the early temperance movement, which was also concerned with womens’ rights.
Unfortunately, 2nd wave feminism left women of color pretty much out of the picture, and there’s still a huge disconnect between white, middle-class feminism and the rest of the women in this country. Racial issues are very charged, and have been for a long time (wwithin the movement itself).
@ Bridget:
I don’t think anyone would have listened to them, to be honest. I was around widespread, systemic abuses in the 70s and 80s, and anyone trying to discuss them was silenced. Men, too.
@ numo:
I have only heard the word “concupiscence” used by extreme Trads and sexual morality wonks. I first came across it in James Michener’s novel Hawaii; one of the New England Calvinist missionaries used it a lot when confronted by the culture shock between Puritan and Polynesian sexual mores.
Other than that, “concupiscence” is about as archaic (and little-used) a term as “fornication” and “miscegenation”. And if “reams and reams” have been devoted to it, it could not have been a well-defined term to start with — could mean anything, like “object” in OOP documentation.
Marsha wrote:
Yes, J Edgar “Mary” Hoover was so concerned about the Immorality of Adultery, wasn’t he/she?
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
But it is a pivotal thing in Catholic theology, whether you know it or not. Through Aquinas, mainly.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
Ok, I’m definitely not a fan of Hoover, but i think that goes too far.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
I think his ideas about supposed communists are far more relevant and to the point. All the Civil Rights leaders and many rank and file were on his lists under that heading.
numo wrote:
Some definitions are in order.
“First Wave Feminism” obviously refers to the “Suffragette Movement” et al.
Does “Second Wave Feminism” refer to the fever swamp of radicalism that was part of the general explosion of The Sixties(TM)? There was a LOT of can-you-top-this extremism going around in Sixties Counterculture movements — is Second Wave the First World Problems/Female Supremacist/Man-Hating version that could scream the loudest in the Age of Aquarius?
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
It is in Augustine on original sin. Aquinas is the heavy hitter in mefieval Catholicism, as he developed the idea further. Post-Vatican II, the word hasn’t shown up much, but the concept is embedded in thr doctrine of Original Sin.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
No, no, it goes back further, before womens’ suffrage. Please check out some sources. It’s too huge a subject for blog comments, really.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
Second Wave refers to Betty Friedan forward. I think you might need to do some reading, as you’re lumping disparate parts of the feminist movement together.
The subject line reads a bit like “Scumbag promotes pacifism!”, which seems to be implying the genetic fallacy, (i.e. that pacifism is wrong because it was promoted by a terrible person).
This kind of sets a weird tone for the rest of the post, which doesn’t quite feel that way. I suspect the entire section about Yoder’s pacifism is all to establish “he was a great theologian and did great things, and that’s probably why he was able to get away with being a scumbag.”
Do I have that right?
I suspect we will find that in all churches, and indeed whenever there is real or presumed power over other people, there are all manner of cases of abuse. What a broken and weary world we live in. Lord, have mercy. 🙁
numo wrote:
“White middle-class feminism” as in “First World Problems”?
(“First World Problems” by Weird Al Yankovic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-qrmSFNt74)
The thing with extreme obsession/activism re First World Problems is that you First World Problems only come into play in First World countries which have pretty much beaten the Survival Game. (Otherwise, you are too busy staying alive another day to worry about them.) Problem is, the Survival instinct is still hard-wired in and if you don’t have any real Life-or-Death threats in your experience, you will react to the remaining First World Problems with the same intensity as if they were Life-or-Death threats to your survival. Maslow’s Heirarchy explains a lot of First World Problem Activism.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
No, very real problems. You need to spend some time getting up to speed on this. I think it’s obvious to women (especially those of us who lived through the bad old days), but not as clear to many men. Not blaming you, just saying…
So, to paraphrase Amy Poehler [1], into the woods, Cinderella runs from her prince, Rapunzel is thrown from a tower for her prince, and Sleeping Beauty just thought she was getting coffee with John Howard Yoder…
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coFVZC7KRr0
I’m a pacifist and much of Yoder’s work has been highly formative in my theology. His life is a sobering lesson, however, that having supposedly “bombproof” beliefs does not necessarily lead to perfect ethical praxis. I don’t think a lot of Christians realize this.
FWIW, I think it’s incredibly important to note that the issue is arguably NOT abstract ideas–whether pacifism, just war, or whatever. It’s misogyny and self-preservation. It’s people taking advantage of others, victim-blaming and silencing, and organizational power management. And misogyny is NOT a problem limited to the theologies of Calvinistas, fundie Christians, certain Mennonite leaders, or the emergent church. It’s systemic problem, and we only do more harm than good when we assume that “those people on the other side” are the only ones subject to it. And that’s a scary reality.
