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The Ecclesial Ethics of John Howard Yoder’s Abuse
Author(s) -
Villegas Isaac Samuel
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
modern theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.144
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1468-0025
pISSN - 0266-7177
DOI - 10.1111/moth.12623
Subject(s) - witness , discernment , power (physics) , theology , philosophy , human sexuality , sexual abuse , sociology , psychoanalysis , religious studies , law , psychology , political science , gender studies , poison control , suicide prevention , medicine , linguistics , physics , environmental health , quantum mechanics
Abstract In the last decade – now that his sexual abuse is no longer deniable – Christian ethicists have had to reconsider John Howard Yoder’s theological contributions in the late twentieth century. This essay considers how the witness of the women who survived his abuse exposes the sexism latent in his development of a framework for moral discernment and community discipline. Yoder designed an ecclesiology that was congruent with his pursuit of unaccountable power over the women he used as subjects for working out his exploitative sexuality. His theological contributions, I argue, cannot be separated from his behavior.