Jesus Changes Everything (Plough Spiritual Guides), Stanley Hauerwas, edited by Charles E. Moore with an Introduction by Tish Harrison Warren. Plough Publishing House (ISBN: 9781636081571) 2025.

Summary: The radical implications of Jesus’ call to follow him for every area of life from personal to societal.

Did answering the call of Jesus to follow him turn your life upside down (or rather right side up)? Stanley Hauerwas has maintained through all of his writing that Jesus changes everything. Following him isn’t about inspiring messages followed by polite chit-chat in the church lobby that has little effect on life Monday through Saturday. Rather, this collection of readings from his works demonstrates how Jesus indeed changes everything from our life orientation to our identification with God’s people to our money, our pursuit of peace, and even our politics.

The book is organized in six sections. What follows is a brief summary to highlight what you will find:

Part I: Following Jesus. Jesus call is a call to follow him, giving him our ultimate allegiance, even unto death, to get out of the boat far from shore and come to him. It’s not a call to an abstract kingdom but into relationship with the living, breathing king. But to follow this king is not a modification of the existing social order, but to become part of a new social order. While love is central to that life, it is love defined by the cross, where Jesus fully identifies with sin and suffering to raise us to new life.

Part II: Good News. The good news is that in Christ the impossible of the sermon on the mount becomes possible. There is really more to life than living for ourselves. Jesus means it when he calls us to be perfect because that perfection is already in effect in him, and may be in us as we look at and follow him. This way of living subverts the existing social order as it embraces a community of reconciliation and forgiveness.

Part III: God’s Alternative Society. At Pentecost, God created something new out of people from every language group. Specifically he created the alternative society called church. It is a society characterized by truth and charity. It is our first family through baptism. For Hauerwas, this has radical implications for marriage, which is supported and derived from our other commitments. Hauerwas contends, “You do not fall in love and then get married. You get married and then learn what real love requires.’

Part IV: Kingdom Economics. Hauerwas is blunt. We have a problem with wealth and we try to soften the radical teaching of Jesus. The issue is whether we see our goods voluntarily at the disposal of others and are able to say “enough” to ourselves. To not offer help we are able to give is theft. Even the prayer for daily bread is for our bread. He asks whether we are closer to the extravagant Mary or the grifting Judas.

Part V: Sowing Seeds of Peace. The way of Jesus is the way of peace. He made peace with God and with one another possible at the cross. He challenges Christians to practice this when we have grievances and he speaks a challenging word to divisive political partisanship. Any identification of Christianity with party or nation is idolatrous. Rather Christians are to “help the world find habits of peace.” He unflinchingly calls Christians to non-violence which may mean “that we and those we love cannot be spared death.” This is dangerous business, only to be contemplated with the hope of the resurrection. He makes the modest proposal that Christians begin by at least agreeing that they will not kill each other.

Part VI: The Politics of Witness. The question is not which party or policies ought the church support. Instead, Hauerwas argues,

“Put starkly, the first task of the church when it comes to social ethics is to be the church. Such a claim may well sound self-serving or irrelevant until we remember that what makes the church the church is its faithful manifestation of the peaceable kingdom in the world. As such, the church does not have a social ethic; the church is a social ethic.”

Jesus alone is king. Rather than killing for freedom, we are called to faithfulness, even unto death. Instead of seeking social status through political alliances, we pursue our freedom to be the church apart from any social order. Rather than the polite society of Sunday mornings being the church could actually get us in trouble, Hauerwas concludes; “By God, sisters and brothers, being Christian could turn out to be more interesting than we had imagined.”

More interesting indeed. This is an uncomfortable book. But it has the ring of truth as being faithful to the one who went to the cross and bids us die. Charles E. Moore captures the message of Hauerwas across the years, and articulates an alternate path to quiet discouragement or political captivity. He skillfully edits the readings to make this a seamless composition. He also offers a brief biography of Hauerwas complemented by an Introduction by former Times columnist Tish Harrison Warren.

I love these Plough Spiritual Guides. Each one I’ve read calls me into both an encounter with Christ, and to the life of following him. This one is no exception. If you are discouraged with the state of the contemporary church, pick this up. It will both challenge your heart and capture your imagination.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.