Mennonite theologian/ethicist John Howard Yoder was one of the most influential theologians of the latter part of the twentieth century. Believing that pacifism is inseparable from Christian theology and practices, he tirelessly preached and taught this good news to any who would listen, first reaching a wide audience when he published The Politics of Jesus in 1972, a strong defense of Christian pacifism and critique of Constantinianism. Yoder had a distinctive reading of Christian history. He followed most Anabaptists in arguing that while the early church subscribed to Christian pacifism, the fourth century church compromised with Constantine and went to war. The church succumbed to Constantinianism. Constantinianism is an arrangement in which the church’s attitude towards violence and money shifts away from the New Testament pattern of pacifism and suspicion of wealth, towards a “responsible” ethic suitable to dominating and ruling people who do not confess Jesus as Lord. Yet Yoder located the most prominent sign of unfaithfulness in the early pacifist church, which shunned the Jewishness of its faith in favor of respectability and power. Though a Mennonite himself, he would even castigate Mennonites to the extent that they have left the diaspora for a settled and compromised existence with the powers.
Some of his other works include, The Christian Witness to the State (1964), The Original Revolution (1972), Nevertheless (1972), Priestly Kingdom (1985), The Royal Priesthood (1994), and For the Nations. In April 2009 Brazos Press will release Yoder’s Christian Attitudes to War, Peace and Revolution, edited by Ted Koontz and Andy Alexis-Baker (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2009).
Yoder published hundreds of articles in his career, most of which were published in obscure journals and magazines that are not accessible to the public. Here we offer a few samples of those obscure writings, which have not been made available more widely except on this site, in order to introduce his thought to readers and make a few pieces more widely available than they otherwise would have been.
Articles by John Howard Yoder available for reading:
“The Christian Declaration of Independence.” Christian Living (July 1955): 27.
“Nonconformity and the Nation.” Christian Living (Feb. 1955): 8–9, 25, 33.
“Things That Are Caesar’s: Part 1.” Christian Living (July 1960): 4–5.
“Things That Are Caesar’s: Part 2.” Christian Living (Aug. 1960): 14–17, 39.
“Things That Are Caesar’s: Part 2.” Christian Living (Sept. 1960): 16–18.
“Why I Don’t Pay All My Income Tax.” Gospel Herald (Jan. 22, 1963): 81, 92.
“The Biblical Mandate.” Post American 3, no. 3 (April 1974): 21–25.
“The National Ritual: Biblical Realism and the Elections.” Sojourners 5, no. 8 (Oct. 1976): 29–30.
“Can There Be a Just War?” Radix 13, no. 2 (Sept.–Oct. 1981): 3–9.
“Cleansing the Temple.” Epiphany: A Journal of Faith and Insight 4 (Spring 1984): 16–18.
