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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
This article analyzes John Howard Yoder's vision of the church as a polis which, through its embodiment of particular practices, serves as an analogical anticipation of God's Kingdom, and thereby offers an alternative to utilitarian and agonal understandings of politics. After describing Yoder's ecclesiologically based vision of politics and examining prominent critiques of Yoder's ecclesiology, the theological framework for Yoder's understanding of the state is discussed. Placing the state within the Pauline cosmology of “principalities and powers,” Yoder outlined a Christian relationship to the state marked both by subordination as well as by occasional disobedience, a disobedience which included participation in nonviolent direct action.
1. Heilke, Thomas, “On Being Ethical Without Moral Sadism: Two Readings of Augustine and the Beginnings of the Anabaptist Revolution,” Political Theory 24, no. 3 (08 1996) :494–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. Yoder published two studies in the Review. “Surrender: A Moral Imperative,” Review of Politics 48 (Fall 1986): 576–95,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “The Wider Setting of ‘Liberation Theology’” Review of Politics 52 (Spring 1990): 285–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3. The term body politics is taken from Yoder's short study, Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 1992).Google Scholar
4. Only in his early study, The Christian Witness to the State (Newton, KS: Faith and Life Press, 1964),Google Scholar did Yoder bring together several of the themes which characterize his attitude toward Christianity and politics, among them the church as polis, the use of “middle axioms” to address the state, and the critique of “effectiveness” as an adequate criterion for Christian action. This present study goes beyond Christian Witness to the State by showing how Yoder deepened and extended its themes in his later work.
5. For the best summary and analysis of Yoder's ecumenical work and thought, see Cartwright, Michael, “Radical Reform, Radical Catholicity: John Howard Yoder's Vision of the Faithful Church,” in The Royal Priesthood: Essays Eccesiological and Ecumenical, ed. Cartwright, Michael (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 1–49Google Scholar
6. By lifting out Bender and Hershberger, I am simplifying the Mennonite intellectual landscape at the mid-century mark. The complexities of Mennonite thought on politics, peace and other issues in the 20th century cannot be entered into here. For the best treatment of this subject, see Bush, Perry, Two Kingdoms, Two Loyalties: Mennonite Pacifism in Modern America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).Google Scholar See also Driedger, Leo and Kraybill, Donald, Mennonite Peacemaking: From Quietism to Activism (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1994).Google Scholar
7. Bender's seminal address appeared first in Church History 13 (03 1944): 3–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar and then in The Mennonite Quarterly Review 18 (04 1944): 67–88.Google Scholar For a comprehensive biography of Bender, see Keim, Albert, Harold S. Bender, 1897–1962 (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1998),Google Scholar esp. chap. 21 which discusses his relationship with Yoder. Thomas Müntzer (1488?–1525) was one of the revolutionary leaders of the Peasants' War. From 1534–35 the city of Münster was the center of a violent attempt by a group of Anabaptists to establish God's Kingdom on earth.
8. I do not pretend to offer a definitive account of Hershberger's evolving thought on nonresistance and nonviolence. I focus here on the arguments of his seminal work, War, Peace, and Nonresistance (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1944),Google Scholar published while Yoder was beginning his college studies.
9. Hershberger, , War, Peace, and Nonresistance, p. 224.Google Scholar For examples of Niebuhr's conceptual insistence on the “violent” character of Gandhian (and other forms) of nonviolence, see Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932)Google Scholar and “Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist,” in Christianity and Power Politics (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940), pp. 1–32.Google Scholar
10. Hershberger, , War, Peace, and Nonresistance, p. 218.Google Scholar
11. Ibid., p. 229.
12. Ibid., p. 189.
13. Ibid., p. 193.
14. Burkholder's dissertation was published several decades after its completion as The Problem of Social Responsibility from the Perspective of the Mennonite Church (Elkhart, IN: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1989), p. 223.Google Scholar
15. The quotation first appeared in Kaufman's essay, “Nonresistance and Responsibility,” first published in Concern, A Pamphlet Series for Questions of Christian Renewal 6 (1958): 5–29.Google Scholar The citation comes from a later collection of Kaufman's essays, Nonresistance and Responsibility, and Other Mennonite Essays (Newton, KS: Faith and Life Press, 1979), p. 65.Google Scholar
16. Ibid., p. 71.
17. See Toews, Paul, “The Concern Movement: Its Origins and Early History,” The Conrad Grebel Review 8 (Spring 1990): 109–126,Google Scholar for a detailed history of the Concern movement and Yoder's role within it.
