John Howard Yoder as a mission theologian.

Park, Joon-Sik

The work of John Howard Yoder (1927-97) has been influential in the fields of Christian ethics and theology. It is noteworthy that Yoder also wrote extensively in the field of mission throughout his denominational and academic career. His writings on mission and evangelism, however, have not received the attention those on pacifism and ethical methodology have, partly because a significant portion of them either were published in denominational popular journals or remained unpublished. Yet Yoder deserves to be considered and studied as a mission theologian, for his acute insights and reflections on mission illumine fundamental issues and would contribute greatly to current debates in missiology. In this article describing his missionary involvement and examining some of the major themes in his mission theology, I intend to portray Yoder as a mission theologian who consistently drew on the Scriptures and on the Radical Reformation tradition for unique insight and an alternative perspective on issues of mission and evangelism.

Yoder's Missionary Involvement

The Oak Grove Mennonite Church in Wooster, Ohio, where Yoder was reared, was progressive in its theology and polity and, at the same time, was deeply evangelical, emphasizing evangelism and conducting regular revival meetings. (1) According to his mother, Ethel, Yoder professed his personal faith in Christ at age twelve. While studying at Goshen College, he regularly engaged in door-to-door evangelism. An evangelism partner vividly described Yoder's participation in evangelistic ministry: "John and I walked the streets of the Locust Grove community in Elkhart, Ind., every Sunday morning to share the Good News about Jesus. With Bibles in hand, this very intelligent young man and I knocked on doors and sat with low-income, poorly educated, wonderful people and shared our lives. He was able to do this in a beautiful way. I wish you could have heard his comments and prayers." (2)

In 1948, a year after his graduation from Goshen College, Yoder applied for an assignment with the Mennonite Central Committee. He was accepted, and from 1949 through 1954 he worked in France as director of postwar relief and social work in that country, supervising the work of two children's homes. Then, while studying full-time at the University of Basel in 1954-57, he was charged with a relief program of the Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities in Algeria, following that country's 1954 earthquake. (3) After returning to America in 1957, he served as an administrative assistant for overseas missions at the Mennonite Board of Missions (1959-65), and then as associate consultant (1965-70). (4)

From 1959 to 1966 Yoder was involved as a mission strategist in the Mennonite mission in Nigeria. There he developed a new kind of postcolonial mission strategy for southeastern Nigeria. According to Wilbert Shenk, "Yoder's gifts of penetrating analysis, theological acuity, wide acquaintance with both ecumenical and evangelical missions, and awareness of the literature of the day were crucial to the process. (5) Particularly his understanding of ecumenism was highly relevant to the very conflictive, confusing, and fragmentary church situation in the region. In that environment he argued for Christian unity as a biblical call and imperative.

Believing in the biblical basis for the unity of the church, Yoder actively participated in the World Council of Churches in various roles for more than two decades. As William Klassen has stated, Yoder "opened up the world of the Anabaptists, especially their hermeneutics, to the ecumenical church." (6)

The Radical Reformation and Christian Mission

Yoder faithfully and untiringly developed his missiology from a radical Anabaptist vision. He stressed the fact that, of all the churches of the Reformation, the Anabaptists alone renewed and retained the essential missional character of the church. He correlated the absence of missionary thinking and practice in the magisterial Reformation with its bondage to the state and subsequent provincialism.

Trusting that resolute attention to the historic free-church tradition would illuminate Christian missionary thought, Yoder delineated some of its distinctive marks in relation to mission. First, the Radical Reformation rejected the Constantinian ecclesiology that identified baptized Christians with true believers, insisting instead that the church must be distinguished from the world. It recovered the crucial importance of voluntary personal decision in Christian faith; when the element of voluntary commitment is lost, the church comes to have no concerns beyond its own membership. (7)

Second, Radical Reformation churches recovered the place of the peace message in the witness of the church. For Yoder a peace witness is not a sectarian peculiarity but "something very central to [and] always a part of the Gospel." (8) The credibility of mission and evangelism is inseparably related with love of one's enemy as a component of the gospel message. In particular, mass killing of non-Christians in a war at the call of a government is "'a disobedience in the field of missions." (9)

Third, the recovery of the peace message in mission would dictate a missional posture and practices appropriate to the message. Centuries of colonial domination by Christian nations had built walls that old ways of mission could not surmount. Yoder believed that the only possible way left was to "get under the wall. (10) The cross simply cannot be proclaimed from a position of domination and violence, but from that of service and humility, which is a distinctively free-church way of carrying out mission.

