”Defanging the Beast":
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse pg 7
RACHEL WALTNER GOOSSEN*
During the mid-1970s, the renowned Christian ethicist and theologian
John Howard Yoder embarked on an experiment in human sexuality,
devising his own guidelines and selecting his own subjects, whom he
called ”sisters." Writing in 1979 to his colleague and supervisor, Marlin
E. Miller, the president of Goshen Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana,
Yoder laid out a continuum of activities in which he and a number of
women had engaged:
- superficial touch as a natural greeting
- discussion of possible deeper meaning of touch ....
- more meaningful .... touch; may be a handclasp, a hug, or a brief
kiss ....
- Same expressions as above but they become an expectation . . .
May be added a closed door, lap-sitting, a less fleeting kiss.
- token partial disrobing
- total disrobing
- specific touching of penis/pubis
- exploration of partial/interrupted arousal/intermission
-Other variables,” Yoder continued, ”cut across these":
- Whether just once as a threshold experience or repeated;
- whether done alone or with others present;
- whether the token nudity was a few minutes or longer?
________________
*Rachel Waltner Goossen is a professor of history at Washburn University (Topeka,
Kan.) The author initiated this study at the invitation of Mennonite Church USA's
Discernment Group.-http://www.mennoniteusa.org/historian-to-examine-churchs-resp-
onse--to-john-howard-yoders-abuse-of-women/. Washburn University provided funding
through a Faculty Research Grant. Iohn Bender, Carolyn Holderread Heggen, Iames Lapp,
Greg Leatherman Sommers, Ted Koontz, Walter Sawatsky, Dorothy Nickel Friesen and
others assisted in providing documentation. Previously inaccessible institutional materials
consulted for this project include the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS)
Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001, and the Mennonite Church USA
Indiana-Michigan Conference Iohn Howard Yoder Files, Il-05-019. Both collections are now
available at the Mennonite Church USA Archives in Goshen, Ind. Additional AMBS files
are also available at MC USA Archives-Goshen. Prairie Street Mennonite Church records
The Mennonite Quarterly Review pg 8
To these listings Yoder added an interpretive paragraph explaining
that as part of the experimentation, he and whatever Christian sister he
was with talked about "the reasoning behind” what they were doing, as
well as “about unrelated matters (her ministry, friendships, future
vocational choices), or past experiences which made this experience
helpful .... Sometimes we talked about mutual friends. Usually we
prayed."(2)
One might reasonably imagine that, upon reading this memo,
President Miller called the police and pressed charges against the 51-
year-old professor who was methodically perpetrating sexual violence
on female students and presumably other women on campus. But this
was 1979. Courts had not yet consistently defined sexual harassment,
and employers were not predisposed to call in law enforcement to
respond to violence against women. No educational institutions in the
United States, from the Ivy League to the smallest church-affiliated
schools, had yet developed procedures for students to file formal
complaints about sexual harassment or assault? Institutional Review
Boards (lRBs), already well-established at larger institutions of higher
education to safeguard the rights of human subjects in academic studies,
did not yet exist at many private institutions, and certainly not at Goshen
Biblical Seminary (G.B.S.).4 Besides, the discipline underlying Yoder's
methodology was not biology or psychology. Rather, as he explained to
Miller, he was working from theological premises that included certain
interpretations of the writings of Paul and the life of Iesus. And in 1979,
_____________________
are located in Elkhart, Ind. Sara Wenger Shenk, Daniel Miller, and Nelson Kraybill
facilitated some of the interviews conducted for this study. The author wishes to thank Ben
Soossen, Nelson Kraybill, Steve Nolt, Tom Prasch, Kerry Wynn, and The Mennonite
Quarterly Revieufs editors for comments on earlier drafts.
1. Yoder to Miller, Dec. 6, 1979, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-
18-001.
2. lbid.
3. Robin Wilson, ”Why Colleges Are on the Hook in Cases of Sexual Assault,” The
Chronicle of Higher Education, 20 Uune 2014), A10.
4. By 1979, Goshen Biblical Seminary, affiliated with the Mennonite Church (MC), had
for two decades been in a cooperative arrangement with another educational institution,
the Mennonite Biblical Seminary, affiliated with the General Conference Mennonite
Church. Together, they were known as The Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, and
each school had its own board and president but shared curricula and campus facilities in
Elkhart, Indiana. Beginning in 1975, Miller served as president of Goshen Biblical
Seminary; fifteen years later he also became president of Mennonite Biblical Seminary. In
1993 the two schools incorporated as one institution known as Associated Mennonite
Biblical Seminary (AMBS). In 2012 AMBS changed its name to Anabaptist Mennonite
Biblical Seminary. See C. ]. Dyck, The AMBS Story (Elkhart, Ind.: Associated Mennonite
Biblical Seminary, 1996), 1-13, and "Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary" and ”Goshen
College Biblical Seminary," Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (CAMEO),
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse pg 9
given a decades-long relationship that included Yoder’s role as Miller's
intellectual mentor as well as his predecessor in the president’s office at
the seminary, Miller was worried about the injurious effects these
extracurricular activities were having on Yoder's 27-year marriage.
There was another powerful reason why Miller called in neither law
enforcement nor an attorney to draw up a severance package. Iohn
Howard Yoder, who was both a professor of theology at the nearby
University of Notre Dame and an adjunct faculty member at Goshen
Biblical Seminary, was a prodigious and prolific Mennonite leader,
known widely for his writings and lectures on discipleship. More than
two decades earlier, he had completed a doctorate at the University of
Basel on the sixteenth-century dialogues between early Anabaptists and
Reformed theologians, and had embarked on a Christocentric career that
would take him to church assignments and academic posts in Europe,
North America, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. His 1972 book The
Politics of ]esus was already considered a classic on religious pacifism,
and his influence on denominational and theological institutions and
across international academic circles was immense.5
Today, institutions-whether religious or educational, private or
public, small or large-are expected to respond more directly to
allegations of sexual misconduct than in the 1970s, the era in which
Yoder’s patterns of behavior emerged. Presently, steps for preventing
and addressing sexual abuse are encoded in policies reflecting insights
from multiple disciplines: psychology and sociology, ethics and law.
Thus, this historical study, begun in 2013 at the invitation of Mennonite
Church USA, reflects an ongoing and evolving effort to understand
legacies of sexual abuse for all involved-victims, their families,
coworkers or others who have knowledge of the abuse, and those who
perpetrate harm.6 Recent scholarship, including studies of abuse
revelations in Roman Catholic dioceses, evangelical Christian missions,
mainline Protestant parishes, and non~Christian religious contexts,
suggests that sexual abuse is a pervasive problem in many religious
_____________________
5. The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1972; rev. ed.,
1994). In 2000, three years after Yoder’s death, editors of Christianity Today named it one of
the top ten books of the twentieth century.
6. The term “victims” is sometimes contested by persons who have experienced sexual
abuse. Some prefer the language of ”survivors" or “activists” in the aftermath of abuse.
This article employs the term "victims" to convey past situations in which women
experienced Lmwanted sexualized behavior from a person with academic and religious
authority. This limited use of the terminology does not presume that these women
regarded themselves as victims in perpetuity. On language preferences, see Kathleen M.
Dwyer, "Surving What I Know,” in Predatory Priests, Silenced Victims, ed. Mary Frawley-
O’Dea and Virginia Goldner (New York: Laurence Erlbaum, 2007), 108-109.
10 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
settings, due in part to the spiritual power attributed to leaders? The
sociologist Anson Shupe argues that the moral weight of religious
traditions often renders believers vulnerable to leaders' abuses. This is
because of ”special authority” ascribed to clergy persons and because
believers “expect the best-not the worst" from those they revere? In
response, local faith communities faced with accusations of abuse by
their leaders may become defensive and "circle the wagons," either
denying that sexual abuse occurred or blaming the victims for bringing
the problem to the public’s attention?
This study focuses on the last twenty-five years of Yoder’s life, when
his sexual behaviors toward many women caused significant harm to
them and, in some cases, to their spouses and other family members. As
Marlin Miller and other Mennonite leaders learned of Yoder's behavior,
the tendency to protect institutional interests-rather than seeking
redress for women reporting sexual violation-was amplified because of
Yoder’s status as the foremost Mennonite theologian and because he
conceptualized his behavior as an experimental form of sexual ethics. In
a 1974 solicitation in which he appealed to women to engage with him,
he wrote: ”Only thanks to your friendship, sisterhood, can I do the
theology."(10) Remarkably, Yoder was conveying that the women whom
he persuaded to join him would be test subjects for him. 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 Yoder from 1992 to 1995 as part
of a Mennonite church accountability and discipline process believe that
more than 100 women experienced unwanted sexual violations by
______________________
7. Anson Shupe, In the Name of All That’s Holy: A Theory of Clergy Malfeasance (Westport,
Conn.: Praeger, 1995); Anson Shupe, Rogue Clerics: The Social Problem of Clergy Deuiance
(New Brunswick, N.].: Transaction Publishers, 2008); Wolves within the Fold: Religious
Leadership and Abuses of Power, ed. Anson Shupe (New Brunswick, N.].: Rutgers University
Press, 1998).
8. Shupe, In the Name, 26.
9. Ibid.
10. Yoder, "A Call for Aid,” 1974, p 3.-AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on ]ohn Howard
Yoder, X-18-001; see also Peter Bromley and Clinton H. Cress, “Narratives of Sexual
Danger," in Anson Shupe, et. al., Bad Pastors: Clergy Misconduct in Modern America (New
York: New York University Press, 2000), 60. An unknown number of women received this
letter or similar appeals from Yoder in his sexuality studies in the months and years
immediately preceding and following his drafting of this letter in ]uly 1974. -Martha Smith
Good interview with author, ]une 27, 2014. ln 1977, in another essay, Yoder downplayed
the research aspects of his writings on sexuality, referring to "the low-priority, informal,
non-academic attention which I have been giving to the issue of singleness.”-Yoder,
”Intergenerational Affection,” March 11, 1977, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on John
Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 11
Yoder.“ Others knowledgeable about the experiences of Yoder’s victims
cite more than fifty as a conservative estimate.” Some who were
victimized by him, as well as others knowledgeable about his activities,
warned educational and church leaders about the dangers he posed.”
Administrators at Mennonite institutions who knew of Yoder’s sexual
misconduct tended to keep decision-making close to the chest, a strategy
of secrecy that resulted in information trickling out over a period of
time.” Yoder’s advances included making suggestive comments,
sending sexually explicit correspondence, and surprising women with
physical coercion. Since Yoder’s death in 1997, additional women have
come forward, confirming evidence from his writings to Marlin Miller
and other confidantes that Yoder’s activities ranged across a spectrum
from sexual harassment in public places to, more rarely, sexual
intercourse.” Some women found his sexual aggressions to be relatively
inconsequential in their own lives. Other women’s experiences were
devastating, with trauma exacting a steep toll on marriages and careers.”
Initially, during the 1970s and early 1980s, Mennonite institutional
responses to reports of Yoder’s sexual violations were muted. At Goshen
Biblical Seminary, President Miller conceived of a disciplinary process
that he regarded as straightforward and biblical, and that he hoped
would bring Yoder to accountability. Because Yoder cloaked his sexual
behavior with women in theological language, and because his
contributions to Christian thought centered on community as the locus
for discipline, biblicism seemed crucial in framing the problem. Yoder
himself had written and lectured extensively about the mandate of
Matthew 18:15 for individual responsibility in confronting wrongdoing:
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him
alone. hf he listens to you, you have gained your brother."(17)
_______________________
11. Betty Hochstetler interview with author, Iune 5, 2014; John G. Kaufman interview
with author, ]une 5, 2014. Hochstetler and Kaufman had been appointed to Yoder’s
Accountability and Support Group because of their expertise in mental health issues;
Hochstetler held a D. Min. and Kaufman held A.C.S.W. accreditation.
12. Carolyn Holderread Heggen interview with author, June 4, 2014.
13. Carolyn Holderread Heggen, ”Misconceptions and Victim Blaming," The Mennonite,
Aug. 2014, 31.
14. Richard Kauffman interview with author, Iune 7, 2014.
15. “Discernment Group Update," ]une 19, 2014, http://www.mennoniteusa.org/an-
update-from-the-discernment-group-on-sexual~abuse/.
16. "Questions," compiled by Carolyn Holderread Heggen, et. al., Spring 2014, in the
author's possession.
17. Mt. 18:15, R.S.V. For Yoder’s perspective on Mt. 18:15-20, see "Binding and
Loosing,” originally in Concern #14, A Pamphlet Series for Questions of Church Renewal
(Scottdale, Pa.: The Concern Group, 1967), 2-32; see also Yoder, Body Politics: Five Practices of
the Christian Community Before the Watching World (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 2001), 1-13.
Mark Thiessen Nation contextualizes the "Concern" movement of the 1950s in light of
12 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
For Miller, the December 1979 memo in which Yoder outlined his
experimenting-with-the-women project was disturbing, but not
shocking. During the previous three years, Miller had already been
confronting Yoder about his "relationships" with women, and the two
Christian theologians were now engaged in a tug of words over how the
conflict between Yoder’s experimentation and seminary interests might
be resolved by a faithful application of Matthew 18. At this point in their
exchange of memoranda, Miller was impatiently but hopefully waiting
to see how the scriptural promise of “If he listens to you" would play
out. It would be a long wait. Meanwhile, Miller’s casting the problem
and its potential solution as biblical obfuscated actual abuses that were
occurring on the seminary campus in young women’s apartments, and
in closed-door office spaces and hotel rooms around the world. The
consequences of this peculiar disputation would be far-reaching.
One of the oddest phrases in Yoder's memo to Miller was "the
’defanging' of the ’beast.’" The purpose of his exploratory sexual
activities, Yoder explained, depended on the needs of a given woman.
Often, he intended "to confirm the safeness of closeness by
demonstrating non-arousal.” At other times, he wanted to help the
woman he was with "overcome the fear/taboo feeling due to simple
ignorance of anatomy.” Or, in the less-frequent instances when Yoder
engaged in what he called "partial/interrupted arousal," he did so to
confirm to the woman-the object of his experimentation-that the
"’defanging’ of the 'beast' is really safe/'18 In subsequent discussions
with Miller and others at Goshen Biblical Seminary, Yoder defined his
activity of "partial/interrupted arousal" as genital penetration without
ejaculation.” By "defanging the beast," he explained, he meant that he
wanted to teach a woman who had expressed fear of sexual relations
that what he called "familial intimacy" was demonstrably safe and not
coerced-that is, not rape.”
________________
Yoder's discipleship focus in John Howard Yoder: Mennonite Patience, Evangelical Witness,
Catholic Convictions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2006), 43-45.
18. Yoder to Miller, Dec. 6, 1979. -AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on ]ohn Howard Yoder,
X-18-001.
19. Ibid. During the early 19805, Yoder also described to Mennonite seminary leaders
the technique of "stuffing," which he noted was genital penetration without ejaculation.-
Evelyn Shellenberger interview with author, Iune 4, 2014; Marcus Smucker interview with
author, Iuly 7, 2014.
20. In his writings and discussions about intimacy, Yoder employed two similar
adjectives. At some points he referred to "familiar intimacy" and at other times "familial
intimacy.” In a 1977 essay, he noted that these terms were interchangeable in his
descriptions of certain kinds of relationships. -Yoder, “Affective Sources for Singles,” ]uly
1977, p. 2, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-001; IHY Task Force
meeting minutes, March 24, 1992, Prairie Street Mennonite Church/JHY Task Force Files, in
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 13
Yoder’s employing of metaphors-whether violent, as in ”defanging
the beast,” or seemingly innocuous, as in his later use of the phrase
“falling off the bike”-for his behaviors and intentions toward women
confounded Marlin Miller. Unlike administrators in the twenty-first
century who, in all likelihood, would think long and hard about
ensuring campus safety for students, employees, and seminary guests,
Miller in these earliest years of his presidency worried principally about
how to preserve his star professor’s marriage and career. Miller, an
ordained minister and a creative, industrious scholar who had assumed
the presidency while still in his mid-thirties, had been a protege of
Yoder’s. In the early 1960s, at Yoder's suggestion, Miller had moved to
Europe for advanced study at Basel with the theologian Karl Barth and
then had completed doctoral studies at the University of Heidelberg.
From 1968 to 1974, Miller had administered programs for the Mennonite
Board of Missions in Paris, a role that brought him into collaborative
interactions with Yoder, who had worked with the agency for several
decades. After coming to Goshen Biblical Seminary to teach in 1974-1975,
Miller had left his missions post in France to become the seminary
president. Shortly after this transition, he had learned from members of
Yoder’s own family about what he initially regarded as Yoder's
extramarital relationships.(21)
When in 1975 Miller ostensibly became Yoder’s boss at the Elkhart
seminary, Yoder began to call him ”padre," or alternatively, ”pére.”(22) In
the years to come, Yoder’s ironic and sometimes perverse use of
language, and his conflating of religious and therapeutic explanations,
would similarly confound and unsettle an expanding circle of Mennonite
administrators. Clergy and laypersons alike-some of them "sworn to
secrecy" and others fearful of consequences from speaking out-would
find themselves trying to understand and respond to Yoder’s
theologizing of sexual behaviors between himself and women.”
ln 1980, soon after receiving the ”’defanging’ of the ’beast’” memo,
President Miller established a disciplinary process with a small cadre of
insiders at the Goshen Biblical Seminary, an early and secretive attempt
the author's possession. In 2015, The Prairie Street Mennonite Church/]HY Task Force
Files will be made accessible for researchers at the MC USA Archives-Goshen.
_____________________
21. Marlin Miller to AMBS Faculty, Staff, and Boards, Iuly 2, 1992, AMBS Marlin E.
Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Gordon Dyck, notes from Church Life
Commission meeting with Anne Yoder, Aug. 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite
Conference Iohn Howard Yoder Files, Il-05-019; Miller biographical information provided
in interview of Ruthann Miller Brunk by Sara Wenger Shenk, Aug. 1, 2014.
22. Shellenberger interview with author.
23. Quotation from Larry Eby, ”John Howard Yoder and the Original Seminary Board
Process," email communication, Aug. 4, 2014, in the author's possession.
14 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
at accountability and discipline that lasted nearly four years. Ultimately,
their efforts to stop Yoder's aggressions toward women would prove
unsuccessful, and they would force his departure from Goshen Biblical
Seminary. This collection of faculty and seminary board members, who
drew up a "covenant" with Yoder and thus called themselves the
"Covenant Group," would be the first of seven assemblages of
Mennonites-some of them standing committees, others ad hoc-that
challenged Yoder from within institutional bases. These Mennonite
Challengers and their eras of engagement with Yoder were:
1. Covenant Group, Goshen Biblical Seminary, 1980-1984
2. Confidential Task Force, Goshen Biblical Seminary, 1982
3. Board of Elders, Prairie Street Mennonite Church, 1986
4. Prairie Street Mennonite Church/Il-IY Task Force, 1991-1992
5. Church Life Commission, Indiana-Michigan Mennonite
Conference, 1992-1996
6. Accountability and Support Group, Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference, 1992-1996
7. Executive Board, Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference,
1992-1997(24)
These groups had varying goals: to engage Yoder intellectually in
hopes of grasping what merits there might be in his unconventional
notions about sexuality; to investigate rumors of his sexual misdeeds; to
discipline him; or some combination of the above, occasionally in
tandem with trying to arrange for face-to-face meetings between women
accusers and Yoder as a step toward forgiveness and reconciliation.” No
group succeeded completely in challenging Yoder's unwanted behavior
toward women. For the last two decades of his life, Yoder discussed,
sparred, and negotiated with these various parties. In all cases, people
grew weary after a few months or years of engagement. Like Miller in
the beginning, each group sought to "counsel" their Christian brother
rather than to have him arrested or expelled. Persons who through
employment or credentials entered the fray from outside the
denomination felt stonewalled, not only by Yoder himself but also by the
_____________
24. Documentation for the Covenant Group, the 1982 Confidential Task Force, and the
1986 Board of Elders accountability efforts is in the AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on ]ohn
Howard Yoder, X-18-001, Mennonite Church USA Archives-Goshen. Documentation for
the Prairie Street Mennonite Church/IHY Task Force of 1991-92 is in the author's
possession, provided by James Lapp. Documentation for the Church Life Commission, the
Accountability and Support Group, and the Executive Board of the Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference is in the MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference ]ohn
Howard Yoder Files, Il-05-019, Mennonite Church USA Archives-Goshen.
25. "Charge to JHY Task Force,” 1991-92, Prairie Street Mennonite Church, JHY Task
Force Files.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 15
secrecy surrounding his behavior, which served to protect Mennonite
institutional interests. In 1985, for example, a young pastor named
Charlie Cooper arrived in Elkhart to serve Prairie Street Mennonite
Church, the congregation of which Yoder had been a member for years.
Cooper had been on the job only a few months when he and the
congregation’s leadership council, the Board of Elders, decided to
confront Yoder about reports of ongoing sexual misbehavior. Years later,
Cooper recalled: "I asked him, [taking a] personal, relational, pastoral
approach, and was made dizzy by his verbiage, re-directs, subjugations,
semantics .... To this day [I] have no idea what-the-[expletive] JHY did!”(26)
When Cooper appealed for help from Mennonite leaders in the
community, those who knew the history of Yoder’s sexual violations
were not sharing.(27)
While at some junctures Yoder’s history of sexual abuse is
impervious, many aspects of this story are becoming clearer. Although
Yoder’s personal papers on this subject-housed at the Mennonite
Church USA Archives-remain closed until 2047, other documentation is
now accessible. More than two dozen Mennonite men and women
involved in various accountability efforts kept, either in institutional files
or in home storage, the written records generated by their efforts. By the
1990s, documents in the form of memoranda, handwritten notes,
meeting minutes, and mental health records had piled up. Still, leaders
of Mennonite accountability groups sought to control and contain
information, and not all the materials survived. As one leader queried
another, "We have a considerable amount that needs shredding. Do you
know where we could have this done?"(28) Time and again, systemic
destruction of files pertaining to Yoder’s sexual abuse occurred. But the
immense paper trail was uncontainable. And the memory bank of
individuals could still be accessed.(29)
_____________________
26. Quotation from Charlie Cooper, email to author, June 28, 2014.
27. Charlie Cooper to Marlin Miller, Dec. 24, 1986, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on ]ohn
Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Marlin Miller to Evelyn Shellenberger, Marcus Smucker, and
Millard Lind, Dec. 29, 1986, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
28. Atlee Beechy to Sherm Kauffman, May 8, 1996, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
29. The Jolm Howard Yoder Papers at the Mennonite Church USA Archives-Goshen
include "Sexual Harassment Charges and Conference Discipline" documents in Box 240,
restricted until 2047, fifty years after Yoder’s death. Individuals who in 2014 granted
interviews to the author include Iean Bender, Iohn Bender, Gordon Dyck, ”Elena”
(pseudonym), Dorothy Nickel Friesen, Simon Gingerich, Martha Smith Good, Iudy Harder,
Keith Harder, Carolyn Holderread Heggen, Betty Hochstetler, Loren Iohns, Richard
Kauffman, Sherm Kauffman, Nancy Kauffmann, Iohn G. Kaufman, Gayle Gerber Koontz,
Ted. Koontz, J. Nelson Kraybill, Iames Lapp, “Maureen” (pseudonym), Mary Ellen Meyer,
Ben Ollenburger, “Rosalie” (pseudonym), Walter Sawatsky, Evelyn Shellenberger, Marcus
Smucker, Willard Swartley, Everett Thomas, and Harold Yoder.
