Stanley Hauerwas

Stanley Hauerwas (b. July 24, 1940) is a United MethodistFact|date=October 2008 theologian, ethicist, and professor of law. He received a Ph.D. from Yale University and an honorary D.D. from the University of Edinburgh, and he has taught at the University of Notre Dame and is currently the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School with a joint appointment at the Duke University School of Law.

In his career, he has attempted to emphasize the importance of virtue and character within the Church. He has been an outspoken Christian pacifist and has promoted nonviolence, having been mentored by Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder. Hauerwas has also been an opponent of nationalism, particularly American patriotism, arguing that it has no place in the Church.

His theological writings occasionally veer into the area of paleo-orthodoxy, and he has also been associated with the narrative theology movement, which burgeoned in the 1970s at his "alma mater", Yale Divinity School.

TIME Magazine in 2001 named him "America's Best Theologian". He responded by saying "Best is not a theological category." That same year, he was invited to give the Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews in Scotland, which were published as "With the Grain of the Universe," (ISBN 1-58743-016-9) a text in which Karl Barth's interpretation of St. Anselm's analogy of faith was featured. In 1997 he gave the "Scottish Journal of Theology" lectures at Aberdeen, published as "Sanctify Them in Truth" (1998).

Hauerwas is a prominent and influential theological ethicist in the United States. Educated at Yale Divinity School, Hauerwas came under the influence of James Gustafson, one of the more well-known students of H. Richard Niebuhr. This contact distinctly discolored his perception of Niebuhr, despite his dependence upon "The Meaning of Revelation" and "The Responsible Self". Later teaching at Notre Dame, Hauerwas discovered John Howard Yoder's work, which critiques the work of Reinhold Niebuhr whom Hauerwas frequently criticizes, and has drawn upon it to question the modern philosophical foundations for just war thinking. Hauerwas has also been deeply influenced by Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who uses Thomist thought regarding virtue ethics to critique modern and postmodern culture.

As a teacher and lecturer, Hauerwas is known for his wit, sharp criticisms of positions he disagrees with, breadth of reading, and (more than) occasional use of profanity, which he explains as being the result of having a brick-layer father. Hauerwas often wears jeans with his dress shirt and tie.

Hauerwas' theology is colored by a deep love of the church. As such, he speaks frequently at churches throughout North America, and gave the Slater-Maguire Lecture at St. Margaret's Anglican Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 2006.

While Hauerwas has been self-identified with the United Methodist Church for the bulk of his career, as of his latest work, he has begun to identify himself as an Anglican and attends Church of the Holy Family, an Episcopal Church in Chapel Hill, NC.

Additionally, Hauerwas was influential in the formation of the Ekklesia Project, a multi-denominational Christian "think tank" and Renewal Movement, also supported by many of his former graduate students. Hauerwas, although a controversial figure, is well-loved by colleagues, former students and Church members alike. One of his former students is Gregory Jones, current Dean of the Divinity School of Duke University.

Publications

Many of his books are collections of essays; some are structured monographs. Among his more commonly known works are:
* "Vision and Virtue: Essays in Christian Ethical Reflection" (1974)
* "Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics" (1975)
* "Truthfulness and Tragedy: Further Investigations into Christian Ethics" (1977)
* "A Community of Character" (1981) ISBN 0-268-00735-7
* "The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics" (1983) ISBN 0-268-01554-6
* "Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society" (1985) ISBN 0-86683-957-7
* "Suffering Presence: Theological Reflections on Medicine, the Mentally Handicapped, and the Church" (1986)
* "Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between" (1988)
* "" (with William Willimon) (1989) ISBN 0-687-36159-1
* "Naming the Silence: God, Medicine and the Problem of Suffering" (1990)
* "After Christendom: How the Church Is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas" (1991) ISBN 0-687-00929-4
* "Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America" (1993) ISBN 0-687-31678-2
* "Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secular" (1994)
* "In Good Company: The Church as Polis" (1995)
* "Where Resident Aliens Live" (with William Willimon) (1996)
* "Christians Among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics" (with Charles Pinches) (1997)
* "Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth Century Theology and Philosophy" (1997)
* "Sanctify Them in Truth: Holiness Exemplified" (1998)
* "A Better Hope: Resources for a church confronting capitalism, democracy and postmodernity" (2000)
* "With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology" (2001) ISBN 1-58743-016-9
* "The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics" (with Samuel Wells) (2004)
* "Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Non-Violence" (2004)
* "That State of the University: Academic Knowledges and the Knowledge of God" (2007)
* "Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary: Conversations between a Radical Democrat and a Christian" (with Romand Coles) (2008)

Quotes

*"We are willing to worship a God only if God makes us safe. Thus you get the silly question, How does a good God let bad things happen to good people? Of course, it was a rabbi who raised that question, but Christians took it up as their own. Have you read the Psalms lately? We're seeing a much more complex God than that question gives credit for." – From the Chronicle for Higher Education, The Chronicle Review, "A Complex God" September 28, 2001 "The Chronicle Review" Page: B6
*"One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend."
*"Consider the problem of taking showers with [Christians] . They are, after all, constantly going on about the business of witnessing in the hopes of making converts to their God and church. Would you want to shower with such people? You never know when they might try to baptize you." From "Why Gays (as a Group) are Morally Superior to Christians (as a Group)" in "The Hauerwas Reader" (2001) eds. John Berkman and Michael Cartwright
*" [W] e must first experience the kingdom if we are even to know what kind of freedom and what kind of equality we should desire. Christian freedom lies in service, Christian equality is equality before God, and neither can be achieved through the coercive efforts of liberal idealists who would transform the world into their image." From "The Servant Community: Christian Social Ethics" (1983) in "The Hauerwas Reader" (2001) eds. John Berkman and Michael Cartwright
*"Sentimentality, not atheism, is the greatest enemy of the Church."Citequote|Stanley Hauerwas|date=October 2008
*"Christians know that Christianity is simply extended training in dying early. That is what we have always been about." From "Abortion, Critically Understood" (1990) at lifewatch.org [http://lifewatch.org/abortion.html] "Nonviolence is a way of life for Christians. If that community produces people whose stories it remembers, it calls them martyrs, not heroes""I had a colleague at the University of Notre Dame who taught Judaica. He was Jewish and always said that any religion that does not tell you what to do with your genitals and pots and pans cannot be interesting. That is exactly true. In the church we tell you what you can and cannot do with your genitals. They are not your own. They are not private. That means that you cannot commit adultery. If you do, you are no longer a member of "us." Of course pots and pans are equally important…""Christianity is simply extended training in dying early""I do not have a foreign policy. I have something better--a church constituted by people who would rather die than kill."

External links

* [http://www.divinity.duke.edu/portal_memberdata/shauerwas Hauerwas biography at Duke]
* [http://www.nd.edu/~ndethics/about/hauerwas.shtml Hauerwas biography at Notre Dame]
* [http://www.bigbrother.net/~mugwump/Hauerwas/ Stanley Hauerwas Online: Unofficial Internet Archive]
* [http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/WeirdWildWeb/courses/mwt/dictionary/mwt_themes_912_hauerwas.htm Stanley Hauerwas: The Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Modern Western Theology]