Revolutionary Christianity. John Howard Yoder
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single chapter in The Original Revolution.25 Like Nonviolence—A Brief History: The Warsaw Lectures,26 this collection of essays, as a complete unit, is an illuminating snapshot of Yoder’s thought—in the midst of the challenges and turmoil of the late sixties—that provides a fascinating synthetic interweaving of diverse themes into a rich, complex, and coherent argument. In these lectures, we get a real sense of the energetic, enthusiastic, and accessible Yoder that is working hard to come to grips with a familiar challenge in a new way, working hard to bring multiple theological and sociological themes together in a critical yet encouraging manner.
To preserve the particular vibrancy of these lectures, we have edited as little as possible. We have attempted to introduce gender-inclusive language and we have also standardized biblical quotations in accordance with the New Revised Standard Version.27 Beyond these significant changes, however, we have edited the text only where grammatically necessary. And, although Yoder left several marginal notes in the original manuscript, all of the footnotes in this volume are provided by the editors and not by Yoder.28
In conclusion, we would like to thank Martha Yoder Maust for granting permission to publish these lectures and for her genuine interest in supporting our efforts to bring the fullness of Yoder’s thought into print. Further, we would also like to thank Herald Press for granting permission to publish the lectures that significantly overlap some of the material originally published in The Original Revolution. We would like to note that this volume is not meant to replace The Original Revolution, but to provide a broader historical perspective for understanding it. Finally, we would like to thank Daniel Marrs for his energetic assistance in preparing the final version of this manuscript and Charlie Collier and Rodney Clapp at Wipf and Stock for both encouraging this venture and seeing it through to publication.
Paul Martens, Mark Thiessen Nation, Matthew Porter, and Myles Werntz
May 2011
1. John Howard Yoder, The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1971) 8.
2. Ibid.
3. Most of the particulars regarding Yoder’s trip in the summer of 1966 come from: Yoder, “Report on South America Trip 22 May–8 July, 1966, ‘Memo to Executive and Overseas Offices, MBMC,’ July 25, 1966,” Archives of the Mennonite Church, Hist. MSS 1–48, Box 32, file 13.
4. For a fuller account of Yoder’s development prior to these lectures, see Mark Thiessen Nation, John Howard Yoder: Mennonite Patience, Evangelical Witness, Catholic Convictions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 1–29, and Earl Zimmerman, Practicing the Politics of Jesus: The Origins and Significance of John Howard Yoder’s Social Ethics (Telford, PA: Cascadia, 2007).
5. As indicated by the occasional marginal notes, these lectures were originally composed in English and then translated by someone more fluent in Spanish than Yoder.
6. Yoder had also been teaching part-time at the Mennonite Biblical Seminary (Elkhart, IN) for six years and, immediately preceding his trip, he had taught full-time for one year at Goshen Biblical Seminary (Goshen, IN) while continuing his role as a consultant at the Board of Missions.
7. In this connection, one ought to note that The Original Revolution is dedicated to Bishop Carlos Gatinoni, “at whose invitation the title essay in this collection was first delivered as a sermon in the Iglesia Metodista Central of Buenos Aires.” Yoder, Original Revolution, iii.
8. Yoder, “To Dr. José Míguez-Bonino, Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 10, 1966,” The Archives of the Mennonite Church, Hist. MSS 1–48, Box 32, file 13.
9. The personal appropriation of this category is perhaps most evident in Yoder, “The Anabaptist Shape of Liberation,” in Why I Am A Mennonite: Essays in Mennonite Identity, ed. Harry Loewen (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1988), 338–48.
10. Yoder, “Minority Christianity and Messianic Judaism,” The Archives of the Mennonite Church, Hist. MSS 1-48, Box 201, file “Buenos Aires.”
11. Yoder, The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited, eds. Michael G. Cartwright and Peter Ochs (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).
12. See Samuel Escobar, “Latin America and Anabaptist Theology,” in Engaging Anabaptism: Conversations with a Radical Tradition, ed. John D. Roth (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2010) 75–88.
13. One might almost want to consider these chapters as the very early seeds from which Body Politics would later mature. See Yoder, Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1992).
14. In this series, Yoder’s knowledge of the Latin American context is evidently superficial as his default examples are drawn primarily from the hostilities in Vietnam and not the indigenous context. Further, his comments concerning the European invasions of North and South America in chapter 9 may sound rather offensive to contemporary ears. That said, Yoder acknowledges his lack of expertise on the particular historical matters and one probably ought to consider these as “samples of a mode of thought” that could be reconsidered or replaced upon further review.
15. For an earlier and less concise form of this argument, see Yoder, “Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Pacifism,” The Mennonite Quarterly Review 29 (April 1955) 101–17.
16. For a mature and more developed form of this argument, see Yoder, When War is Unjust: Being Honest in Just War Thinking, 2nd ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996).
17. See p. 93.
18. See Yoder, The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).
19. See p. 150.
20. See p. 144.
21. See p. 158.
22. 2 Cor 5:17.
23. See p. 167.
24.