Dave A A wrote:
Here’s an interested study on John Wesley’s correspondence…
http://archives.gcah.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10516/6768/MH-2013-April-Campbell.pdf?sequence=1
@ Clayton:
The thing that struck me is that I get Gothard and Phillips. Their theory of everything is power and hierarchy. The thing with Yoder, and I know next to nothing about him, is that his position on pacifism would seem logically to extend to not exerting unwarranted power over another person. There seems to be a big disconnect between his universal ethic and his personal ethic.
So, in one way he seems like Gothard in that it is just creepy, but in another way it seems more like Tony Jones because the man doesn’t match the man’s message.
Marsha:
Good job on the reference to gender inclusion in the Civil Rights Act.
Someone mentioned MLK.
There may be a similar pattern there.
A lot of records about him are the subject of a federal court order.
But remember what I said about politically correct positions and how those who hold them get lots of leeway from governing authorities.
Look at the nonprofits run by politically correct people. They get away with a lot.
I sure hope that in the future all that is revealed about MLK is affairs with other consenting adults, and not the abuse of power in any way.
But it may take another generation to be able to handle and process any negative revelations.
I meant to add that the federal court order keeps a lot of MLK material locked up for years to come.
@ Anonymous:
Why? Isn’t all the info out on JFK now? There seems no reason to keep the info locked up now.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
And worse, he had a child with his concubine, took the child from her and then banished her instead of marrying her after he became a Christian.Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Self actualization. I agree with you. I am well aware of the glass ceiling because I lived through that time and most of my white college friends went the corporate route while most my minority female friends went the government job route whether it was teaching or as a bureaucrat. But what I saw was that too many wanted the top rungs on the ladder handed to them as a sort of entitlement because they were women. And that did happen for some. I even saw women made partners in law firms because they needed a woman. But some women worked even harder and earned it, too. I saw another route–start a business. You can lose your shirt that way but the experience was invaluable not to mention “equal footing” in many areas where it would not have otherwise happened. The most equal color is “green”. Sad, but true.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Disclaimer: This is my perspective only, and I do not claim it is Truth.
I think you have a point regarding Maslow and also about First World Problems. I think it is a mistake, probably unavoidable, to lump all “feminists” in a particular era into one “wave” or another. I realize it is shorthand, but it conflates things which should not be conflated.
First-wave was about basic rights of the vote and economic rights, and I don’t think many in the West disputes that was a good thing. With second-wave it was a little more complicted. There were women who wanted to advance in the workforce but were hindered by pressure to employ the men who were returning from the war. In some sense, women were pitted against one another because the ones who wanted to continue working were taking the job of another woman’s husband. Or so some people thought. Other women, IMO, were more interested in making a political point rather than strictly an economic one. And it’s not always easy to sort through those differences.
The main problem with second-wave feminism is that some gave the impression that a woman is the same as a man–that the genders are essentially interchangeable. That became an ideology that was and is unhelpful in several ways, IMO. It is one thing to say that a woman should not be restricted solely because of gender, but it is another thing to effectively say that females and males are essentially the same.
Third wave I just don’t get, and ISTM to be unhinged from reality in the sense that I cannot see how women other than upper-middle to upper class women share their concerns.
What is lost in all of these, as a Christian, is that the genders are made *for* the good of one another, not as a tool to advance the other gender’s interests, whatever those may be. And I think that is where Yoder lost the plot. He still saw a woman as some*thing* to be used rather than a person to whom he could relate as God intended.
The moral of all these abuse incidents is: There is no theology that protects people from their own stupidity.
Bridget wrote:
Are you kidding? I think the rule is the JFK info, a lot of it will be released at the 75th anniversary….they have changed the date twice.
Lydia wrote:
Love Foyle’s War…..
The other thing that complicates the issue of sexual harassment is that there were some women who recognized the “rules” of the corrupt system, decided to play along, and were rewarded for playing along. Their interests did not coincide with the women who had more of a meritocracy mindset and who did not want to play to be paid. Women are not a monolithic interest group, just like any other group.
From a Christian perspective, the ethic of the Kingdom is that the strong use their strength for the benefit of the weak. The ethic of the world system is the strong exploit the weak. The higher ones lower themselves and lift the lower ones up in the Kingdom. In the world, the ones who are lower have to demand and fight for their rights, and that gets really messy but necessary.
