Stanley Hauerwas

Review: The Peaceable Kingdom

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The Peaceable Kingdom, Stanley Hauerwas. University of Notre Dame Press (ISBN:  9780268015541) 1991.

Summary: A Christian ethic centered in the character of the rule Jesus inaugurated, lived by the church in nonviolent service.

I recently reviewed a distillation of Stanley Hauerwas’ writings titled Jesus Changes Everything (at https://bobonbooks.com/2025/03/26/review-jesus-changes-everything/). I was so impressed with his writings that I wanted to read more and picked up his The Peaceable Kingdom. This is his “primer in Christian ethics” and elaborates the idea that peace and nonviolence is central to the character of Jesus’ kingdom and the calling of those who follow him, gathered in Christian communities. I was surprised in reading this work to find it was far more “academic,” befitting his work as a seminary professor at Duke.

In my review, I will not focus on all the details of what is at times a dense discussion (but well worth the wading). Rather, I will summarize what I found and briefly comment.

First of all, he denies the possibility of an “absolute” ethics while arguing for the distinctiveness of a Christian ethic. For him, doctrine and ethics are inseparable. Truth must be lived and this inevitably involves an ethic. Moreover, for the Christian, that ethic centers in the narrative of Jesus–his life, death, and resurrection–that inaugurates a kingdom of forgiveness and peace. That peace is both with God and with one another.

Jesus calls his followers into a community of character. Specifically, Jesus calls us into lives of repenting from violence and discord, exercising our agency to live peaceably. Hence, the church, as Christ’s body, doesn’t have an ethic but is one. We are the servant community living in patience and hope for the dawning of Jesus kingdom. The church isn’t the kingdom but lives in anticipation of it by its character.

Hauerwas notes the focus on casuistry and ethical decision-making in much of ethics. A Christian ethic is different, flowing not from calculated decisions but what a person or community is and is becoming. Finally, Hauerwas proposes that a key virtue undergirding peaceableness is patience. He argues the virtue of doing nothing, siding with H. Richard Niebuhr over his brother Reinhold Niebuhr. With this patience comes joy, as we relinquish controlling our lives and those of others to God. Rather than tackling the many problems of the world, he argues for the grace of doing one thing.

For me, the strongest parts of Hauerwas’ argument are the appeal to the narrative of Jesus for our ethic and the insistence that the church is a social ethic. However, I do not believe that nonviolence always means doing nothing. Rosa Parks was peaceable and nonviolent, but she sat down. So were John Lewis and others who engaged in sit-ins. And sometimes, doing nothing is an act of nonviolent resistance, not nonresistance. Given that Hauerwas wrote twenty-five years after the civil rights movement, it surprises me he does not address this.

However, Hauerwas is one of the leading voices in reasserting the calling of the church to peace and nonviolence within society. It is an important testimony at a time when Christians seem bent on “taking sides” in the divisive political issues of our days, even using warfare metaphors to characterize their efforts. Perhaps this book is indeed a “primer” for how then we should live as the people of God.

Review: Jesus Changes Everything

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Cover image of "Jesus Changes Everything" by Stanley Hauerwas

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.

Review: The Making of Stanley Hauerwas

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Making

The Making of Stanley Hauerwas (New Explorations in Theology), David B. Hunsicker, foreword by Stanley Hauerwas. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019.

Summary: A study of the theology of Stanley Hauerwas and the apparently contrary threads of being characterized as both Barthian, and a postliberal theologian.

Stanley Hauerwas has been one of the most visible and discussed theologians of the last forty years. His challenging work on the nature of the church, his assertion of the church as a political structure, and his social ethics has evoked much discussion. In this work, David B. Hunsicker focuses on two apparently contrary aspects of Hauerwas theological work–his claim to be a Barthian, and the postliberal character of his theology, focusing on narrative interpretation of scripture and emphasizing ecclesiology instead of Christology.

Hunsicker begins by tracing Hauerwas biography and the Barthian influences in his thought–particularly in rejecting the divorce of theology and ethics, and in rejecting theological liberalism. He then offers a case study of how each of them approached abortion, how both reject natural theology approaches arguing from universal reasons, but how Hauerwas parts in grounding his exploration in ecclesiology and how the church functions in moral formation. He concludes in the first part that Hauerwas was indirectly influenced by Barth, and that his post liberalism expands the idea of what it means to be a “Barthian.”