Evangelism, Discipleship, and Social Concern

The integration of evangelism and discipleship is another mark of the Radical Reformation mission. Yoder insisted that evangelism and the demands of discipleship should not be separated. It is wrong "to relegate matters of ethical concern to secondary or derivative status," (11) since such dualism implies that conversion with regard to the substance of morality is either postponed or considered of lesser importance. Moral conversion encompassing both the content of ethical obligation and radical obedient commitment should take place at the same time with spiritual conversion. Yoder's claim that ethical content is not to be set aside for the sake of numerical growth is still relevant for contemporary churches, which often become captive to the success mentality of our culture.

Yoder also did not allow any dichotomy between evangelism and social responsibility. Reflecting on Jesus' practices of healing and feeding, he maintained that Jesus neither expected nor looked for any particular kind of results based on his physical and material aid; he simply acted out of compassion. The imperative for every Christian is thus to care about all the needs of the neighbor, whether physical or spiritual. There should be separation between charity and missionary intention; missionaries are not to expect even "a sympathetic hearing" for their message as a result of material aid. For Yoder, "mission and service work should both be done. Neither should be done alone and neither should be done for the sake of the other." (12)

Congregational Missiology

Yoder's most significant contribution to the field of mission in particular and to that of theology in general is his passionate call for recovery of the communal dimension of the church as an ethical and missional reality. (13) He states that the redemptive work of God in Jesus is to be understood as "the calling of a people ... from which both personal conversion and missionary instrumentalities are derived." Therefore, "the distinctness of the church of believers is prerequisite to the meaningfulness of the gospel message." (14)

For Yoder, peoplehood and mission cannot be separated; each upholds the genuineness of the other. The mission of the church is first and foremost to be and to remain the "peculiar people" that God has called it to be. Since the community of believers is the form of the mission, Yoder called for "the congregational structure of the mission" rather than "the missionary structure of the congregation." (15) In fact, the Great Commission "does not authorize sending by the church; it is the church that is sent." (16)

Ecumenical Unity

Mark Nation perceptively pointed out that "one way to read Yoder is that his whole life demonstrated his commitment to a 'special ecumenical vocation' and, often, an embodiment of 'ecumenical patience." (17) Yoder firmly believed that the unity of the church is a scriptural command and that, where there is no unity, the Gospel itself is at stake.

The kind of unity Yoder envisioned is not simple agreement that evades the truth question; it is, first, reconciliation at the point of difference or division through dialogue, prerequisite to which are "a mutually recognized authority" and "the willingness to move, to change positions." (18) True conversation seeks ways to face differences clearly, accepting both the claims of Christ upon each party and the authority of Scripture as the court of appeal. Second, the unity is to be supranational, not subservient to nationalism. Third, unity in ethical commitment is as central as unity in Christian teaching and worship: "if there be one faith, one body, one hope, there must also be one obedience." (19) Fourth, the unity sought is not "a common denominator," since a merger based on the attainable consensus functions simply on the level of business administration or efficiency and not of ecclesiology.

With regard to cooperation in ministry among churches, Yoder stated that the degree of communion and shared ministry is to depend on the level of reached agreement. The principle is "to go neither farther nor less far than existing agreement permits." (20) In other words, a different degree of unity is required in accordance with the nature of each common task. Faithful to his Radical Reformation tradition, Yoder also insisted that the real ecumenical action be carried out not by mission agencies and task forces but by local congregations. Actual local gatherings for worship and business are the place where that unity must be tested and experienced.

Interreligious Dialogue

Although Yoder wrote less about interfaith relations and dialogue than he did about ecumenism, (21) the depth of his insights and his vigor with regard to the issue of interreligious dialogue are significant indeed. Carefully examining the challenges posed by the resurgence of other faiths and contemporary responses to them, Yoder sought to provide an alternative perspective faithful to his Radical Reformation tradition and to his belief in the particularity of the Gospel.

For Yoder, Christians' view of other religions is at the deepest level "a reflection or a projection of our faith." (22) Since, however, the church's accommodation to pagan culture and religion, which had begun in the second century, led to new depths of unfaithfulness under Constantine in the fourth century, (23) Christianity's true encounter with other religions should start with the disavowal of Constantine, recovering and clarifying its own identity. Yoder believed that a rejection of Constantinianism would fundamentally alter our perspective in interfaith dialogue, since Christendom was formed more by other religious cultures than by the Bible.

