3 Quotes & Sayings By John D Roth

John D. Roth is President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, where he oversees the Foundation's $100 million investment in research Read more

Prior to joining the Foundation in 2003, he was Chief Executive Officer of Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., working with the company's executive officer to enhance its business performance and increase shareholder value. He also served as Chairman of the Board for Harvard Business School, where he helped grow revenues from $30 million to $1 billion. A member of the board of directors of GEICO, Mr.

Roth has held positions with many other leading organizations including PepsiCo, JP Morgan Chase, and The Walt Disney Company. Before assuming his current position at the Foundation, Mr. Roth was a partner at Goldman Sachs & Co., where he worked on mergers and acquisitions for over twenty years.

He is a director of United Technologies Corporation and serves on several boards including that of Citizens National Bank & Trust Co., Inc., The Henry Ford Health System, Inc., and The Brookings Institution.

1
From the very beginning of the movement in the sixteenth century, Anabaptists shared a deep suspicion of the so-called Schriftgelehrten - the university-trained scholars who, they claimed artfully dodged the clear and simple teachings of Jesus by appealing to complex arguments and carefully crafted statements of doctrine. In other words, they confused theological discussions with lived faith. John D. Roth
2
Throughout history, Christians have faced the persistent temptation of confusing the language we use to talk about God with the essence of Christian faith. This stubborn human tendency to turn doctrine into an idol - to confuse a human creation with the truth itself - can easily lead people to wield doctrinal claims as a weapon against minority or dissenting perspectives. Thus, anyone who does not line up with a certain formulation of Christian faith is not only wrong, but also a heretic and therefore worthy of punishment or death. John D. Roth