16 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
UNWELCOME SEXUAL ADVANCES
The decades-long sweep of this story, and its propensity to inspire
public debate, requires careful attention to late-twentieth~century shifts
in laws addressing sexual behavior. Legal considerations of sexual
harassment have historically been guided by Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, which prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace, and by
definitions established by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission. Prior to the 1970s, federal courts did not recognize sexual
harassment as a form of sex discrimination, dismissing it as mere
flirtation.(30) In 1976, U.S. federal courts began considering cases related to
sexual harassment in the workplace. A decade later, the first U.S.
Supreme Court case to address sexual harassment linked it to hostile
working environments and held that the viability of sexual harassment
claims depended on whether the advances were "unwelcome."(31) During
the 1980s, the federal gender-equity law, Title IX of the Education
Amendments to the Civil Rights Act, began to be cited in court cases in
which female students argued that sexual harassment was
discriminatory and, therefore, illegal.(32) In the 1990s, the U.S. Supreme
Court addressed cases involving teachers' sexual overtures toward
students, and, in 2001, the federal Education Department issued a new
standard establishing sexual harassment as discriminatory, mandating
that educational institutions take preventative steps in addressing sexual
harassment and eliminating hostile environments in which persons are
intimidated.(33)
Over the past four decades, legal considerations guiding definitions of
sexual harassment have expanded as a result of increased attention to
the experiences of female students and workers, often spurred by
_________________
30, The term "sexual harassment” was coined in 1975 by feminists in Ithaca, N.Y.; this
history is recounted in Caroline A. Forell and Dorma M. Matthews, ”Men, Women, and Sex
at Work,” in Sexual Harassment: Cases, Case Studies, 8 Commentary, ed. Paul I. Weizer (New
York: P. Lang, 2002), 229.
31. The case was Meritor Savings Bank zr. Vinson (1986); Weizer, Sexual Harassment, 4-5.
32. The best-known case using Title IX (1972) to establish that sexual harassment can be
considered discriminatory is Alexander v. Yale University (1980). In its decision, the U.S.
District Court ruled against the plaintiffs, but the case prompted Yale University and other
schools to institute formal grievance procedures.
33. Wilson, ”Why Colleges are on the Hook,” A10; see also Iimmy Carter, A Call to
Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power (New York: Simon 8: Schuster, 2014), 44.
Landmark cases addressing educational settings include Franklin o. Gwinnett County Public
Schools (1992) and Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (1999). On federal guidelines,
see "Revised Sexual Harassment Guidance: Harassment of Students by School Employees,
Other Students, or Third Parties, Title lX," Department of Education Office for Civil Rights,
2001, https://www2.ed_gov/offices/OCR/archives/pdf/shguide.pdf.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 17
feminist activists.(34) As legal attention to sexual harassment has evolved,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines have provided
frameworks for determining when unwelcome sexual advances and
requests for sexual favors constitute sexual harassment. Sexual
harassment may be physical (such as kissing, hugging, pinching, patting,
grabbing, blocking the victim’s path, or leering at the victim), or verbal
(either oral or written), and can include requests.(35) Commission
guidelines note that acts of physical aggression or intimidation are
sometimes combined with incidents of sexual harassment, further
establishing evidence of abuse.(36) Although these definitions for sexual
harassment became mainstream after Yoder had begun his project, his
continued advances toward women through the 1980s coincided with
cultural shifts in which notions of sexual harassment came to be
regarded, both within Mennonite circles and beyond, as directly
applicable to his actions.
Yoder's legacies of sexual abuse were deeply harmful Within his own
Mennonite community in northern Indiana and well beyond his
academic bases. A highly mobile professor and churchman, he
approached (mostly Mennonite) women both near and far from home,
violating contemporary general understandings of propriety. For more
than two decades, three key institutions-his part-time employer,
Goshen Biblical Seminary; his local congregation, Prairie Street
Mennonite Church in Elkhart; and the regional Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference, which held his ministerial credential-all
responded to reports of Yoder’s sexual misconduct. With no legal
charges ever filed, adjudication, such as it Was, took place in local
Mennonite settings-seminary lecture halls, conference quarters, and
living rooms-often involving Mennonites who were also closely
connected to Yoder through collegiality, educational history,
congregational fraternity, or even family relationships. Despite the faith
community's longstanding commitment to nonviolence and its polity
emphasis on local authority rather than entrenched hierarchies, these
Mennonite leaders' interventions, while often well-intentioned, were
largely ineffectual.(37)
____________________
34. Campaigns against sexual violence in the context of U.S. governmental systems are
the focus of Kristin Bumiller’s In an Abusive State: How Neolilieralism Appropriated the
Feminist Movement Against Sexual Violence (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008).
35. Weizer, Sexual I-Ianzssment, 5-6. On the E.E.O.C. guidelines, see Weizer, Sexual
Harassment, 299-339 and ”Sexua1 Harassment," http://legal-dictionarythefreediction-
ary.com/sexual+harassment.
36. Weizer, Sexual Harassment, 335.
37. "Comments from Victims for the Yoder Discernment Group,” compiled by Carolyn
Holderread Heggen, et. al., May 2014, in the author’s possession.
18 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
Yoder also had a variety of other agency and institutional affiliations.
His colleagues at The Mennonite Quarterly Review (where he served on the
board of editors for more than thirty years), Mennonite Board of
Education, Mennonite Board of Missions, Mennonite Central Committee,
Mennonite World Conference, Mennonite Historical Society, and Herald
Press all played some role in responding to reports-often circulated
informally-that he was engaging in inappropriate sexual activities. And
by the 1990s, as evidence mounted that his actions toward women were
often detrimental, three Mennonite liberal arts colleges-Yoder's alma
mater, Goshen College, in Indiana, as well as Bethel College in Kansas
and Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia-were grappling with
whether or not to welcome him as a visiting speaker on their campuses.”
But as scholars Brian Hamilton and Kyle Lambelet point out, Yoder's
professional reputation suffered only marginally. He was never formally
disciplined by the broader academic and religious peers with whom he
was closely affiliated, including his employer, the University of Notre
Dame, and the Society of Christian Ethics, where he served a term as
president in 1987-1988. Institutional problems of whether and how to
respond to reports of Yoder's sexual abuse extended well beyond the
realm of Mennonite leaders. Yet even though Yoder's sexual violations
were known beyond the Mennonite world, those with the power to
discipline him seem to have abdicated that responsibility.”
The noted sociologist Andrew Greeley has written of sexual abuse
and institutional response mostly in the context of American Catholic
hierarchies, but his insights cut across religious lines. “The clerical elite,"
he argues,
will rally around the accused person because an attack on him is an
attack on the whole elite .... For the sexual abuser this provides an
almost perfect situation. You can exploit, and your colleagues will
protect you from the effects of your exploitation either by denying it
or finding you another place to exercise your power.(40)
_________________
38. In the mid-1980s, Goshen College instituted a policy to prohibit Yoder from visiting
campus, but made an exception in the early 1990s when the college hosted a Believers
Church conference that Yoder had helped to plan. On 1990s-era controversies over
invitations for Yoder to speak, see Rachel Waltner Goossen, “Campus Protests and Iohn
Howard Yoder,” Mennonite Life (forthcoming, 2015).
39. Hamilton and Lambelet argue that scholars have a continuing responsibility to
interrogate Yoder's theological work with his history of sexual violence in mind. This
includes not only his writings on human sexuality, but more importantly, his writings on
peace and nonviolence. See "A Dark Theme Revisited: How to Read Yoder's Sexualized
Violence," unpublished, 2014, in the author’s possession.
40. Andrew Greeley, review of Spoils of the Kingdom by Anson Shupe, Contemporary
Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 37 (March 2008), 142.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 19
Of course, Catholicism’s management of priests' abuse of
parishioners, like Mennonite responses to Yoder’s sexual abuse of
women, reveals more nuance than Greeley’s indictment suggests. In this
particular Mennonite drama, with its Catholic (Notre Dame) overtones,
institutional processes lasted over two decades and ranged over multiple
locales. Meanwhile, ideas about what to do kept changing. From the
1970s through the 1990s, terms such as "accountability" and
"confidentiality” were laden with shifting and contested meanings. The
concepts "sexual harassment" and "sexual abuse” had far more cultural
cachet in the 1990s (when Yoder's abuses came to an end) than in the
1970s when President Miller first confronted him. Secrecy aside,
whenever groups of Mennonites who were engaged in confronting
Yoder did talk among themselves, these framing complexities often led
them to talk past one another rather than with one another. As these
exertions played out, Wordsmithing, as well as the passage of time,
worked to Yoder’s advantage.
Yet during the 1980s and continuing into the early 1990s, the secrecy
that had veiled Yoder's sexual violence in preceding decades began to
collapse. Some of the women who had experienced Yoder's sexual
aggressiveness but had previously been unknown to each other initiated
conversations, recorded their experiences on paper, and leveraged their
collective will to force Mermonite leaders to stop his abuse.(41) Whether
they responded to his sexual aggressiveness as merely offensive and
with rebuff, or with feelings of violation, anguish, betrayal, and anger,
the residue was a lifetime of wariness about sexual power plays.(42) Their
efforts at whistle-blowing-never formalized as an ongoing "group"
response because they lacked the capital and infrastructure that
Mennonite institutions possessed-culminated with several dramatic
events in 1992, a turning point in the denomination's dealings with
Yoder. Many people came to know at least a little about his harmful
______________________
41. Feminist theory on victimization highlights the importance of constructing
narrative, as well as finding supportive listeners, for survivors of sexual abuse to develop
control over events that they experienced as traumatizing. Over time, according to
philosopher and trauma survivor Susan Brison, this process ”reintegrates the survivor into
a community, reestablishing her trust in others."-Brison, Aftermath: Violence and the
Remaking of a Se# (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003), xi. See also Diane Enns,
The Violence of Victimhood (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 85.
42. "Elena" (pseudonym) interview with author, ]uly 8, 2014; "Maureen" (pseudonym)
interview with author; Good interview with author; Heggen interview with author;
handwritten notes of ]ames Lapp, March 27, 1991, in the author’s possession; confidential
statement from eight women to the JHY Task Force, 4-page typescript, Feb. 21-22, 1992,
AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001. On sexual victims' range of
responses to clergy abuse, see G. Lloyd Rediger, Ministry and Sexuality: Cases, Counseling,
Cure (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 23-24.
20 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
past.(43) An avalanche of news stories that year, from accounts in The Bethel
(Kansas) Collegian and The Mennonite Weekly Review to the Chicago
Tribune and The New York Times, linked Yoder's name to credible reports
by women of having been sexually abused.(44) These initial press reports
were thin on detail, but the ramifications of what some Christian
theologians would later call ”scandalizing John Howard Yoder” were
enormous.(45) Despite all of its twists and turns with Mennonite
officialdom and women's agency, this saga would fall short of
reconciliation.
MAPPING A NEW CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ETHICS
Constructing a narrative about the scope of Yoder’s sexual abuse and
Mennonite responses to it is more conceivable now than in earlier
decades, when secrecy held sway. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century
accounts of Yoder’s life (1927-1997) and his influence in word and deed
appear in published sources that include a substantial obituary in The
New York Times, a biography, and a new memoir recounting the life of
Yoder's wife, Anne.(46) Mark Thiessen Nation, in his 2006 volume ]ohn
Howard Yoder, describes a boyhood in northeastern Ohio, undergraduate
studies at Goshen College, and subsequent European postwar relief
work through a Mennonite Central Committee assignment where Yoder
met a young French Mennonite, Anne Guth. In 1952 the couple
married.” Yoder's formulation of a specifically Christian sexual ethic, or
______________________
43. For an account of how dawning awareness of Yoder’s sexualized theology led others
in academe to distance themselves, see Gerald Schlabach, "Only Those We Need Can
Betray Us," July 10, 2014, http://wwW.geraldschlabach,net/2014/07/10/only-those-we-need
can-betray-us-my-relationship-with-john-howard-yode1=and-his-legacy.
44. Kimberly Cott, "Yoder Disinvited to Conference," Bethel Collegian, March 5, 1992, 1;
Paul Schrag, “Bethel Withdraws Invitation for Theologian to Speak; Sexual Misconduct
Alleged,” Mennonite Weekly Review, March 12, 1992, 3; Peter Steinfels, "Religion Notes:
Ministerial Transgressions,” The New York Times, Aug. 22, 1992; ”Mennonite Theologian
Disciplined,” Chicago Tribune, Aug. 28, 1992, 8. The source for the Tribune article was
Religious News Service, which reported in news outlets across the nation that Yoder had
"admitted to charges of sexual misconduct."
45. ”Scandalizing John Howard Yoder” is the title of an investigative piece by David
Cramer, Ienny Howell, Ionathan Tran, and Paul Martens, Iuly 7, 2014,
interpretation of the ironies of "reconciliation" in Yoder’s legacy, see Mark Oppenheimer,
”A Theologian's Influence, and Stained Past, Lives On," The New York Times, Oct. 12, 2013,
A14.
46. Peter Steinfels, ”John H, Yoder, Theologian at Notre Dame, Is Dead at 70," The New
York Times, Ian. 7, 1998, http://www.nytirnes.corn/1998/01/07/us/john-h-yoder-theologian-
at-notre-dame-is-dead-at-70.htrn; Nation, ]ohn Howard Yoder; Anne Marie Guth Yoder with
Rebecca Yoder Neufeld, What I Hold Precious (N.p.: St. Jacobs Printer Ltd.), 2013.
47. Nation, John Howard Yoder, 17. Nation referred in his biography to what he termed
"allegations regarding inappropriate sexual activity" (25, n, 92), More recently, Nation
offered additional perspectives on Yoder’s history of sexual harassment and sexual abuse
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 21
at least his early articulations of its roots, stretch back to his post-World
War Il years in Europe. As a young man he spoke to friends and family
about ”trying to live as if not married when you were married, from I
Corinthians 7:29: “from now on, let even those who have wives be as
though they had none."’(48) His wife recalled years later that
He once preached on I Corinthians when we were engaged and it
scared me a bit. ”He who refrains from marriage will do better." (I
Corinthians 7:38). He had this admiration for people who did not
need to get married, who had complete dedication to the work. He
thought it was better to be single, and would say: ”Soy0ns plus
comme eux; let us be more like them." He talked about how single
people could give themselves more fully to service .... In any case
]ohn’s married life certainly didn’t keep him from giving full time
to the church's business.(49)
By 1970, Yoder, his wife, and their six children were living in Elkhart,
Indiana, and he was president of Goshen Biblical Seminary. As acting
dean (as well as president) during the 1972-1973 academic year, Yoder
took an interest, along with his colleague Erland Waltner, then serving as
Mennonite Biblical Seminary’s president, in reports that a group of a
dozen or more female seminary students and working women were
holding weekly meetings in a student apartment.(50) This consciousness-
raising group was discussing the women's movement, reading books on
feminist theology, and musing over how to incorporate these interests
into their studies. Already, they and their families had established a
cooperative daycare facility with financial and administrative support
from the seminary. At the same time, they were aware of ongoing
tensions with an older group of women (faculty wives and women with
adjunct teaching roles) whose perspectives on gender roles in family and
church settings were comparatively traditional. In the spring of 1973, the
younger women made a proposal to a skeptical President Waltner: they
would develop a women's studies course. Within months they gained
administrative approval and developed the first class on feminist
theology at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries.(51)
_____________
in "On Contextualizing Two Failures of John Howard Yoder," coauthored with Marva
Dawn, Sept. 23, 2013, http://emu.edu/now/anabaptist-nation/2013/09/23/on-
contextualizing-tw0-failures-of-john-howard-yoder/.
48. Yoder, What I Hold Precious, 88.
49. Ibicl.
50. Martha Smith Good, email to author, Iuly 8, 2014; Dorothy Nickel Friesen, "Women
Changing,” typescript, 1973, in Friesen's possession.
51. Dorothy Nickel Friesen interview with author, ]uly 17, 2014.
22 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
As it turned out, the class "Women in Church and Society" was a
campus hit. During the fall 1973 semester, the 15-week evening seminar
drew an enrollment of more than fifty people. The course had an
unusual format. Faculty and students shared responsibility for
convening weekly sessions and hosting guest speakers who presented on
topics ranging from women in biblical times, to the roots of the
American feminist movement, to abortion.(52) Yoder had volunteered to
serve as faculty advisor for the course, and as the liaison with the
student conveners he took responsibility for administrative duties,
including grading. Many auditors and off-campus guests attended the
class, including Yoder’s wife, Anne, who wanted to hear what young
women on campus were saying about changing roles for women in
society,(53)
The curricular addition of “Women in Church and Society” at
A,M.B.S., contemporaneous with the tide of women’s studies at
graduate-level institutions arising across the U.S. and Canada,
represented an early effort by young second-wave feminists struggling
to find their places in ministerial vocations and other religious settings.
At the time of this inaugural course offering, no Mennonite woman had
yet completed a Master of Divinity degree at A.M.B.S. Mennonite
congregations had not begun hiring women as professional, ordained
ministers, Accordingly, professors at the Elkhart seminary routinely
advised female students to “go into teaching" or to pursue a Master in
Religious Education degree.(54)
In the 1973-1974 academic year, graduates of the Associated
Mennonite Biblical Seminaries were all men. The faculty included very
few women, concentrated in areas such as Christian Education and
language study. But changes were coming. The registrar’s annual
records show that, over the decade, the proportion of women enrolled at
the seminary increased from 6 percent to 37 percent:
_______________
52. Student planners included Dorothy Nickel Friesen, Carole Hull, and Rachel
Friesen.-Dorothy Nickel Friesen, email to author, ]uly 10, 2014; Dorothy Nickel Friesen,
”Women in Church and Society,” Window, AMBS publication, Dec. 1973; course syllabus
listed in Iohn Howard Yoder memo to Weyburn Groff, Dec. 17, 1976, in Friesen’s
possession.
53. Friesen, “Women in Church and Society”; JHY Task Force meeting minutes, March
24, 1992, Prairie Street Mennonite Church/JHY Task Force Files; "Women in Church and
Society Course Evaluation,” 1973, in Friesen's possession. Nearly two decades later, Anne
Yoder told Mennonite church officials investigating reports of her husband’s past sexual
misconduct that she had attended the class in part because she feared that her husband was
interested in talk of sexual liberation-in vogue at the time-and that he would not be able
to resist overtures from women.-]HY Task Force meeting minutes, March 24, 1992, Prairie
Street Mennonite Church/] HY Task Force Files.
54. Friesen interview with author.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 23
1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979(55)
Men 82 82 87 87 94 116 129 123 133 139
Women 5 14 16 36 49 52 63 55 66 83
%Women 6% 15% 15% 29% 34% 31% 33% 31% 33% 37%
In coming years, some of the participants in the “Women in Church and
Society" course would be among the first women licensed and ordained
in Mennonite settings.
By the fall semester of 1973, Yoder stepped down as Goshen Biblical
Seminary’s president, and his colleague Joseph Hertzler became interim
president. Soon thereafter, in 1975, Marlin Miller would start his nearly
two-decade tenure as president of G.B.S. Meanwhile, Yoder, freed from
administrative responsibilities, began to write on what he termed “the
dignity of single persons."(56) It was common practice at the Mennonite
seminaries in Elkhart for faculty to circulate for discussion drafts on any
number of theological topics: nonresistance, Calvinism, eschatology.
With the "Women in Church and Society" class creating a popular forum
for discussing gender and family roles, Yoder's distribution of relevant
essays spiked. Through the mid-1970s, Yoder circulated at least a dozen
unpublished papers among colleagues, students, and friends.” In one of
these, written in 1977 and reflecting on the history of his
conceptualizations about marriage and relationships, Yoder noted:
My initial thinking and informal writing on the subject of the
dignity of single persons arose from a context of institutional and
pastoral concerns .... I was bothered by the Way I saw agencies,
including church agencies, dealing with single persons as less
Worthy of respect or of responsibility. Secondly, I saw the unhealthy
effects which the drive toward early marriage had upon the quality
___________________
55. Weyburn Groff, "Number of Female Students," Iuly 20, 1983, typescript in Friesend’s
possession. On part-time and full-time enrollments at G.B.S. and M.B.S., see Samuel Floyd
Pannabecker, Ventures of Faith: The Story of Mennonite Biblical Seminary (Elkhart, Ind.:
Mennonite Biblical Seminary, 1975), 103.
56. Yoder, "Affective Resources for Singles,” Iuly 1977, p. 1.
57. One unpublished essay appeared in the decade previous to the essays discussed
here. See Yoder, "When is a Marriage not a Marriage,” 1968, addressed initially to
"interested Mennonite churchmen” and later circulated more broadly to seminary students
and others.-AMES Marlin E. Miller Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
24 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
of the marriages of those who settle upon a marriage partner very
early because of the fear of remaining single.(58)
In this same essay, which he cautioned was neither for publication nor
quotation, Yoder wrote that in 1974 he had begun to develop ”the notion
of a distinction between two dimensions of sexuality, the familiar and
the genital."(59) His ideas, he said, were ”exploratory and noncommittal,"
and he solicited "critical reactions of all kinds" from those to whom he
was circulating his work. He noted that ”the prude and the
pornographer agree that the only genuine or natural expression of bodily
affection is genital."(60) But biblical exegesis offered an alternative to
consider: "From Jesus, if we understand him correctly," Yoder added,
". . . we are now able to say that freedom of bodily affection and
intimacy is not necessarily correlated with the satisfaction of genital
drives."(61) In present-day society, among people who struggle with
inhibitions, Yoder suggested that "there will need to be some experience
of therapeutic tension and adjustments."(62) Further, he speculated that
persons plagued either by inhibitions about sexual intercourse or by
promiscuity would have difficulty attaining what he termed "the
freedom of the Gospel,” which Yoder linked to ]esus' encounters with
women:
. . . the freedom of the Gospel, the freedom which Iesus lived out
with women who touched him and whose status as sexual victims
was an immediate part of his ministry to them.(63)
As would become apparent to many individuals with whom Yoder
interacted in the coming years, this reference to Jesus and "women who
touched him" were not idle words. For the theologian whose depiction
of Christian discipleship in The Politics of Jesus was empowering, such
politics in a decade of women’s liberation were now becoming
personal.(64)
_______________
58. Yoder, "Affective Resources for Singles," ]uly 1977, 1. For an example of Yoder’s
thinking on this topic as early as 1973, see his revised essay "Singleness in Ethical and
Pastoral Perspective,” in Being Single: Resources on Singleness, ed. David Selzer (New York:
Episcopal Church Center, 1986), 72-95,
59. Yoder, "Affective Resources for Singles,” ]uly 1977, pp. 1, 6. Yoder began this essay
with the caveat that, unlike his earlier treatises on similar topics, this one ”should not be
passed on to persons uninformed about, or unready to respect the confidential personal
and church context within which this exploration is undertaken.”
60. Ibid; quotations are on pp. 1 and 11.
61. Ibid, 11.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid, 12.
64. Yoder also critiqued contemporary feminist intellectual currents. In an essay focused
on Jesus’ countercultural engagement with women in antiquity, Yoder emphasized the
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 25
What explains Yoder’s evolution into this speculative thinking in the
decade of the 1970s? Yoder's popularity as a Mennonite leader was
closely tied to his own celebrated work in postwar writings about
Mennonite peace theology, which meant that he both wrote about and
embodied a normative and laudable form of Mennonite masculinity.