The marks of a non-Constantinian perspective include "concern for the particular, historical, and therefore Jewish quality and substance of New Testament faith in Jesus." (24) Yoder traced the beginning of the fall of the church back even further than Constantine to its separation from Judaism in the second century and its denial of authentic continuity between Judaism's particular vision and its own. (25) That separation and denial resulted in the church's loss of uniqueness and particularity. Thus, for Yoder, the clarification of identity means returning to the vision of Abraham--'a radically historical alternative to a religious [abstract and universal] vision of [the] cosmos" (26)--which was later fulfilled by the particular historical figure Jesus of Nazareth.

The error of the Christendom mission was not that it tied itself too closely to Jesus but that in actuality it denied him in its alliance with imperialism and the use of violence. Thus, the corrective would be "not to talk less about Jesus and more about religion, but the contrary," that is, to radicalize "the particular relevance of Jesus, enabling dialogue through the content of the message: the love of the adversary, the dignity of the lowly, repentance, servanthood, the renunciation of coercion." (27) For Yoder, Christians' ultimate contribution in interfaith dialogue is to get out of the way so that people of other faiths might see Jesus more clearly and concretely.

Prerequisite to interfaith dialogue is affirmation of "the uncoercible dignity of the interlocutor as person and one's solidarity ... with him as neighbor." (28) Furthermore, we must accept the vulnerability of the gospel message in the sense that it must remain noncoercive if it is to be valid. With such a posture, mission and dialogue are not mutually exclusive alternatives; each finds its validity only in relation to the other. This is because "respect for the genuineness of dialogue demands in both directions that there be no disavowal in principle of my witness becoming an open option for the other." (29)

"As You Go": Migration and Mission

The major themes of Yoder's missiology are woven together most integrally in his vision of "migration as mission." As early as 1961 Yoder advocated "migration" as a new way of mission and evangelism in the postcolonial era. (30) First, in order to know another religion, Christians must go to reside where it is practiced so as to learn its language and culture and to live and struggle through the differences and the distance between systems. In going to a foreign country as immigrants, missionaries would intend to be nationalized rather than expecting eventually to return to their home countries. Their own language and culture would not last more than one generation.

Second, people can learn to know who Jesus is only if disciples of Jesus come to them. Yoder suggested that migrant missionaries should go in numbers sufficient to create a functioning Christian fellowship, "yet not so large [as] to create a self-sufficient cultural island of their own." (31) A lone missionary or a small group of scattered missionaries would not be able to form a visible community whose life together and practices of reconciliation and service could be observed by the surrounding society.

Third, the witness of missionary migrants could be more penetrating and transformative than that of traditional missions. They would seek to support themselves rather than relying on financial support from churches at home; they would be willing to live at the economic level of people they serve. Yoder believed that "part of our Christian witness can be made only by way of economy," (32) that is, through an example of honesty and reliability. Migrating missionaries, by their involvement in the local economy, would be able to make such witness through their daily contacts in work and marketplace.

Yoder on the Third World

Yoder's missiology does not, however, appear to appreciate fully the unique place of the Third World countries in God's grand scheme of redemptive mission. In "The Third World and Christian Mission," he agreed that we should take the Third World seriously as the theater of God's missionary purposes. However, he concluded that the missionary situation of the faithful church in any age and any place--even in overchurched suburbia in North America--is that of the "third world." For Yoder, "third world" thus becomes a mood, not a place.

His statement certainly has merit in the sense that, in any missionary context, the Gospel is to be proclaimed from a position not of power and strength but of weakness and vulnerability. It fails to recognize with full seriousness, however, the particularity and uniqueness of the cultures in the Third World countries and their concrete experiences of, and struggles against, various forms of oppression. When Yoder said that "'the third world' is the world of our mission wherever we be," (33) he was in danger of neglecting and ignoring the particular political and economic burdens of the Third World countries and the corresponding accountability and responsibility for them on the part of the Western churches.

Although Yoder rightfully called for disavowal of Christendom and criticized its past imperial missional practices, he failed to point out positive elements in the missional legacy of Christendom. Not everything done and left by Christendom has been negative. It can safely be said that, in the expansion of Christianity, God still graciously worked in and through and in spite of Christendom's wrongful vision and ways of mission and evangelism. (34) Yoder recognized the Third World as "the theater" of God's missionary purposes but failed to see it as now the center of Christianity and its churches as the primary agent of Christian mission. He legitimately lamented the failure of Christendom. God in his providence, however, has worked even through the fallible instrument of Christendom to accomplish his larger and greater redemptive mission for humanity. For this we praise him.

