Category Archives: Publications

The Importance of Novels (Series on “Minding the Web”)

“Yet the novel is all-important for me exactly because it forces one to imagine other lives. In short, novels are an exercise in the enrichment of the imagination through which we develop empathy that is crucial for the acquisition of the virtues.”1

This is the thirteenth in a series of posts highlighting captivating, provocative, or simply entertaining quotes from the forthcoming book Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections by Stanley Hauerwas edited by Robert J. Dean (Cascade).

  1. Stanley Hauerwas, “In Defense of ‘Our Respectable Culture’: Trying to Make Sense of John Howard Yoder,” Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections, edited by Robert J. Dean (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018), 153.

Hope Beyond Optimism (Series on “Minding the Web”)

In the essay “Minding the Gaps, or, Theologians Writing Memoirs,” Stanley Hauerwas examines the similarities and divergences between the British theologian A.E. Harvey’s memoir and his own, Hannah’s Child.  In addition to belonging to the subset of “memoirs written by theologians,” both works also reflect upon a shared reality of life with a spouse suffering from mental illness.  Here is an illuminating quote from near the end of the essay: Continue reading Hope Beyond Optimism (Series on “Minding the Web”)

The Need for Exemplification (Series on “Minding the Web”)

This is the third in a series of posts highlighting captivating, provocative, or simply entertaining quotes from the forthcoming book Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections by Stanley Hauerwas with Robert J. Dean (Cascade).

In the essay “Why Jean Vanier Matters: An Exemplary Exploration,” Hauerwas draws upon the work of Alasdair MacIntyre to help us see why we cannot do without the exemplification of Jean Vanier and the L’Arche movement, if we are to reason and live well. While the just of the following paragraph could be distilled from many of Hauerwas’s earlier writings, the clarity of the following summary of MacIntyre’s tradition-based account of moral inquiry commends itself to those who are seeking to understand how MacIntyre has impacted Hauerwas’s own way of thinking about ethics and rationality. Continue reading The Need for Exemplification (Series on “Minding the Web”)

Book Review of Losing Susan

I have contributed a book review of Victor Lee Austin’s gripping theologically-informed reflection on loving and carrying for his dying spouse, Losing Susan: Brain Disease, the Priest’s Wife, and the God Who Gives and Takes Away, to the most recent edition of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith.  You can read the review here beginning on page 200.  More importantly read the book!

Forthcoming Issue of Didaskalia

The forthcoming issue of the Canadian theological journal Didaskalia, published by Providence Theological Seminary, includes both a gracious review of my book For the Life of the World: Jesus Christ and the Church in the Theologies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Stanley Hauerwas by Christopher Holmes and an essay of my own entitled, “A Matter of MIssion: Bonhoeffer, the Bible, and Ecclesial Formation.” Continue reading Forthcoming Issue of Didaskalia

On Feet and Forgiveness

“With the basin, God’s people are schooled in the humility necessary to serve in Christ’s upside-down kingdom.1 The practice of foot-washing challenges our deeply held goals and aspirations by replacing popular conceptions of success with a vision of radical downward mobility. Continue reading On Feet and Forgiveness

  1. Reflecting on the practice of foot-washing, Jean Vanier writes, “It is always very moving for me when someone with disabilities washes my feet or when I see a person wash the feet of their mother or father. It is the world turned upside down.” Jean Vanier, Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John (Ottawa: Novalis, 2004), 228.