This enhanced his status especially with other male leaders and made it
unlikely for them to question or critique him. And Yoder’s Christology,
centered on a "political" Jesus imbued with social forms of power,
offered resources for speaking and writing about the historical man
whose spiritual freedom Yoder venerated.(65) Yoder thought speculatively
about Jesus’ sexuality as a model for his disciples, for the men who
followed in his path. Still, while Yoder circulated his ideas about
"familiar" or "familial" sexuality (terms he used interchangeably in his
unpublished papers with the terms "non-genital” and "non-erotic"), he
also called for "confidentiality" in circulating such ideas about men's
and women's touching:
It follows that when we exercise modesty and confidentiality with
regard to the expression of the alternative style being talked about
in this paper, we do not do so simply out of social cowardice or a
failure to stand up for what we believe in. We do it, as did the
apostle Paul, out of respect for the integrity of those who could not
help but misunderstand this liberty and who therefore would be
harmed by seeing it lived out in front of them.(66)
In this passage, Yoder left unnamed those he thought would be
"harmed" by seeing heterosexual activity manifested outside of
marriage. Certainly, there were those close to home as well as Mennonite
seminary constituents who, he pointed out to Marlin Miller, clung to
conventional ideas about sexuality.” Yoder closed his essay: "If . . . we
____________________
freedom and dignity that Iesus had afforded to women, concluding: "It is obvious that on
this basis woman finds a basis for her dignity which is far deeper and broader than much
recent talk about ’liberation’.”-Yoder, "What is 'Adultery of the Heart’?," 1975, p. 3,
AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
65. For essays exploring Yoder’s peace theology and his perspectives on mission, see A
Mind Patient and Untamed: Assessing Iohn Howard Yoder’s Contributions to Theology, Ethics,
and Peacenuzking, ed. Ben C. Ollenburger and Gayle Gerber Koontz (Telford, Pa.: Cascadia,
2004), and Theology of Mission: A Believers Churcli Perspective, ed. Gayle Gerber Koontz and
Andy Alexis-Baker (Westmont, Ill.: InterVarsity Press Academic, 2013).
66. Quotation from Yoder, "Affective Resources for Singles," p, 12. The notions of
"familiar," "non-erotic,” "non-genital" sexuality are used as synonyms.-Yoder to Marlin
Miller and Ross Bender, "My Thoughts on Marriage, Singleness, and Sexuality,” April 19,
1977, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on ]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
67. Yoder to Miller and Bender, ”My Thoughts on Marriage, Singleness, and Sexuality,”
April 19, 1977, AMBS Marlin Miller ]ohn Howard Yoder Files; see also Yoder to Miller,
memo titled "Employment and Related Matters," ]an. 25, 1980, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files
on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
26 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
live in too safe a society where no risks are taken and therefore no
emotional rewards can be reached ,... then we would need a specific
argument and visible modeling to make clear the fruitfulness and
propriety of a freer expression of affection."(68) One of Yoder’s colleagues
at Goshen Biblical Seminary, academic dean Ross T. Bender, responded
heartily to the portion of Yoder’s essay that sounded a cautionary note,
observing that Yoder’s advocacy for "considerably greater phys-
ical/emotional freedom" would be unacceptable to Mennonites, and for
that matter, to other Christians. lt would instead, Bender insisted,
“surely bring the roof down on our heads." (69)
But Yoder cast such worries aside. As he took steps to engage women
more freely on the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries campus, his
professed interest in the dignity of singleness was overlaid with an
interest in heterosexual relations outside of marriage. If roles for men
and women were changing, he was willing to test his ideas by a literal
laying on of hands. During one incident, while driving in 1973 to present
lectures at a theology conference at Calvin College in Michigan, he took
along as a passenger a young married Mennonite Biblical Seminary
student he knew from campus. She was employed part-time as a writer
for a Mennonite agency and had work to do at the conference. Earlier,
Yoder had given her one of his thought-pieces on Christian family
relationships, and during the car trip he told her he'd like to discuss it:
What can we do, as Christian brothers and sisters, he asked, He reached
over for her hand and held it, asking: “Is this O.K.? Can we do this?" She
was surprised and did not immediately say no. For the past year that she
had been at the seminary, he had been supportive of her interest in
feminism and her intellectual aspirations. She valued him as a mentor.
When he released his hand from hers, he placed it at her knee. As he
drove on his hand moved up, grazing along her thigh. Shocked, she
demanded that he stop, that he never do that again. He pulled his hand
away. They arrived at their destination, participated in the conference
program, and afterwards she warily rode back to Indiana with him. For
the time being, it seemed, he was done testing ideas of Christian
familiarity with her.(70)
But there were plenty of women in Yoder’s world-in cars, offices,
classrooms, and church settings-and he had time to hone his
_______________
68. Yoder, "Affective Sources for Singles," 13.
69. Ross Bender, typescript response to Iohn Howard Yoder, 1977, in the author’s
possession, provided by Mary Ellen Meyer.
70. Maureen (pseudonym) interview with author. This was the first of two times during
the 1970s that she experienced unwanted sexual behavior by Yoder. Years later, as an
AMBS employee, she learned details of his more flagrant violations of other women, and
kept her office door locked in the evenings, fearful of his movements around the campus.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 27
methodologies. Some women who knew him in a variety of settings
would assert that his personal attentiveness had been positive and
broadening, and they appreciated his friendship." A generation later,
professionals knowledgeable about sexual abuse would label Yoder’s
range of opportunistic approaches as "grooming" behaviors, subtle
come-ons that suggested to whomever he was engaging with that he
valued her intellect and collaboration. In a letter he had begun
distributing in August 1974 which he titled "A Call for Aid," Yoder
wrote:
I am being led into a kind of theological, ethical, and psychological
study for which I need your help .... They are delicate themes, not
for publication .... If, as my marriage paper argues, marriage is
indissolubly monogamous and is publically celebrated and
institutionally reinforced, - and if as my singleness paper pleads,
singleness can be maturely chosen and publically celebrated, - then
any two people of the two sexes, who have openly graduated from
the age of courtship, whether by marriage or into singleness know
where they stand and are free, as led by need, opportunity, and
counsel, to relate for whatever interaction of woman-
liness/manliness is needed, with the clearly drawn line, publicly
recognized, that excludes the genital.”
Women reading the closing paragraphs of Yoder’s letter would find a
guileful appeal, prompting some of them to respond with sharp retorts
and personal distancing, and others to move closer into his circle:
I send this to you because at one and the same time you represent to
me 1) a sister given to me in Christian mutuality, 2) a person with
experience in mature singleness, 3) a person of broad experience
with others in single circumstances, 4) a mind able to respond
critically to defensiveness .... This subject is at once personal
friendship, personal counseling, and theological ethics.”
Like another larger~than-life figure of the era, Henry Kissinger-who
one year earlier had been quoted widely for saying "Power is the
ultimate aphrodisiac"-Yoder employed variants in exercising clout.”
Appealing to intellect and friendship were persistent recruitment
techniques as he reached out to women both on and off campus. Some
__________________
71. See, for example, letter from "A Concerned ’Sister’” to Marlin Miller, Dec. 6, 1983,
AMES Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-8-001.
72. Yoder, "A Call for Aid,” 1974, pp. 1-2, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard
Yoder, X-18-001.
73. Ibid., 3. `
74. Kissinger quoted in The New York Times, Oct. 28, 1973.
28 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
were students or employees of the Associated Mennonite Biblical
Seminaries in Elkhart. Many others he met at academic and church
conferences or on his periodic trips to Europe and elsewhere as part of
his scholar/churchman portfolio. He received responses from a number
of women who cut him off immediately. Ethel Yake Metzler, for
example, a married professional mental health counselor in northern
Indiana who had known Yoder since attending Goshen College with him
three decades earlier, turned away his phone calls to her home in which
he asked for lunch dates. She scrawled "This is ridiculous" on a paper he
sent her on heterosexual intimacy outside of marriage, later reflecting
that rejecting Yoder’s advances was easier for her than for many others;
she was the same age as he was and she considered him a peer, not an
authority figure.(75)
In his unpublished writings on Christian relationships, Yoder
incorporated references to intentional communities, some of which were
just coming into existence and had Mennonite affiliations. One of these
was Reba Place in Evanston, Illinois, which Yoder visited on a number of
occasions and where he conversed with elders. In 1973, Reba Place had
issued community guidelines for heterosexual practice. While
advocating prohibitions on premarital and extramarital intercourse, Reba
Place’s leaders noted that "each single person should have a combination
of relationships within which their interpersonal needs can be met to an
extent which is equivalent to that enjoyed by those who are happily
married.”(76) Yoder also engaged in conversations with members of the
Fellowship of Hope, a Mermonite intentional community in the Elkhart
neighborhood where he had earlier owned property, and to which he
and his wife had sold their home during his term as president of Goshen
Biblical Seminary.(77) Yoder was interested in the ethics of communal
living, and all through the 1970s, he discussed with participants in
intentional Christian living arrangements the biblical, economic, and
cultural dimensions of their communities, which typically included both
married and unmarried members. Yoder also served as a consultant to
the Sojourners Community in Washington, D.C., and to the broader
network known as "Community of Communities.”(78)
_______________
75. Ethel Yake Metzler, email to author, Iuly 31, 2014.
76. "Friendship, Courtship and Marriage in Christian Community,” typescript, Reba
Place, Evanston, Illinois, c. 1973, in the author’s possession.
77. The Yoders had then purchased and moved to another house on Benham Avenue in
Elkhart, directly across from the seminary campus.
78. Keith Harder interview with author, July 12, 2014; ]udy Harder interview with
author, July 12, 2014; Anne Yoder, What I Hold Precious, 158; discussion of interpersonal
relationships at Reba Place Fellowship appears in a three-page typescript, author
unknown, titled "Friendship, Courtship and Marriage in Christian Community,”
undated.-A.M.B.S. Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Nation, John
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 29
In addition to traveling and consulting, Yoder was expanding his
institutional and employment bases. In 1976, he negotiated a full-time
faculty contract with the University of Notre Dame, where he had been
teaching part time since the 1967-1968 academic year. Yoder's
publications and lectures around the world had catapulted him to high
standing and he wanted to be mindful, he told Marlin Miller, of “the best
stewardship of my remaining time."(79) By shoring his base at Notre
Dame, he hoped to affirm his independence from Mennonite
denominational agencies, having worked with them for twenty-five
years.” He saw his own “originality and efficacy as thinker and teacher,"
he told Miller, as bridging the interests of Mennonites and other
Christian groups.” Already, in his previous engagements with the
National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, and other
organizations, Yoder had encountered more satisfaction ”than in the
tent-making tasks of mission administration and seminary curriculum.”(82)
Enlarging his ecumenical platform was a liberating move.
Beginning in 1977 and continuing to his death in 1997, Yoder
maintained full professor status at Notre Dame. As part of these
employment adjustments, Miller arranged for him to continue teaching
in Elkhart in a "permanent" adjunct position for which Goshen Biblical
Seminary purchased some of Yoder's time from Notre Dame.(83) This dual
school arrangement, which lasted seven more years until Yoder's forced
resignation from Goshen Biblical Seminary, provides the backstory for
Miller’s man-to-man approach in dealing with Yoder's sexualized
behavior on and around the seminary campus.”
By the end of the 1970s, Miller was documenting a surge of disturbing
incidents involving Yoder. During the 1978-1979 academic year, for
example, Yoder's seminary office neighbor and colleague in New
Testament studies, Willard Swartley, witnessed a distressing scene. Late
_________________
Howard Yoder, 23, n. 87. For brief histories of these communities, see WwW.rebaplacefellow-
ship.org/Who_We_Are/History; wwwiellowshipofhope.org/history; and www.sojo.net/-
about-us/history.
79. Yoder and Miller, joint document titled "Vocational Review of Iohn H. Yoder," c.
1975, p. 2, AMES Marlin E. Miller Files on Iolm Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
80. Ibid., 3.
81. lbid., 2.
82, lbid. For Yoder's employment history in the 19505 and 1960s, see Nation, john
Howard Yoder, 21-22.
83. Miller to Yoder, "Adjunct Faculty Position/GBS,” March 15, 1976, AMBS Marlin-
Miller-Iohn Howard Yoder Files; Yoder to David Burrell and Marlin Miller, Dec. 14, 1976,
AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Nation, Iohn Howard Yoder,
23.
84. On the resignation, see Yoder to Miller, May 4, 1984, and Evelyn Shellenberger to
Yoder, ]LLne 1, 1984, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on john Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
30 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
one evening Swartley arrived at the seminary to prepare for teaching the
next day and flipped on a switch in his classroom. The lights revealed
Yoder in a chair with a woman kneeling between his knees. A startled
Swartley left the classroom. He was unsure of the identity of the woman,
but believed she was a student. Returning to his office the next morning,
he found that Yoder had left him a signed note in which he said that he
had been helping-that is, counseling-the young woman. Swartley did
not confront Yoder about this incident directly, but reported it to Miller,
who replied that he was not surprised. As Swartley later remembered it,
Miller told him that he had received letters about Yoder’s activities with
a number of women.”
In this instance, there would be no immediate follow-up, but another
set of encounters that academic year would have devastating
consequences for one young woman. In the fall of 1978, Yoder recruited
”Elena,” a new student at A.M.B.S., to respond to an article he had
written on sexuality in Christian contexts. She had recently completed a
service term with Mennonite Central Committee and wanted to explore
entering the ministry. In her first semester she took Yoder’s "War, Peace,
and Revolution" class. During a personal conversation, Yoder
commented on her appearance in a way that left her confused. Soon her
meetings with Yoder mutated from typical professor-student contacts to
one-on-one tutorials, in which he demonstrated his theology of Christian
relationships through touch and verbal persuasion. Having grown up in
a family that had strictures against talking back, she felt overwhelmed by
Yoder, who periodically abused her in his office, in a prayer room, and
in her campus living quarters. These encounters were followed by letters
in which she repeatedly wrote, "This doesn’t make sense!" He replied
with a barrage of notes and letters delivered to her student mailbox,
explaining exactly how she was wrong in her thinking.(86)
Elena became aware of two additional students and another
seminary-affiliated woman who were also part of Yoder’s "sister
community."(87) She later recalled that he wanted to instruct her both
physically and intellectually, and remembered that “he would defeat me
every time" she tried to dispute his sexualized ministrations. She tried to
gain some perspective by talking with another young woman who was
one of the ”sisters" and found mirrored confusion: ”In the community of
________________
85. Swartley interview with author, Iime 2, 2014; Ted Koontz, “]ohn H. Yoder and
AMBS: A Chronology,” Feb. 6, 2012, in author’s possession. Swartley had been a student of
Yoder’s in 1960-1962; see Swartley, Send Forth Your Light (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press,
2007), 290, n. 42.
86. "Elena" (pseudonym) interview with author.
87. Ibid.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 31
sisters, we' didn’t understand-why is he touching our breasts?”(88)
Despite professing that what he was doing was “familial” and “non-
erotic,” Yoder engaged with Elena in a brief act of genital penetration,
ostensibly to show her that intimate relations did not have to be coercive,
that "men don't have to be rapists."(89)
Elena suffered a loss of self-confidence and whatever sense of sexual
boundary maintenance she might have had before arriving at the
seminary. In desperation she spoke again with one of the "sisters," a
woman who Yoder had suggested might participate with him and Elena
in a three-way meeting. Elena and her co-student contemplated Yoder's
proposition but then told each other that he was wrong, that his ideas
were wrong, and their rebuff ended Yoder's physical contact with
them.(90)
But there would be a long and twisted coda. In the late spring of 1979,
Yoder was preparing to leave for Europe, and he asked Elena to record
in writing everything he had taught her about Christian sexual
relationships. She complied and mailed it to him. Within weeks, Yoder's
wife, Anne, discovered Elena’s letter and took it to Marlin Miller as
further evidence of her husband’s extracurricular activities. That
summer, the G.B.S. president called Elena into his office. In shock and
shame, she stood as Miller showed her the letter she had written, and she
listened in disbelief as he told her: ”I have the authority to expel you
from the seminary."(91) She nodded, and after leaving Miller's office, sank
into depression.
Miller, the theologian at the helm of her church’s seminary, had
threatened her with expulsion. That had been his response to written
evidence that Yoder was engaged in explicit sexual experimentation with
selected students; the letter she had written and sent to Yoder at his
request, just weeks before, had been clear on those details. Elena stayed
on campus for the upcoming school year, even sitting in on a class
offered by President Miller. But ultimately, she later recalled: ”He didn’t
______________
88. Ibid.
89. Ibid. In the 1970s, the brief act noted here would not have been considered rape by
prevailing legal definitions. Understandings of rape have evolved significantly, however,
as have considerations about power inequalities, particularly in religious institutions.
Writing in 1990, for example, G. Lloyd Rediger, a Presbyterian pastoral counselor and
consultant on sexual abuse, noted: "Consent to sexual relations with unwanted partners . . .
does not eliminate the fact of rape, it demonstrates how poorly our society has understood
the needs and rights of women." -Ministry and Sexuality, 65. For a discussion of how
definitions of rape are evolving, see Michael Kimmel and Gloria Steinem, "’Yes' is Better
Than 'No'." The New York Times, Sept. 5, 2014, A-23.
90. "Elena" (pseudonym) interview with author.
91. Ibid.
32 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
have to expel me. I did his job for him.”(92) Concentrating on studies was
difficult, and she dropped out of one class after another. She departed
Elkhart at the end of her second year without a degree. Her sojourn at
the Mennonite seminary had been darkened by Yoder’s abuse, by
Miller’s blaming, and by her own shattered sense of self. These
experiences, she later recalled, set her up for further abuse by several
other male predators who sensed her vulnerability. ln the longer term-
over the next several decades-this legacy, including debilitating anxiety
and depression, foreshortened her vocation in Christian ministry.(93)
Elena's experiences in 1979 highlight not only the egregious behavior
of Yoder toward some women on the A.M.B.S. campus, but also the
power that Miller was using to enforce others’ silence. For the time
being, Miller was still focused on Yoder’s troubled marriage. This
concern dated back to the 1975-1976 academic year when Miller had
been appointed seminary president, Shortly before, Anne Yoder had
discovered correspondence of her husband's that provided evidence of
his sexual involvements with women in the U.S. and abroad.
Confronting him, she had also reached out for emotional support from
her sister-in-law, Mary Ellen (Yoder) Meyer, her husband’s only sibling.
Meyer, a nurse, was well-acquainted with the seminary community
through her brother’s longstanding faculty status and her own
friendships among northern Indiana Mennonites. Initially assuming that
her brother’s extramarital involvements were consensual, Meyer had
encouraged her sister-in-law to talk with President Miller, hoping he
might exert influence over ]ohn to attend to his marriage. Anne Yoder
did appeal to Miller for help. He initially conceived of the Yoders'
problems as "domestic" and private, and he responded discreetly. By
1976, both Miller and Meyer were trying to persuade Yoder how hurtful
his behavior was to his wife and, potentially, to others.(94) But despite
several years of on-again, off-again four-way conversations between the
Yoders, President Miller, and Mary Ellen Meyer, as well as marital
counseling by a local psychiatric social worker, Yoder’s sexualized
behaviors toward many women not only continued, but intensified.(95)
As part of Miller's fraternal efforts to work alongside members of the
Yoder family in dealing with Yoder’s behavior, he relied for counsel on
________________
92. lbid.
93. Ibid.
94. Mary Ellen Meyer interview with author, ]uly 24, 2014.
95. Marlin Miller memo to Iohn Howard Yoder, "Correspondence Issues,” Dec. 5, 1979,
AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-001; John Howard Yoder memo
to Marlin Miller, "Apologies and Gratitude,” Dec. 7, 1979, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on
John Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 33
Yoder’s brother-in-law, Albert Meyer, married to Mary Ellen. Miller and
Meyer were close friends, Meyer served as head of the Mennonite Board
of Education, which had oversight of G.B.S. and other Mennonite-
affiliated schools, and he attended the seminary's board meetings. For
eight years, from the mid-1970s through the early 1980s, Miller
nevertheless shielded the G.B.S. board from awareness of Yoder’s sexual
behaviors. It remained a family matter.
Meanwhile, as Mary Ellen Meyer learned about her brother's network
of "sisters" and details about some of his physical involvements, her
distress and apprehension deepened. Arguing with him, rejecting his
theological and intellectual premises, she concluded that his seduction of
some women, and actions that included all-night experiences of nudity
and bodily contact, were grievous distortions of Christianity. She
learned, both firsthand and through information shared by Marlin
Miller, how Yoder had tried to enlist women for his project and that a
number of them had refused. In 1979 she wrote: "I am surprised at his
naivety that seemed not to realize this could not all be kept secret
forever."(96) "As this comes out," she added regretfully, his insistence on
framing his behavior as cutting-edge Christian sexual ethics would
undermine much of his theological legacy.” She lost heart in the project
of reforming her theologian brother, and pulled back from what she had
come to regard as a deceptive discourse. By 1980, she had concluded that
Yoder’s ”experiment" was no experiment; he had not incorporated any
men into his study, and the harm to many people was all too apparent.
She had not succeeded in convincing her brother of this, but for nearly
four more years, Marlin Miller would remain at the task.”
Miller had hoped that Mary Ellen Meyer would help him correspond
with some of the women with whom Yoder had had ”intimate relations
. . . in the last several years." The seminary president envisioned sending
his own letters to the women criticizing Yoder’s ideas and practices
regarding Christian sexuality. Miller anticipated sending these, along
with letters written by Yoder and his wife, expressing Yoder’s intent to
work with each woman toward "mutual correction, forgiveness, and
eventual reconciliation."(99) But this plan never materialized.
__________________
96. Mary Ellen Meyer, typescript correspondence, 1979, in her possession.
97. Ibid.
98. Mary Ellen Meyer, handwritten correspondence, Feb. 27, 1980, in her possession.
99. Quotations from Marlin Miller to Iohn Yoder, Anne Yoder, and Mary Ellen Meyer,
Sept. 28, 1979, AMBS Marlin-Miller-Iohn Howard Yoder Files; see also ]ohn Howard Yoder
to Marlin Miller, "Proposed Circle Letter to Sisters," Oct. 1, 1979, AMBS Marlin E. Miller
Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001, and Marlin Miller memo to Iohn Howard Yoder,
"Correspondence Issues," Dec. 5, 1979, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard
Yoder, X-18-001.
34 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
Yoder questioned whether Miller's letter-writing scheme was
intended to goad each Christian "sister" to apologize for the sin of
participating in an adulterous relationship.(100) Yoder rejected the notion
that he had engaged in adultery because he regarded his personalized
attention to women as therapeutic. Genital penetration without
ejaculation, by Yoder's definition, was not sexual intercourse. He
regarded as permissible the activities that he called "familial" or
"familiar" activity with Christian "sisters," and he defined monogamy as
simply remaining married to one’s spouse.(101) Further, Yoder pointed out
problems likely to emerge from Miller's letter-writing; divulging the
women’s names, Yoder advised, would violate confidentiality.(102) Besides,
did Miller really intend, Yoder asked, "to inform the sisters on the less
involved levels that my views led me farther with others than with
them?"(103) The seminary president ought not to play one correspondent
off against another, Yoder intimated. Yet of his numerous objections,
each was subordinate to one key point. You “demand/’ he chided Miller,
"that l bow to the majority view and that it comes from the heart."(104) On
the matter of mapping a new Christian sexual ethics, Yoder was not
conceding.