Conclusion

John H. Yoder critically addressed major themes of missiology from an Anabaptist vision, persistently providing a unique alternative perspective on them based on his understanding of the particular character of Jesus and of the Christian mission. He consistently referred to the Scriptures and to the Radical Reformation tradition for insight on current issues of mission and evangelism. In numerous ways Yoder argued convincingly that "a more resolute attention to Free Church orientation might illuminate our missionary thought in more places than some would have expected." (35)

In his mission theology Yoder attempts to recover the encompassing totality of God's vision of salvation, since "nothing less than the whole will of God for the whole man can be the burden of our mission." (36) In his missional writings we see an integral interrelation of missiology, ecclesiology, and ethics. The church as a distinct ethical community is to experience, proclaim, and witness to the new reality of human fellowship. Thus the distinction between church and mission is inadmissible; the presence of the church is to be the message as well as its medium. It is crucially important that our practice of mission and evangelism not be separated from the biblically grounded vision of the faithful church.

We must also give careful heed to Yoder's call to give the peace message its legitimate place in Christian mission. Responsible Christian mission implies not only passive avoidance of violence but also active prevention of its use to attain any end. If we consider any person or group from the perspective of mission--that is, with concern for their being able to respond to the proclamation of Christ--then clearly "it is impossible to kill anybody as a solution to an ethical problem." (37)

In the face of the resurgence of other faiths, Yoder's understanding of the gospel truth as particular yet communicable provides a refreshing, worthy alternative to traditional approaches. He would not subordinate particularity and identity to universality and communicability. "Instead of seeking to escape particular identity," said Yoder, "what we need ... is a better way to restate the meaning of a truth claim from within particular identity." (38) The truth claim should, however, be expressed from within the language and thought-worlds that a people inhabit and be made with utmost respect for their culture and religion. Often interreligious dialogue is pursued by intellectuals on the level of abstract religious systems; what we need in interfaith dialogue is to be particular and local rather than being hierarchical and institutional.

Understanding the Gospel as the message of God's acceptance of weakness, Yoder advocated that the practice of mission and evangelism be rooted in faithfulness rather than in effectiveness. He called for restoration of trust in the weakness of the Gospel, which is the mark of the power of God, as well as for abandonment of the success mentality. On the one hand, churches today need to remember that short-term "discernible effectiveness" or apparent success is not to be equated with the progress of God's kingdom. On the other hand, when the church is faithful, even failures should not call into question God's ultimate victory. As Yoder emphatically stated, "That God's cause will triumph was decided on Easter morning." Therefore "we do not realize [Jesus'] victory; we manifest it." (39) Few in the second half of the twentieth century were more eager and faithful than Yoder in calling the attention of the people of God to this great victory.

Notes

(1.) The following biographical sketch of Yoder is based upon two works by Mark Thiessen Nation: "The Ecumenical Patience and Vocation of John Howard Yoder: A Study of Theological Ethics" (Ph.D. diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 2000) and "John Howard Yoder: Mennonite, Evangelical, Catholic," Mennonite Quarterly Review 72 (July 2003): 357-70.

(2.) Geraldine Harder, "Who Is to Blame for Misconduct?" Mennonite Weekly Review, July 23, 1992, quoted in Nation, "John Howard Yoder," p. 365.

(3.) Based on his experiences in Algeria, Yoder wrote a series of five articles in the Gospel Herald: "Islam's Special Challenge to Christian Mission," December 31, 1957, pp. 1142-43; "Islam's Challenge to Mennonites," February 4,1958, pp. 110-11; "Our First Three Years in Algeria," February 18, 1958, pp. 158-60; "The War in Algeria," March 18, 1958, pp. 254-56; and "Missions and Material Aid in Algeria," April 1, 1958, pp. 306-7.

(4.) Yoder's unpublished writings during his service for the Mennonite mission board include "Outline Commentary on Matthew 28:16ff. and Acts 1:8" (1961), "Anabaptist Understanding of the Nature and Mission of the Church" (1967), "Leadership Training in Overseas Churches: A Study Prospectus" (1967), and "Creativity in Missionary Personnel Administration" (1969).

(5.) Wilbert R. Shenk, "'Go Slow Through Uyo': A Case Study of Dialogue as Missionary Method," in Fullness of Life for All: Challenges for Mission in Early Twenty-first Century, ed. Inus Daneel, Charles Van Engen, and Hendrik Vroom (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003), p. 334.

(6.) William Klassen, "John H. Yoder and the Ecumenical Church," Conrad Grebel Review 16 (1998): 77.

(7.) John H. Yoder, "Reformation and Missions: A Literature Survey," in Anabaptism and Mission, ed. Wilbert R. Shenk (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1984), p. 48.

