Academic literature on the topic 'John Howard Society of Ottawa'

AbstractThis article examines the compatibility between an ecclesial focus in contemporary theological ethics and an account of democratic citizenship. It focuses on the work of the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder. It explores the use of a motif that appeared with increasing frequency in Yoder's later writings, and has yet to receive much substantial academic attention — that of exilic citizenship. It then notes parallels between this exilic ecclesiology and contemporary understandings of civil society. It concludes that an exilic reading of Christian witness provides a fruitful basis for a theology of democratic participation.

The publication ofThe Politics of Jesusin 1972 established John Howard Voder as the most intellectually compelling, critical, and constructive Mennonite theologian of this generation. In that volume, Voder articulated an interpretive method and a substantive doctrinal position that affirmed his sectarian and ‘restoration’ theological vision but at the same time gained him a serious hearing in several corners of the North American Christian community. His recent tenure as President of the Society of Christian Ethics and appointment in the Department of Theology at Notre Dame University are only two examples of his standing among ecumenically-minded Christians.

When the annual Methodist Conference assembled in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 14 July 1936, the retiring President appeared wearing the moderator’s gown presented to the Connexion the previous summer. In his Methodist Recorder column, W. F. Howard wondered: ‘Will the Protestant Truth Society discover some subtle Romeward predilection in this departure from our ancient wont and usage?’, but reassured his readers that ‘It is a simple Geneva gown,… black enough for John Knox himself.’

Research points to the pedagogical value of an engaged and community service-learning approach to developing understanding of course content (Astin, Vogelgesang, Ikeda, & Yee, 2000). To help students achieve a better understanding of how the discipline of psychology contributes to the discipline of law, some students in a second year psychology class participated in a community-based research project, partnering with the Elizabeth Fry Society and the John Howard Society. The objective of the study was to determine whether there are differences in attitudes towards the criminal justice system between individuals who have, and have not, been in conflict with the law. The student-researchers interviewed men and women from the John Howard and Elizabeth Fry Societies, who had been in conflict with the law, regarding their attitudes toward the criminal justice system, and compared their responses to those given by undergraduate psychology students who did not participate as student-researchers in the project. Responses revealed some commonalities (e.g., recommendations to change sentencing practices) as well as differences (e.g., satisfaction with the justice system). The students wrote a research report describing the findings of the study as well as their reflections on their experience. In addition to the positive feedback received from the community organizations, the students participating in the project reported that they found it to be a positive, enriching, and rewarding experience.

AbstractThis article proposes looking to Kathryn Tanner and John Howard Yoder as resources for moving beyond a stalemate in recent ecclesiology which locates competing centres of gravity in either church or world. By contrast, Tanner and Yoder locate that centre outside of both church and world: in God, who ‘was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself . . . and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation’ (2 Cor 5:19). Accordingly, they articulate a vision of the church in the world whose posture is wholly, and constitutively, undefensive: a community free of the violence – actual, rhetorical or otherwise – produced by anxiety about securing its place vis-à-vis the wider society. Tanner envisages the church as a graced community of argument founded and sustained by God's cosmos-wide generosity in Christ, unconcerned with itself as such and instead intent on the world's good. In Yoder's case, his christological pacifism undergirds a church whose politics are Jesus' own, and which therefore seeks, forsaking all coercion, to embody God's eschatological peace in and for the world. These accounts share three theological moves in common. First is a Barthian priority of divine transcendence, whereby neither God, nor the gospel, nor the world is put in jeopardy by the church's fallibility (human or sinful). Second is a non-foundationalist commitment to social-historical process, to the particularities of context which constantly form (and reform) the church as a creature in time and space. Third is the generative root of all: the incarnation of God the Word. Insofar as the church is christocentric, it is by grace turned out to the world in commissioned blessing. The result is an account of the church as at once eccentric (its life hid with Christ in God) and firmly rooted in the messy realities of the here and now – realities just as present within the church as outside of it. To be sure, Tanner and Yoder are different theologians with different methods and ends; where Tanner perhaps lacks a sufficient theology of peoplehood, Yoder's ecclesiology verges at times on the heroic or ideal. Nevertheless, brought together in this way they make for productive partners in non-alarmist ecclesiology, freeing the church to fulfil its calling to serve and bless the world, even as it leaves its borders unsecured, because its faith abides not in itself but in God.

AbstractIn this article I reflect upon the implications of Christendom for Christian vocation. It begins by describing the condition of Christendom in the United States. Then it traces John Howard Yoder's critique of Christendom. Finally, it assesses Yoder's critique with a view to a revised understanding of the public vocation of the Christian in a post-Christendom USA. Part of that assessment involves distinguishing three forms of Christendom: state-enforced Christendom, voluntary cultural Christendom, and Christian culture within the church as minority community of obedient witness. I propose that Reformed vocation should join embrace Yoder's rejection of state-enforced Christendom and affirm his call to develop Christian culture as a minority community. But unlike Yoder Reformed vocation requires Christians, where possible, to work toward voluntary Christendom in the broader society.