18. Yoder, “Reflections on the Irrelevance of certain Slogans to the historical Movements they represent, Or, the Cooking of the Anabaptist Goose, Or, Ye garnish the sepulchers of the righteous,” (sic, Yoder's capitalization; 25 April 1952), f. 6, b. 47, Bender papers, Archives of the Mennonite Church, Goshen, Indiana. Quoted in Keim, , Harold S. Bender, p. 453.Google Scholar Yoder's most extended statement of the charge that contemporary Mennonite reality lagged far behind the “Anabaptist Vision” can be found in his essay, “Anabaptist Vision and Mennonite Reality,” in Consultation on Anabaptist-Mennonite Theology: Papers Read at the 1969 Aspen Conference, ed. Klassen, A.J. (Fresno: Council of Mennonite Seminaries, 1970), pp. 1–46.Google Scholar
19. Toews, Paul, Mennonites in American Society, 1930–1970: Modernity and the Persistence of Religious Community, The Mennonite Experience in America, Volume 4 (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1996), pp. 234–35.Google Scholar
20. Albert Keim suggests that the biblical hermeneutics of Karl Barth and Oscar Cullmann influenced the Concern group, both directly and indirectly, in their shift away from Anabaptism back to the New Testament church (Keim, , Harold S. Bender, p. 463Google Scholar). By the mid–1960s Bender's vision of a unified Anabaptism with its origin in Zurich was beginning to give way to historiographic approaches which emphasized the multiple origins of the Anabaptist movement and the diversity of Anabaptisms. For the definitive account of this shift, see Stayer, James, Packull, Werner, and Deppermann, Klaus, “From Monogenesis to Polygenesis: The Historical Discussion of Anabaptist Origins,” The Mennonite Quarterly Review 49 (04 1975): 83–121.Google Scholar For Yoder's most succinct statements of how he related contemporary theological work to Anabaptism, see his essays, “‘Anabaptists and the Sword’ Revisited: Systematic Historiography and Undogmatic Nonresistants,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 85/2 (1974): 126–39;Google Scholar“Anabaptism and History: ‘Restitution’ and the Possibility of Renewal,” in Umstrittenes Täufertum 1525–1975: Neue Forschungen, ed. Goertz, Hans-Jürgen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1975), pp. 244–58;Google Scholar“The Ambivalence of the Appeal to the Fathers,” in Practiced in the Presence: Essays in Honor of T. Canby Jones, ed. Snarr, Neil and Christopher, Daniel Smith (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1994), pp. 245–55;Google Scholar and “Primitivism in the Radical Reformation: Strengths and Weaknesses,” in The Primitive Church in the Modern World, ed. Hughes, Richard T. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995), pp. 74–97.Google Scholar
21. For documents from and analysis of the Puidoux conferences, see Durnbaugh, Donald, ed., On Earth Peace: Discussions on War and Peace Issues between Friends, Mennonites, Brethren and European Churches, 1935–1975 (Elgin: Brethren Press, 1978).Google Scholar Yoder's photocopied lecture series, Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution: A Companion to Bainton (Elkhart, IN: Co-op Bookstore, 1983),Google Scholar also reflects Yoder's commitment to ecumenical dialogue with Christians outside the pacifist fold.
22. Yoder, , Body Politics, p. ix.Google Scholar
23. Yoder, , Christian Witness to the State, p. 17.Google Scholar
24. Ibid., p. 18.
25. Yoder, , Body Politics, p. ix.Google Scholar
26. Yoder, , Christian Witness to the State, pp. 18–19.Google Scholar
27. The Eucharist as a socially-embodied form of economic solidarity is one of the two main biblical motifs Yoder lifted out to discuss the economic character of the church. The other was the Jubilee of Lev. 25, a vision of economic redistribution echoed in such prophetic passages as Isaiah 61 and taken up in Jesus' inaugural sermon in Nazareth (Luke 4). For Yoder's discussion of the Jubilee, see chapter 3 of The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).Google Scholar
28. Yoder, , Body Politics, pp. 72–73.Google Scholar
29. Ibid., p. 72.
30. Yoder, John Howard, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 5.Google Scholar Within the Mennonite context Yoder believed that reformation was demanded on the level of the ministry and church polity. Yoder opposed bureaucratizing and professionalizing trends in ministry within the Mennonite churches, championing instead the universality of ministry as developed in I Corinthians 13 and calling for more open deliberation in church polity along Quaker models. See, for example, Yoder, , The Fullness of Christ: Paul's Vision of Universal Ministry (Elgin: Brethren Press, 1987).Google Scholar
31. Yoder, , Christian Witness to the State, p. 19.Google Scholar Yoder later placed this experimental activity of the church under the rubric of the church as “pioneer” (Yoder, , The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical, ed. Cartwright, Michael [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994], pp. 205–206Google Scholar).