(8.) John H. Yoder, "The Place of Peace Witness in Missions," Gospel Herald, January 3, 1961, p. 14.

(9.) John H. Yoder, "The Nature of the Unity We Seek," Religion in Life 26 (1957): 219.

(10.) Yoder, "Place of Peace Witness," p. 14.

(11.) John H. Yoder, "Experiential Etiology of Evangelical Dualism," Missiology: An International Review 11 (1983): 450.

(12.) Yoder, "Missions and Material Aid," p. 307.

(13.) For further discussion of Yoder's ecclesiology, see my "Ecclesiologies in Creative Tension: The Church as Ethical and Missional Reality in H. Richard Niebuhr and John H. Yoder," International Review of Mission 92 (2003): 332-44.

(14.) John H. Yoder, "A People in the World: Theological Interpretation," in The Concept of the Believers' Church, ed. James Leo Garrett, Jr. (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1969), pp. 258-59.

(15.) Ibid., p. 283, italics mine.

(16.) Yoder, "Commentary on Matthew 28:16ff.," p. 4.

(17.) Nation, "Ecumenical Patience," p. 8.

(18.) Yoder, "Nature of Unity," p. 216.

(19.) Ibid., p. 221.

(20.) John H. Yoder, "The Free Church Ecumenical Style," Quaker Religious Thought 10 (1968): 38.

(21.) Nation, "Ecumenical Patience," p. 132.

(22.) John H. Yoder, "The Christian View of Other Religions," prepared for a class "Theology of Mission" at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, 1970, p. 1. For Yoder the issue of the uniqueness of Christianity "calls for inward critique and not for self justification"; "uniqueness is not a possession or an advantage, but a call, a vulnerability" ("The Finality of Jesus Christ and Other Faiths," collected material from lectures and essays reproduced in the fall of 1983 for the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries course, "Ecclesiology in Missional Perspective," pp. 25-26).

(23.) Yoder's criticism was not so much of Constantine himself as of the age he inaugurated, in which the church, now allied with the state, began a systematic denial of the Gospel.

(24.) John H. Yoder, "The Disavowal of Constantine: An Alternative Perspective on Interfaith Dialogue," in Aspects of Interfaith Dialogue: Tantur Yearbook, 1975-1976, ed. W. Wegner and W. Harrelson (Jerusalem: Tantur Ecumenical Institute for Advanced Theological Studies, 1979), p. 50.

(25.) Yoder understands part of the character of the Radical Reformation to be "a different relationship to the Jewish heritage of Christianity" (ibid.). See his "Judaism as Non-non-Christian Religion," in his book of essays The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited, ed. Michael G. Cartwright and Peter Ochs (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).

(26.) Yoder, "Finality of Jesus Christ," p. 23.

(27.) Yoder, "Disavowal of Constantine," p. 64.

(28.) Ibid., p. 62.

(29.) Ibid., p. 61.

(30.) John H. Yoder, As You Go: The Old Mission in a New Day, Focal Pamphlet no. 5 (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1961).

(31.) John H. Yoder, "Christian Missions at the End of an Era," Christian Living, August 1961, p. 14.

(32.) John H. Yoder, "Missionary Church," Gospel Herald, January 8,1963, p. 38.

(33.) John H. Yoder, "The Third World and Christian Mission," paper presented at the Inter-Seminaries Consultation, Elkhart, Ind., January 28-31, 1971, p. 10.

(34.) I appreciate the comment of Wilbert R. Shenk, alerting me to the fact that a defense of Christendom--based on positive elements that, due to God's providence, are to be found in its missional legacy--could "divert attention from the task of the theologian to struggle to evaluate practice in light of the divine intention" (personal correspondence, January 3, 2004). Although I am aware that wording similar to mine could be used by some as an excuse not to respond faithfully and responsibly to the call to renewal of Christian mission, such is far from my intention.

(35.) Yoder, "Third World and Christian Mission," p. 8.

(36.) Ibid.

(37.) John H. Yoder, "Teaching Ethics from a Missionary Perspective," in Occasional Papers of the Council of Mennonite Seminaries and the Institute of Mennonite Studies, no. 2, ed. Willard M. Swartley (Elkhart, Ind.: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1981), p. 99.

(38.) John H. Yoder, "On Not Being Ashamed of the Gospel: Particularity, Pluralism, and Validation," Faith and Philosophy 9 (1992): 290.

(39.) Yoder, "Third World and Christian Mission," p. 7.

Joon-Sik Park is the E. Stanley Jones Associate Professor of World Evangelism, Methodist Theological School in Ohio, located in Delaware, Ohio.