What Would You Do?: A Serious Answer to a Standard Question

by John Howard Yoder

Publisher:

Herald Press

, 1992

Overview

John Howard Yoder helps answer the age-old question, “What would you do if someone was attacking your grandmother, husband, wife, daughter, or son?” Yoder provides a variety of responses to this classic question, his own thorough ethical analysis, and answers given by other writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Dale Brown, and Dale Aukerman. Augmenting, and at times contradicting, his views are a collection of real-life stories from people who have discovered alternative responses to violence.

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Key Features

• Asks readers what they would do if someone attacked their loved ones
• Presents stories of nonviolence from a variety of sources
• Challenges readers to take up a stance of peace and nonviolent resistance

Contents

• Section 1: Taking the Question Seriously
  • The Assumptions behind the Question
  • The Emotional Twist to the Question
  • War Is Different
  • The Options Available
  • A Second Look at Another Way Out
  • More Specific Christian Dimensions
• Section 2: Other Ways to Respond
  • Count Leo Tolstoy: Certain Things Christians Cannot Do
  • S.H. Booth-Clibborn: Is It Too Late?
  • C.J. Furness: Faith in the Power of the Spirit
  • Henry T. Hodgkin: No Revolver as a Last Resort
  • Joan Baez: Three Cheers for Grandma!
  • Dale W. Brown: Why Not Add a Bit?
  • Dale Aukerman: The Scandal of Defenselessness
  • Dale Aukerman: What Would You Do If?
• Section 3: But Does It Really Work?
  • Tom Skinner: Something or Somebody Glued Them
  • An Anonymous Missionary: It Was Like a Spring Thaw
  • Gladys Aylward: You Say You Have the Living God Inside You
  • Terry Dobson: The Art of Reconciliation
  • Dorothy T. Samuel: Sometimes What It Takes Is Trust
  • Sarah Corson: Welcoming the Enemy
  • Angie O'Gorman: Defense Through Disarmament
  • Peggy Faw Gish: Neither Violent nor Victim
  • Art Gish: What If I Had Punched Him Back?
  • Lawrence Hart: A Gesture of Peace

Praise for the Print Edition

Anyone who is at all interested in nonviolence will find Yoder’s insights helpful in sharpening her or his thinking. Others who might ask the question with the intention of trapping pacifists will be given pause and forced to think twice. Christian pacifists and others exploring nonviolence will long be indebted to John Howard Yoder for this important contribution.

—The Christian Century

Product Details

• Title: What Would You Do?: A Serious Answer to a Standard Question
• Author: John Howard Yoder
• Edition: Expanded
• Publisher: Herald Press
• Publication Date: 1992
• Pages: 144

About John Howard Yoder

John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) taught ethics and theology at Notre Dame University and Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. He received his doctorate from the University of Basel, Switzerland, and was a member of the Mennonite Church in Elkhart, Indiana. Widely sought around the world as a theological educator, ethicist, and interpreter of biblical pacifism, he is best known for The Politics of Jesus, 2nd ed.. He is also the author of The Christian Witness to the State, The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical, and Nevertheless: The Varieties and Shortcomings of Religious Pacifism.