Holy Rationalizations

In this episode, I veer away from Hegel for a moment to follow a curiosity that opened up after listening to the latest Why Theory discussion of After the Hunt. That conversation sent me back to John Howard Yoder, one of the most important theologians of Christian nonviolence in the twentieth century, and also someone who shaped the theological world I was formed in during seminary.But Yoder was not only a theologian of peace. He was also a man who sexually abused and exploited women, including women in his academic and religious orbit. And what makes his case so disturbing is not only the hypocrisy, as horrifying as that is, but the way he tried to turn his abuse into a theological experiment.Drawing from Isaac Villegas and Rachel Waltner Goossen’s work on Yoder’s abuse, I explore how Yoder used the language of Christian freedom, community, nonviolence, intimacy, and moral discernment to rationalize his behavior and avoid accountability. I also reflect on the psychoanalytic insight that we are often most dangerous when we find beautiful, moral, or spiritual language to explain away the harm we are causing.This episode is about abuse, power, self-deception, theology, institutions, and the need for a hermeneutic of suspicion toward our own noblest explanations. It asks what happens when the language of peace becomes a shelter for violence, when theology becomes an alibi, and when someone else’s suffering is finally allowed to interrupt the story we prefer to tell about ourselves.