Book Review by Jeph Holloway,
Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy
East Texas Baptist University
A Kinder, Gentler Hauerwas
by Stanley Hauerwas
A fruitful way of reading Stanley Hauerwas` latest rendering, A Better Hope,[1] is to read it as a statement concerning the present state of the discipline of Christian Ethics-as an analysis of the discipline`s dominant character and an account of what it would mean if it embraced its genuinely theological dimensions. In other words, A Better Hope gives clear indication of what Hauerwas thinks is wrong with how Christian Ethics is usually "done," and what it would take for it to be done rightly.
To be fair, Hauerwas would want the "what it would take for it to be done rightly" aspect to bear the emphasis. He confesses himself, though, that the reader will not find here a "kinder, gentler Hauerwas . . . . A Better Hope is not without polemics" (10). Hauerwas is still "mad as hell," particularly with Christians (including himself) who, for the sake of a voice in the public arena, make common cause with those features of our present context that are actually enemies of the faith: capitalism, democracy, and postmodernity. But his overarching concern is to provide for both the church and the world a better hope, by once again reminding the church of its distinctive calling. Embracing this distinctive calling requires reliance on the truth that Christians have available "resources for resisting the powers that threaten ours lives as Christians" (10).
Unfortunately, the way Christian Ethics is often pursued, these resources are usually neglected, if not considered an outright impediment to effectiveness. Hauerwas argues throughout A Better Hope and in a variety of ways that Christian Ethics generally suffers from three interrelated errors. The first error is that "the subject of Christian Ethics in America has always been America" (23-24). Likewise, many Christians in general think that the fundamental task of the church is "to make America work" (33). One great problem with this, of course, is that with the close identification of American Christianity with America the church in America has lost "our ability to survive as church" (33). It is no wonder, Hauerwas suggests, that a church that is concerned so much with America has lost in numbers, influence, and status when such a church "would have nothing distinctive to say . . . about the challenges facing this society" (25). Certainly "it is by no means clear why you need to go to church when such churches only reinforce what you already know from participation in a democratic society" (26).
But why does Hauerwas believe that participation in a democratic society means Christians "would have nothing distinctive to say as Christians?" Because it is often assumed that "if Christians are to speak in the `public` arena they must do so using a `third language` that avoids the `particularities` of the faith" (11). "Some mediating language is required and assumed to be justified in the name of a common morality or by natural law reasoning" (26). But the use of this "third language" (commonly assumed to sound much like John Rawls), for the sake of making America work, leaves the distinctive contribution of Christians outside the conversation. This indicates the second error challenged by Hauerwas: the abstraction of Christian Ethics from theology.
The impact of the Americo-centric character of Christian Ethics as a discipline is seen most clearly in the work of graduate schools in America that train ethicists. In moving from a seminary context to a graduate school environment, the focus is less on Christian Ethics than it is on Religious Ethics. In such an environment the major influence on such studies is philosophy, not theology, a move made necessary by the assumption "that the subject of study and/or action is America" (61). What troubles Hauerwas, it seems, is that because the subject of the study of Christian Ethics has been America, Christian ethicists have been eager to substitute the particular language of identifiable religious traditions with the allegedly neutral language of philosophy. In doing this they reveal the belief that the "questions of God`s creative and redemptive purposes" (64) have no bearing on the moral and social issues of our day.
Of course, not all Christian ethicists have followed this track. Hauerwas mentions those whose work in the field clearly locates them within particular ecclesial contexts-John Howard Yoder, Vernard Eller, George Forell, and Richard Mouw to name a few (59). What these writers have in common is the conviction that they are concerned to address not first America, but the church. This raises the third error that exorcises Hauerwas: the independence of Christian Ethics from the church. With reference to the two major luminaries of 20th Century Christian Ethics, Hauerwas says that the church has only an ambiguous presence in the work of H. Richard Niebuhr and "is almost non-existent in Reinhold Niebuhr`s corpus" (62). The irony is that with this loss of the church, the practices of which "make ethical reflection intelligible for Christians," it is more, "rather than less, difficult for Christians to engage other traditions" for the sake of public significance (62). This is so, says Hauerwas, because "unless we are willing to take the particularity of our convictions seriously, we have no way to even know what it means to claim them as true or false" (62).
The independence of the field of Christian Ethics from the church is seen in more than just the move from the seminary to graduate schools for the study of Religious Ethics. It is also seen in that Christian Ethics in particular and American Christianity in general, has little appreciation for the close relationship between worship, evangelism, and ethics. Hauerwas, indeed, cites Donald Saliers as one whose "focus on worship becomes a way to explore how the and might be eliminated between theology and evangelism or theology and ethics" (156). Clearly, though, the convention in both ethical training and church practice is to see sharp lines of distinction between tasks that only find their unity in the life of the church. For Hauerwas, though, the concern is for the peculiar practices of the church and its peculiarly theological language about the Trinity (which "requires at the least that we learn to say together the Apostle`s Creed" [160]), to enable the church to recover its life in worship. When such occurs then those sharp lines of distinction are blurred and the tasks of worship/evangelism/ethics converge in the lives of a people shaped by love for God which, according to Augustine, is the only place where true justice is found and a true politic enabled (157).
Hauerwas is persuaded that when the church recovers this life it enjoys the resources necessary to withstand the corrupting powers that presently confront it-capitalism, democracy, and postmodernity. While Hauerwas` arguments are more nuanced and interwoven, we might say that attention to the life of worship in the communion of saints provides an identity and an arena for commitment that subverts the focus of capitalism on short-term commitments, ceaseless innovation, and self-gratification (47-51). The relocation of ethical and political discourse within the particularities of theology challenges the basic premise of western liberalism that matters of faith are private and restricted to "internal" matters of religion (109-16). The affirmation of life in the church is affirmation of a fellowship and friendship that spans the generations, in other words, one that takes history seriously (173-87). What better resource would we want for combating the nihilism and hopelessness of a postmodernity that agonizes over the denial of history, a denial that leaves as the only remaining comfort "the shopping mall" (39).
Long-time readers of Hauerwas will not find much that is new in A Better Hope. This does not bother Hauerwas who says of these essays, "If they repeat arguments I have made elsewhere, [they] do so because, given the entrenchment of the position against which I am arguing, I can only say again what I have said before in the hope of establishing new habits that can help us forget what I hope we can learn to leave behind" (17). Those who hear in Hauerwas a voice of theological integrity and challenge to the church to embrace its identity as an altera civitas will be grateful for the continuing dialogue Hauerwas provides with the great variety of voices he engages. Those not persuaded of his analysis will perhaps echo one of the strongest advocates of capitalism, democracy, and late-modernity, otherwise known as postmodernity: "Well, there he goes again."
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[1]Hauerwas, Stanley, A Better Hope: Resources for a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy, and Postmodernity (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2000).