32. Yoder, , Christian Witness to the State, p. 20.Google Scholar
33. Niebuhr's article was posthumously published in the Journal of Religious Ethics 16, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 109ff.Google Scholar For Yoder's discussion of the article, including reflections on how this “early” Niebuhr differed from the Niebuhr of Christ and Culture, see Yoder, , For the Nations: Essays Public and Evangelical (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 21–23.Google Scholar
34. Barth, , “The Christian Community and the Civil Community,” Karl Barth: Theologian of Freedom, ed. Green, Clifford (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), pp. 265–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Yoder also often cited Barth's claim in the Dogmatics that “true church order is exemplary order” (Barth, , Church Dogmatics, ed. Bromiley, G.W. and Torrance, T.F. [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1958], 4: 719ff).Google Scholar For Yoder's most extensive published discussions of Barth's ecclesiology, see “Karl Barth: How His Mind Kept Changing,” in How Karl Barth Changed My Mind, ed. McKim, Donald K. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), pp. 166–71,Google Scholar and “Why Ecclesiology Is Social Ethics: Gospel Ethics versus the Wider Wisdom,” in Royal Priesthood, pp. 102–26.Google Scholar
35. Yoder, , “The Anabaptist Dissent: The Logic of the Place of the Disciple in Society,” Concern: A Pamphlet Series for Questions of Christian Renewal 1 (06 1954): 46.Google Scholar
36. Yoder, , Royal Priesthood, p. 198.Google Scholar
37. Yoder, , Politics of Jesus, p. 240.Google Scholar
38. Hauerwas, Stanley and Willimon, William, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989);Google ScholarMacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981);Google Scholar and Lindbeck, George, “The Sectarian Future of the Church,” in The God Experience (New York: Newman Press, 1971), pp. 226–43.Google Scholar
39. Yoder, , For the Nations, pp. 113–14.Google Scholar
40. Yoder, , Politics of Jesus, pp. 14–15.Google Scholar
41. Yoder, , Royal Priesthood, p. 197.Google Scholar Yoder also lists several other forms of “neo-Constantinianism,” such as the “neo-neo-Constantinianism” of a Sweden, where the church and state provide each other with mutual support, without illusion that most Swedes view themselves as specifically Christian. While Yoder did not hesitate to critique liberation theologies which advocated violence, he did note the disingenuousness of such a critique coming from decidedly non-pacifist circles in North America (Yoder, , “The Wider Setting of ‘Liberation Theology’” p. 287Google Scholar). Yoder wrote several articles on liberation theology, probably an outgrowth of several trips he made to Latin America. See, among others, “Exodus and Exile: Two Faces of Liberation” Crosscurrents (Fall 1973), pp. 297–309;Google Scholar“Biblical Roots of Liberation Theology,” Grail 1 (09 1985): 55–74;Google Scholar and “Withdrawal and Diaspora: The Two Faces of Liberation” in Freedom and Discipleship: Liberation Theology in Anabaptist Perspective, ed. Schipani, Daniel S. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1989), pp. 76–84.Google Scholar
42. Yoder, , “Withdrawal and Diaspora,” p. 82.Google Scholar
43. See especially Yoder's essay, “See How They Go with Their Face to the Sun,” in For the Nations, pp. 51–78.Google Scholar Yoder devoted a substantial amount of thought to the question of the significance of Judaism for Christianity; unfortunately, most of his writings on the subject remain unpublished. Before his death Yoder gathered several of his essays on Judaism into a desktop packet: Yoder, , The Jewish Christian Schism Revisited: A Bundle of Old Essays, a Shalom Desktop Publication, 1996, 168 pp.,Google Scholar available on Yoder's still active website at http://www.nd.edu/~theo/jhy/writings/home/indschism.htm. For a provocative, albeit in my opinion insufficient, critique Yoder's appropriation of certain strands of Judaism, see Reimer, A. James, “Theological Orthodoxy and Jewish Christianity: A Personal Tribute to John Howard Yoder” in The Wisdom of the Cross, ed. Hauerwas, Stanley et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 430–49.Google Scholar For a more nuanced discussion of the Jerermian vision favored by Yoder and, for example, the Deuteronomic challenge (Deut. 6–9) of celebrating the shalom of the land “without defensively and violently hoarding God's blessing,” see Schlabach, Gerald W., “Deuteronomic or Constantinian: What Is the Most Basic Problem for Christian Social Ethics,” in The Wisdom of the Cross, pp. 449–71.Google Scholar
44. Yoder, , “The Anabaptist Dissent.”Google Scholar Troeltsch developed his churchsect typology in his monumental study, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 2 vols., trans. Wyon, Olive (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992).Google Scholar
45. Toews, , Mennonites in American Society, p. 235.Google Scholar
46. Yoder, , Christian Witness to the State, p. 78.Google Scholar Yoder was often criticized for his lack of attention to questions of interiority and the internal justification of the Christian. While such concerns admittedly do not stand at the forefront of Yoder's work, passages like this one indicate that he understood the importance of individual regeneration.