Into the 1980s, Miller was determined to keep word of his dispute
with Yoder from spreading. Exchanging lengthy memos with his
colleague about sexual mores in biblical and contemporary times-in
addition to investigating Yoder's specific behaviors-was time-
consuming and emotionally draining.(105) Still, Miller considered his
adversary his mentor, and he regarded Yoder's theological contributions
on nonviolence and discipleship to be of incalculable value. Convincing
Yoder of his errors had become the hidden agenda of Miller's seminary
presidency.
________________
100. John Howard Yoder to Marlin Miller, Nov. 3, 1979, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on
Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Iohn Howard Yoder to Marlin Miller, Nov. 21, 1979, AMBS
Marlin E. Miller Piles on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
101. Evelyn Shellenberger interview with author; Marcus Smucker interview with
author, ]uly 7, 2014. On Yoder's standard for monogamy, see ”Minutes of Task Force
Meeting with ]ol1n H. Yoder, March 14, 1992, Prairie Street Mermonite Church/IHY Task
Force Files.
102. John Howard Yoder to Marlin Miller, Oct. 1, 1979, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on
John Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
103. Yoder to Miller, Nov. 3, 1979, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on ]ohn Howard Yoder,
X-18-001.
104. Iohn Howard Yoder to Marlin Miller, Oct. 30, 1979, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on
John Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
105. Some of Miller’s time investment involved research, including discussing
theological and psychological currents with Mennonite seminarians and with psychiatrists.
Marlin Miller, typescript to Iohn Howard Yoder, Aug. 13, 1979, twelve pages, copy in the
author’s possession, provided by Mary Ellen Meyer, p. 10.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 35
Miller had a range of concerns in keeping Yoder’s secret. Given the
strains in the Yoders’ marriage, it was possible that Anne Yoder would
become so angry that she would expose her husband’s behaviors to the
broader church. It was also conceivable that some woman, known or
unknown to Miller, might tell her story publicly. Yet another risk lay in
exposure by aggrieved husbands. By 1979, Miller had become aware of
marriages in trouble because of Yoder’s actions in North America and on
other continents; a prominent theologian had written to inform Miller of
two women in South Africa whom Yoder had violated sexually.(106) And it
was unclear to Miller how discreet Yoder himself would be, for, while he
had not published or spoken publicly about his views on marriage,
singleness, or Christian sexuality, it was possible he still might.(107) In his
ongoing communications with Miller, Yoder appeared as interested in
perpetuating the process of theological debate as pushing toward any
resolution. "You yourself," he lectured Miller, “would not be satisfied
with my simply yielding and saying 'have it your way’ without valid
process.”(108)
Taking these variables into account, Miller addressed Yoder’s
prerogatives seriously and systematically. In March 1979 he asked Yoder
to ”cease all touch in counseling women” and to adopt an open-door
office policy at the seminary.(109) Miller also initiated conversations with
former students about Yoder, inquiring about his behavior toward them.
Meanwhile, Miller and Yoder agreed that they wished to avoid
”potential for blackmail, for scandal."(110) They discussed the merits of
what Yoder termed ”liquidating your secret file” of correspondence,
both unsolicited letters and those resulting from Miller’s
investigations.(111)
Miller did destroy an unknown number of letters in 1980, but not
before hand-transcribing a catalog of what he had learned from seminary
alumnae and from women living at a distance. He summarized and
dated letters and calls he had received-mostly from English-speakers,
but also some in German and French-about women's encounters with
_____________________
106. Heggen email to the author, Aug. 3, 2014.
107. Iolm Howard Yoder memo to Marlin Miller, Dec. 31, 1979, AMBS Marlin E. Miller
Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
108. Iohn Howard Yoder to Marlin Miller, Dec. 6, 1979, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on
]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
109. "Understandings Re: Behavioral Commitments," typescript, c. 1980, AMES Marlin
E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
110. Quotation from Yoder in memo to Miller, Dec. 31, 1979, AMBS Marlin E. Miller
Files on john Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
111. Quotation from Yoder in memo to Miller, Oct. 23, 1979, AMBS Marlin E. Miller
Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
36 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
Yoder. Miller's diary-like entries included details in the margins about
his informants' marital status and whether they had reported "total
disrobing” or "partial penetration,” as well as their rationales for
engaging with Yoder in his theological project.” Miller kept this
compendium at home, not in his seminary office.”
Remarkably, Miller developed no plan to dismiss Yoder. Instead, he
used the data he had gathered to repudiate his colleague's theology. In a
twelve-page letter, formulated with a preamble and four sections, Miller
told Yoder he was responding "primarily in the context of fraternal
discernment and debate rather [than] employer-employee negotia-
tions.”1l4 Extending his critique to all of Yoder's unpublished papers on
Christian sexuality, Miller declared:
I am convinced that your definitional and structural considerations
are sufficiently skewed to allow for principles and practices which
are less than biblical, undermine Christian marriage, and allow for a
measure of marital infidelity short of physical adultery understood
narrowly as sexual intercourse.(115)
Yoder's arguments about helping women had, conversely, produced
pain. ”[Y]our practice in the last several years,” Miller argued, ”has
caused major offense _ . _ and in every case that I know about caused
confusion, guilt, and crises."(116)
Further, Miller refuted Yoder's justifications head-on, objecting to
Yoder's "implied analogy between ]esus' conduct" and Yoder's own.”
He dismissed Yoder's notion that ”all the 'traditional taboos’ about
degrees of familiarity between sexes can be classified . . . as defenses
against the perception of sexuality as a wild beast."(108) Miller identified
the two locales where he believed Yoder's sexual experimentation to
have been most devastating-in Strasbourg, France, the urban
headquarters for Mennonite World Conference, and at A.M.B.S. in
Elkhart-and he lambasted Yoder for "acting out your ideas in the
context of private twosomes rather than giving at least equal energy and
________________
112. Marlin Miller, "notes from correspondence which has been destroyed,”
handwritten, 22 pages, c. 1980. -AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on ]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-
001.
113. Marlin Miller to Iohn Howard Yoder, March 31, 1980, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files
on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
114. Miller, typescript to Yoder, Aug. 13, 1979, p. 1, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn
Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
115. Ibid., 5.
116. Ibid., 8-9.
117. Ibid., 9.
118. Ibid.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 37
creativity to developing . . . appropriate community structures." Miller
clinched his argument:
You have thus made yourself in fact legislator, judge, and pope in
your own case where the church's discernment of your gifts, your
professional expertise, and experience have least prepared you ....
you are caught in a web of self-rationalization.(119)
Miller’s argumentation was sharp; Yoder's rebuttal, dismissive. The
two men’s intellectual fracas would spin on, propelled by Miller’s
dogged resolve and Yoder's persistence. Meanwhile, these exchanges
enabled the continued abuse of women who were living and studying on
the seminary campus but were not privy to the men’s debate.
Responding to Miller, Yoder reminded his employer of the high calling
of Christian ethicists:
Intellectually the great challenge-is how to deal with a basic
challenge to an entire cultural mind set .... Numerous of your
[arguments] represent simply an appeal to the consensus of our
respectable culture. I know what that consensus teaches, for I am its
product and its victim. I knew its teachings before I began testing an
alternative set of axioms. I did not come to reject them through
simple rebellion or disdainful superiority. I knew at the outset that I
am "voted down." Therefore any appeals to that consensus . . . or
otherwise documenting its hold on our minds, is at best circular,
and at worst it supports my analysis.(120)
In this exchange, Yoder posited himself as society's "product and its
victim,” struggling against banality in the very Christian community that
pegged him as spokesman and exemplar.
In the spring of 1980, Yoder drew up a seven-page draft aimed at
persuading Miller that his ideas were morally justifiable. In this
document he provided a defense that he would offer repeatedly to
Mennonite interlocutors, that whenever “women declined further
relationship, I . . . respected that."(121) He defended what he called “the
essence of the experimental method,” noting that "there are experiences
of being ‘wrong' which clarify that one is also somewhat right."(122)
Responding to charges that women had been hurt, not helped, by his
sexual explorations, Yoder reached for analogy from medical ethics:
"Only by the surgeon’s risking some failures, can it be determined for
______________
119. Ibid., 9-10.
120. Yoder to Miller, Dec. 31, 1979, 1.
121. Iohn Howard Yoder, handwritten draft, 7 pages, Spring 1980, AMBS Marlin E.
Miller Files on john Howard Yoder, X-18-001,
122. Ibid.
38 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
which kinds of patients heart surgery or organ transplant is a risk worth
running.”)(123) Turning to questions about his motives, he retorted:
Was I driven by an obsession? Was I seeking to hurt my family? Did
I coerce persons or bowl over resistance? On this . . . no confirming
testimony has come in. The “obsession” interpretation has been
weakened by my surviving a year of privation and punishment.(124)
Yoder was referring to "discipline" by the G.B.S. president, including the
admonition to keep his office door open whenever female students were
present and to stop initiating new “sisters” into his sexual ethics project.
As Miller negotiated a new employment contract with Yoder in 1980,
he added several stipulations. First, Yoder was to refrain from the
explicitly sexual activities that his December 1979 ”’defanging' of the
’beast"' memo had identified. These prohibitions were in effect ”world-
wide and at all times,” not just on the seminary campus, because, Miller
told Yoder, he was a representative of A.M.B.S. wherever and whenever
he traveled.(125) Further, Yoder was to inform Miller whenever he spoke
publicly or wrote on sexuality, marriage, and singleness. This would not
be bowing to censorship, Miller assured him, but would guarantee
”open conversation and debate with seminary colleagues."(126) Miller
wanted to make these behavioral restrictions contractual, but Yoder
responded by questioning which of multiple "hats" the seminary
president was wearing; Employer? Fraternal counselor? Yoder added
that he might prefer to change jobs than abide by behavioral
conformity?(127)
Throughout his dispute with Miller, Yoder evinced what some
clinicians in the emerging field of religious sexual abuse prevention
would identify as ”the star factor,” the internalizing of a theological
framework in which a perpetrator comes to regard himself as such an
unusually privileged person that he is exempt from moral principles. In
these instances, abusers may believe they are called to do noble work
and feel justified in making their own rules.(128) While Yoder’s arbiter,
Miller, sensed this, the star-quality of Yoder’s theological influence
__________________
123. Ibid.
124. Ibid.
125. Miller told Yoder to refrain from categories "D through H."-Marlin Miller to Iohn
Howard Yoder, March 31, 1980; see also revised memo, April 26, 1980, AMBS Marlin E.
Miller Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
126. Ibid., March 31, 1980.
127. John Howard Yoder to Marlin Miller, ]an. 25, 1980, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on
Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
128. Rediger, Ministry and Sexuality, 17.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 39
blinded as much as it illuminated. And biblicism was still Miller’s main
frame for addressing Yoder.
In seeking to restrict Yoder's behaviors both on and off the seminary
campus, Miller was now acknowledging that reliance on Matthew 18:15
for confronting his brother had been inadequate. The next step, the
sixteenth verse of Matthew 18, beckoned: "But he does not listen, take one
or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence
of two or three witnesses."(129) So, as a new decade began, President Miller
assembled a small group of seminary advisors to join him in addressing
the problem.
A COVENANT MADE AND BROKEN
By mutual agreement, in the fall of 1980 Miller and Yoder broadened
their disputation to include two G.B.S. board members-board chair
Marcus Smucker, a pastor, and Evelyn Shellenberger, a nurse
practitioner-as well as a seminary colleague and Old Testament scholar,
Millard Lind. Together with Miller and Yoder they met semi-regularly
for three years in an effort to apply Matthew 18:16.(130) In October 1980,
Miller drafted a three-page "Covenantal Agreement" between himself,
Yoder, Smucker, Shellenberger, and Lind. This document affirmed
Yoder's continued employment at G.B.S. and noted that no punitive
measures would be applied. However, the covenant required Yoder to
initiate steps toward healing and reconciliation wherever his actions had
caused injury.(131) Covenant members agreed to not speak of this to others
and regarded their agreement as the "successful conclusion of the second
step of the Matthew 18 'rule of Christ’ process, namely the step of the
brother’s having heard the two or three witnesses.”(132) In authoring the
document, Miller applied Matthew 18:16 to the group’s promise of
confidentiality, which he believed would serve seminary interests. "The
matter therefore," he wrote, "is not 'told to the church.'"(133) Miller was
invoking biblical justification for withholding from G.B.S.’s board of
______________
129. Mt. 18:16, RSV.
130. By 1982, the Covenant Group had limited its meetings to annual gatherings, in
which members reevaluated and renewed their commitment to the covenant. Marlin
Miller, "Summary of Agenda and Agreements: Covenant Group Meeting," Aug. 21, 1982,
AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on ]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
131. Marlin Miller to Evelyn Shellenberger, Millard Lind, Marcus Smucker, and Iohn
Howard Yoder, Oct. 25, 1981, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-
001.
132. "Covenantal Agreement," Oct. 22, 1980, p. 3, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn
Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
133. Ibid.
40 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
overseers information about Yoder’s past, as well as the new conditions
put in place.
Three members of the Covenant Group-Shellenberger, Smucker, and
Lind-were disinclined to challenge Yoder’s unorthodox views of
sexuality. When the group met, they listened as Miller and Yoder
debated, and Srnucker later remembered that Miller did not divulge his
own detailed knowledge about A.M.B.S. students and other women who
had been harmed by Yoder. Decades later, Srnucker expressed regret
that, as G.B.S. board chair in the early 1980s and as a member of the
Covenant Group, he had not been more proactive: "I trusted Marlin, but
his judgment failed. And the issue of confidentiality was very vigorously
pushed by ]ohn.”(134) At Covenant Group meetings, Yoder claimed that as
an ethicist he was at the forefront of a sexual desensitization endeavor
deserving wider testing. ”Crazy as I thought it was," Smucker recalled,
"I thought he [Yoder] believed it,” and gradually Smucker realized that
the two theologians' dispute had been long in the making.(135) Only dimly
did he grasp the stakes for women-students, spouses, secretaries, and
others-at the seminary.
For a brief time, in the spring of 1982, the Covenant Group ceded the
question of whether Yoder’s ideas merited further testing to a new set of
listeners. Miller and Yoder agreed on a short list of names of Mennonite
men and women from the Elkhart community and invited these persons
to serve on a “Confidential Task Force.” Over six meetings in a small
seminary classroom, Yoder stood at the blackboard, diagramming,
instructing, and inviting his listeners to consider how married, single,
and divorced Christians might benefit from a new "familial" ethics that
rejected contemporary thinking-as summarized by Yoder-of sexuality
as “a beast or a slippery slope which is intrinsically wild,
uncontrollable."(136) Yoder told the task force that he envisioned some
Christians to be ready for a new paradigm modeled on "the way Jesus
dealt with women.”(137) According to ground rules set by Yoder and
Miller, the task force was to consider only theoretical perspectives, not
actual experience. Thus Yoder never referenced his experimentation with
“sisters.” Sitting in on these seminars were a local psychiatrist and an
elder from the intentional community Fellowship of Hope, as well as
President Miller, who for the time being held back his critique. The
exercise was inconsequential. As the school year ended, the task force
______________
134. Marcus Smucker interview with author, ]uly 7, 2014.
135. Ibid.
136. ”Summary of Ad Hoc Consultation,” March 17, 1982, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files
on ]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
137. Ibid.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 41
disbanded, with one member advising Yoder to abandon his theoretical
agenda and work on strengthening his marriage.(138)
Through the early 1980s, Miller's reliance on the covenant to police
Yoder’s behavior introduced a set of new difficulties. The first and most
pressing was how to carry out the promise of confidentiality. Miller and
others of the Covenant Group faced mounting questions by seminary
constituents and church leaders from throughout the denomination and
beyond. As new understandings about sexual harassment and abuse
gained currency across Mennonite institutions, Miller's covenantal
protections of Yoder functioned as a relic from an earlier era.
The second problem arose from the biblical mandate that one who
offends should take steps toward healing and reconciliation. Members of
the Covenant Group anticipated that this would require conversations
between Yoder and others. When Miller, in an effort to jump-start this
process, contacted individuals whom he knew to have been violated, he
discovered that they were unwilling to participate. The seminary’s
interest in arranging reconciliatory meetings for its own peace theologian
ran afoul of the women’s interests. What victim of sexual abuse wished
for face-to-face contact with Yoder, either alone or in the presence of his
institutional backers? Miller turned up no one-not seminary employees,
alumnae, or acquaintances in the broader community-and eventually
he conceded that “they are afraid of unpleasant or harmful
consequences, either from john or from broader damage to their
reputations."(139)
Yoder turned this to his advantage, intimating to Miller that the
covenant was not living up to its promises. How could he apologize to
accusers in the shadows? Yoder did not deny his history of sexualized
relationships with women, but maintained that he had never intended
harm. Why, he asked, should he remain under disciplinary restrictions if
there was no one available to hear that he regretted having
misinterpreted some women’s cues about their willingness? Oddly,
Yoder phrased his episodic misreading of women’s readiness to give
consent as "falling off the bike"-that is, something that was regrettable
but unintentional.(140) ”In terms of the reconciliation mandate of Matt. 18,”
_____________________
138. Judy Harder to ]ohn Howard Yoder, May 2, 1982, AMBS Marlin E, Miller Files on
]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Marlin Miller, "Summary of Agenda and Agreements,
Covenant Group Meeting,” Aug. 21, 1982, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on ]ohn Howard
Yoder, X-18-001
139. Marlin Miller to Evelyn Shellenberger, ]an. 3, 1984, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on
Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001; see also Marlin Miller to Victor Stoltzfus, March 20, 1991, p.
2, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iolm Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
140. Shellenberger interview with author; Ted Koontz, "John H. Yoder and AMBS: A
Chronology,” 6.
42 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
Yoder insisted, "we cannot proceed in the absence of accusers."(141) It was
a conundrum that, for years, provided the centerpiece of his arguments
with Miller.
A third problem proved equally intractable. Yoder had agreed to
refrain from a litany of sexual activities that, over the better part of a
decade, had become a principal mode for interacting with women. As a
member of the Covenant Group, he was not supposed to falter. But the
restrictions proved burdensome, and Yoder complained that, as a part-
time faculty member at Goshen Biblical Seminary, "it is not clear that I
should be 100% under GBS’ moral control."(142) Meanwhile, when Miller
tried to question Yoder about new accusations that came his way, Yoder
insisted that he was simply corresponding with "sisters" from the past
who welcomed his attention.(143) Miller's files on his colleague again grew
thick with correspondence, chiefly complaints about Yoder’s behavior.(144)
One acquaintance alerted Miller to rumors that Yoder "does in fact, by
his example, encourage extra-marital affairs as a way of life" and told the
G.B.S. president pointedly that "if you don't condone them, you'll have
to address them, because the constituency reads silence on the issues as
consent."(145)
In the midst of this flow of letters came a singular one laying charges
of sexual harassment directly on Miller's desk. Ruth Krall, a former
student at A.M.B.S. and clinical counselor who had taught at Goshen
College, wrote to Miller of her growing awareness from the late 1970s
onward of the "serious problem" at the seminary and of Miller's
continuing difficulties in stopping Yoder’s behavior. Although Krall had
not experienced sexual harassment personally, as a clinician she had
heard painful accounts about Yoder’s abuses. For several years she and
colleagues from Goshen College had been in conversation with faculty
women at nearby campuses-the University of Notre Dame and St.
__________________
141. Iohn Howard Yoder to Marlin Miller, Evelyn Shellenberger, Millard Lind, Marcus
Smucker, Dec. 8, 1983, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001; see
also Yoder to Miller, Shellenberger, Lind, Smucker, Dec. 19, 1983, AMBS Marlin E. Miller
Files on ]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
142. ]ohn Howard Yoder memo to "concerned sisters," Oct. 21, 1983, AMBS Marlin E.
Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
143. Marlin Miller to ]ohn Howard Yoder, handwritten letter, April 10, 1983, AMBS
Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
144. See, for example, correspondence to Marlin Miller, Nov. 10, 1983, AMBS Marlin E.
Miller Files on ]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
145. Correspondence to Marlin Miller, Aug. 22, 1983, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on
Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard YocZer’s Sexual Abuse 43
Mary’s College-to share concerns about Yoder’s unwelcome sexual
advances and to strategize about confronting the problem.(146)
Krall’s critique, leveled in 1982, was broader than the perspectives
Miller had considered previously. The trouble was not simply one
faculty member's behavior. Krall framed the problem as institutional,
exacerbated by a male-dominated board, administration, teaching staff,
and student body. At the seminary, male prerogative was simply taken
for granted. Krall told Miller bluntly: ”Until the agenda of sexism is
taken seriously, you may not ever hear the story of sexual harassment.
Sexism and sexual violence against women are so intertwined at this
moment in history that it is impossible to separate them."(147) The
persistence of institutionalized sexism aided and abetted sexual
harassment, which had destructive implications, she added:
When women, in any way, are considered to be subordinate,
inferior, or the sexual property of men, sexual harassment can
occur. As such is it an act of Violence against Women. It is a most
devastating method of putting women in their place. Because our
sexuality and its enactment is so vital to our identity, any
exploitation by the powerful towards the less powerful reverberates
one thousand fold.(148)
For Miller, Krall’s letter raised the stakes. Yoder was now disregarding
parts of the covenantal agreement, and his actions threatened to wreak
havoc on the seminary’s reputation. New revelations of sexual
violations, fast as they were coming in, could not be controlled.
Although Miller failed to absorb Krall’s feminist perspective that
sexual harassment constituted violence against women, he could not
miss the signs that Mennonite women academics were concerned about
female students' and other wo1nen's safety. They had interpreted the
problem in a new way, and their solutions were far different from
Miller’s. Krall and other women were mobilizing against patriarchy by
intensifying communications. Miller soon learned the truth of Krall’s
parting challenge, that "the women’s network in the Mennonite Church
knows more about this problem than you do." At the next general
assembly of the Mennonite Church, a convention held in August 1983 in
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, women gathered privately to discuss Yoder's
behavior and the Elkhart seminary’s condoning of it. Some approached
___________________
146. Ruth E. Krall to Marlin Miller, Sept. 9, 1982, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn
Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Krall, The Elephants in God's Living Room, Vol. 3, 2014,
Living-Room-Vol-3-%C2%A9.pdf; Ruth Krall, email to author, ]uly 29, 2014.
147. Krall to Miller, Sept. 9, 1982.
148. lbid.
