A new book has just been released that engages the work of John Howard Yoder: Power and Practices: Engaging the Work of John Howard Yoder, edited by Jeremy Bergen and Anthony Siegrist. Scottdale, PA.: Herald Press, 2009.
Herald Press describes the book this way:
A new generation engages the theology of John Howard Yoder. These essays wrestle with questions of power and its implications for social practices including policing, nonviolence, sexism, governmentality, dialogue, political critique, theological construction, and the work of “inheriting” a theological tradition.
The authors and their approaches to Yoder’s work are diverse. They bring a wide array of backgrounds to the task, from activism and church leadership to advanced studies and the professorate. What each has in common is an instinct to place Yoder’s work into new conversations and to examine it through new lenses.
Nekeisha Alexis-Baker’s article, “Freedom in the Cross: John Howard Yoder and Womanist Theologies in Conversation,” engages Yoder’s work from a womanist perspective in an attempt to find points of commonality and difference. She also pays special attention to his idea of “revolutionary subordination” as it relates to Black women’s experience pre- and post- slavery in America.
My own essay (Andy Alexis-Baker), “Unbinding Yoder from Just Policing” examines how people like Jim Wallis, Glen Stassen, Gerald Schlabach and others have misused Yoder to further their international policing agendas. I offer a critique and a new reading of Yoder that is the first time anyone has actually examined all of his writing in detail on policing.
Some discussion of it in the forums.