47. Yoder, , Body Politics, p. 78.Google Scholar
48. Yoder, , Politics of Jesus, p. 96.Google Scholar Miroslav Volf misreads Yoder when he interprets Yoder's emphasis on the disciple's imitation of Jesus' way of the cross as unconnected to a social ethic: the disciple ends up going the way of the cross, Yoder argued, because she is part of a community which embodies a way of life threatening to the powers (Volf, , Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996], p. 22Google Scholar).
49. Yoder, , Priestly Kingdom, pp. 11–12.Google Scholar Troeltschian categories as filtered through H. Richard Niebuhr's landmark Christ and Culture made it appear that Christians who stressed the importance of creating alternative modes of social organization within the church were in some way “against culture.” For Yoder's devastating critique of Niebuhr's typology, see Yoder, , “How H. Richard Niebuhr Reasoned: A Critique of Christ and Culture,” in Authentic Transformation: A New Vision of Christ and Culture, ed. Stassen, Glen H., Yeager, D.M., and Yoder, John Howard (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), pp. 31–90.Google Scholar
50. Yoder, , Royal Priesthood, p. 215.Google Scholar
51. Miller, Richard B., Interpretations of Conflict: Ethics, Pacifism, and the Just-War Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 240.Google Scholar
52. Yoder, , Christian Witness to the State, p. 53.Google Scholar
53 Yoder, , For the Nations, p. 121.Google Scholar Barth's concept of “secular parables” allowed him to maintain that all truth was within Christ, rather than alongside and thus independent of Christ; he could thus envision “common ground” between Christian and non-Christian without recourse to either transcendental structures of reason or discourse or to supposedly universal feelings such as that of absolute dependence. Barth developed his understanding of “secular parables” in Church Dogmatics IV/3: 1, par. 69, sec. 2. While Yoder never discussed Barth's secular parables, Yoder's work is, I have argued, compatible with Barth's approach to the question of truth extra muros ecclesiae (Weaver, Alain Epp, “Parables of the Kingdom and Religious Plurality: With Barth and Yoder towards a Nonresistant Public Theology,” The Mennonite Quarterly Review 72 [07 1998]: 411–40Google Scholar).
54. Yoder, , For the Nations, p. 155.Google Scholar
55. O'Donovan, Oliver, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 224.Google Scholar
56. Hauerwas discusses O'Donovan's critique of Yoder, in Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth-Century Theology and Philosophy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), p. 224n15.Google Scholar For Hauerwas on the “involuntary” character of the church see esp. chap. 9 of Sanctify Them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998).Google Scholar One might want to locate the tension between the voluntary versus the nonvoluntary character of the church in the debate between pedobaptist and antipedobaptist positions. Yoder was quite clear, however, that what was at stake for him in adult baptism was the distinctness of the church from the world, and Yoder in fact proposed ecumenical formulations to bridge the differences between adult and infant baptism arguments (Yoder, , “Adjusting to the Changing Shape of the Debate on Infant Baptism,” in Oecumennisme: Essays in Honor of Dr. Henk Kossen, ed. Lambo, Arie [Amsterdam: Algemene Doopsgezinde Societeit, 1989], pp. 201–214Google Scholar).