44 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
church administrators to report what they knew and urged intervention,
calling for restrictions on Yoder’s movements around the seminary, at
college campuses, and at other institutions. (149)
Prodded by their advocacy, Miller made further inquiries and heard
from two young women at the University of Notre Dame who had
suffered abuse by Yoder in his South Bend office and elsewhere on the
campus. One of the women had reported Yoder’s behavior to a
counselor in the student services office at Notre Dame; with several other
women, she had contemplated a lawsuit against Yoder. Although the
Notre Dame students had not pursued legal action, their detailed
accounts of Yoder’s abuse-along with escalating reports from
Mennonite constituents and the possibility that other aggrieved women
might bring a lawsuit against the seminary-convinced Miller that the
covenant with Yoder was broken.(150) From Miller’s perspective, the time
had come to apply the full freight of the Matthew 18 passage, verse
seventeen: “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church .... "(151)
SEMINARY RESIGNATION
During the fall of 1983, Miller and members of the Covenant Group
prepared to recommend Yoder’s dismissal to the G.B.S. board of
overseers, which Miller envisioned as the third and final step of Matthew
18, although “tell it to the church," in this case, meant sharing
confidential information with male-dominated seminary boards. Miller’s
counterpart at A.M.B.S., Mennonite Biblical Seminary president Henry
Poettcker, had recently heard from constituents about Yoder’s sexual
misconduct, and it was only a matter of time before M.B.S.’s board of
trustees would learn of these developments. Yoder reacted sharply. He
wrote to women friends that the Covenant Group was now placing him
under new limitations, including no further touching of any women
outside his own family. These and other "sweeping legalistic
restrictions," Yoder added, were due to complaints by unknown
accusers, as well as gossip in ”'women’s movement’ circles in which my
__________________
149. Ibid.; Miller to Shellenberger, Ian. 3, 1984, p. 3, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn
Howard Yoder, X-18-001. The 1983 convention in Bethlehem was a joint gathering of the
Mennonite Church, with which Goshen Biblical Seminary was affiliated, and the General
Conference Mennonite Church, with which Mennonite Biblical Seminary was affiliated.
150. Miller to Shellenberger, Ian. 3, 1984, p. 3, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn
Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Marlin Miller to Iohn Howard Yoder, Dec. 19, 1983; AMBS
Marlin E. Miller Files on Iolm Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Gordon Dyck, notes of meeting of
representatives from AMBS, Prairie Street Mennonite Church, and Church Life
Commission, Dec. 18, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference Iohn
Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
151. Mt. 18:17, RSV.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 45
relationships with certain persons are interpreted as harassment.”(152)
Yoder decried the seminary’s tilt against his continued employment; he
could not, he said, respond to the accuracy of charges without knowing
who had made them. In his estimation, the seminary had flouted due
process and violated the letter and spirit of Matthew 18. "How much
blood,” he demanded to know, "do my unnamed accusers want?" (153)
Through the remainder of the academic year, tensions between Miller
and Yoder escalated, with Miller concluding that Yoder’s continued
pursuit of proscribed activities in the past few years had not abated,
“depending on how one defines intercourse."(154) Yoder told Miller that he
had no reason to change his ideas about sexual ethics.(155) But as seminary
leaders considered their options for terminating him, Yoder began to
speak of resigning and negotiating a severance.(156)
By late 1983, Yoder was arranging for a leave of absence from Notre
Dame for the upcoming academic year. His status as a full-time
professor there meant, in practical terms, that the Elkhart seminary
would be losing an adjunct faculty member. However, no one would
regard his departure from G.B.S. as routine, so both Yoder and Miller
turned their attention to administrative details: When should Yoder
leave? What should the seminary board and other constituents be told?
How should the department head of theological studies at Notre Dame
be informed? What should be shared with Mennonite agencies? What of
the women who were asking questions about A.M.B.S.’s and Notre
Dame’s policies? Cn these matters, Yoder drafted proposals that in his
view represented a “political compromise’ to . . . reduce the
damages."(157)
Negotiations and compromise would not come easily, however.
Yoder continued to insist that due process had been violated, and he told
Miller and members of the Covenant Group-by now, functioning as a
seminary committee to work out his severance-that by resigning he
__________________
152. Quotations from Yoder memo to Marlin Miller, Evelyn Shellenberger, and Marcus
Smucker, Dec. 17, 1983, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001, and
Yoder memo to "concerned sisters," Oct. 21, 1983, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn
Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
153. Quotation from Yoder memo to Miller, Shellenberger, Smucker, and Lind, Dec. 8,
1983; see also Yoder to Miller, Shellenberger, Smucker, and Lind, Dec. 17, 1983.
154. Miller to She1lenberger,]an. 3, 1984, p. 3.
155. Ibid.
156. Marlin Miller, "Draft for Brainstorming,” ca. Oct. 1983, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files
on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
157. Yoder to Miller, Shellenberger, Smucker, and Lind, Dec. 17, 1983, AMBS Marlin E.
Miller Files on ]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
46 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
was doing the seminary a favor to "help us all out of a bind/’158 Marcus
Smucker, who had left G.B.S.’s board chairmanship to join the seminary
faculty, took exception to Yoder's portrayal of himself as a victim of
injustice. Smucker expressed chagrin that he and others had waited so
long to act decisively against Yoder. “ln particular," Smucker told him,
“Marlin has invested heavily with his time, energy, and personal
anguish to try to make this work out in your behalf. Somehow his
concern and interest for your welfare seems to have escaped your
awareness, instead you appear to be translating this into primarily an
authority issue."(159)
With these conflicts simmering, neither Yoder nor Miller relied on
legal counsel. Arrangements for Yoder's separation were handled in-
house, based on written agreements made early in 1984. Yoder informed
the chair of the theology department at the University of Notre Dame,
Richard McBrien, that he would be leaving his adjunct position at
Goshen Biblical Seminary and that the decision had "delicate
dimensions." Yoder added: “I and the others in the Mennonite context
would be grateful if you could avoid giving the matter unnecessary
prominence."(160) McBrien complied, and Miller-mindful of recent
reports from current and former Notre Dame students as well as a staff
counselor-warned Yoder that ”some [women] there talk among
themselves and tell others to 'look out for some of the priests and Prof.
Y.’”(161) Assuming that his own administrative problems would abate once
Yoder left the seminary, Miller cautioned him not to jeopardize his
employment at Notre Dame.”(162)
Yoder resigned effective June 1, 1984, and no publicity attended
G.B.S.'s board action to accept the resignation. If asked about it, G.B.S.
board members and seminary representatives were to say that the
decision had been reached by mutual agreement as a solution to
_____________________
158. See, for example, John Howard Yoder to Marlin Miller, March 26, 1984, p. 2, AMBS
Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001, and Iohn Howard Yoder to Marcus
Smucker and Marlin Miller, April 13, 1984, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard
Yoder, X-18-001.
159. Quotation from Marcus Smucker to John Howard Yoder, ca. ]an. 12, 1984, AMBS
Marlin E. Miller Files on ]ol'm Howard Yoder, X-18-001; see also Marcus Smucker to Marlin
Miller, Iohn Howard Yoder, Evelyn Shellenberger, and Millard Lind, April 5, 1984, AMES
Marlin E. Miller Files on ]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
160. John Howard Yoder to Richard McBrien, Feb. 6, 1984, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files
on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
161. Quotation from Marlin Miller to Iohn Howard Yoder, Feb. 3, 1984, AMBS Marlin E.
Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
162. Marlin Miller to Iohn Howard Yoder, Feb. 2, 1984, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on
Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001. See also Marlin Miller to Richard McBrien, Iune 14, 1984,
AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on ]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoderis Sexual Abuse 47
longstanding issues, and that neither the institution nor Yoder planned
to make a statement.(163) Signaling silence in a pact with Yoder that he
would later regret, Miller stipulated that ”GBS will not take the initiative
to inform responsible persons in the church or in church agencies if not
asked."(164) If representatives of church agencies did ask for explanations,
Miller planned to confer with G.B.S.'s board chair-a post held by
Evelyn Shellenberger-and with Yoder. When, in late spring 1984, the
G.B.S./M.B.S. boards met in joint executive session, Miller announced
that Yoder was resigning in acknowledgement of sexual involvements
with women on several continents. A G.B.S. board member asked what
Yoder thought he had been accomplishing through his activities, and
Miller replied: "He was trying to prove you could 'tame the beast.'"(165)
Miller asked the assembled group of nearly twenty board members to
keep the reason for Yoder's forced resignation confidential, a request
that drew sharp responses. Some M.B.S. board members were critical of
Miller for withholding the damaging information for so long.(166) How
should Mermonite Church~ and General Conference-related agencies
deal with upcoming speaking engagements by Yoder that were already
planned? Maintaining confidentiality seemed impossible, and, to some,
ill-advised. But in the coming years, seminary insiders would remain
mostly mum.(167)
Yoder's departure was not a clean break. As a former faculty member
who lived across the street from the seminary, he retained a key and
campus mailbox, an arrangement that was to be reviewed periodically.(168)
He also continued to use the seminary library. These logistics became
conflictual as word filtered back to Miller that Yoder was telling others
that his resignation from the seminary lacked ”due process.” In 1983,
worried about the potential for public scandal, Miller had urged Yoder
to decline an invitation to speak at the eleventh Mennonite World
__________________
163. For an example, see Ron Rempel to Marlin Miller, Oct. 30, 1984, AMBS Marlin E.
Miller Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-001, and Marlin Miller to Ron Rempel, Nov. 15,
1984, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
164. Quotation from Marlin Miller, et. al., 'Subcommittee Report and
Recommendations” to GBS Board of Overseers, ]an. 18, 1984, pp, 3-4, AMBS Marlin E.
Miller Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-001. On Millers later regret, see Ted Koontz
interview with author, Iune 6, 2014.
165. Larry Eby email communication, Aug. 4, 2014.
166. Ibid.
167. Soon after the joint meeting, Yoder expressed dismay to Miller that not all M.B.S.
board members had kept details of the session confidential.-Yoder to Miller, ]uly 14, 1984,
AMBS Evelyn Shellenberger Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-003, Mennonite Church
USA Archives-Goshen.
168. Marlin Miller to Ioe Hertzler, ]une 29, 1984, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on John
Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Richard A. Kauffman to Evelyn Shellenberger, Dec. 8, 1986,
AMBS Evelyn Shellenberger Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-003.
48 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
Conference assembly in Strasbourg, France. lt would be an enormous
gathering, with thousands of people attending from seventy nations. But
from Miller’s point of view, too many people on both sides of the
Atlantic were aware of Yoder's sexual behaviors.(169) Yoder had
acquiesced, but his subsequent comments to others about a lack of
fairness associated with his seminary resignation reflected his irritation
with Miller, and Yoder's wrangling over the next several years for access
to seminary resources echoed this dissatisfaction!(170) Gradually, however,
seminary ties loosened. In the coming years, Yoder, whose profile as
theologian and ethicist would grow with his base at the University of
Notre Dame, would not be welcome at any A.M.B.S. event.
A CHURCH MEMBER IN GOOD STANDING?
After Yoder's departure, Miller, when asked why he had left, hewed
to the line about the separation having been a way to resolve
longstanding issues. From interested parties both within and beyond the
Mennonite Church, he fielded queries that often reflected sympathy for
Yoder. "Where is the grace in all this?" asked one friend. Usually
circumspect, Miller replied with details that few others would learn: his
communications regarding sexual Violations by Yoder had involved
approximately thirty individuals "in Africa, Canada, Europe, and the
United States, and . _ . comparable situations in South America." He and
his colleagues had exercised exceeding patience with Yoder, and the toll
on his own health and family life had been significant. Given these
challenges, Miller mused that it had been necessary for Yoder to sever
his ties with the seminary; that he had left was a sign of grace?"(171)
Any relief Miller may have felt was short-lived. Mennonite
administrators and academics hoping to work with Yoder--but puzzling
over whether they ought to-brought a tide of new problems into the
president's office. From Kansas, a Mennonite pastor reported that
Yoder’s plans to teach a class at the Great Plains Seminary Extension was
thrown into question because of rumors about his past, and the word
from Yoder himself was that “the Matthew 18 process" at the Elkhart
_____________________
169. Marlin Miller to Iohn Howard Yoder, April 10, 1983 AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files
on John Howard Yoder, X-18-001. By late spring 1984, the Mennonite Central Committee's
Peace Section was also reassessing its relationship with Yoder. See "Review: John Howard
Yoder Portfolio,” May 1984, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
170. Marlin Miller to Iohn Howard Yoder, ]une 4, 1984, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on
Jolm Howard Yoder, X-18-001; ]ohn Howard Yoder to Ioseph Hertzler, July 27, 1987, AMBS
Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Marlin Miller to Ioseph Hertzler,
]uly 28, 1987, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
171. Quotation from Marlin Miller in letter to correspondent, March 18, 1985, AMBS
Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 49
seminary had broken down!(172) By the mid-1980s, a generation of pastoral
leaders had imbibed lessons on church discipline-in the biblical phrase,
"binding and loosing”-from Yoder through his widely-disseminated
books and lectures.(173) With Yoder now reportedly saying that Christian
principles of accountability had been devalued at the seminary, Miller
regarded Yoder's word as disingenuous. Miller felt bound, by his written
severance agreements with Yoder, to say little in response, but he
showed a fellow A.M.B.S. administrator where he kept his Yoder-related
files under lock and key, ”in case," he said, “my plane ever goes
down.”(174)
From Herald Press, the Mennonite publishing house headquartered
in western Pennsylvania, which had an interest in continuing to publish
Yoder's work, came a pointed query: "Has Iohn been involved in
adultery?”(175) Posed by the press’s editor for theological books, this
question fell into the category that Miller had promised Yoder he would
address only after consulting with his board chair and Yoder himself.
Miller did confer with them and then urged Herald Press to interrogate
Yoder directly, suggesting opaquely that the editors ask Yoder “where
he now stands on matters the seminary was concerned about and which
contributed to his resignation.”(176) The issue would not go away. For
years, Herald Press would face pressure from readers who questioned
whether the Mennonite standard-bearer in publishing should continue to
publish Yoder, as well as those who critiqued the press for grappling
with that question.(177)
______________________
172. Lois Barrett letter to Marlin Miller, May 28, 1985, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on
]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18~0O1.
173. Lapp interview, ]une 24, 2014.
174. Quotation from Richard Kauffman interview with author; see also Marlin Miller to
John Howard Yoder, March 13, 1986, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on John Howard Yoder,
X-18-001. Miller had used the phrase ”in case my plane goes down” in referring to his
Yoder-related files as early as 1979. See Miller to Yoder, Dec. 26, 1979, AMBS Marlin E.
Miller Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-001. Miller’s reticence to corrununicate details
about Yoder’s departure from AMBS was encouraged by legal counsel; see Greg Hartzler
to Marlin Miller, March 20, 1992, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-
18-001.
175. Loren Iohns to Marlin Miller, Sept. 12, 1985, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn
Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
176. Marlin Miller to Loren Johns, Nov. 18, 1985, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn
Howard Yoder, X-18-001,
177. Cf. Loren Johns to Charlie Cooper, Jan. 27, 1986, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on
John Howard Yoder, X-18-001, and Millard Lind to Marlin Miller, Jan. 12, 1987, AMBS
Marlin E. Miller Files on ]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001. For varied perspectives on the
press’s 2013 decision regarding books authored by Yoder, see “MennoMedia to Include
Publishers Statement in John Howard Yoder Books,” Dec. 9, 2013, http://www.menno-
media.org/?Page=7904, and letter to editor by Walter Klaassen, Ruth Klaassen, Harry
Loewen, and Vem Ratzlaff, Canadian Mennonite, March 3, 2014, 11-13.
50 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
Inquiries to the seminary from Herald Press coincided with rising
concerns within Yoder’s own congregation, the Prairie Street Mennonite
Church in Elkhart. Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing for more
than a decade, a succession of pastors there-first gingerly, and then
more boldly-approached Yoder, responding to information circulating
about his extramarital sexual activity. Prior to Yoder’s departure from
Goshen Biblical Seminary, Prairie Street pastor Phil Bedsworth and a
ministerial colleague had spoken with Yoder in an effort to apply
Matthew 18. They were concerned about the state of Yoder’s marriage,
but they did not pursue the matter beyond a few conversations.(178)
In 1986, a newly-arrived pastor at Prairie Street, Charlie Cooper,
hosted a series of breakfast meetings with the nine other ordained
ministers in the congregation in an effort to build collegial relationships
with Yoder and other leaders.” (Yoder had been ordained to the
ministry in 1973 while serving as president of Goshen Biblical Seminary.)
Cooper later remembered: "These men had for the most part known
Yoder for years, and several had heard . . . of 'concerns.'”(180) A number
were retired pastors; others held posts in Mennonite agencies. At these
meetings, Yoder and Cooper discussed the meaning of ordination. It was
a topic of significance for Cooper because believers church theology held
that the locus for disciplining members, including ordained leaders, was
the congregations.(181) Had Mennonites ascribed to a more hierarchical
ecclesiology, Prairie Street Mennonite Church would have been less
likely to investigate rumors of Yoder’s sexual misconduct. But
throughout 1986, Cooper and the congregational Board of Elders-a
leadership group responsible for spiritual well-being within the
congregation-felt obliged to respond to inquiries from Herald Press and
to determine whether or not Yoder could remain a church member in
good standing.(182)
The elders were frustrated in their efforts to obtain information from
Yoder directly. Yoder told Cooper that if they were ready "to go into
matters in greater depth, read papers, deal with appropriate definitions
________________
178. James Lapp, handwritten notes, March 27, 1991, Prairie Street Mennonite
Church/JHY Task Force Files; Keith Harder interview with author, July 12, 2014,
179. Simon Gingerich interview with author, ]une 7, 2014; ”Litany for the Service of
Ordination of John Howard Yoder," May 6, 1973, AMBS Marlin-Miller ]ohn Howard Yoder
Files.
180. Cooper, email to author, Iune 28, 2014.
181, Prairie Street representatives consulted with leaders of the Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference about the congregations responsibility for accountability regarding
ministers; see Indiana-Michigan Church Life Commission Minutes, April 3, 1986, p. 3, MC
USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
182. Loren Johns to Charlie Cooper, ]an. 27, 1986, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn
Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 51
and research results," he would be more willing to engage with them.(183)
That was a conversation stopper. Decades later, Cooper recalled: “It was
difficult to see [Yoder’s] life-long friends in elders meeting trying to be
helpful and nurturing while pushing him toward honesty, and see them
being essentially humiliated as he ran them around in intellectual,
ethical, theological circles."(184) When confronted with questions about
moral lapses, Yoder neither confirmed nor denied. The Prairie Street
elders then turned to Miller for context and clues, but the seminary
president would not divulge specific reasons for Yoder's separation from
A.M.B.S.(185)
After nearly a year, the Prairie Street elders concluded that, despite
continuing concerns about Yoder, they lacked clear evidence of
wrongdoing. Hearing this, Herald Press, whose earlier inquiries had
suggested that his actions threatened Mennonite propriety, saw no
reason to discipline him over unsubstantiated allegations. If the Prairie
Street congregation could find no justification for revoking his church
membership, then “we cannot but hold him to be completely clear of
accusation-a Herald Press author in good standing."(186) At the Elkhart
seminary, President Miller was dismayed that the press planned to
proceed with publishing Yoder's work when judgments from Yoder's
congregational leaders were ambiguous.(187) For their part, the press’s
editors never considered launching their own inquiry into Yoder’s past,
but they were perplexed by Miller's reluctance to speak candidly about
Yoder’s moral character.(188)
Church accountability, it seemed, was a slippery business. In the next
decade, as credible accounts of Yoder’s sexual abuse emerged and
questions arose again about lines of accountability, leaders at A.M.B.S.,
Herald Press, and Prairie Street Mennonite Church all rethought
assumptions about whether a congregation with no access to verifiable
information could effectively discipline Mennonites’ best-known
theologian. Who had failed the church? Who had disappointed women
fearful of Yoder's movements in the Elkhart and South Bend
___________________
183. Quotation from Marlin Miller to Evelyn Shellenberer, Marcus Smucker, and
Millard Lind, Dec. 29, 1986, pp. 2-3, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on John Howard Yoder, X-
18-001.
184. Cooper, email to author, June 28, 2014.
185. Marlin Miller to Evelyn Shellenberger, Marcus Smucker, and Millard Lind, Dec. 29,
1986, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
186. Quotation from Loren Johns to Charlie Cooper, Dec. 18, 1986, AMBS Marlin E.
Miller Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Loren Johns interview with author, June 6,
2014.
187. Marlin Miller to Evelyn Shellenberger, Marcus Smucker, and Millard Lind, Dec. 29,
1986, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
188. Loren Johns interview with author.
52 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
communities and beyond? These questions were rhetorical, but Cooper,
who left Prairie Street in 1989 for another pastorate, reflected that "the
only person not spinning their wheels or convening meetings nor
draining their energy nor playing private detective . _ . was John Howard
Yoder. He seemed very content to wait out the process.”(189) It would be
nearly five years before Mennonite ecclesiastical bodies would maneuver
toward him again.
"NO LONGER A PRIVATE MATTER"
In 1989, Yoder sustained injuries in a car accident that resulted in
physical limitations for the rest of his life. Lingering foot pain and a
reliance on crutches to walk presented mobility challenges for the Notre
Dame professor, now over 60 years old; but his productivity remained
undiminished. Yoder wrote in five languages, and translators made his
works even more accessible. At A.M.B.S. and other institutions around
the world, his books on theology and ethics were part of course
curricula. But in Elkhart, students speculated about why he no longer
taught at the seminary, and some challenged faculty members and
administrators to remove Yoder’s writings from required reading lists. A
few professors had stopped referencing Yoder in the classroom, while
others regarded his scholarship as central to their own teaching and
research.(190)
In 1990, Ruth and Harold Yoder, a married couple who had recently
completed studies at A.M.B.S., began serving as co-pastors at Prairie
Street Mennonite Church. Occasionally receiving queries from
Mennonite agencies about John Howard Yoder’s sexual misconduct, the
new pastors were unsure how to respond, but a member of Prairie
Street’s Board of Elders passed along a file documenting the 1986
confrontations with him. Now, five years later, Mennonite conferences
were beginning to implement policies addressing sexual abuse. The
Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference, which held Yoder’s ministerial
credential, was on the verge of adopting guidelines for responding to
sexual abuse allegations against ordained leaders.(191) Aware of these
_____________________
189. Cooper, email to author, ]une 28, 2014.
190. Mary H. Schertz to Marlin Miller, Feb. 19, 1990, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on
John Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Memo to Marlin Miller, Feb. 19, 1990, AMBS Marlin E.
Miller Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-001; AMBS Joint Boards Executive Minutes,
March 1, 1990, p. 2, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-001;
Swartley interview with author.
191. John Esau of the General Conference Mennonite Church had already drafted
"Guidelines for Discipline in Ministerial Credentialing." See eighth revision, ]an. 1992,
Prairie Street Mennonite Church/]HY Task Force Files; "Draft-Guidelines for Dealing with
Alleged Sexual Harassment and/or Abuse," Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference, May
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 53
developments, the Prairie Street pastors and elders opened a new
investigation. As with earlier efforts, the Matthew 18 frame for resolving
conflict was still in play, but it was now overlaid with concerns about
potential for abuse in settings where individuals held unequal power.
Rooted in the Prairie Street congregation, this initiative also included
Mennonite leaders whose concerns about Yoder’s conduct dated back
many years. During 1991-1992, the newly-constituted Prairie Street
Mennonite Church/JHY Task Force included representatives of the
congregation along with five members from the broader denomination,
including James Lapp, general secretary of the Mennonite Church.(192)
Lapp had been aware of allegations about Yoder's misconduct and had
earlier assumed that adjudication should fall to Goshen Biblical
Seminary and to the Prairie Street congregation. But now, perspectives
about misuses of religious authority influenced Lapp and other leaders.
Lapp later recalled,
There was a gap in ]ohn's theology and understanding, of not
respecting power dynamics. The whole culture was changing about
how we viewed abuse of women. It was no longer a private matter;
we came to see the inadequacy of that. By the 1990s there was more
willingness to take responsibility, and I was prodded along by these
voices of women.(193)
Other voices were emerging, as well. Iohn K. Stoner, for example, a
pacifist writer and administrator for Mennonite Central Committee,
urged Lapp to reject Yoder’s interpretations of Matthew 18. Stoner knew
individuals familiar with Yoder’s sexual aggressions, and argued that
confronting him required a new model:
The first step must be a careful, thorough and sensitive
documentation of the stories of all of the women who have a
complaint .... Totally contrary to what ]ohn Howard has
maintained, the victims do not have to confront and accuse him face
_______________________
18, 1992, Prairie Street Mennonite Church Files, Elkhart, Ind.; Harold Yoder interview with
author, June 7, 2014; Sherm Kauffman interview with author, June 9, 2014.
