Better angels of our nature

Trump’s War on Iran

The President’s war on Iran is not the same as Thomas Jefferson’s call for an “empire of liberty.” Jefferson argued for expanding the American ideal of a republic in which individuals could prosper, practice their chosen religion, and participate in government as citizens. Indeed, Jefferson ignored the rights of indigenous people groups in the American West and the rights of the enslaved. The third president wanted an empire of yeoman farmers spread from ocean to ocean across North America, in the context of which he wrote about an “empire of liberty.”

For twenty-eight days in June of 2003, eight teachers and 22 students set out on a journey to retrace the Lewis & Clark journey from 1803-1806. We traveled from Harrisonburg, Va., to the West Coast and back, driving over 5,000 miles. I led the history side of the camping expedition. One of the questions we worked on was to analyze Jefferson’s call for an “empire of liberty.”

Students and teachers on the Missouri River, with Lewis & Clark, 2003

Students and teachers read the primary sources, asked scholars and experts along the trail what they thought, and drew our own conclusions. I came to hold that Jefferson wanted to expand the freedoms of the country’s founding era across the continent. I did not find that Jefferson was an imperialist in the modern sense of the word. The Louisiana Purchase fell into Jefferson’s lap, and he took advantage of it, to be sure. Unfortunately, later presidents used Jefferson’s “empire of liberty” to expand and conquer in imperialistic ways.

The war of the United States against the country of Iran is of a different kind than Jefferson’s war on Tripoli or his expansionism across the North American continent in the early 1800s. In my opinion, Iran does need to be stopped from developing nuclear weapons, but the attack by the United States against Iran should be stopped. However, to use Jefferson’s war approach in the First Barbary War, 1801-1805, negotiations need to be firm and produce results that are inviolable.

When our motorcoach load of students and teachers reached the West Coast and saw the Pacific Ocean, we were giddy with excitement and happiness. We had retraced Lewis and Clark’s journey. Never mind that the Iraq War had just begun and U.S. ground troops invaded a Middle Eastern country. Lewis & Clark 2003, an expedition of learning and inquiry from our small Harrisonburg high school, had uncovered the joys of reading, studying, asking open-ended questions, and trying to determine what Jefferson meant by his “empire of liberty” phrase. When we dipped in the Pacific Ocean on June 23, 2003, we were optimistic about the country’s future. I hope and pray for a return of that euphoria we felt when sticking our toes in the Pacific Ocean. We need such optimism today.

Lewis & Clark students and teachers at the Pacific Ocean, June 23, 2003
Better angels of our nature

What about “the pursuit of happiness”?

The third of Thomas Jefferson’s self-evident truths has been on my mind during this 250th anniversary. Is the “pursuit of happiness” really an unalienable right for all people, in the same breath as life and liberty? I don’t think so, and I wish the Monticello president had chosen a different word or phrase, like the pursuit of meaning, virtue, or service.

I watched most of the naturalization event for 74 new U.S. citizens that took place at Monticello on July 4, 2026. High on Jefferson’s hill above Charlottesville, Virginia, about an hour’s drive from my home, I listened to a half dozen newly minted citizens express their gratitude. They came from Switzerland, Taiwan, Syria, Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala. They had worked, sometimes for years, to reach their naturalization ceremony. Words like “gratitude,” “proudest moment,” “dream come true,” and “so grateful to God” poured from their hearts when they spoke to over 3000 in attendance.

Yes, they or their parents pursued happiness, and they migrated to the U.S. to find it. But happiness is not really what they sought. They wanted to live freely, to pursue goals of service and involvement in their new American communities. The immigrant from Switzerland said, “My wish, my desire, and my pledge are that I will always be a citizen who gives more to the community and to the country than I take.” That’s a great tone and goal that moves far beyond the more trivial “pursuit of happiness.”

World History students at Monticello with their teacher, Mr. Yoder, February 2015

I’ve taken high school students to visit Monticello several times during my career as a history teacher. While a visit to Jefferson’s grand palace on a hill is required of all 4th graders who live in Harrisonburg, Virginia, I often found that, for whatever reason, some of my high school students had never visited the home of our third president.