In part two, Hunsicker considers the claim that Hauerwas learned to keep theology and ethics together from Barth. The discussion revolves around a key difference–Barth’s rejection of a casuistic approach ethics. Hauerwas reintroduces casuistry in his ecclesiological approach but the differences are reconciled in Hauerwas’ narrative approach to Christology, with the ethics of the church formed by its imitation of Christ.

In the final part, Hunsicker takes on the question of whether Hauerwas is more Ritschlian than Barthian in that his use of scripture is sociological rather than theological. Hunsicker contends that while Hauerwas goes beyond Barth in his focus on the church, his theology of the church is consistent with that of Barth. The conclusion includes some of Hunsicker’s ideas of helpful clarifications Hauerwas could make to resolve the apparent contradictions.

One question I wonder about beyond academic curiosity is why this all matters? One of the things this work underscored is the critical connection between Christ and the church, that our encounter with Christ is embodied and lived out through the church into the world. Through the church, we are both formed in Christ and engaged with the world. This work also helps explicate the way Hauerwas departs from liberal theology and the creative tension in his work in its Barthian and postliberal aspects. Finally, it underscores Hauerwas critique that Christian ethics in Twentieth century America was more American than Christian, and Hauerwas effort to recover a church more Christian than American.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Living Gently in a Violent World

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Living Gently

Living Gently in a Violent World, Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2018.

Summary: Essays by the two authors reflecting on the practice of gentleness in the L’Arche communities where assistants and the disabled live in community, and the theological and political significance of this witness in a violent world.

Stanley Hauerwas has been named “America’s best theologian” by Time magazine, known for his advocacy that the church embody its social ethic, that it be itself, in its communal life, and for his critique of liberal democracy, capitalism, and militarism, and the church’s often unthinking endorsement and adoption of these ideologies. Jean Vanier, deceased in 2019, was the founder of L’Arche, a network of communities where helpers and the disabled live and share life together in “houses” or communities. Until 2006, they had never met, although Hauerwas had commended the work of L’Arche. They were invited to a conference by the Center for Spirituality, Health, and Disability at the University of Aberdeen, where they spent two days conversing and speaking. This book, recently reissued in an expanded edition with study guide, reflects those conversations.

Other than introductory and concluding essays by John Swinton, this book consists of  four alternating essays by Vanier and Hauerwas. The first, by Vanier is a narrative of the beginnings and development of L’Arche. Drawn by the work of Father Thomas Philippe with the disabled in France, he moved there, began to live with two disabled men who had been institutionalized, and soon found himself leading the community. He describes L’Arche as fragile, subject to government regulations and the question of whether people will always choose to live with them. He also describes L’Arche as a place of transformation, both for assistants and the disabled, transformations that reflect the mystery of the Spirit’s work. He describes three crucial activities in their community, all requiring gentleness and patience: meals together, prayer and communion, and celebration of everything from birthdays and holidays to deaths of members. The message in all of this is, “You are a gift. You’re a gift to the community.”

Hauerwas responds by discussing how L’Arche is a “modest proposal” in a violent world that is a witness to the church of its call to gentleness and non-violence. It is a witness of care for those who cannot be cured, of patience in a particular place. For this reason, Hauerwas also believes that L’Arche needs the church as a reminder that they need to worship with the larger body that is not L’Arche. It is not only as a witness to the church, amplified through the church, but also support and sustenance from the church that makes its life possible.

Vanier then writes of L’Arche as a place that in a small way addresses the woundedness of the world by recognizing in weakness and wounds a way to God. He speaks of the connection of fear and violence, and the power of surrendering our fears to love–the love of God and the present love of the community, both the abled and the disabled. Grieving the sentiment that would abort all those with Down syndrome and the message that leaves the disabled feeling, “I am no good” Vanier writes:

“The heart of L’Arche is to say to people, ‘I am glad you exist.’ And the proof that we are glad that they exist is that we stay with them for a long time. We are together, we can have fun together. ‘I am glad you exist’ is translated into physical presence” (p. 69).