192. "Charge to ]l-TY Task Force," 1991, Prairie Street Mennonite Church/JHY Task Force
Files. Harold Yoder convened the Task Force, which included Prairie Street’s Ruth Yoder
and Mary Mishler, as well as Atlee Beechy, Phyllis Stutzrnan, Dale Schumrn, Willis
Breckbill, and James Lapp.
193. Quotations from Lapp interview with author. See also Lapp to Victor Stoltzfus,
April 30, 1991, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on john Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Lapp,
handwritten notes from meeting with Harold Yoder, May 29, 1991, Prairie Street
Mennonite Church/Il-IY Task Force Files. Some male Mennonite leaders reported
transformational experiences in the early to mid-19905 as a result of participating in
conferences focused on stopping male violence against women. See, for example, Ted
Koontz, “Born Again,” in Godwrzrd, ed. Ted Koontz (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1996), 17-
24.
54 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
to face. ln the nature of the case, very few or none of them have the
power to do that, and it is beside the point (indeed, perverse) to
blame them.(194)
Stoner’s critique reflected the work of Christian theorist Marie
Fortune, who in Sexual Violence and other writings posited that the
Matthew passage ”assumes a level playing field with all parties equal.
This cannot be true when one party is a pastor.”(195) As an alternative
approach, Stoner’s perspective guided the new JHY Task Force, whose
members began contacting women to document past offenses.
The task force’s initiatives laid the groundwork for an unprecedented
confrontation with Yoder. Within the year, his history of abuse would
become public knowledge. In the fall of 1991, Mennonite activism aimed
at bringing Yoder’s sexual misconduct to light coincided with the U.S.
Senate confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas. Millions of Americans
watched televised accounts of the nominee denying accusations of sexual
harassment, and publicity surrounding the hearings stimulated
nationwide discussions about sexual behavior in the workplace as well
as power inequities.(196) Although Thomas was eventually appointed to
the Supreme Court, new attention to claims of sexual harassment gave
further weight to the JHY Task Force, which was determined to learn the
extent of Yoder's sexual abuse toward women and apply protocols for
church-based discipline.
MINISTERIAL CREDENTIAL SUSPENDED
In 1991, Martha Smith Good was serving as campus pastor at Goshen
College. A decade and a half earlier, as a student at G.B.S., she had
thwarted Yoder's approaches over a period of several years.(197) Also in
1991, Carolyn Holderread Heggen, a Mennonite mental health
professional, was living in New Mexico. Heggen had met Yoder a
decade earlier when he had traveled to Albuquerque for a series of
speaking engagements; during that trip, and later, through
correspondence, he made unwelcome sexual advances to her.(198) Both
women had rebuffed Yoder directly and, in due time, had spoken with
____________________
194. Iohn K. Stoner to Iarnes Lapp, received April 4, 1991, Prairie Street Mennonite
Church/]HY Task Force Files.
195. Quotation from Bromley and Cress, “Narratives of Sexual Danger,” 148. See also
Marie Fortune, Sexual Violence: The Sin Revisited (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, [1983] 2005).
196. “The Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearings: The Awakening of America to the
Issue of Sexual Harassment," in Paul 1. Weizer, Sexual Harassment: Cases, Case Studies, S*
Commentary (New York: P. Lang, 2002), 147.
197. Good interview with author.
198. Heggen interview with author.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 55
his employer, Marlin Miller, about their experiences.” Heggen would
pursue a career in mental health, speaking and writing on sexual abuse.
By the 1990s, she was in regular contact with Mennonite agencies, raising
awareness about violence against women and encouraging networking
among survivors of sexual abuse.(200)
Heggen, frustrated by Miller’s apparent deference to Yoder, despite
reports of ongoing harassment of women, became acquainted with Good
in the fall of 1991. The two women's experience of finding each other
was significant for their own sense of well-being, and they decided to
invite other women to join them, since the Elkhart seminary had not
reached out to extend care to Yoder's victims. They took a letter they had
written, inviting other women to contact them for mutual support, to
Miller, and asked him to mail it to anyone who had contacted him about
unwanted sexual approaches by Yoder.(201) They left Miller little choice.
When he initially refused, Heggen told him that she had already shared
a copy of the letter with J. Lorne Peachey, editor of the Mennonite
magazine The Gospel Herald. Peachey had earlier told Heggen that if he
could use his position to support her work in creating awareness about
sexual abuse in Mennonite contexts, he would do so, and he was willing,
if necessary, to publish the letter.(202)
After consulting with the seminary’s attorney, Miller reluctantly gave
the two women the help they sought. Miller had a long record of
keeping secrets about Yoder’s actions, but times had changed. Secrecy in
the matter of ecclesiastical handling of authority and sexual abuse could
no longer be maintained, and he now regarded Yoder’s history as far
more troubling than an injudicious “experiment” in Christian ethics.
Miller forwarded Good and Heggen’s letter to individuals whose names
he had filed away. ln a cover note, Miller wrote: "Please give their
request your serious consideration. If you choose to respond, you may
get in touch with one of them directly.(203) Ironically, as the women's circle
___________________
199. During the 1983-1984 academic year, Yoder wrote to Heggen, raising the possibility
that he might sue for libel.-Heggen, email to author, Iune 27, 2014; Charlene Epp to
Harold and Ruth Yoder, Sept. 4, 1991, provided by Carolyn Holderread Heggen, in the
author’s possession.
200. Heggen interview with author; Carolyn Holderread Heggen, Sexual Abuse in
Christian Homes and Churches (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1993).
201. Ruth Krall, who was acquainted with both Good and Heggen, had suggested that
they meet.-Martha Smith Good and Carolyn Holderread Heggen to Marlin Miller and
Marcus Smucker, "Unfinished Business re: John Howard Yoder,” Oct. 23, 1992, AMES
Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
202. Heggen interview with author. See also Marlin Miller letter to J. Lorne Peachey,
Nov. 7, 1990, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
203. Quotation from Marlin Miller, "Draft: Confidential,” c. Dec. 1991, AMBS Marlin E.
Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Martha Smith Good and Carolyn Holderread
Heggen letter addressed “Dear Sister," 1991, provided by Carolyn Holderread Heggen, in
56 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
was widening, Miller’s supporting role would be hidden from view.
Even though secrecy in the matter of Yoder’s legacies of abuse was
ending, transparency in Mennonite institutions remained elusive; Miller
told members of his administrative cabinet that, if queried about Yoder’s
past employment at the seminary, they should speak in ”neutral terms of
'sexual conduct’ rather than 'sexual harassment."' Miller was concerned
that loose talk at the seminary might result in a libel suit.(204)
The women’s network developed swiftly. In February 1992, Good
hosted a weekend gathering of eight women at her Elkhart home, Some
had not known each other before. They shared with each other the
physical and emotional impact that Yoder’s actions in the 1970s and
1980s had had on them, as well as longer-term effects on their families,
marriages, careers, and friendships. Concerned that Yoder's status
afforded him opportunities for continued harassment and abuse, the
group was determined to act, despite concerns about ”a potentially
explosive response when John's behaviour is confronted and made
public."(205)
The following morning, by prior arrangement, the women arrived at
the home of the pastors of the Prairie Street church to meet with the JHY
Task Force and give firsthand accounts of their experiences. They
presented a four-page composite statement of Yoder’s aggressions
toward them, noting that “we know from talking with other women that
our experiences do not represent the full scope of ]ohn's inappropriate
sexual behavior.”(206) They requested suspension of Yoder’s ministerial
credential while Mennonite authorities investigated, and asked that
church leaders take responsibility for stopping his misconduct, adding:
"We do not feel that invoking Matthew 18 as a model for process is
appropriate in this case .... A number of us are frightened by ]ohn and
at this point do not want an ongoing relationship with him.”(207) Each
woman signed her name but requested that individual identities not be
released.(208) After speaking, the women asked: "Do you believe us?" Task
________________
the author's possession; Martha Smith Good to Marlin Miller, Dec. 4, 1991, AMBS Marlin E.
Miller Files on ]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Marlin Miller to Martha Smith Good, Dec. 11,
1991, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on Iohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
204. Quotation from Marlin Miller to Gayle Gerber Koontz and Richard Kauffman,
March 3, 1992, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on ]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
205. Martha Smith Good to undisclosed recipients, Feb. 17, 1992, provided by Carolyn
Holderread Heggen, in the author's possession.
206. "Confidential Statement,” Feb. 21-22, 1992, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on ]ohn
Howard Yoder, X-18-001; Martha Smith Good to Carolyn Holderread Heggen, Feb. 6, 1992,
provided by Carolyn Holderread Heggen, in the author's possession.
207. ’“Confidential Statement,” quotation from p. 4.
208. Ibid., p. 4; Hegen, "Misconceptions and Victim Blaming,” 31.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 57
force members responded that they did, concluding unanimously that
the women’s reports were credible.(209)
Three weeks later, the task force charged Yoder with thirteen sexual
misconduct offenses, noting:
These charges indicate a long pattern of inappropriate sexual
behavior between you and a number of women. The settings for this
conduct were in many places: conferences, classrooms, retreats,
homes, apartments, offices, parking lots. We believe the stories we
have heard, and recognize that they represent deep pain for the
women . . . . The stories represent . . . a violation of the trust placed
in you as a church leader.(210)
From a Mennonite theologian and friend came an additional plea that
Yoder repent for violating women’s trust in the context of his churchly
authority. "You were next to God to some of them, ]ohn,” wrote an
A.M.B.S. professor, Ted Koontz:
You abused that power, you betrayed them, you made their faith
harder, their lives more burdened .... You were terribly powerful in
those relationships, and just “asking” before acting does not make
the relationship mutual or desired. You are still incredibly powerful
in relationship to many of them-it is pure fear of you which has
caused many of them to remain silent for so long.(211)
The task force’s charges of sexual misconduct buttressed a substantive
Mennonite accountability process that would last until 1996. More
immediately, however, Yoder faced revelations at Bethel College in
North Newton, Kansas, where he had agreed to give the keynote address
at a 1992 conference on nonviolence and violence in American history.
Two months before the conference, protests over Yoder’s impending
appearance prompted a barrage of communications between college
administrators and others, including some women who reported past
sexual violations by Yoder.(212) The Bethel College president, John Zehr,
rescinded the conference invitation, and the campus’s student
_____________________
209. The women regarded the task force members’ warm reception as affirming and
sensitive.-Tina Mast Burnett to James Lapp, Feb. 28, 1992, Prairie Street Mennonite
Church/IHY Task Force Files; Harold Yoder interview with author; Heggen interview with
author; "Summary of 2-22-92 Meeting,” Feb. 25, 1992, Prairie Street Mennonite Church/IHY
Task Force Files.
210. ]HY Task Force memorandum to John Howard Yoder, "Charges of Sexual
Misconduct,” March 14, 1992, Prairie Street Mennonite Church/I HY Task Force Files.
211. Ted Koontz to John Howard Yoder, Feb. 24, 1992, provided by Ted Koontz, in the
author’s possession.
212. Conference program, 1992, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on John Howard Yoder, X-
18-001; ”The Decision to Disinvite John Howard Yoder to Speak: An Interview with _lames
C. Juhnke," The Mennonite, Iune 2014, 44; James Juhnke, email to author, June 9, 2014.
58 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
newspaper, The Bethel Collegian, reported the story. Within days The
Mennonite Weekly Review ran a news feature that led to a wave of
journalistic accounts in the Mennonite press, revealing charges of sexual
harassment and abuse.(213) Controversy swirled over whether the
accusations against Yoder were credible. Related press coverage in the
secular press reached a zenith in Iuly 1992, when The Elkhart Truth
published a five-article series, based on religion writer Tom Price's
"interviews over a three-month period with church leaders, theologians,
and three of the eight women who brought the allegations to a church
panel.”(214) Price reported that the scope of Yoder’s sexual abuse may have
involved thirty women in addition to the eight who had come forward.
At the Prairie Street Mennonite Church in Elkhart, these
developments exacerbated tensions between the pastors and some
congregational members. Iohn Howard and Anne Yoder stopped
attending services at Prairie Street, and the Board of Elders, concerned
about the couple’s spiritual well-being, assigned several retired persons
to offer pastoral care to them. Task force members, who had earlier
assured confidentiality in updates to the congregation, faced criticism
from some individuals who wrongly assumed that they had leaked
accusations to the press.(215) The task force had been meeting with Yoder
for several months but feared that the publicity would trigger his
withdrawal from ongoing talks.(216)
Yoder never denied the thirteen charges of sexual misconduct. He
responded to the task force that he regarded his usefulness to Mennonite
________________________
213. Cott, "Yoder Disinvited to Conference," Bethel Collegian, March 5, 1992, 1; Schrag,
"Bethel Withdraws Invitation for Theologian to Speak," Mennonite Weekly Review, March
12, 1992, 3.
214, ”Theologian’s Future Faces a ’Litmus Test'/' The Elkhart Truth, Iuly 12, 1992, B-1 ; B-
3. Price used pseudonyms for women who, more recently, have identified themselves as
having been among the eight women; Good was ”Clara" in the series; Heggen was "Tina"
The articles are available online on Ted Grimsrud's website, http://peacetheology.net/john-
h-yoder/john-howard-yoder%E2%80%99s-sexual-misconduct%E2%80%94part-five-2/_ In
citing Price's article, however, Grimsrud’s site contains an unfortunate transcription error.
The site says Price reported 80 women may have been abused in addition to the eight who
came forward. The number that Price actually cited in his reporting was 30, not 80. Some of
the women who told their stories to the press received rebukes, including in letters to the
editor appearing in Mennonite periodicals; c.f. Winifred Waltner, letter to editor, Mennonite
Weekly Review, March 19, 1992, p. 4, and Debra H. Bender, letter to editor, Mennonite Weekly
Review, April 2, 1992. On Prairie Street Mennonite Church/JHY Task Force concerns about
victim-blaming, see Harold Yoder to JHY Accountability and Support Group, Oct. 6, 1992,
provided by Carolyn Holderread Heggen, in the author’s possession.
215. "Statement from the Elders and Pastors to Be Read on Sunday Morning,” March 15,
1992, Prairie Street Mennonite Church/J HY Task Force Files.
216. Harold Yoder interview with author; see also "Price Told the ]ohn Howard Yoder
Story," The Mennonite, Oct. 1, 2013, http://wwwthemennonite.org/issues/16-
1O/articles/news_analysis_Price_told_the_Iohn_Howard_Yoder_story.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 59
institutions to be nearing an end, and that he would not be greatly
concerned if his ties with the denomination diminished. Task force
members countered that in his writings, he had championed
accountability to the church.(217) They challenged Yoder's "pattern of
rationalization," asking why he had persisted in activities "which held
the strong possibility of . . . discrediting your career as a moral
theologian."(218) He replied that he had "helped” some women, but
expressed regret that he had not adequately understood from some
women their level of consent.” His stance echoed his arguments to
Marlin Miller a decade earlier: as an intellectual engaged with ethical
questions, Yoder emphasized, he required freedom to think critically and
to arrive at unpopular conclusions, and he could not cave in to
expectations that his ideas conform to those of Mennonites seeking to
discipline him.(220)
In June 1992, the task force recommended to the Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference that Yoder's ministerial credential be suspended.
Conference officials did so immediately, issuing a statement that "Yoder
has violated sexual boundaries" and that the conference was calling on
him to enter therapy and make restitution.(221) Those involved in this
decision, however, were uncertain how he would respond.
Yoder agreed to participate after three theologians with collegial ties
to him-Glen Stassen of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, James
McClendon of Fuller Theological Seminary, and Stanley Hauerwas of
Duke University-urged him, in a conference call, to commit to the
accountability process for the sake of his broader influence and Christian
ministry.(222) Having already asserted that he had initiated few "familial"
relationships with women since leaving A.M.B.S., Yoder now told the
task force that he had communicated with all women with whom he had
had "familial" contacts in the past five years to tell them he was
_____________________
217. "Minutes of Task Force Meeting with John Howard Yoder,” June 3, 1992, Prairie
Street Mennonite Church/IHY Task Force Files.
218. ]HY Task Force to John Howard Yoder, "Summary and Recommendations for
Resolution," May 8, 1992, Prairie Street Mennonite Church/IHY Task Force Files.
219. Yoder explained his views that, if both persons involved agreed to stop their
physical activities short of intercourse, the relationship was not sexualized.- Ibid.; James
Lapp, notes, March 14 and March 26, 1992, Prairie Street Mennonite Church/IHY Task
Force Files.
220. "Minutes of Task Force Meeting with John Howard Yoder,” Itme 3, 1992, Prairie
Street Mennonite Church/IHY Task Force Files.
221. Addendum to CLC Minutes, May 18, 1992, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite
Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-O5-019; Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference
press release, June 27, 1992, Prairie Street Mennonite Church/JHY Task Force Files.
222. Harold Yoder to IHY Task Force, June 16, 1992, Prairie Street Mennonite
Church/IHY Task Force Files; see also Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s
Memoir (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010), 244-245.
60 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
discontinuing those relationships.(223) He wrote a statement to be
distributed through the task force to the eight women who had accused
him of sexual misconduct, in which he referred to “the intensity of my
regret for the pain I caused you."(224) Over the next four years, Yoder
would contemplate reconciliation with persons harmed, give a modest
sum toward financial restitution, undergo therapy, and in all these
matters engage closely with a disciplinary group established by the
Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference’s Church Life Commission.(225)
INDIANA-MICHIGAN MENNONITE CONFERENCE
DISCIPLINARY PROCESS
Following the suspension of Yoder’s ministerial credential, the ]HY
Task Force disbanded, turning matters over to the Church Life
Commission-a standing committee of the Indiana-Michigan Mennonite
Conference-and to the newly-formed Accountability and Support
Group, which the commission appointed in October 1992 to work with
Yoder on disciplinary steps. In establishing the Accountability and
Support Group, the regional conference was following recently-adopted
policies for addressing sexual abuse. Among the protocols, an
intervention team was to meet regularly with the person facing
charges.(226) Two task force members ensured continuity by joining the
Accountability and Support Group: Atlee Beechy, professor of
psychology at Goshen College, and Mary Mishler, a Prairie Street elder.
Also joining were two Mennonite mental health professionals, Betty
Hochstetler and John G. Kaufman.
The Accountability and Support Group began its work with Yoder in
November 1992, focusing on setting ground rules for confidentiality,
planning for reconciliation with victims and making restitution, and
____________________
223. ”Minutes of Task Force Meeting with Iolm Howard Yoder," June 26, 1992, Prairie
Street Mennonite Church/]HY Task Force Files.
224. John Howard Yoder, ”Memorandum to Persons I Have Offended," ]uly 7, 1992,
Prairie Street Mennonite Church/IHY Task Force Files; women who received Yoder’s
statement responded that it "reflected considerable self-justification by explaining the
situation as misunderstanding or misinterpreting his motives and approaches rather than
clearly reflecting a confessional and repentance position." See "A Summary of the
Responses from Seven Women," Aug. 1992, Accountability and Support Group, MC USA
Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference john Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
225. John Howard Yoder to Prairie Street Elders and to the Indiana-Michigan
Conference Church Life Commission, ]uly 7, 1992, Prairie Street Mennonite Church/]I-IY
Task Force Files.
226. “Draft-Guidelines for Dealing with Alleged Sexual Harassment and/or Abuse,”
Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference, May 18, 1992, Prairie Street Mennonite Church
Files. These newly-adopted guidelines were similar to those in use by the United Church of
Christ (UCC) denomination.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoderis Sexual Abuse 61
arranging for psychological evaluation and therapy.(227) Accountability
and Support Group members expected to report the outcomes of Yoder’s
disciplinary process to the regional conference’s Church Life
Commission, which had the authority to reinstate or withdraw Yoder's
ministerial credential. Although the Accountability and Support Group
members envisioned that their task would be challenging, no one
anticipated meeting more than thirty times with Yoder over four years in
a labyrinth-like process burdened by disputes. Within a year, the
regional conference’s Church Life Commission, which had appointed the
group, considered restructuring it because of philosophical and
managerial questions about whether "accountability" and "support"
functions could-or should-be combined in the same committee. The
group frequently met in homes (the Yoders’ and group members') and,
over time, the commission perceived that the group, while dedicated in
fulfilling its mandate, tilted in the direction of offering support to the
Yoders, likely compromising their "accountability" directives. These
tensions lingered through the mid-1990s.(228)
On matters of sexual behavior, as far as the Accountability and
Support Group could ascertain, Yoder yielded to expectations that he not
approach women inappropriately. But in sparring with those attempting
to discipline him, he appropriated the language of victimhood for
himself.(229) Responding to a Mennonite scholar informing him that his
membership on the board of editors of The Mennonite Quarterly Review
was suspended, pending resolution of the Indiana-Michigan disciplinary
process, Yoder retorted that, in this set of events, “you are as much a
victim as l."(230)
Although in mid-1992 Indiana-Michigan conference officials intended
to release a written statement by Yoder that he was working toward
reconciliation, his drafts, at best, minimized his actions and suggested
____________________
227. Minutes, Accountability and Support Group for John Howard Yoder, Nov. 16,
1992, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-
019
228. Family linkages in these two Mennonite committees posed additional
complications. Atlee Beechy, A.S.G. chair, was the father-in-law of Gordon Dyck, who led
the C.L.C. from 1993 until the accountability process ended in 1996. Dyck's leadership
derived in part because the C.L.C.'s chair, Gerald Good-husband of Martha Smith Good-
recused himself in Yoder-related matters. The C.L.C. and the A.S.G. differed significantly
about how to engage Yoder most effectively.-ASG minutes, June 22, 1993; Addendum to
CLC Minutes, Feb. 10, 1994 and April 20, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite
Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019; Nancy Kauffman interview with author,
June 5, 2014; Dyck interview with author, ]une 5, 2014.
229. "ASG Progress Report,” May 17, 1994, p. 4, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite
Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
230. John Howard Yoder to Walter Sawatsky, Oct. 1, 1992, Mennonite Historical Society
Files in the author’s possession.
