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Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World

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John Howard Yoder (1927-1997), who was a professor of theology at Notre Dame and a Mennonite, outlines in 80 pages five practices that should be central to every church's life together. He argues that congregations need to recover these practices that are described in the New Testament and have since become distorted. This book grew out of a 1986 lecture at Duke Divinity School entitled "Sacrament as Social Process: Christ the Transformer of Culture," later published in his book The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical. In Body Politics, Yoder describes the five practices this way:

(1) Binding and Loosing

(2) Disciples Break Bread Together / Eucharist

(3) Baptism and the New Humanity / Baptism

(4) The Fullness of Christ / Multiplicity of gifts

(5) The Rule of Paul / Open meeting

In each case, Yoder argues that the original New Testament practice has been today almost entirely lost in most churches. (1) Binding and loosing - moral discernment through dialogue and forgiveness as described in Matthew 18 - is rarely practiced. (2) The sense of the Eucharist as a meal (1 Corinthians 11) where people share their food with one another is rarely practiced. (3) Baptism (Galatians 3:27-28) rarely communicates the profound transcending of social and cultural barriers - between Jew and Gentile, slave and free there is one baptism. (4) In almost every church there a few so-called "gifted" people who dominate the church while most congregation members are spectators. (5) And it is the rare congregation that truly opens the floor for all congregation members to participate (1 Corinthians 14).

What is compelling about Yoder's writing is his skill as a reader of biblical texts, his weaving of historical context (his dissertation work was on the Radical Reformation), and his ability to talk to theologians of many denominations (he did his doctoral work with the reformed theologian Karl Barth, taught at a Roman Catholic school, and strongly influenced the United Methodist theologian Stanley Hauerwas).

Yoder is also amazingly concise for a theologian. In my first year as a Th.D. (Doctor of Theology) student at Duke Divinity School, this is the one book I read this year that I find myself recommending to friends and family.

So, who will like this book? Yoder writes sympathetically denominational groups that have less formal hierarchy: Mennonites, Quakers, Methodists, Plymouth Brethren, evangelicals, Baptists, Pentecostals, Puritans, and house churches. If you are a part of any of these denominations, you will probably cheer all the way through this book and say "Aha!"

On the other hand, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Presbyterians will surely find Yoder's ideas radical, wild, far out, untenable, foreign and unrealistic. For example, a Roman Catholic might initially think about the five practices: (1) the priest facilitates confession, (2) the priest facilitates the mass / Eucharist, (3) infants are baptized, (4) the priests have a special religious ritual calling, and (5) the congregation is silent as the priests recite mass. Yoder argues from the New Testament that all of these developments are unfortunate! Thus, if you are coming from that perspective, it will probably be tough to swallow Yoder's ideas and he may not convince you to be a radical protestant in 80 pages! However, if you have a niggle of doubt about any of these things, Yoder is sure to fan it! It is also worth noting that many Roman Catholics want to recover the biblical meaning of these practices. For example, I read this year at Duke a number of books that get at this by Roman Catholic authors: Raymond Brown's The Churches The Apostles Left Behind, Michael Warren's At This Time, in This Place: The Spirit Embodied in the Local Assembly, and Vincent Miller's Consuming Religion: Christian Faith And Practice in a Consumer Culture.

Yoder, is most known for his book The Politics of Jesus and for his defense of pacifism but this little book is a gem. I would highly recommend this book for anyone thinking about church leadership or planting a church. I would also highly recommend it as a textbook for Systematic Theology III courses which cover ecclesiology. If you liked this book, read Yoder's For the Nations: Essays Evangelical and Public next.

Andy Rowell

Th.D. Student

Duke Divinity School

Blog: Church Leadership Conversations

If you ever thought the 'sacraments' were a little goofy as kind of magical acts, then this is the book for you. Approaches the church's practices as the place where God and man both act, and by doing so show forth the way the world is meant to (and one day will) be. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

In this book Yoder provides a theologically compact treatment of five definitive church practices: (1) binding a loosing (a human activity in which God is working, discussed as a type of confrontational reconciliation); (2) breaking bread (the celebration of an eschatological meal); (3) baptism (an initiatory rite of a new people); (4) the fullness of Christ expressed in the body (a discussion of group relationships where "every member of the body has a distinctly identifiable, divinely validated and empowered role," springing from texts such as Eph. 4:11-13); and (5) the Rule of Paul (beginning in 1 Cor. 14, Yoder explores the way in which the church meeting is ordered). Yoder's discussion focuses on how these practices form and shape the people of God in to a political body who witness to the resurrection and reign of Christ.

This book would be helpful to those exploring the nature of the church and how the practices of the church mold the character of a unique people who call Jesus "Lord." Yoder's treatment is brief, yet sophisticated, and makes for an interesting and engaging read. I've found this book helpful in furthering my own theological reflection, as Yoder's emphasis on distinct political practices has deepened my own ecclesiology.