In 2015, I took other teachers and my high school juniors in world history class to visit Monticello and the nearby University of Virginia. We discovered that Jefferson lived a life of privilege, was wealthy, and had his work done by enslaved people. But on a cold day in February, we had a grand day at Monticello, and the kids really did want to find out why Jefferson and his vision inspire me so much. We clowned around, laughed, toured the grounds, and it was a highlight of my teaching career.

While I worked in a small private school in Harrisonburg, the students came from families that had migrated to America from all over the globe. They came not so much to pursue “happiness” as to start new lives, to serve the church or community, and to improve their economic opportunities. Happiness is a by-product of our search for meaning and purpose, which often emerges over time, but it’s not usually a noble goal in people’s lives at the beginning. Jefferson was born into wealth, inherited land, and was an oligarch. And the fact that women, the enslaved, and immigrants were secondary citizens prompted him to switch from John Locke’s “ownership of property” to “the pursuit of happiness.” I wish a different thought had entered Jefferson’s mind in that historic 1776 moment.

World History classes at Monticello, Charlottesville, Va., February 2015. Teacher Elwood Yoder in front row.

Better angels of our nature

Ben Franklin’s Revolution

Ben Franklin, a printer from Philadelphia, worked to unite the colonists in their Revolutionary War battles against Britain. He signed the Declaration of Independence, staking his life on the 1776 insurrection, and later he signed the Constitution. But over the course of 84 years, Franklin changed his ideas in two significant ways.

1) Revolution: Opposed to the idea of separation from Britain at first, Franklin changed and joined the fight against domination by the large British Empire. He had hoped for a united trans-Atlantic Anglo-American empire. Still, between 1754, when he developed an Albany plan for unity with Great Britain, and the steamy summer of 1776, when battles had already erupted, Franklin joined the Revolutionary cause against the British.

 From The Old Farmer’s Almanac, www.Almanac.com (used by permission)

Franklin published one of the most famous editorial cartoons in U.S. history, “Join or Die,” depicting a divided snake to symbolize the disunity of the 13 colonies in 1754. When the revolution against Britain exploded in 1775, Franklin’s cartoon resurfaced as a call for the colonies to unite or die. Franklin’s presence in the colonies, his experience, his travels to Europe, and his commitment to independence were among key factors that decided the War in favor of the Americans.

The will-power of 13 small colonies to rise against an empire, and be successful, should be a lesson to political leaders today. The Vietnam War taught the U.S. that a small nation united against a much larger force can succeed. With the unfortunate decision to attack Iran in 2026, history teaches that the size of an empire does not guarantee victory in battle; in fact, it can result in the opposite.

2) Immigrants: Ben Franklin preferred that the 13 colonies remain Anglo in ethnicity. As a young man, he favored English immigrants to the British colonies. He feared the encroachment of so many thousands of German “Palatine Boors” who swarmed into Pennsylvania in the 1700s, worried that they would Germanize the Pennsylvania colony and fail to learn English customs and language.[1]

Franklin was concerned about people like my immigrant ancestors who stepped off a ship in Philadelphia on September 21, 1742, with several hundred German-speaking farming families. I wonder if Franklin glanced out from his print shop and noticed my German-speaking immigrants, Christian and Anna Yoder, with a family of eight children aged 2-17, traipsing into his beloved English colony.

By the end of his life, however, many German-speaking immigrants had begun to support the new American country. Furthermore, Franklin began to understand their vital roles in Pennsylvania and the New World.[2]

In late June 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Mullin v. Doe, that the Trump administration can end temporary protected status for migrants fleeing violence and natural disasters in Haiti and Syria. Let’s learn from history that immigrants have strengthened and bolstered the United States. Haitians and Syrians today, in some respects, are like 18th-century German immigrants who fled violence and natural disasters in Europe. Ben Franklin learned to accommodate their ethnic differences, and we today should accept Haitian and Syrian migrants who have fled violence and natural disasters in their lands.

