Sanford Calvin YODER

YODER, SWARTZENDRUBER

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 10/7/2006 at 21:10:34

Gospel Herald -March 18, 1975

S. C. Yoder, a Pioneer

Sanford Calvin Yoder, seventh president of Goshen College and a leader in the Mennonite denomination and its overseas missions, died on Feb. 23 at Greencroft Nursing Center, Goshen. He was 95 years old. He was born on Dec. 5, 1879, to Christian S. and Anna (Swartzendruber) Yoder, pioneers on the Iowa prairie at Sharon Center, near Iowa City. While a young boy, the family moved to the prairies of northwestern Iowa. Owing to economic depression and family hardship, he finished high school as he was able and was graduated from Clarion High School at the age of 22 and most likely was the first child of Amish parents west of the Mississippi River to continue his education through high school. Settling in Nebraska in 1908, he became deeply interested in the work of the Amish-Mennonite Church and began a career that included a wide variety of service to the church as pastor, evangelist, writer, overseas missions leader, college president, Bible professor, and arbitrator of tensions within the brotherhood. As a result, his name has been a household name among Mennonites for more than half a century.

During World War I he was one of those responsible for the Amish and Mennonite conscientious objectors in camps west of the Mississippi River and helped draft the document setting forth the church's position on nonresistance. He was elected to the Mennonite Board of Education in 1916 and was its president 1919-24. He was moderator of the Mennonite General Conference 1919-21. In 1918 he was elected to Mennonite Board of Missions and in 1919-20 he was in Argentina to give advice and counsel on beginning the mission work there. From 1921 to 1940 he was Mission Board secretary and from 1940 to 1944 its president. He was also a founding member of Mennonite Central Committee. He helped launch the Mennonite Historical Library and the scholarly Mennonite Quarterly Review, a historical journal of Anabaptist and Mennonite thought and affairs. Upon retiring from the presidency of Goshen College in 1940, Yoder taught Bible at Goshen College until 1951, and was director of the college's Bible correspondence department until 1962. Just before leaving the presidency, he began writing on a wide variety of topics and experiences, and his first book, For Conscience' Sake, a study of Mennonite migrants resulting from World War 1, was published in 1940.

Numerous books appeared later: Down South America Way (1943), Poetry of the Old Testament" (1948), Eastward to the Sun (1953), Horse Trails Along the Desert (1954), Days of My Years (1959), If I Were Young Again (1963), and He Gave Some Prophets (1964) about the Old Testament prophets and their message.