John Howard Yoder

John Howard Yoder (1927-1997) was an American Mennonite theologian and ethicist, one of the most influential defenders of Christian pacifism in the twentieth century. Writing from the Anabaptist tradition, he focused on the relationship between Christian faith and political power.

He studied at Goshen College and earned his doctorate at Basel, where he worked with Karl Barth. He taught at Mennonite seminaries and, from the mid-1960s, at the University of Notre Dame. His best-known book, The Politics of Jesus (1972), argues that the ethics of Jesus, centered on love and nonviolence, is a political alternative to coercive power. For Yoder, the church should not seek to dominate society but to be a community of disciples that witnesses to a different way of life. He criticized Constantinianism, the alliance between church and state, and the realism of Reinhold Niebuhr, and he rejected the search for a universal Enlightenment-style ethic. After his death, allegations emerged that he had sexually abused women over several decades, a fact that has clouded his legacy.