57. Yoder, , The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1971), p. 33.Google Scholar
58. Yoder, , Royal Priesthood, p. 104.Google Scholar
59. Yoder, , Politics of Jesus, p. 137.Google Scholar Yoder's structural understanding of the Pauline powers closely paralleled that of Walter Wink in his trilogy of books, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984);Google ScholarUnmasking the Powers (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986);Google ScholarEngaging the Powers (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992).Google Scholar Yoder also drew on the work of William Stringfellow and Jacques Ellul in elaborating his own position on the “powers.” For Stringfellow, see Free in Obedience (New York: Seabury, 1964), pp. 49–50ff.Google Scholar For Ellul, see Marva Dawn's dissertation written under Yoder's guidance: “The Concept of the ‘Principalities and Powers' in the Work of Jacques Ellul” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 1992).Google Scholar
60. Yoder, , Politics of Jesus, p. 143.Google Scholar
61. Ibid., p. 144.
62. Ibid., p. 145.
63. Ibid., p. 158. While Yoder wrote extensively about Jesus, he never outlined a Christology in a systematic fashion. In a passage like the one just quoted Yoder appeared to be challenging the adequacy of the Anselmian model of substitutionary atonement in favor of a Christus Victor theory of the atonement. If Yoder remained ambiguous regarding atonement theory, other Anabaptist theologians have extended this element of Yoder's thought, arguing for the classic, Christus Victor model of the atonement over against substitutionary models. See especially Weaver, J. Denny, “Atonement for the NonConstantinian Church,” Modern Theology 6 (07 1990): 307–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
64. That the church, of course, has historically and will continue to fall prey to the temptation of self-glorification meant, for Yoder, that the church is continually in need of reform.
65. O'Donovan objects to Yoder's treatment of the powers, claiming that in Christian Witness to the State and Politics of Jesus “the language of the principalities and powers was invoked solely to point up the demonic character of the state.” Absent, O'Donovan asserts, “was the reference to Christ's triumph and the state's subjection, or semisubjection” (O'Donovan, , Desire of the Nations, p. 151Google Scholar). O'Donovan's characterization of Yoder is virtually unrecognizable. While Yoder undeniably emphasized the “rebellious”—and thus, demonic—character of the powers, he consistently stressed their goodness as part of God's creation and argued that these powers had been subordinated under the lordship of Christ.
66. Yoder, , Politics of Jesus, p. 201.Google Scholar God, of course, creates the state as a power; God does not, however, create, but orders, the state in its present, rebellious form.
67. Yoder, , Christian Witness to the State, p. 75.Google Scholar
68. Yoder, , Priestly Kingdom, p. 154.Google Scholar
69. Yoder, John Howard, Nevertheless: The Varieties and Shortcoming of Religious Pacifism, rev. and expanded ed. (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1992), p. 113.Google Scholar See also Arne Rasmusson's observation that the idea of “two moralities” for church and states is inherently problematic, as it promotes “a too static view of (and even ontological status to) the morality of the state and a too neat division between the ethics of the church and the state” (Rasmusson, , The Church as Polis: From Political Theology to Theological Politics as Exemplified by Jürgen Moltmann and Stanley Hauerwas, Studia Theologica Lundensia 49 [Lund: Lund University Press, 1994], p. 227n193).Google Scholar
70. Yoder, , “The Anabaptist Dissent,” p. 51.Google Scholar
71. Yoder, , Christian Witness to the State, pp. 36–37.Google Scholar Yoder's opposition to the death penalty stemmed both from his biblical exegesis as well as from his conviction that it went beyond the “absolute minimum of violence” permitted the state. For Yoder's most concise discussion of capital punishment, see his pamphlet, The Christian and Capital Punishment, Institute of Mennonite Studies Series No. 1 (Newton, KS: Faith and Life Press, 1961).Google Scholar
72. Yoder, , Christian Witness to the State, p. 77.Google Scholar
73. Yoder, , Politics of Jesus, p. 209.Google Scholar
74. Yoder, , Nevertheless, p. 113.Google Scholar That Yoder's ecumenical spirit drove him to form alliances with Christian pacifists of various persuasions did not, of course, mean that he held back from criticizing what he viewed as the overly optimistic anthropology of many Christian pacifists. In his seminal response to Reinhold Niebuhr, for example, Yoder made clear that he joined Niebuhr in denouncing the high view of the human and the low view of sin which characterized many Christian pacifists influenced by the Social Gospel (Yoder, , “Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Pacifism,” The Mennonite Quarterly Review 29 [04 1955]: 101–117).Google Scholar
75. Yoder, , ‘For the Nations, pp. 118–19.Google Scholar
76. Ibid., p. 101. One form of nonviolent protest in which Yoder personally engaged himself was war-tax refusal. For an explanation of his position, see Yoder, , “Why I Don't Pay All of My Income Tax,” Sojourners (March 1977): 11–12.Google Scholar
