Yoder Applied

Posted on | October 20, 2008 | No Comments

The Other Journal publishes a piece by Tim Kumfer: “Between Sojourners and the Simple Way? Rethinking Radical, Evangelical Politics in ’08 with John Howard Yoder.” Kumfer proposes Yoder as an answer and critique to certain aspects of Jim Wallis’ liberal politics and also Shane Claiborne’s New Monasticism. 

There is a tension to be creatively lived in at the borders of church and world. At times, it seems that Wallis has forgotten the borders exist, whereas Claiborne acts as if they’re impassable. I’d love to see Wallis talk more explicitly about the need for the church to become a people in its own right and for Claiborne to make an advocacy visit or two on the Hill. Really, what Wallis and Claiborne need is not me reminding them of Yoder’s words but each other.

There will always be tensions between the local practices of the faith community and wider movements for social change, prophetic actions and pragmatic policy-pushing, the primacy of faith language and the necessity of public language. The challenge is to avoid setting up false alternatives for ourselves, to avoid thinking that our particular piece of the puzzle is the only one that matters. Instead of dismissing either prophetic signs and alternative experiments or advocacy and civic participation, we need to find ways to deepen the connections between them, because the possibilities for authentic cultural transformation just might lie at their intersection. 

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Theopolitical is the weblog of Davey Henreckson, a graduate student in theology at the University of Notre Dame. Topics of conversation are political and historical theology, with semi-frequent forays into literature, economics, localism, and the divine American sport -- baseball.

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