The limits of Stan the Man Hauerwas

When I was in seminary, I got drunk on Stanley Hauerwas. His polemic works against Modernity, Christendom, Liberalism, Individualism, etc. - struck a chord with me, and gave me a certain set of diagnostic lenses to see "How stuff works" in our late modern world. For all that I learned from Hauerwas and will no doubt continue to learn, I am in his debt.

Yet even while I was stumbling drunk on his work, there were moments of clarity where I saw something lacking. In his hyperbolic assertion that Christianity hangs or falls on the fidelity of the Church as a concrete social/political body, understood as an alternative to "the world" - this all seemed to at least downplay or, worse, denigrate things like personal piety or spiritual formation. The self was lost in that elusive, fugitive "We/Us" of the capital-C Church.

So for all kinds of good reasons I remain generally positive on Hauerwas, but I'm also grateful for smarter folks than I doing critical engagement on his work, because it might give me better handles on where the limits of his work lie, and where I might mark out points of departure. The most recent, and what looks to be very intelligent, entry in this field is Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction
, by Nicholas M. Healy
, published by Eerdmans. And First Things has a helpful review of the book up from John Webster, tellingly entitled "Ecclesiocentrism." It's short and sweet, so give it a look if you love or hate Stan.



Here's a great summary by Webster of the Healy's claims:

[He argues] that Hauerwas is a “splendid social ethicist” whose theology is “surprisingly thin.” It says little about divine being and action, justification, the Spirit’s grace, or the life of virtue as orientation to God, Healy concludes. In short, if Hauerwas’s rendering of the Christian lifework is not adequate, it is because it does not place Church and morals sub ratione Dei (under the aspect of God).

That first sentence might be the clearest articulation of my felt-sense of reading a decently modest amount (but probably more than most) of Hauerwas on and off for the past five years. Hauerwas (and Yoder before him) have both been accused of being SO heavily focused on ethics that spirituality, or God's super-natural work in our lives individually and perhaps even corporately, kind of gets lost in all this focus on theologically correct doing.

And it's precisely here where I see the Schwarzenau Brethren tradition's claiming of Pietism with Anabaptism to be a boon, and not a liability. The spiritual life of selves in relation to/with God is important, theologically and practically worthwhile. Yes of course to selves understood as being constituted by tradition/narrative-based communities and all that social-political-ethical Yoderwas/MacIntyre stuff, sure. And yes we get baggage from both Anabaptism (that Hauerwas likes to cherry-pick from but also make fun of) and Pietism (that both Hauerwas and Yoder seemed to hate), but that's life.

So it seems I'm waking from my Hauerwasian hangover. Or, to switch metaphors, my friend Ric Hudgens pointed out in Facebook conversation...

I do hope...that it is time for the initial romance of Hauerwasian theology to fade so that we can come to a mature assessment that can both affirm and deny varying parts of his contribution. The current Christian Century series on Resident Aliens points in that direction too.

Which reminded me that I have more reading to do...