62 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
that he was sorry for having misunderstood women’s consent. At worst,
Yoder's writings shed doubt on his sincerity.(231) Psychological research on
the confessions of perpetrators indicates that individuals tend to
acknowledge only what they can justify to themselves, and Yoder's
statements to Indiana-Michigan conference interrogators apparently
followed this pattern.(232) As a result, conference officials decided not to
release Yoder’s statements nor issue any public information about the
disciplinary process. Later, when asked if he had ever apologized for his
actions, (Yoder asserted: ”I was prevented from [doing so] in August
1992."(233) His claim fanned speculation that he had been Willing to make a
public statement of repentance but had been barred from doing so by
conference officials.(234)
Critiques akin to those that Marlin Miller at the seminary had long
regarded as the price of confidentiality now came directed to the
Indiana-Michigan conference from Christian scholars who yearned for
Yoder's reputation to be restored. From Ontario, a Mennonite professor
of biblical studies wondered if the commission was taking too much time
working for healing between Yoder and his victims: ”[T]he longer such a
process is stalled," he argued, "the easier it is for the abused and the
abuser to exchange roles.”(235) Two years later, an appeal from theologians
Glen Stassen, Stanley Hauerwas, and Mark Nation arrived on the desks
of Indiana-Michigan conference officials, urging swift closure in the
disciplinary process and restoration of Yoder to his broader Work in the
church.(236) "It is our understanding that despite the fact that he considers
his views on sexuality to be prophetic," wrote Hauerwas and Nation in a
second letter to the Indiana-Michigan conference, ”he has used
considerable self-restraint and has shown remarkable respect for his
____________________
231. John Howard Yoder, “Memorandum to the Prairie Street Elders and Indiana-
Michigan Conference Church Life Commission," July 7, 1992, Prairie Street Mennonite
Church/JHY Task Force Files; John Howard Yoder, "Memorandum to the Prairie Street
Elders and to the Indiana-Michigan Conference Church Life Commission, Aug. 20, 1992,
MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference Iohn Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
232. See Eyal Peer, Alessandro Acquisti, and Shaul Shalvi, ”’I Cheated, but Only a
Little': Partial Confessions of Unethical Behavior," Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 106 (2014), 202; 214.
233. John Howard Yoder to George R. Brunk III, Jan. 14, 1997, AMBS Sara Wenger
Shenk Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-002, Mennonite Church USA Archives-Goshen.
234. For example, see Christa Eshleman, "Seminary Features Yoder: Theologian’s
Return Raises Questions," Weather Vane, V. 42, no. 10, ]an. 23, 1997.
235. William Klassen to Gerald Good, CLC chair, Dec. 15, 1992, MC USA Indiana-
Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
236. Nation, Stassen, and Hauerwas to Atlee Beechy, June 14, 1994, MC USA Indiana-
Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 63
Church by not promoting his views publicly anytime during his long
teaching career."(237)
But the two regional committees managing Yoder's disciplinary
process saw things differently. While they agreed that “the tight lipped
process complicates the whole thing," they expected that pending issues,
including communications between Yoder and aggrieved women,
developing plans for financial restitution, and assessing Yoder's mental
health needs, would take time to resolve.(238) Although they faced pressure
from Yoder's colleagues-Mennonites, Baptists, Methodists, and
others-to restore Yoder to ministry, the commission knew that Yoder
himself did not regard his credential as necessary for his ongoing work
as a theologian and ethicist at the University of Notre Dame.
In writing and teaching, Yoder had long de-emphasized the
significance of his ministerial status.(239) He told Church Life Commission
members that his ordination, conducted in 1973 at his parents'
Mennonite church in Ohio, "was a fiction in the past and has no meaning
for the foreseeable future."(240) In conversations with the commission and
the Accountability and Support Group, Yoder expressed doubts about
his acceptance among Mennonites.(241) Although his name remained on
the membership roster at Prairie Street Mennonite Church, his interests
were not narrowly denominational, a stance that complicated matters for
Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference officials tasked with
disciplining him. They were sincere in their efforts to address Yoder's
sexual misconduct, but they were negotiating with a high-profile figure
whose long-term cooperation was never assured and whose adversarial
bent was considerable. Throughout the four-year process, there would
be no quick or easy resolution to any aspect of Yoder's status as a
Mermonite churchman, nor would "reconciliation” with many of the
women he had targeted prove to be an attainable goal.
As part of the disciplinary process, the Accountability and Support
Group took seriously its liaison role between Yoder and any women who
wished to confront him. Members of the group kept in regular contact
_____________________
237. Quotation from Hauerwas and Nation to Yoder Church Discipline Committee, ]uly
7, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-
019; Gordon Dyck to Hauerwas and Nation, Sept. 29, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference john Howard Yoder Files, II-05~019.
238. Quotation from Aug. 18, 1994 C.L.C. meeting with Prairie Street elders and pastors,
in minutes of Elders meeting, Aug. 24, 1994, Prairie Street Mennonite Church Files.
239. C.L.C. Consultation with A.S.G., Aug. 27, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
240. John Howard Yoder to Gordon Dyck, ]an. 16, 1995, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
241. Final Report of A.S.G. to C.L.C., June 12, 1995, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, Il-O5-019.
64 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
with the eight women who had given their accounts to the Prairie
Street/IHY Task Force in early 1992. Two had opted for face-to-face
meetings with Yoder, which the Accountability and Support Group
arranged, and seven of the eight eventually revealed their identities to
Yoder, so that by mid-1994, he came to know who had charged him with
sexual misconduct before representatives of the Mennonite Church.242
Although few of the eight women desired contact with Yoder, one
additional woman, "Elena," the former A.M.B.S. student who had left
the seminary following Marlin Miller’s threat of expulsion, requested a
meeting with Yoder. In 1993 she and members of the Accountability and
Support Group met face-to-face with Yoder and his wife so that she
could report the trauma, both initially and in subsequent years, that
resulted from Yoder’s abuse.(243)
Anne Yoder supported her husband throughout the church
disciplinary process, regularly participating in the Accountability and
Support Group meetings and occasionally contacting members of the
Church Life Commission to advocate for compassion for her husband.(244)
Her anger at him, which had been visible to Miller and others in the
1970s, had shifted in the 1980s as A.M.B.S. had forced Yoder’s
resignation and then banned him from campus events. Over time, she
nurtured a protective stance; by the 1990s, she had allied with her
husband as he navigated disciplinary measures. In her memoir,
published decades later, she referenced "all the turmoil and difficulties”
in Elkhart when Yoder’s sexual misconduct had become public, and
expressed appreciation for the neighborhood Lutheran church that she
and her husband had attended during the Mennonite disciplinary
process.(245)
In 1995, the Yoders requested a transfer of membership from the
Prairie Street congregation to the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer.(246)
____________________
242. "Progress Report of the ASG,” May 17, 1994, p. 3, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference Iohn Howard Yoder Files, II-O5-019.
243. Addendum to Church Life Commission Minutes, April 12, 1993, MC USA Indiana-
Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019; Betty Hochstetler
interview with author, June 5, 2014.
244. Gordon Dyck, handwritten notes, July 26, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-O5-019; Anne Yoder to Gordon Dyck,
April 1, 1996, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files,
II-O5-019.
245. Anne Guth Yoder with Rebecca Yoder Neufeld, What I Hold Precious, 176 and 198,
n. 8. Friends of the Yoders at Prairie Street Mennonite Church regarded the Lutheran
congregation and pastoral leadership as offering a welcoming environment to the
couple. -John Bender interview with author, June 6, 2014.
246. John Howard Yoder to Board of Elders, July 3, 1995, Prairie Street Mennonite
Church Files.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 65
But their friends at Prairie Street hoped that Mennonites near and far
could “forgive and forget” so that the Yoders would return to the Prairie
Street congregation.” Reflecting this desire, Prairie Street’s board of
elders never acted on the Yoders' transfer request, but intensified efforts
to restore congregational relationships with the couple.(248) The Yoders did
not press the transfer issue and their membership at Prairie Street
remained intact, with the elders formally reaffirming their membership
in 1996.(249)
While Prairie Street’s elders focused on maintaining contact with the
Yoders, members of the Accountability and Support Group realized that
no such concentrated effort-by any board or committee-was similarly
focused on the women's welfare. Denominational and congregational
resources were being channeled into the rehabilitation of John Howard
Yoder, but no comparable endeavor addressed the spiritual and
emotional needs of women who had been harmed.(250) In most cases, their
identities, as well as their hopes for the church accountability process,
remained unknown. The Church Life Commission pondered how to
communicate with them. Indiana-Michigan conference officials turned
for help to the Mennonite Central Committee (M.C.C.), the international
relief and development agency, which had already developed a
”survivors’ list” to connect victims of pastoral abuse in Mennonite
contexts. Indiana-Michigan conference officials seized on the idea that
since ”MCC was also involved in sending ]HY around the world," the
agency might host a women's communications network and administer
restitution funds.(251)
The notion of resourcing through M.C.C. intensified after A.M.B.S.
president Marlin Miller, meeting with the Church Life Commission,
clarified the international scope of Yoder's sexual misconduct. Miller
spoke confidentially of as many as forty women he now knew to have
______________________
247. Quotation from Gordon Dyck notes of phone call with Harold Yoder, June 16, 1994,
MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, Il-05-019.
248. Board of Elders meeting minutes, April 20, 1995, Prairie Street Mennonite Church
Files; John Bender interview with author.
249. Board of Elders minutes, Iuly 12, 1995, Jan. 23, 1996, and Dec. 6, 1996, Prairie Street
Mennonite Church Files.
250. Minutes of C.L.C. consultation with A.S.G., Aug. 27, 1994, MC USA Indiana-
Michigan Mennonite Conference Iohn Howard Yoder Files, ll-O5-019.
251. Quotation from Iohn G. Kaufman, minutes of C.L.C. consultation with A.S.G., Aug.
27, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-
05-019; Handwritten notes of C.L.C. meeting, summer 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference Iohn Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019; Shenn Kauffman interview
with author. One model proposed by Indiana-Michigan conference officials was that
M.C.C. might bill offenders for 80 percent of victims’ expenses for psychotherapy.-
Charlotte Holsopple Glick to C.L.C., July 23, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite
Conference John Howard Yoder Files, ll-05-019.
66 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
been affected by Yoder's sexual harassment, and told the commission
that he still received correspondence from women who had personally
experienced it.(252) In 1994, two days before Miller's heart attack and tragic
death at the age of 55, he wrote to his former student "Elena," expressing
regret for Yoder’s behavior toward her, telling her that in the aftermath
of Yoder’s departure, A.M.B.S. had established policies for registering
grievances.(253)
At the Prairie Street Mennonite Church, elders were also concerned
with restitution. In 1994, the Prairie Street Board of Elders set aside an
escrow account, to which Yoder contributed $1,000 and the congregation
added an additional $500.(254) Over a series of meetings, the Accountability
and Support Group had engaged Yoder on the size of possible restitution
and had tested with him the possibility of an extended contribution
program based on a percentage of Yoder’s income, but Yoder preferred
to make a single payment.(255) Restitution, the group asserted, could pay
for mental health counseling for victims, reimburse expenses for women
who had traveled to Elkhart to confront Yoder, and fund conferences on
sexual abuse in religious settings.(256) But no consensus emerged on who
might be tapped as additional contributors or how such a fund might be
administered. Indiana-Michigan conference officials approached
Mennonite Central Committee and other Mennonite agencies with an
offer of the $1,500 Prairie Street fund as start-up money, but found no
takers.(257)
By the time the accountability process for Yoder ended in 1996,
Indiana-Michigan conference officials had not yet found a home for the
____________________
252. Addendum to CLC minutes, Dec. 9, 1993, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite
Conference John Howard Yoder Files, H-05-019; Summary of meeting of representatives
from A.M.B.S., Prairie Street Mennonite Church, and Church Life Commission, Dec. 18,
1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, lI-05-
019.
253. Marlin Miller letter, Nov. 1, 1994, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on John Howard
Yoder, X-18-001. Miller’s statement of regret addressed Yoder's actions, but Miller did not
address his own confrontation with her in 1979.-”Elena” (pseudonym) interview with
author.
254. Minutes of Board of Elders meetings, Nov. 3, 1994 and Feb. 23, 1995, Prairie Street
Mennonite Church Files; minutes of C.L.C. and A.S.G. joint meeting, Dec. 18, 1994; MC
USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
255. A.S.G. minutes, Oct. 25, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference
John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019; Dyck interview with author.
256. Addendum to C.L.C. minutes, Sept. 15, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-O5-019.
257. Charlotte Holsopple Glick to C.L.C., Iuly 23, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019; minutes of C.L,C. consultation
with A.S.G., Aug. 27, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John
Howard Yoder Files, II-O5-019; Sherm Kauffman to Gordon Dyck, Iuly 17, 1995, MC USA
Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 67
monies held in escrow. A year later, Prairie Street congregational
representatives closed the matter by sending a contribution of $900, at
Yoder’s suggestion, to the Center for Prevention of Sexual and Domestic
Violence in Seattle.(258) No information about this disbursement of
restitution funds was given to women known to Indiana-Mennonite
conference officials to have experienced sexual abuse by Yoder.(259)
Throughout 1994 and 1995, Indiana-Michigan conference officials
worried about a potential new complication to their work, asking
themselves: “If JHY becomes Lutheran, how will this process change?" (260)
Hoping to retain leverage, they encouraged the initiatives by Prairie
Street elders to maintain contact with Yoder.(261) He kept his Mennonite
affiliation, but in 1995 a significant obstacle to the disciplinary process
arose when he withdrew consideration of his ministerial credential from
the Church Life Commission. In a letter to the commission, Yoder argued
that his case was different from that of several Mennonite ministers who
had recently undergone discipline for sexual misconduct while serving
in pastorates As an academic, Yoder no longer desired his ministerial
credential, and the commission lost a bargaining chip in their
negotiations.(262) Along with members of the Accountability and Support
Group, commission members had been hoping to establish an ongoing
monitoring plan with Yoder as a condition to restoring his credential. No
clear proposals had yet been formulated because the commission
believed that, to date, they had not received adequate assessment of his
psychological functioning. But with Yoder’s withdrawal of consideration
of his ministerial status from discussions, the commission had no
________________
258. Later, this organization was renamed the FaithTrust Institute, The Board of Elders
at Prairie Street sent $900 to the Seattle organization, and transferred $450 remaining into
Prairie Street Mennonite Church’s mutual aid fund.-John Howard Yoder to Ray Horst,
Feb. 19, 1997, Prairie Street Mennonite Church Records; minutes, Board of Elders meeting,
March 4, 1997; Prairie Street Mennonite Church Records; Ray Horst to Sherm Kauffman,
May 27, 1997, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder
Files, II-05-019,
259. “Elena” (pseudonym) interview with author; "Questions," Heggen, et. al.
260. Quotation from C.L.C. Agenda/Report for Consultation with ASG, Aug. 27, 1994,
MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019; see
also Minutes of C.L.C. consultation with ASG, Aug. 27, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference john Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
261. Board of Elders meeting minutes, April 18, 1996, Prairie Street Mennonite Church
Records.
262. Yoder referenced the Mennonite ministers Urie Bender, Paul Landis, and james
Dunn; John Howard Yoder to Gordon Dyck and C.L.C., jan. 16, 1995, MC USA Indiana-
Michigan Mennonite Conference john Howard Yoder Files, II-O5-019; ASG. meeting
minutes, Feb. 15, 1995, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference john Howard
Yoder Files, II-05-019; addendum to C.L.C. minutes, Feb. 16, 1995, MC USA Indiana-
Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
68 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
continuing jurisdiction over him; as a result, there would be no plan to
monitor his ongoing behavior.(263)
Assessing Yoder’s mental health and ensuring appropriate
psychological treatment proved fractious, as well. Early in the church's
disciplinary process, several Mennonite mental health professionals had
recommended that he enter an out-of-state treatment center for sexual
addiction, noting that compulsive behavior often requires stronger
interventions than individual willpower.264 Citing distance and expense,
Indiana-Michigan conference officials discounted the idea but hoped that
locally-provided mental health evaluations and professional counseling
would move him toward repentance and apology. Over time, as Yoder
remained steadfast in his position that his error had lain in
misunderstanding Women’s consent, Accountability and Support Group
members expressed regret that the conference had not pursued
residential, group-therapy treatment options.(265)
Initially, the group and Yoder agreed that he would undergo
assessment and counseling from a psychologist named Sheridan
McCabe, affiliated with the University of Notre Dame; the
Accountability and Support Group believed that Yoder’s therapy should
focus on ”misuse of power" in connection with sexual boundaries.266 A
year later, Indiana-Michigan officials were uncertain whether Yoder was
continuing to receive counseling, and members of the Church Life
Commission questioned whether the psychologist's assessment had been
adequate, proposing that a second opinion was in order!" For several
months, Yoder, supported by the Accountability and Support Group,
_____________________
263. Gordon Dyck to Sherm Kauffman, Atlee Beechy, and John Howard Yoder, March
20, 1996, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, Il-
O5-019; C.L.C. meeting minutes, Ian. 19, 1995, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite
Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
264. Carolyn Holderread Heggen to the A,S.G., April 16, 1994, MC USA Indiana-
Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, Il-O5-019; Ethel Yake Metzler,
email to author, Aug. 3, 2014. On therapies recommended for habitual sexual abusers, see
Shupe, Rogue Clerics, 147.
265. Final Report of the A.S.G. to the C.L.G., June 12, 1995, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, Il-05-019.
266, Minutes of A.S.G. meetings, Jan. 26, 1993, May 11, 1993, and May 25, 1993, and ]an.
4, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-O5-
019
267. Regarding the report of psychologist Sheridan McCabe, see addendum to minutes
of C.L.C. meeting, May 16, 1994, and Addendum to minutes of C.L.C. meeting, Nov. 21,
1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-O5-
019. McCabe's report on Yoder, which was forwarded to Indiana-Michigan Mennonite
Conference officials, remains restricted material in the Mennonite Church USA Indiana-
Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 69
maintained that no further psychological testing was necessary.(268)
Indiana-Michigan conference officials consulted with a Chicago-area
expert on sexual misconduct in church settings to help them strategize
for moving forward. The consultant, a prominent Episcopalian priest,
pushed the Mennonites to arrange for an independent analysis of
Yoder's psychological state; she cautioned them that Yoder "could
probably manipulate a polygraph."(269)
Given Yoder's bent for argumentation, a central question was whether
the Accountability and Support Group or anyone involved in the
Mennonites’ disciplinary process could adequately challenge him.(270) The
Accountability and Support Group, which met with him regularly, had
no direct knowledge of Yoder's earlier semantic gamesmanship with
Miller at A.M.B.S. or with Cooper at Prairie Street; nonetheless, Yoder’s
verbal skills were legendary. In late 1994 Church Life Commission
members did arrange for a ”second opinion," convincing Yoder to make
four trips to Chicago for a series of assessments by psychiatrist ]ohn F.
Gottlieb.(271) Commission members wanted Gottlieb to address two
questions in particular: “What evidences are there that Iohn has changed
and can redirect his behavior? What evidence is there that ]ohn can
follow his own 'safe plan'?”(272)
Two months later, Gottlieb, after consulting a Chicago psychologist
with expertise in sexual abuse in workplace settings, completed his
assessment of Yoder. The Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference’s
Church Life Commission, in covering the trip costs to Chicago and the
associated medical bill, expected to receive the assessment, which
required authorization by Yoder. Yoder signed a release for the Church
Life Commission, the Accountability and Support Group, and himself to
receive the twenty-three-page document, its length owing, Gottlieb
wrote, ”to the long history, complexity, and administrative issues
_____________________
268. Gordon Dyck to C.L.C., Dec. 9, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite
Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-O5-019.
269. Summary Observations of the C.L.C. Consultation with Chilton Knudsen, May 26,
1994, p. 4, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, Il-
05-019; on Knudsen's work, see Darlene K. Haskin, et. al., Restoring the Soul of the Church
(St. Joseph, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1995).
270. A.S.G. Progress Report to C.L.C., May 17, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-O5-019.
271. A.S.G. meeting minutes, Dec. 7, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite
Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019; Gordon Dyck to C.L.C., Dec. 9, 1994, MC
USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019; Yoder
to Gordon Dyck, Ian. 30, 1995, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John
Howard Yoder Files, H-05-019.
272. Addendum to C.L.C. Minutes, Dec. 19, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, H-05-019.
70 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
surrounding this case."(273) The report would become a thorn in the side of
all involved. Because Gottlieb took a “less favorable" view of Yoder's
functioning than the earlier, ”quite favorable” conclusions reached by
McCabe, the psychologist affiliated with Notre Dame, the commission
recommended that the Indiana-Michigan conference withdraw Yoder's
ministerial credential.(274)
Yoder, upon reading the new document, immediately revoked the
Accountability and Support Group's access to it, claiming in a letter to
the commission that "1 did not intend to authorize him to circulate _ . _
the large bulk of damaging raw notes and quotes gratuitously gathered
and passed on in Gottlieb’s report."(275) Yoder expressed anger that copies
of the report were now in the hands of Indiana-Michigan Mennonite
officials and committee members and demanded that all copies be
destroyed.(276) The commission disagreed, noting that ”since the IN-MI
Conference asked for this report, and originally had permission from
]HY to receive it, that IN-Ml has the right to keep and file it. This report
contains information which supports CLC’s decision not to return JHY’s
credential.”(277)
The dispute over Gottlieb’s assessment of Yoder's mental health-and
the right of Mennonite interrogators to have that information-signaled
that the disciplinary proceedings would miss the mark of reconciliation
and restoration. Yoder was acutely apprehensive about the implications
of all this information for his legacy. In 1996 he informed Indiana-
Michigan Mennonite Conference officials that he was consulting a
lawyer about, as he phrased it, "whether the cause of the kingdom is
_________________
273. John Gottlieb to Gordon Dyck, March 15, 1995, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, Il-05-019. The psychologist consulting
with Gottlieb was Alan Friedman, Ph.D. Indiana-Michigan conference officials negotiated
the assessors’ charges from $2,860 down to $2,200. Addendum to C.L.C. minutes, April 6,
1995, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference john Howard Yoder Files, Il-05-
019
274. Quotations from Sherm Kauffman, "Consultation with Greg Hartzler re: IHY
Case,” Sept. 18, 1995, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard
Yoder Files, ll-05-019; Addendum to C.L.C. minutes, April 6, 1995, MC USA Indiana-
Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
275. By the time of Yoder's revocation of the release, members of the C.L.C. as well as
Atlee Beechy, chair of the A.S.G., had read the report.-John Howard Yoder to Gordon
Dyck and Atlee Beechy, April 10, 1995, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference
john Howard Yoder Files, ll-05-019.
276. Iohn Howard Yoder to Gordon Dyck, July 10, 1995, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, ll-O5-019.
277. Quotation from C.L.C. report to Indiana-Michigan Executive Committee, Aug. 31,
1995, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, 11-05-
019; C.L.C. Report to Executive Committee, Aug. 31-Sept. 1, 1995, MC USA Indiana-
Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, ll-05-019.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 71
served by perpetuating an archive on the process."(278) For the rest of his
life, he would remain in a standoff with Mennonite officials over their
right to the report. Yoder's wishes prevailed after his death, and no
known copies of the psychiatric assessment exist, since in 2001 Indiana-
Michigan conference officials destroyed their one remaining copy.(279)
The sociologist Anson Shupe notes that religious institutional bodies
faced with having to respond to sexual abuse seek to neutralize conflict
in an effort to restore authority in their institutions.(280) As long as the
Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference had a disciplinary hold upon
Yoder, Christian concepts of repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, and
restoration, rooted in biblical justice, all carried important rhetorical
functions. This was true for Accountability and Support Group
members, Church Life Commission members, and the Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference executive committee, which ultimately
commended Yoder for further writing and teaching in Mennonite
contexts. These ecclesiastical bodies' interests in bringing the disciplinary
matter to an end diverged from Yoder's interests.
Although the Indiana-Michigan conference committees had failed to
establish a restitution fund to benefit Yoder's victims, opted not to
reinstate his credential, had no "safe plan” in place for monitoring his
behavior, and had not secured therapy for him in the aftermath of
Gottlieb’s psychiatric assessment, in 1996 weary church representatives
sought to bring an end to the process.(281) Conference officials now faced a
thankless task: crafting a public statement about Yoder's status that
would be parsed by readers, many with significant stakes in the matter.