[1] “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, 1751,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-0080.

[2] For this essay, I have used Mental Maps of the Founders, by Michael Barone, Encounter Books, 2023, 7-30.

Better angels of our nature

Religious Freedom: A Distinctive American Virtue

Anna Gerber Yoder, my 7th great-grandmother, lived about 75 miles from where the nation’s founders adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Anna lived on a 160-acre farm in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Age 70 when the Revolution began, she lived through the War as a widow. Some of Anna’s adult children moved to a remote region of western Pennsylvania rather than live amid Revolutionary battles and unrest.

When James Madison wrote the Bill of Rights, he had people like Anna Gerber Yoder’s husband and sons in mind. In a first draft of the Second Amendment, Madison wrote that “no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.” Madison was well aware of dissenter groups in Virginia who chose not to bear arms for religious reasons. Congress voted against Madison’s bold defense of religious minorities.

Vinca flowers at Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, Harrisonburg, Va., June 14, 2026

The Mennonites, Brethren, Amish, Quakers, and other dissenters who would not take up weapons in War found a country that tolerated them while not embracing their convictions. But the Republic that sprang from Revolutionary War victory provided an almost unheard-of environment in which to live one’s religious convictions. Most dissenters have been very grateful.

When Anna Gerber Yoder’s descendants were conscripted to fight in every American War since the Revolutionary War, they sought ways to avoid taking up arms.  

Nearly 250 years after the country’s founding, on May 6, 2026, I attended an annual Shenandoah Valley Prayer Breakfast in Harrisonburg, Virginia. About 400 guests arrived early for breakfast, coffee, conversation, and prayer. We came from all walks of life, occupations, and denominations.

We prayed for business and nonprofits in our community and for our clergy. With several uniformed police in attendance, we prayed for them and first responders. We prayed for the least of these in our region, for our higher education institutions, for the government, and for students in our communities. Another led us in praying for healthcare and counseling professionals, for agricultural workers, and finally for our world.

When a speaker gave a faith testimony at the Prayer Breakfast, held at James Madison University, I looked at the university’s seal above the podium. The school reduced one of Madison’s statements to “Knowledge is Liberty.”

Elwood Yoder

I’d revise the JMU seal by adding a concept: “Knowledge, Liberty, and Grace.” In 1779, when Anna Gerber Yoder endured the Revolutionary War, wondering how it would end, and when James Madison was elected in Virginia to serve in the Continental Congress, John Newton wrote the lyrics to “Amazing Grace.” Newton’s memorable lyrics became the most popular gospel song in American history. Knowledge and liberty are great, but without an understanding of grace amid the fragility of human nature, knowledge and liberty hold little value. I’m very grateful for a U.S. environment that accepts dissenting groups and fosters religious freedom.

Better angels of our nature

Peace be with you

Pope Leo XIV delivered an encouraging message to Mennonites who gathered in Zurich, Switzerland, on May 29, 2025. Upon the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Anabaptist movement, Pope Leo began his letter with “Peace be with you,” quoting Christ’s words in John 20:19.

From the Aramaic language used among the fearful Jerusalem disciples to the written Greek language of the Apostle John, to the Latin of the medieval Catholic Bible, to the English I can understand, “Peace be with you” undergirds that which is good in civilization, it advances the betterments of human culture, and it enlivens the better angels of our nature.

Massanutten Mountain and the city of Harrisonburg, May 30, 2026 (Elwood Yoder photo)

A politician has stated that “We live in a world…that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” I think the advisor misunderstands the way the world works. The laws of cooperation and positive human interactions have propelled technological advances since the beginning of time; the spirit of human ingenuity improves our lives; and the hopes of men and women for a better planet push us to explore, build, and create. Dictators and brutal armies have repeatedly failed with force. In reality, it is the undergirding pillars of peace and human interaction that have led to advances in our world, not the so-called iron laws of force and brute power.