Hauerwas’s concluding essay explores the politics of gentleness in an extended engagement with the thought of John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum, both who labored to articulate a rationale for the rights of the disabled to help. He summarizes how L’Arche went beyond this:

“Nussbaum wants to give Jean justifications for helping the disabled. What she can’t do is give him a reason to live with them. But that is exactly what Jean says he needed. He had to be taught how to be gentle. It is not easy to learn to be gentle with the mentally disabled. As Jean has already said, they also suffer from the wound of loneliness. They can ask for too much. Which means gentleness requires the slow and patient work necessary to create trust. Crucial for the development of trust is that assistants in L’Arche discover the darkness, brokenness, and selfishness shaped by their own loneliness…. According to Jean, through the struggle to discover we are wounded like the mentally disabled, we discover how much ‘we need Jesus and his Paraclete…” (p. 90).

There is a gentleness that flows out of this awareness before God of our mutual weakness, exemplified in the practice of mutually washing one another’s feet, transformative to assistants and disabled alike, that is a witness in a violent world.

This slim volume is an extraordinary testament, a witness as it were, to the power of gentleness that flows from weakness, both in its description of the quiet wonder taking place within L’Arche, and the record of the conversation between Vanier and Hauerwas, as they opened minds and hearts to each other to explore the significance of the “modest proposal” that is L’Arche in an impatient and violent world.

Review: Christian Political Witness

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Christian Political WitnessWe were once told by a friend that she would not consider joining our church because it would mean she would have to change her political affiliation. Thankfully, if that ever was true, it is no longer. Yet when some hear the phrase “Christian political witness” it conjures up ideas of church support of a particular political agenda of one of the major political parties or an effort to gain political leverage to impose an agenda on a dissenting public. For many, that is alienating and smacks of the polarized politics so many of us detest.

I found that this volume, consisting of a collection of papers from the 2013 Wheaton Theology Conference, explores a very different, and much more nuanced political engagement. Stanley Hauerwas’ opening paper set a tone for the volume challenging the church to think of itself neither as allied with the state in some form of re-constituted Christendom nor simply a marginalized, privatized community in a secular culture but rather its own polis that exists as a public, material witness to the Lordship of Jesus over and against all other powers. The collection returns to this theme at the end as former Archbishop of the Anglican Church in Kenya, David Gitari, in his account of his own courageous witness confronting Daniel arap Moi, proposes an analogy between politics and fire. He writes,

“Our relationship with powers that be should be like our relationship with fire. If you get too close to the fire you get burnt, and if you go too far away you will freeze. Hence stay in a strategic place so that you can be of help. You can support the authority, but when they become corrupt you can criticize fearlessly.”

In between these “bookends” ten other scholars explored various aspects of this topic. Mark Noll looks at the antebellum use of scripture around the issue of slavery as a warning about our use of scripture in political witness, including an example of a more careful hermeneutic. Scot McKnight explores the idea of the kingdom and comes down against popular fashion in arguing that the presence of the kingdom is most visibly expressed through the church.  Timothy Gombis considers the political witness of Paul while George Kalantzis recounts the political engagement of the pre-Constantinian early church with Rome, particularly its refusal to engage in pagan sacrifice and of military service.

The following papers turned to more contemporary issues. Jana Marguerite Bennett suggests that the existence of the church challenges the public/private split and the relegation of family to the private sphere. William T. Cavanaugh explores the Citizens United decision that defines business corporations as persons. His objection to this decision is not the defining of corporations as “person” but the exclusive application of this to business, ignoring the long-standing idea of Christian communities seeing themselves as “bodies” in which individuals exist as part of a larger corporate whole. Peter Leithart turns to the often contested concerns about violence and God’s actions to destroy enemies, which he distinguishes from the unjust and sinful use of force, which he would define as violence.

The next two papers were, for me, the most thought-provoking. Daniel Bell gives us a fresh take on “just war” theory that moves beyond the “public policy checklist” approach to a “Christian discipleship” approach that considers the virtues the church nurtures related to just war criteria. Following this, Jennifer McBride challenges the triumphal and self-righteous approach often taken by churches with a repentance-based approach that acknowledges our own complicity in sin and invites others to join us in turning from it toward God.

The penultimate paper by David P. Gushee observes the absence in evangelicalism of a social teaching tradition similar to that found in Roman Catholicism or mainline Protestantism. He proposes a “social ethics of costly practical solidarity with the oppressed” and works out in brief form how this might apply to ten contemporary issues.

The question of how one engages or does not engage our political and power structures is unavoidable for any thoughtful citizen, believing or not. What ethic will inform that engagement? What ends will one pursue? The papers in this book provided helpful perspectives toward political engagements and structures that foster flourishing societies while resisting church or state tyranny and corruption.