77. Yoder, , For the Nations, p. 199Google Scholar.
78. See, for example, Yoder's respectful treatment of various effectiveness-oriented forms of pacifism in Nevertheless. Yoder's ability to engage in thought-experiments is also evident in his consideration of what it would mean to make just war criteria effective. See Yoder, , When War Is Unjust: Being Honest in ]ust War, rev. ed. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1997).Google Scholar
79. Yoder, , Christian Witness to the State, p. 44.Google Scholar
80. Yoder, , Politics of Jesus, p. 242.Google Scholar
81. For a provocative dialogue with and appropriation of Yoder's apocalyptic politics in conversation with Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, see Toole, David, Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo: Theological Reflections on Nihilism, Tragedy, and Apocalypse (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998).Google Scholar
82. Yoder, , Politics of Jesus, p. 204.Google Scholar
83 Yoder, , Royal Priesthood, p. 204.Google Scholar
84. Yoder, , For the Nations, p. 115.Google Scholar
85. Yoder, , Christian Witness to the State, p. 72.Google Scholar
86. Yoder, , Priestly Kingdom, p. 158.Google Scholar
87. Yoder, , Christian Witness to the State, p. 73.Google Scholar Perhaps, however, middle axioms might be properly viewed as secular parables of the kingdom. See the discussion of Barth, Yoder and secular parables in note 55 above.
88. Ibid., p. 59. As noted above, Yoder resisted developing a theory of the “ideal” state. However, he did not hesitate in making ad hoc judgments about the superiority of some forms of government and social organization over others. Criticizing Stanley Hauerwas's dismissal of liberal democratic values as a set of “bad ideas” as “too simple,” Yoder argued for the relative benefits of liberal, pluralistic forms of government and society. “A soft pluralism, when consistent, provides the most livable cultural space for Jews and Anabaptists, as well as for Jehovah's Witnesses and followers of Rev. Moon. As a civil arrangement, pluralism is better than any of the hitherto known alternatives. As an ecclesiastical arrangement, it is better than the monarchical episcopate. As a marketplace of ideas, it is better than a politically correct campus or a media empire homogenized by salesmanship” (Yoder, , “Meaning after Babble: With Jeffrey Stout Beyond Relativism” Journal of Religious Ethics 24 [Spring 1996]: 135Google Scholar). For Hauerwas's most sustained attack on liberalism in politics, see his After Christendom: How the Church is to Behave if Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation are Bad Ideas (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991).Google Scholar Hauerwas perceptively responds to Yoder's critique by suggesting that liberal, democratic societies are less “pluralistic” than they claim (Hauerwas, , Wilderness Wanderings, p. 21n27Google Scholar).
89. Yoder, , Christian Witness to the State, p. 27.Google Scholar Yoder did not rule out a priori that Christians might even serve as police officers. Here, however, the opening was much more narrow: “in truth we must hold that the nonresistant position is the normal and normative position for every Christian, and it is the use of violence, even at that point where the state may with some legitimacy be violent, that requires an exceptional justification.” Yoder claimed never to have met anyone who both acknowledged the general normativity of nonresistance while also claiming a special dispensation to participate in the legitimate violence of the state (Yoder, , Christian Witness to the State, pp. 56–57).Google Scholar For a discussion of Christian service in the police, see Winright, Tobias, “From Police Officers to Peace Officers,” in The Wisdom of the Cross, pp. 84–114.Google Scholar
90. Yoder, , Christian Witness to the State, p. 28.Google Scholar
91. The definition comes from Heilke: he proposes the definition in order to counter it with the “politics” of sixteenth-century Anabaptism (Heilke, , “On Being Ethical,” p. 513).Google Scholar
92. In a message to the Christian right, Paul Weyrich, formerly of the Moral Majority, lamented that “Politics has failed.” Cal Thomas and others have called the religious right's infatuation with governmental politics into question (Thomas, Cal, Dobson, Ed, Dobson, Thomas, Blinded by Might: Can the Religious Right Save America? [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999]).Google Scholar I offered a theological analysis and critique of these declarations in my essay, “Drop-Out Christianity: The Religious Right's Sectarian Future?” The Christian Century 116/9 (17 03 1999): 300–301.Google Scholar