Big Spring Mennonite Church, Luray, Va. (photo by Elwood Yoder)

This spring, I visited a small congregation on two successive Sunday mornings. These folks in Page County, Virginia, are actively serving their community. They assist children at the local school who are food-insecure with weekend backpacks of food, and they volunteer at a Luray humanitarian mission that provides family assistance to community members. When they lit their peace lamp during worship, it moved me deeply, and I can’t quite explain why except that I think my friends have discovered the joy in sharing the Master’s peace with others in their community.

NBC News recently surveyed Americans’ common beliefs and values. They found that as a people, Americans have far more in common than what divides us. In 2026, I’ve given tours at the Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, where I work, to folks from Virginia and 10 additional states. I find that wherever people come from, we are much alike; we share similar hopes and are like-minded on many values.

To accept peace as our guiding motif for living enables us to choose life over death and to stand for justice rather than warfare. The simple words “peace be with you,” spoken today, with purpose, hope, and action, can transform our world for good far more than weapons of warfare and destruction.

Better angels of our nature

Digging deep to help immigrants

Beginning in 1874, over 1,200 families from Ukraine sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to New York and traveled by train to Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. Russian Tsar Alexander II had revoked some religious freedoms for thousands of Mennonites and required military service. So, the families, whose ancestors had migrated for religious freedom from the Netherlands to Prussia and then to Russia, picked up and moved again, this time to the U.S. and Canada.

 Because so many families moved at about the same time, farm prices were depressed when they sold, and the farmers arrived in New York with little money. In the better angels of their nature, hundreds of Mennonites in the United States gave money to help pay ship crossing fares and to help them buy land in the American Midwest.

“In a Strange Land–Asking the Way.” Mennonite group from Odesa, Russia (Ukraine), bound for Nebraska or Dakota. Harper’s Weekly, 1874 May 30, p. 452, Library of Congress

I was startled recently by how deep some families in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia dug to help pay ship crossing fares and enable farm families from Russia who spoke no English to buy land. In 1874, four small Mennonite congregations just north of Harrisonburg, Va., raised $195 to help pay ship passage fees and offered $245 in loans to help two families buy land in Kansas and Oklahoma. The immigrant family names were Unruh and Schmidt.

Earlier this year, I reviewed a folder of previously unanalyzed primary source material from Jacob Geil, a Mennonite deacon, who kept good records. The financial notes that Geil issued to Mennonites from Russia were for seven years. The correspondence includes letters that Geil wrote to Unruh and Schmidt seven years later, inquiring about repayment. I figured that about two dozen farm families in the Shenandoah Valley, in the four small congregations, collected over $12,000 in today’s money to help.

Money given and loans made to immigrants in the 1870s, combined with the economic incentives offered by the Santa Fe Railroad Company, helped them prosper and flourish. The settlers repaid the loans from Mennonites whom they did not know, making Kansas a breadbasket for the world.

House where Jacob Geil and family lived in the 1870s, Linville, Va. (photo by Elwood Yoder)

In October 2024, I took two grandsons, ages 5 and 8, to visit a heritage museum in Goessel, Kansas, one of the centers where Russian immigrants settled 150 years ago. We learned history, sat on old farm machinery, learned about wheat threshing stones, and had fun.

We paused to examine and talk about a swords-into-plowshares outdoor metal sculpture created to mark the centennial in 1974 of the first wave of Mennonite arrivals from Ukraine. These immigrant farm families believed in the way of peace and nonviolence. To the credit of President Ulysses S. Grant and Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, who welcomed immigrants, the Mennonites turned the ground with plowshares and grew acres of wheat. Many of their descendants rejected violence when Uncle Sam went to war.

Swords into Plowshares sculpture, Goessel, KS (Elwood Yoder photo)

My wife and I have six grandchildren who live in eastern Kansas. They are growing up where thousands of Russian immigrants settled and prospered. One lesson I want to help teach them is that the better angels of our nature should embolden those of us who have been here a while to, in turn, assist immigrants and help them get started in their new lives. And we may need to dig deep.