While this was not quite as good as Yoder's "Politics of Jesus", it was close--and that's saying a lot. In this short book he looks at 5 practices of Christian life that are or should be sacraments: dealing with wrong-doing, communion, baptism, discerning of gifts, and the conduct of meetings. He finds the ways in which all of these are/can be distinctive expressions of Christian redemptive life that also have something valuable to show the non-Christian world. Calling them all sacraments might seem to raise some of them higher than they deserve, but his point is that their importance and distinctiveness are not sufficiently appreciated, and that sacraments are not supposed to be suffused with anything spooky. The book is full of subtle insights, but the best discussion was of the distribution and discerning of gifts. At the end of that chapter he talks about the issue of ordaining women, which was more of a hot topic when he was writing this. But if you read "gay people" in the place of "women" it will hit just as hard in a contemporary context (p. 60):

"The mistake that dominates this debate...is not in the answers, but in the question. There is not (i.e., there should not be) one 'ministerial' role, of which then we could argue about whether it is gender specific. There are as many ministerial roles as there are members of the body of Christ, and that means that more than half of them are women. The roles least justified by the witness of the New Testament--quite regardless of the gender debate--are those of priest and (super-congregational) bishop, precisely the ones that some men have traditionally held alone and want to keep for themselves. To let a few women into an office that men have for generations wrongly restricted, and that did not even exist in the apostolic churches may be a good kind of 'affirmative action,' but it is hardly the most profound vision of renewal....The transformation that Paul's vision calls for would not be to let a few more especially gifted women share with a few men the rare roles of domination; it would be to reorient the notion of ministry so that there would be no one ungifted, no one not called, no one not empowered, and no one dominated. Only that would live up to Paul's call to 'lead a life worthy of our calling'."

Yoder has a lot of great ideas in this book; truly inspired ideas which are charismatic- in the original and Yoderesc use of that word. I was challenged by what he said. I saw far too familiar passages anew. I now realize that "binding and loosing" has so much more to do with forgiveness and the priesthood of all believers in equality, than it does with exorcism- while not denying the God-given power over demons we have. Yoder's genius is really seeing the Christian life in new ways, and even phrasing the old ways anew. I particularly enjoy the thought that the Church is merely that "part of the world that confesses the renewal to which all the world is called". That's worth ruminating on for a few centuries.

I would have enjoyed the book a whole lot more if Yoder had finished it. It felt like a lot of his ideas were only half-done. Some of his reasoning I could follow; other parts seemed like he had a good idea, but just jumped to the end of the theology. Not everything he shared could be supported from the text. It might be, but he didn't explain to his readers how it would be so. Sometimes I felt like he was coming from a foreign culture, and had dealt with issues I've never had a problem with. That was the only way I could explain his reasoning. Had the book been a bit longer, and more filled, I could probably be on board more with his truly brave new world.

Still highly recommended. Maybe you'll innately agree more with those theological jumps Yoder makes. You'll definitely be struck to the core by those aspects that are soundly supported.

This book addresses the chasm created over centuries of ceremony and interpretation between the church's understanding of sacraments and its policies for dealing with issues such as ethnic differences, economic need, conflict, social status, and decision making. Yoder argues that sacraments, where God works in the actions of humans, is not restricted to religious ceremonies nor are they performed only by clergy or elite few, but happens in everyday life through the actions of every single person in the church. Yoder unpacks this by focusing on five activities of the church and shows how they extend into the Christian and secular world.

These five activities are: 1) Binding and Loosing, which is a process of conflict resolution, commanded by Jesus that entails moral discernment and reconciliation. It involves open discussion that allows all parties to discern the validity of rules, for adversaries and underdogs to be heard, and is always for the goal of unity. 2) Disciples Break Bread Together. Yoder acknowledges the many associated memories and meanings of bread and eating together. Yoder also explains the centrality of the common meal for the new family Jesus created by practicing economic solidarity. Breaking bread together is both "specimen and symbol of responsibility" first to the body and then to the world. 3) Baptism is the introduction of a person into a new creation, a new community to transcend barriers like ethnicity and class. This equalization is not attained in creation but in redemption that makes one in Christ. 4) The Fullness of Christ describes a new mode of group relationships, in which every member of a body has a distinctly identifiable, divinely validated and empowered role. Each gift and person has equal dignity, completely interdependent and accountable to one another, and completely counter-cultural. 5) The Rule of Paul - a guideline for church meetings, one of open discussion, directed by the Spirit and thus by essence leads to unity and action. Yoder convincingly explains Paul's likely meaning of his instruction for women in these meetings.

Every Christian, layman to leader, should read this book to understand the part they play and so not to hinder others from fulfilling God's activity. By understanding our activities in church in social process terms allows greater opportunity for community building. In creating community with like terms an environment is built in which the truth of the Gospel can be shared with all.