Republican Ted Yoho resigned from a prominent Christian organization after it was made clear that if he did not, he would be forced to step down. This occurred after he launched a blistering personal invective against everyone’s favorite “love-to-hate-her” democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, allegedly calling her “disgusting” and a “F—— b—.”
The attack and subsequent non-apology apology from Yoho prompted Bread for the World, to leave a statement on their website,
“As a bipartisan Christian organization committed to alleviating hunger and poverty through sound public policies, Bread for the World upholds the values of respect, dignity, and compassion that Jesus calls us to when engaging decision makers from across the political spectrum. We believe that Rep. Ted Yoho’s recent actions and words as reported in the media are not reflective of the ethical standards expected of members of our Board of Directors.
In an interview with NPR, Eugene Cho, newly minted President and CEO of Bread for the world, further said:
Well, as you can imagine, this has been a very difficult week at Bread for the World. Having said that, when we were made aware of the incident, we made sure not to rush to any particular decision. I think in our larger culture and world, there’s so much pressure and voices shouting at us about what we should do. We took some time to reflect internally, to have some discussions with our board of directors and our staff and our constituents. And we also wanted to wait to be able to have a conversation directly with Congressman Yoho.
But as you noted in the introduction, we have expectations for our board of directors. We’re not an organization that demands perfection of any of us because clearly, we’ll all fall short. But we did feel that his comments were inappropriate, not reflective of the ethical standards and Christian values that we seek to uphold as an organization and for our leaders. And for that reason, we had that conversation with Congressman Yoho.
As far as “Christian Organizations” go, Bread for the World a theologically squishy, ecumenical 501c3 organization that is headquartered in the US and operates around the world. It has 95 employees, and disperses about $5 million dollars a year.
It is led by Rev. Eugene Cho, who is the former senior Pastor at Quest Church, which is associated with the radical pietist Evangelical Covenant Church denomination.
