About the Book
The work of John Howard Yoder has become increasingly influential in recent years. Moreover, it is gaining influence in some surprising places. No longer restricted to the world of theological ethicists and Mennonites, Yoder has been discovered as a refreshing voice by scholars working in many other fields. For thirty-five years, Yoder was known primarily as an articulate defender of Christian pacifism against a theological ethics guild dominated by the Troeltschian assumptions reflected in the work of Walter Rauschenbusch and Reinhold and Richard Niebuhr. But in the last decade, there has been a clearly identifiable shift in direction. A new generation of scholars has begun reading Yoder alongside figures most often associated with post-structuralism, neo-Nietzscheanism, and post-colonialism, resulting in original and productive new readings of his work. At the same time, scholars from outside of theology and ethics departments, indeed outside of Christianity itself, like Romand Coles and Daniel Boyarin, have discovered in Yoder a significant conversation partner for their own work. This volume collects some of the best of those essays in hope of encouraging more such work from readers of Yoder and in hopes of attracting others to his important work.
Table of Contents:
Introduction, by Peter Dula and Chris K. Huebner
1 Judaism as a Free Church: Footnotes to John Howard Yoder's The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited, by Daniel Boyarin
2 The Christian Witness in the Earthly City: John Howard Yoder as Augustinian Interlocutor, by Gerald W. Schlabach
3 John Howard Yoder's Systematic Defense of Christian Pacifism, by Nancey Murphy
4 The War of the Lamb: Postmodernity and Yoder's Eschatological Genealogy of Morals, by P. Travis Kroeker
5 Foucault, Genealogy, Anabaptism: Confessions of an Errant Postmodernist, by Peter C. Blum
6 Yoder's Patience and/with Derrida's Differance, by Peter C. Blum
7 Patience, Witness, and the Scattered Body of Christ: Yoder and Virilio on Knowledge, Politics, and Speed, by Chris K. Huebner
8 On Exile: Yoder, Said, and a Politics of Land and Return, by Alain Epp Weaver
9 Memory in the Politics of Forgiveness, by J. Alexander Sider
10 Traumatic Violence and Christian Peacemaking, by Cynthia Hess
11 The Wild Patience of John Howard Yoder: "Outsiders" and the "Otherness of the Church," by Romand Coles
12 Laughing With the World: Possibilities of Hope in John Howard Yoder and Jeffrey Stout, by Jonathan Tran
13 Epistemological Violence, Christianity, and the Secular, by Daniel Colucciello Barber
14 Fracturing Evangelical Recognitions of Christ: Inheriting the Radical Democracy of John Howard Yoder with the Penumbral Vision of Rowan Williams, by Joseph R. Wiebe
15 Communio Missionis: Certeau, Yoder, and the Missionary Space of the Church, by Nathan R. Kerr
List of Contributors
About the Author :
Peter Dula is Assistant Professor of Religion and Culture at Eastern Mennonite University.
Chris K. Huebner is Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Canadian Mennonite University.
Peter Dula is Assistant Professor of Religion and Culture at Eastern Mennonite University. Chris K. Huebner is Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Canadian Mennonite University.
Review :
"The New Yoder reflects Yoder's growing presence in Anglophone theology, and shows how Yoder's ideas resonate with Nietzsche and 'post-modern' thinkers such as Derrida, Focault, and de Certeau. [ - ] Yoder's more nuanced and reflective prose draws readers of all kinds into theological engagement. Yoder makes new approaches to theological topics by questioning the fundamental terms of debate. As Peter Blum puts it in his essay, "he responds to questions not by answering them in their own terms, but by enquiring where the questions come from." [ - ] The New Yoder makes fascinating but demanding reading, and although the authors make some effort to provide explanations to of, say, Focault's and Derrida's thinking, they tend to assume that readers will already be familiar with the ideas and thinkers under discussion. Nevertheless, there is still plenty in this book for the non-specialist reader; and those involved in theological study will find much here to stimulate their thinking." --The Revd Dr Hugh Rayment-Pickard, in: The Church Times 18 May 2012 "This is an engaging and important collection which shows promising signs of new ways of responding to and working in conversation with the immensely important and influential work of Yoder. [...] If you have ever wondered what might have happened if Yoder had read postmodern Continental philosophy, or engaged positively with Augustine, or been influenced by post-colonialism, this collection is a must-read." --Elizabeth Phillips, Theology volume 116 (1) " - an excellent collection of essays." --Stephen Lawson, Saint Louis University, Reviews in Religion and Theology, Volume 20, Issue 3, July 2013