Contemplating the parties whose interests had to be taken into account,
______________________
278. John Howard Yoder to Sherrn Kauffman, Dec. 16, 1996, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference Iohn Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
279. For six years, one remaining copy of the Gottlieb report was held in the restricted
Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files. In 2001, more than
three years after Yoder's death, members of Yoder's family requested that the document be
destroyed. ln response, Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference officials sought legal
counsel and on June 1, 2001, took action to ensure ”that the copy of Dr. Gottlieb’s report be
deleted from [Yoder's] file and destroyed." A note placed in the file states: “The Gottlieb
report stated a considerably different point of view from an evaluation conducted by
Sheridan McCabe that is included in the file. It cited several deficiencies in the McCabe
report that Gottlieb then explored as part of his evaluation and reporting, thus coming to a
different conclusion."-Confidential File for John Howard Yoder Addendum Note to
Executive Committee Minutes, June 1, 2001, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite
Conference John Howard Yoder Files, Il-05-019.
280. Bromley and Cress, "Narratives of Sexual Danger,” 148.
281. After the disciplinary process ended, Indiana-Michigan officials speculated that a
denomination-wide restitution fund to benefit victims of sexual abuse might be established
with Mennonite Board of Congregational Ministries. See Sherm Kauffman to john Howard
Yoder, Nov. 20, 1996, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard
Yoder Files, Il-05-019.
72 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
the Indiana-Michigan conference executive secretary, Sherm Kauffman,
drew up a diverse list: Yoder and his family; women who had
experienced sexual misconduct; the Prairie Street congregation; the
Church Life Commission; the Accountability and Support Group; the
Executive Committee of the Indiana-Michigan conference; A.M.B.S.; and
the wider Mennonite church. Ever hopeful, Kauffman jotted down the
word "closure" alongside this brainstorming list.(282)
But closure would be elusive. Relations with Yoder had deteriorated
over the dissemination of the Gottlieb report, and officials of the Indiana-
Michigan Mennonite Conference were concerned enough about a
potential lawsuit over their retention of the medical record and the
hundreds of documents they intended to archive that they sought legal
advice.(283) Ultimately, the conference passed over its attorney’s counsel to
consider releasing no public statement at all; refraining from releasing a
statement, he had argued, would minimize ”liability for breach of
confidentiality, privacy, and ministerial privilege."(284) But neither did the
conference adopt a suggestion by the Accountability and Support Group
that the proposed news release invite women who wanted to "make
some reconciling contact with Yoder" to phone the Indiana-Michigan
conference offices.(285) At least seventeen drafts of a press release
circulated among Indiana-Michigan Mennonite conference officials,
Yoder, and others.
In the end, the heavily-edited statement, sent to Mennonite papers in
]une 1996, announced that Yoder's disciplinary process was over. The
release commended Yoder ”for participating in the process to its
conclusion" and encouraged "the church to use his gifts of writing and
teaching."(286) Although the release noted that Yoder's ministerial
credential would not be reinstated, no reasons were given, and while it
______________________
282. Sherm Kauffman, ”Groups with Interests in IHY News Release,” c. 1996, MC USA
Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, Il-05-019.
283. Minutes of Indiana-Michigan Executive Committee, Aug. 31-Sept. 1, 1995, p. 3, MC
USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, ll-05-019.
284. Quotation from Greg Hartzler to Sherm Kauffman, Ian. 17, 1996, MC USA Indiana-
Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, Il-05-019.
285. Quotation from "Rough Draft #2/’ c. 1995, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite
Conference John Howard Yoder Files, ll-O5-019; John Howard Yoder to Gordon Dyck and
C.L.C., Oct. 2, 1995, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard
Yoder Files, II-05-019.
286. Quotations from news release, "Disciplinary Process with John Howard Yoder
Draws to a Close,” 1996, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard
Yoder Files, II-05-019; Sherm Kauffman to Gospel Herald, Gospel Evangel, and Mennonite
Weekly Review, June 6, 1996, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John
Howard Yoder Files, ll-05-019; Notes of consultation with Carolyn Holderread Heggen,
Sherm Kauffman, Willard Swartley, Ted Koontz, and Gayle Gerber Koontz, 1997, AMBS
Sara Wenger Shenk Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-002,
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 73
recommended use of an accountability plan, it offered no details. Nor
did the release address the issue of restitution. Although Indiana-
Michigan conference officials had hoped that Yoder would write a public
statement of apology that they could issue alongside the conference’s
statement, he declined to do so. In preceding years, Yoder had expressed
regret to several women who had confronted him directly, but in 1996 he
did not want to issue a blanket statement when he felt he had ”no voice"
in unresolved matters with the Indiana-Michigan conference.(287)
BEARING THE COSTS
The press release was a disappointment to the women who four years
earlier had reported their experiences to Mennonite officials. Through
updates provided by the Accountability and Support Group, they had
been kept apprised of the Indiana-Michigan conference’s substantive
efforts to challenge Yoder. From their perspective, Yoder had been called
to repentance by his church but had not repented. The press release
provided no evidence that Yoder’s behavior had changed, nor assurance
that he was unlikely to offend again, and it conveyed little regard for
victims and the costs they had borne in bringing Yoder’s past to light.(288)
The harms to women were varied and deeply personal. Some women
remained in the Mennonite church, but others, disillusioned by their
denomination’s seeming inability to confront Yoder, left. Some
redirected their careers away from pastoral ministry or church
administration. While women and their allies bore the costs of alienation
from a church that had earlier nurtured them, the losses were not only
personal. Some, critical of institutional responses to Yoder’s abuse, asked
whether Mennonites produced so few female theologians because
Yoder’s legacy pushed women away from seminary study and onto
alternative vocational paths.(289)
These questions would linger for decades following the conclusion of
Yoder’s disciplinary process with the Indiana-Michigan conference. For
Yoder, on the other hand, the 1996 press release opened the way for new
speaking invitations. In January 1997 he traveled to Harrisonburg,
Virginia, as a featured lecturer on peace theology for Eastern Mennonite
Seminary’s annual leadership training event. The seminary's invitation
became a flashpoint for faculty and students dismayed by their school’s
offer of a public forum for him to speak, given that the press statement
________________
287. Quotation from John Howard Yoder to Sherm Kauffman, March 8, 1996, MC USA
Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
288. Good interview with author; Heggen interview with author.
289. Heggen, email to author, Sept. 29, 2014.
74 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
released just months earlier had not included an apology.(290) The
controversy prompted Eastern Mennonite Seminary leaders to request
from Yoder a statement “renouncing the wrongs of the past."(291) Yoder
replied with a five-sentence statement on the Mennonite disciplinary
process, saying in part that “I regret the institutional decisions which
have permitted the persistence of the misperception that I had not
repented or apologized.”(292) The invitation to speak stood, and Yoder
made his campus presentation as planned, responding to a question
posed about what he had learned in the past four years by saying that
“there isn't anyone l’ve hurt that I haven’t wanted to apologize to and
l'm grateful for those who have forgiven me."(293)
Through the last year of his life, John Howard Yoder gave substantial
energy to scholarly endeavors at the University of Notre Dame. Nearby,
at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, a new
president, J. Nelson Kraybill, was inaugurated in the spring of 1997. It
was a new day for the Mennonite seminary, and contemplating the
Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference's advice that the church use
Yoder’s gifts of teaching, his former faculty colleagues discussed how
they might extend a reconciling gesture.(294) An opportunity came during
the fall semester, when A.M.B.S. faculty and administrators invited
Yoder to teach a seminary course on Christianity, war, and peace.
Yoder’s former student and colleague, Willard Swartley, extended the
invitation, assuring Yoder that after a thirteen-year ban, he was now
welcome on campus, Few students questioned the seminary's decision,
________________________
290. Barbra Graber, "In the Case of the Mennonite Church’s Invitation to Return John
Howard Yoder To His Honored Place as a Teacher of Peace and Reconciliation Among Us,"
c. Jan. 1997, AMBS Sara Wenger Shenk Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-002; George R.
Brunk Ill to Barbra Graber, ]an. 8, 1997, AMBS Sara Wenger Shenk Files on John Howard
Yoder, X-18-002.
291. Duane Sider and George R. Brunk III to John Howard Yoder, Ian. 11, 1997, MC
USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, ll-05-019.
292. ]ohn Howard Yoder to George R. Brunk Ill, ]an. 14, 1997, AMBS Sara Wenger
Shenk Files on ]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-002. Yoder stipulated that his newly-written
statement not be circulated or posted publicly, and E.M.U. officials complied.-Beryl
Brubaker, George R. Brunk III, and William Hawk to E.M.U. Community, Ian. 16, 1997,
AMBS Sara Wenger Shenk Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-002.
293. Quotation from Yoder in Christa Eshleman, “Seminary Features Yoder:
Theologian’s Return Raises Questions," Weather Vane, v. 42, no. 10, Ian. 23, 1997; see also
Goossen, ”Campus Protests and John Howard Yoder,” Mennonite Life (forthcoming, 2015).
294. Erland Waltner to Willard Swartley, ]ake Elias, and Ted Koontz, Oct. 24, 1996,
AMBS Sara Wenger Shenk Files on ]ohn Howard Yoder, X-18-002; Nelson Kraybill email to
John Howard Yoder, March 12, 1997, AMBS Sara Wenger Shenk Files on ]ohn Howard
Yoder, X-18-002; Ted Koontz interview with author; Ben Ollenburger interview with
author, June 7, 2014;
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 75
and Yoder's return as a part-time lecturer to campus during the fall of
1997 was uncontroversial.(295)
Through that fall, elders and others at Prairie Street Mennonite
Church continued to hope that Anne and John Yoder would return to
worship as members of the congregation. A new pastor was arriving,
and the couple attended an informal gathering at his home. On
December 28, 1997, the Yoders attended a Sunday service at their
longtime Mennonite congregation.(296) It marked a return from the
Lutheran church and a quiet homecoming; in coming decades, Anne
Yoder would regularly attend the Prairie Street church and maintain
close friendships there.
Two days after the Prairie Street morning service, on December 30,
Iohn Howard Yoder died suddenly at age 70 after suffering a heart
attack. In the days and weeks to come, tributes to him emphasized
themes of renewal. Nelson Kraybill, the A.M.B.S. president, told the
South Bend Tribune that ”I would regret if his personal failures, which
John Yoder acknowledged, were more widely publicized than the
process of restoration and forgiveness.”(297) Atlee Beechy, the Goshen
College psychology and peace studies professor who had chaired the
Accountability and Support Group through the four-year Mennonite
disciplinary process, echoed Kraybill's words as a wise, sensitive
approach for those contemplating Yoder's legacy, adding: "May the
healing continue!”(298)
HIGH STAKES FOR MENNONITE IDENTITY
Over the past two decades, emerging scholarship has intensified
interest in Yoder's peace theology in View of the sexual abuse
perpetrated at A.M.B.S. and far beyond. Public discourse surrounding
narratives of Yoder's life, evident from strong interest in his writings,
persona, and legacies of abuse, underscore the significance of this story
for the collective identity of North American Mennonites. For those who
in the mid- to late-twentieth century admired Yoder for carrying notions
of Christian nonviolence and discipleship to the larger world, the
__________________
295. Yoder completed the teaching of the course, filling in for the regular professor who
was on leave.-Nelson Kraybill, ”John Howard Yoder as Lecturer in Ethics Course," Oct. 6,
1997, AMBS Sara Wenger Shenl< Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-002; John Howard
Yoder to Willard Swartley, Sept. 18, 1997, AMBS Sara Wenger Shenk Files on John Howard
Yoder, X-18-002; Nelson Kraybill, interview with author, ]une 6, 2014; Swartley interview
with author.
296. John Bender interview with author.
297. ”Theologian, N.D. Instructor Yoder Dies,” South Bend Tribune, Ian. 1, 1998, B-5.
298. Atlee Beechy to Nelson Kraybill, Ian. 6, 1998, AMBS Sara Wenger Shenk Files on
John Howard Yoder, X-18-002.
76 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
theologian embodied Mennonitism. ln more recent years, many
individuals and a number of organizations-including Anabaptist
Mennonite Biblical Seminary and Mennonite Church USA-have
attempted to influence the representation of his abuses in the press and
through electronic media.(299) Consequently, this narrative about Yoder
and the women he targeted illuminates contested interpretations by
claimants with stakes in Mennonite identity and theology. But as long as
Yoder remains the key actor in this story, the perspectives of women
who challenged his sexual violence and identified its detrimental costs
are sidelined.
Yoder's sexualized behaviors cannot be dismissed, as some have
suggested, as mere ”peccadilloes," a term that implies an indulgent
appetite of little consequence.(300) Writing in 1992, A.l\/I.B.S. president
Marlin Miller described Yoder's behavior as ranging “from what some
people would consider bad taste and social ineptitude to what any
Mennonite congregation or any Christian institution would consider
immoral."(301) During Yoder's life and since his death, many with
knowledge of his abuse have assumed that he struggled with sexual
addiction. Others-including some former colleagues and students who
recall his social awkwardness-have wondered if Yoder may have had
Asperger syndrome.(302) Yet these unsubstantiated speculations offer no
insight into Yoder's sexual aggressions toward so many women. Still
others seeking to understand Yoder's seemingly inexplicable behavior
have offered religious explanations: demon possession-that is, sin
_______________________
299. Observers claiming Mennonite identity, as well as some who do not characterize
themselves as Mennonite, have participated in vigorous debates about Yoder's past; cf.
Sara Wenger Shenk, "A (Potentially Transformative) Teachable Moment," Sept. 12, 2013,
http://www.ambs.edu/publishing/blog/10153/2013/9; Stephanie Krehbiel, ”The Woody
Allen Problem: How Do We Read Pacifist Theologian (and Sexual Abuser) John Howard
Yoder?," Religion Dispatches (2014), http://religiondispatches.org/the-woody-allen-problem-
how-do-we-read-pacifist-theologian-and-sexual-abuser-john-howard-yoder/; and Lisa
Schirch, commentary, Iune 25, 2014, http://emu.edu/now/anabaptist-nation/2014/05/01/the
church-discipline-of-john-howard-yoder-2/.
300. William Klassen email to Ross Lynn Bender, Oct. 9, 2004, online,
rossbender.org/AMES-JHY.pdf.
301. Marlin Miller to Victor Stoltzfus, March 20, 1991, AMBS Marlin E. Miller Files on
John Howard Yoder, X-18-001.
302. On the Asperger’s notion, cf. Ted Grimsrud, "Word and Deed: The Strange Case of John Howard Yoder," Thinking Pacmsm Blog, Dec. 30, 2010, http://thinkingpacifismnetl-
2010/12/30/word-and-deed-the-strange-case-of-john-howard-yoder/; Glen Stassen, "Glen
Stassen’s Reflections on the Yoder Scandal," Thinking Pacfsm Blog, Sept. 24, 2013,
David Cramer, David, Jenny Howell, Ionathan Tran and Paul Martens, ”Scandalizing John
Howard Yoder," http://theotherjournalcom, July 7, 2014, note 7.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 77
requiring exorcism via the strongest spiritual resources available
through Yoder's own professed Christian faith.(303)
Admirers of Yoder's theology have cited these and other notions in
attempting to explain his behavior. Yet those who offer medicalized
theories about whether Yoder struggled with undiagnosed Asperger's,
as well as those who gloss over the Mennonites' disciplinary processes as
triumphant restoration, continue in the tradition of Marlin Miller by
keeping the focus on Yoder himself rather than on the consequences of
his actions.(304) Such explanations deflect attention away from institutional
complicity and reveal Yoder's followers’ attempts to explain away his
misdeeds so that they might reclaim his theology.(305) Iust as Miller,
during the late 1970s and early 19805, used his authority to silence Elena
because he held Yoder in such high esteem, a number of recent
interpreters have continued to minimize Yoder's history of sexual abuse
while highlighting his theological career.(306)
During the 1990s, Yoder himself was dismissive of the various moral,
psychological, and religious diagnoses that institutional challengers set
before him. But he had weighty supporters who argued against the
monitoring of his "internal attitudes and convictions” even though they
noted that Yoder "may not quite understand why the women are hurt.
He may believe his theory about sexuality is right."(307) Those who took
this position viewed Yoder's restoration as essential. In 1996, at the
conclusion of Yoder's disciplinary process, the ethicists Stanley
Hauerwas and Glen Stassen commended Mennonite officials for work
well done and for a satisfying endpoint, since “Churches have a
tremendous need for his gifts."(308) For Hauerwas and Stassen, eminent
leaders in their fields, restoring Yoder to his place of eminence was only
right, since, in their words, ”Mennonites are admired for Christian
_______________________
303. Ted Koontz, journal entry, Feb. 14, 1992, provided by Ted Koontz, in the author’s
possession.
304. Invoking Asperger syndrome in connection with sexual abuse also perpetuates
prejudice; on scholars' irresponsibility in this matter, see Hamilton and Lambelet, "A Dark
Theme Revisited: How to Read Yoder's Sexualized Violence.”
305. See, for example, "The Yoder File,” editorial, The Christian Century, Aug. 20, 2014,
p. 7.
306. Cf. Glenn Friesen, “The Church Discipline of Iohn Howard Yoder: Legal and
Religious Considerations,” 2014, http://www.members.shaw.ca/chronicle/Yoder.html and
Mark Thiessen Nation, coauthored with Marva Dawn, "On Contextualizing Two Failures
of Iohn Howard Yoder," Sept. 23, 2013, http://emu.edu/now/anabaptist-nation/2013-
/09/23/on-contextualizing-two~failures-of-john-howard-yoder/.
307. Quotation from Hauerwas and Nation to Yoder Church Discipline Committee, ]uly
7, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference john Howard Yoder Files, II-05-
019.
308. Glen Stassen and Stanley Hauerwas to Sherrn Kauffman, Iuly 22, 1996, MC USA
Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
78 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
discipline and sometimes criticized for not practicing enough forgiveness
and grace."(309) From afar, Hauerwas and Stassen cast a glow on a process
that Yoder himself dismissed. After months of struggle with Indiana-
Michigan conference representatives over their right to retain Gottlieb's
psychiatric report, Yoder concluded that "the initially stated goal of
restoration has been abandoned."(310)
Others interpreting the same events have focused less on restoration
and more on reconciliation. Olive branches extended in the form of
visits, calls, meal invitations, and cordial notes from elders and others at
the Prairie Street Mennonite Church encouraged the return of the Yoders
to their Mennonite congregation.(311) Similarly, efforts in 1996 and 1997 at
A.M.B.S. to invite Yoder back to campus brought a renewed relationship,
in limited measure, between Yoder and his former base. One A.M.B.S.
administrator told Yoder in 1996 that "the concept of shunning” no
longer carried the day.(312) Still, reconciliation between Yoder and the
seminary was compromised by an institutional past burdened with
secrets.(313)
The promised restoration of Yoder as churchman, championed by
Hauerwas and Stassen, offered reassurance to anyone seeking to read
Yoder as a credible theologian. The goal of reconciliation, plumbed
diligently by Prairie Street congregants as well as by A.M.B.S. leaders,
highlighted the conciliatory stance of some influential Mennonites
toward Yoder. But few Prairie Street or A.M.B.S. representatives situated
their hopes for ”reconciliation" in Yoder’s relations with women he had
sexually harassed and abused. A more expansive form of reconciliation
had been envisioned by Indiana-Michigan conference committee
members, who initially worked toward sufficient restitution to be made
available for women victims and the development of a ”safe plan" to
ensure a lower likelihood of recidivism. But these reconciling gestures
never occurred, in part because Yoder had earlier-in his theological
___________________
309. Ibid.
310. John Howard Yoder to Sherm Kauffman, Dec. 16, 1996, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, ll-05-019.
311. Church records also indicate discord among members and pastors through the
mid-19905 over the theologian’s estrangement from his congregation.-Prairie Street Task
Force on Church Leadership, memo to congregation, April 21, 1996, Prairie Street
Mennonite Church Files; Harold Yoder interview with author; Simon Gingerich interview
with author.
312. Quotation from Gerald Gerbrandt to John Howard Yoder, May 13, 1996, AMBS
Sara Wenger Shenk Files on John Howard Yoder, X-18-002.
313. Evelyn Shellenberger interview with author.
Mennonite Responses to John Howard Yoder’s Sexual Abuse 79
disputation with Marlin Miller over sexual ethics-honed his skills of
rationalizing to control the process.(314)
Yoder's ideas about sexuality were at the core of his relationships with
many people. These ideas were infused with his theology. In December
1997, a week before his death, in an email to a woman twenty-five years
younger whom he had never met but had noticed at a conference, Yoder
referred to his own recent experiences with Mennonite discipline. He
added that "the [reconciliation] process lost ground" and asked her to
aid him "in a confidential exchange about how it might be possible.”(315)
The recipient, who knew of his history of sexual misconduct, never
responded. But Yoder's appeal to her, calling out to engage
confidentially, could be read as a quiet reverberation of his behavioral
patterns more than two decades earlier when he had enticed young
women with "A Call for Aid," saying, "I need your help .... They are
delicate themes."(316)
Mennonite denominational responses to Yoder’s legacy of sexual
abuse show the entanglement of a theologian who had long professed a
biblical frame for church discipline -- If your brother sins against you, go and
tell him his fault--with institutional figures reluctant, even unwilling, to
adjust the frame to mitigate effects of violence and power. During the
1970s and 1980s, leaders at A.M.B.S, used secrecy to guard the reputation
of the seminary, and, even more tellingly, guarded Yoder's embodied
Mennonitism, a faith tradition that they saw him as representing ably
and admirably to the broader world.
But in engaging Yoder's ideas about sexual ethics, Miller and his
Covenant Group hurt many people, including themselves.(317) Their
exertions were echoed in the 1990s and beyond within fraternal
Mennonite institutions-including Herald Press and the Indiana-
Michigan Mennonite Conference-that aimed to preserve Mennonite
identity and polity through precarious negotiations in the fallout of
Yoder’s actions. By the late twentieth century, some of the secrecy that
had characterized Mennonite institutions’ responses to Yoder's abuses
gave way to new paradigms, most notably a critique of victim-blaming
and a reading of Matthew 18 that contextualizes significant power
_________________
314. A.S.G. Progress Report to C,L.C., May 17, 1994, MC USA Indiana-Michigan
Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-05-019.
315. John Howard Yoder email to "Rosalie" (pseudonym), Dec. 22, 1997, provided by
Carolyn Holderread Heggen, in the author's possession.
316. Yoder, “A Call for Aid,” 1974, p. 1.
317. Ted Koontz interview with author; Evelyn Shellenberger interview with author;
Marcus Srnucker interview with author; Richard Kauffman interview with author.
80 The Mennonite Quarterly Review
imbalances between parties.(318) Meanwhile, this tragedy reflected how
silence, patriarchal assumptions, and concern for damage control
enabled an "experiment” that was never an experiment at all, but a
theological idea carried along by Mennonite interests for far too long.(319)
_______________
318. Cf. Ted Koontz to John Howard Yoder, March 10, 1992, provided by Ted Koontz, in
the author's possession, and John K. Stoner to James Lapp, received April 4, 1991, Prairie
Street Mennonite Church/IHY Task Force Files.
319. For perceptive commentary on institutional failures in the handling of Yoder's
abusiveness, see George R. Brunk HI to Sherm Kauffman, Jan. 15, 1997, MC USA Indiana-
Michigan Mennonite Conference John Howard Yoder Files, II-O5-019.