Better angels of our nature

Washhouse Politics

Decades of interactions in an old washhouse demonstrate how people with different goals and backgrounds can live together in concord and peace. In 1840, the Burkholders, a Mennonite family in Rockingham County, Va., built a washhouse. Since then, many have used the building, and today it is a fun learning station during K-1st-grade field trips at the Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center in Harrisonburg, Va.

From 1840 to 1865, ten percent of those in the Shenandoah Valley were enslaved, though the Burkholder family did not use them to work in their washhouse. If they had, their Mennonite church would have removed them from membership. In 1860, Rebecca Burkholder suffered the death of her husband, Martin, and lost two children to influenza. When the Civil War began in 1861, widow Burkholder had four small children in her care, and neighbors and family helped her farm the fields.

Burkholder-Myers house (left), 1854, and washhouse, 1840, Harrisonburg, Va.

The Burkholder family washed their clothes in their washhouse, using water heated in a large metal pot that hung over the fire. They used homemade lye soap, hung clean clothes outside on a line to dry, and poured the wash water on the garden plants. The washhouse also served as a butcher house, where cattle and hog meat were cured and smoked.

Rebecca Burkholder hid men at her home during the Civil War who, for religious reasons, would not fight for the Confederacy. No one knows where she hid the men, but the basement or attic in the washhouse is a likely guess.

In 2026, well over 100 K-1st-grade children will visit the washhouse each week in April and May. Many parents, teachers, and chaperones follow their children. They come from public, private, and homeschool groups. On April 23, 2026, in the washhouse, education students from a nearby university and two faculty observed the guides. I led a Connecticut tourist couple into the smoky wash house, where logs burned in the fireplace, and they were delighted to watch children actively learning.

Burkholder-Myers washhouse, Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, Harrisonburg, Va.

The washhouse guides demonstrated how 19th-century families washed their clothes. The kids used a washboard to clean socks, then went outside and learned to hang wet clothes on a clothesline.

During lunch, when the kids ate their packed lunches outside, the 40-50 adult volunteers ate a delicious lunch delivered by a local Mennonite church.

In the washhouse, Confederate scouts searched for Mennonite men who hid from conscription, and the Burkholders washed, ironed, folded their clean clothes, and prepared summer meals over the fireplace. In recent years, thousands of elementary students have learned about the tasks performed in a 19th-century washhouse. Amid these many people, cultures, and beliefs, the washhouse has been a great setting for diverse people to learn from one another. For me, “washhouse politics,” where people interact with good intentions and respect one another, is how I’d like to see our U.S. society work together and get along.

Washhouse at Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, Harrisonburg, Va.

Better angels of our nature

Patterns of peace in a broken world

On Easter, a leader lit a peace lamp on the pulpit. Not a big deal, I guess, but I was six states away from where I usually worship, and her simple act of lighting a lamp for peace and praying for our divided world got me thinking.

Despite stark political divisions in the United States and a war in the Middle East, we can still see patterns of peace in our lives if we look for them—the small peace lamp kept my attention and burned during the entire Easter service.

While driving away from the barn where our family gathered for an early morning Easter sunrise service, I stopped the van. The farm’s owners had placed a small cross in the yard, strategically positioned to catch the bright rays of the rising sun. It stunned me, so I stopped, with four grandsons buckled in behind me. I needed to move quickly to take the photo of the crude cross that reminded me of the peace that I hope for in our world today.

And the sunrise service had been ecumenical, welcoming people from several area congregations. Again, to notice the pattern of peace was heartening to me.

Back in Virginia, after 4.5 hours of sleep, I spoke to a group of about 30 men for an early Tuesday morning Bible study. Again, I noticed and thought about the reality that these men and I came from 8-10 different congregations. It helps to look for patterns of peace because the small things we notice help to cope with larger differences in the world.