Gram3 wrote:
Just to clarify, I did not mean to imply in any way that God intends for every woman and every man to be married or that either marriage or singleness is always better. IMO it is more the idea that males and females are complementary in whatever relationships they have. And I mean “complementary” in the dictionary sense, not the CBMW newspeak sense.
While I’m hogging the comment stream, the institutional failure aspect of this is, once again, the most infuriating thing for me.
@ Marsha:
WOW! THANKS for taking the time to respond in detail! I so appreciate it.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
“There was no such thing as equal pay for equal work, after all men were the providers and needed those larger salaries. I was shocked in the early eighties when I was teaching and chairing a department at a business college and discovered that a male colleague was paid 50 percent more than me. I was told that this was fair because he had alimony and child support to pay and that my husband had a good job.”
–please tell me this kind of salary silliness is at least unusual now.
(I’m not on top of things — I have my own business and what spare time I have hasn’t been devoted to reading up on these kinds of statistics.)
K.D. wrote:
No. Not kidding. I thought the info was released at the 50 year mark. I don’t keep up with everything the government is doing/not doing in the information release department. Count me uninformed on that matter, but I’m sure I’m not alone.
@ Marsha:
“I think the backlash against women and blacks that we are seeing now is a result of the economic recession. The wealthy elite are getting wealthier at the expense of the middle class and the poor and we are encouraged to blame everything on minorities, women and illegal immigrants.”
+++++++++++++++
is this just petty human nature (history repeating itself), or is there some calculated agenda to this end? or an awareness of the former being capitalized on by blue meanie schmucks?
@ elastigirl:
Equal pay for equal work is still a big issue, no question.
numo wrote:
And female students taking advantage of male profs. It happens, you know.
roebuck wrote:
And I think we will be seeing more examples of female profs taking advantage of their students as well. It’s a power thing more than a gender thing, IMO.
@ roebuck:
Yes, it does, but that’s not the common scenario. Besides, profs are in a position of power, and sexual relationships with students are an abuse of that power.
@ Gram3:
Yes, definitely.
@ roebuck:
The thing is, i know of some pretty egregious examples re. profs where i went to undergrad. I won’t go into detail, but I’m sure you get my drift.
Bridget wrote:
It was 50, but to protect the children, they moved it to 75 years….and Carolyn is the only child that remains…..
Bridget and KD:
You guys are ahead of me now.
I have no idea about what has been kept locked up about JFK. We already know a darn lot. The guy may still have a bit of a halo in some circles, but hardly.
Everyone knows about JFK’s problems by now.
What other shoes will drop? I do not know.
numo wrote:
I totally get your drift, and I know of at least two cases in my own experience. But I also know of several instances where a female student has ‘set her cap’ at a male prof, to the point of destroying a marriage in one case. I was the target of one such young woman a few years ago, and it was weird and awkward to deal with, believe me…
There are also instances of female faculty going for male students, as you probably know.
What a world! I’m glad I don’t teach any more…
dee wrote:
From what little I’ve read on G. Fox, I’m quite certainly he very handily surpassed that remarkably low bar! 🙂
Gram3 wrote:
But as we have seen here at TWW and the other spiritual abuse watchblogs, a lot of what’s supposed to be the Kingdom uses the ethic of the world.
Gram3 wrote:
And when the corrupt system changed, there were those who recognized the new set of rules and continued Gaming the System. Except instead of giving in to the sexual harassment for the rewards under the old rules, they now accuse of sexual harassment for the rewards under the new rules.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
The ethic is a good clue to whether a kingdom is of this world.
I’ll say one thing about John Kennedy the man (as opposed to JFK the Myth): He at least had the good timing to get killed when his legend was at its peak, before things could unravel. And the circumstances of his death just cemented in JFK the Myth (who these days probably bears little resemblance to John Kennedy the man).
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
You betcha. What is sad is that false accusations diminish the real thing. UVA and Rolling Stone being the most notorious recent example of a false moral panic. What must that do to real rape victims? How does someone who is falsely accused get their name back?
Marsha wrote:
Agreed. Even if he beat other women than the one Abernathy reported, his legacy as a great Politcal Leader would stay intact. A great Pastor or Theologian, not so much.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
IIRC, Jackie Kennedy was appalled over the the things she heard from JFK and RFK about MLK’s womanizing. Ironic!
Billy McMahon wrote:
Fascinating!
