“For unless a people exist who have a narrative more determinative than the story shaped by the politics of the day, I fear we will continue to produce politicians like Donald Trump, people who not only seem to be dangerous but are dangerous. They are, moreover, all the more dangerous because no people seem to exist who are capable of telling them the truth. (more…)
Tag: Hauerwas
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On Growing Old in the United States (Series on “Minding the Web”)
“The substitution of technique for wisdom is one of the main reasons that we have no place for understanding the responsibilities and status of the elderly. In wisdom cultures the elderly are expected to remember the judgments made in the past about matters that can be other. Once a social order no longer depends on memory the old have no responsibility to younger generations. (more…)
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The Failure of the Triumphant Church (Series on “Minding the Web”)
This is the sixth 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 contrast to the triumphant church, the early church was a militant church. The militant church, moreover, alone is the church. The triumphant church, as well as the very concept of Christendom, is but vain conceit. Nowhere is that vanity more apparent than the triumphant church’s inability to produce martyrs. (more…)
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Kierkegaard and the Loss of Truth in Christendom (Series on “Minding the Web”)
This is the fifth 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).
Søren Kierkegaard has long lurked in the background of Stanley Hauerwas’s work. In this forthcoming volume, we are finally treated to a direct engagement with the “Great Dane,” as Hauerwas consults Kierkegaard to help think through what it would mean to teach theology as theology in the modern university. Here is the first of several quotes from this provocative essay. (more…)
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Bonhoeffer on “Stolen Words” (Series on “Minding the Web”)
This is the fourth 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).
“To find the proper words” strikes me as the great challenge for the recovery of the church’s visibility. Consider, for example, Bonhoeffer’s reflections in the Ethics—tellingly in the section “Ethics as Formation”—in which he describes how Hitler, the one who tyrannically despises humanity, makes use of the meanness of the human heart by giving it other names. (more…)
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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. (more…)
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The Plight We Are In (Series on “Minding the Web”)
This is the second 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).
Here is Hauerwas drawing on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre to provide as clear an account as any of the plight that we find ourselves in under the reign of liberalism: (more…)
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A New Series on “Minding the Web”
This past year I’ve had the great privilege of working with Stanley Hauerwas on his forthcoming book Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections (Cascade Books). I served as something of a curator and editor of Hauerwas’s essays, addresses, and sermons, as well as contributing a couple of essays and sermons of my own to the volume. The essays, I believe, feature some of best writing, so I am delighted that they have found a home in such a rich volume alongside of Hauerwas’s enduringly relevant and provocative investigations and sermons. In addition to the gracious invitation to participate in the project, Stanley has generously granted me permission to share some of my favourite quotes from the book in the days leading up to its publication. Over the course of the next few weeks, I will draw attention to some of the turns-of-phrase, sentences and short passages that, for one reason or another, captured my imagination. (more…)
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The Virtue of Baseball
The most recent book from Stanley Hauerwas, The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson, consists of letters that the theologian annually sent to his godson, Laurie Wells, over a fifteen year period marking the anniversary of Wells’s baptism. Each of the letters addresses a virtue that is important for the Christian life. As a result, the book can be read as an engaging entry point into and accessible distillation of Hauerwas’s forty plus years of prodigious scholarship and writing. The book, which seems ideally situated to become a classic, also contains an eloquent introduction by one of Hauerwas’s most insightful interpreters, who also happens to be the father of the recipient of the letters, the pastor-theologian Sam Wells. One of my favourite passages involves a discussion of the training in patience that is baseball. (more…)