At work that first day back from Kansas, I ate lunch on the Welcome Center deck that faces toward the Massanutten Mountain. I’m always encouraged by the ancient mountain’s peak and its silent elegance, with the Blue Ridge beyond. Above the deck was a glorious pink dogwood, in full spring bloom, delivering beauty to my lunch break that was glorious, enchanting, and memorable.

It doesn’t always work for me, but when I can notice patterns of peace around me, in wholesome relationships, societal systems that still work, and natural wonders that amaze, my spirit fills with hope for peace in a broken world.

Better angels of our nature

A good local association in a time of national peril

This week, I attended an energizing and hope-filled press conference held in a local congregation’s parking lot. About seventy community members gathered on a sun-drenched but cool Monday morning to hear about the progress of an innovative tri-party association. A new preschool that held the press conference emerged from families who want their children enrolled in a quality program while they work.

With families of preschoolers, the public school superintendent, and city and state politicians in attendance, the innovative preschool model shows how local entities can come together to improve the community.

Valley Early Education Reimagined press conference, Harrisonburg Va., March 23, 2026. E. Yoder photo

There was energy in the press conference. A mother of a boy in the preschool program explained that she could continue teaching at a local high school because her son was well cared for. Another mother detailed her anxious choice between having her children in a good preschool or staying home to care for them.

With kids, educators, pastors, grandparents, and politicians, those who gathered created a sense of purpose and renewed hope for our community. We are in a time of national peril, about which few would disagree. But here in my backyard, less than a mile from where I live, is a new association bubbling up from below, showing what we can achieve together.

Launched by Valley Interfaith Action, of which I’m a part, Valley Early Education Reimagined (VEER) is a new model seeking employers and state officials to help fund preschool expenses.

VEER press conference, Harrisonburg, Va., March 23, 2026. E. Yoder photo

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French traveler and writer who came to the United States in 1831, described the unique way Americans create associations for their own betterment. Tocqueville’s description of associations unfolded before my eyes as speaker after speaker at the March 23, 2026, press conference explained how we in this community could work together for our common good.

The mood was positive and hopeful. Two men thanked me for a recent history lecture before the event began. But when the press conference started, I listened to every word. “Together,” a Church of the Brethren pastor declared, “We are pioneering a sustainable childcare model for Virginia.” And the mayor of Harrisonburg, Virginia, called us to work “together, together, together.” The mayor’s energy was the kind of civility and cooperation that James Madison described in Federalist #10, where factions in society come together, working from the bottom up, to create a better world for the participants.

This community movement, driven by diverse local people working together, offers hope that we can overcome divisions and build a stronger society.

VEER press conference, March 23, 2026, Harrisonburg, Va. E. Yoder photo
Better angels of our nature

Happy Birthday, James Madison!

James Madison image courtesy of James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Va.

Happy 275th birthday, James Madison! At my job in Harrisonburg, Virginia, I’ve created a small historical exhibit to honor the fourth president, James Madison, from nearby Montpelier, Virginia.

A few days ago, when James Madison University, a major university I can see from the Heritage Center where I work, celebrated James’s 275th birthday, we did the same. We brought in bagel bites, muffins, candles, and a Jimmy Madison bobblehead. About fifteen volunteer carpenters had come to work for the day, and at lunch, around tables, they humored me by singing “Happy Birthday” to James Madison.

In the earlier Julian calendar, Madison was born on March 6. In the Gregorian calendar, adopted in the United States when James was one, his birthday moved to March 16. Take your pick — JMU and the Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center each had a party in Harrisonburg, Va., on March 6 (Julian), but March 16, 2026 (Gregorian), is Madison’s 275th birthday.

So here’s a tribute to the political philosopher who brought religious freedom to the United States. I’m a Mennonite, and for these 250 years of the United States, my people have been privileged to worship in freedom, even with minority religious beliefs. Madison’s First Amendment says it all: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Celebrating James Madison’s birthday, March 6, 2026
M. Garber photo

"Articulating historical perspectives that inform current trends in the church, society and the world," by Elwood E. Yoder