Billy McMahon wrote:
In case you haven’t had a chance read other articles on this blog, Dee and Deb do not have a side that they cater to. Abuse is abuse is abuse. They spend plenty of time in their own yard.
dee wrote:
Actually Dee there is Christian pacifism, and Christian non-resistance. This article confuses the two and doesn’t recognize the distinction. Few outside the Anabaptist community appreciate that.
Hesitant to weigh in here, but want to note two things:
First, to Billy McMahon’s point that this isn’t about pacifism per se, I would suggest that perhaps Yoder’s unique position within the Mennonite Church, and Yoder’s understanding at the ways pacifist ideology and theology engendered certain conflict-averse behaviors, allowed him to continue in his abusive behaviors far longer than he would have been able to otherwise.
Second, as to the question of the Mennonite church is seemingly slow to respond, it’s helpful to remember that there’s another victim to consider: Yoder’s widow, Anne. While the Mennonite Church is a denomination (and should be held to account as such), sociologically it has many of the hallmarks of an extended family, so that type of thinking (handling things “in-house,” not re-victimizing his widow) has to be continually dealt with.
(And, for what it’s worth, the “Mark Yoder” quoted in the post is actually named Mark Thiessen Nation, a former student of Yoder’s who did most of his doctoral work on Yoder’s teachings.)
Jon Carlson wrote:
Thank you for your comment.
I know it must be hard for his widow to hear such things and it is nice that they are sensitive to her. But there are many, many victims who were sidelined over this. These women needed to be heard, offered counseling and validation. It appears that their concern for Yoder’s widow and the potential pain such revelations would cause, that they were willing to sacrifice the feelings of many, many women who were harmed and had to live with that for years.
Instead, they should have told Ann the truth and offer to give her support and help as she confronted reality.
.
Those who were actually harmed should have received priority.
pk47tech wrote:
Thank you for correcting me. Could you tell me the difference?
dee wrote:
This got me curious, so I found this article:
http://www.australia.anabaptistmennonites.org/index_htm_files/PacifismOrNonResistance.pdf
My take: a Christian Pacifist might work together with John Lennon to “Imagine” a brotherhood of man, “Give Peace a Chance”, and *fight* for war to be over “if you want it”. A Biblical non-resister would focus on the peace of God, which passeth understanding, and seek to be un-involved in the world’s conflicts.
@ dee:
Sorry, I should have been clearer: when I spoke of the slowness of leaders to respond, I’m talking about the current generation of leaders, who are doing remarkable work speaking directly with victims, compiling documentation, making public statements, etc. Today’s leaders (working almost 20 years after Yoder’s death) are weighing the need for a full public reflection against the needs of his family (and surviving victims, not all of whom are publicly known). That’s a reasonable course of action when there is no concern for further abuse (since Yoder is long deceased.)
The leaders who first ignored or overlooked his behavior were undoubtedly in the wrong, regardless of their motives. Their desire to protect the institution and their “brother” led to further victimization, which is inexcusable. I believe those sinful, evil actions will be appropriately named as such by the Mennonite church.
Jon Carlson wrote:
What an amazing example that would be for so many others who need to show some Christian leadership. Thanks for that additional information.
@ Gram3:
I’m cautiously hopeful… Our denomination is being ripped apart by some strong disagreements about LGBTQ inclusion, so it’s possible the entire denominational gathering will be sucked into that. But my expectation is that public confession / repentance / lament will be part of the assembly in July.
In my own congregation, we’ve had some courageous survivors of sexual abuse (unrelated to the JHY abuse) share their stories in various contexts, including Sunday morning worship, and that’s been a healing and hopeful experience.
Jon Carlson wrote:
If that happens, would you mind posting on the Open Discussion page? Thanks, and I pray that the leaders and the ordinary people in your church will have wisdom in how to proceed on these challenges facing you.
@ Dave A A:
Dave A A wrote:
Yes, that’s a good summary. A pacifist is willing to use violent methods to achieve a certain goal of peace. Non-resistance never uses violence in pursuit of the goal.
Sometimes an old (and probably apocryphal) story is told of a Quaker (pacifist) finding an intruder in his home. He retrieves his musket rifle, points it at the intruder and yells, “Friend, thou standest where I am about to shoot!” 🙂
I did not read all the comments so this may have been noted already: Two of the authors quoted sources are not quite correct. “Mennonite World” is actually the Mennonite World Review and “Mark Yoder” is actually Mark Thiessen Nation, professor at Eastern Mennonite University.