The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics

by Stanley Hauerwas

In this classic work, Stanley Hauerwas presents an overall introduction to the themes and method that have distinguished his vision of Christian ethics. Rather than survey ethical thinkers or quandaries he develops one straightforward account of a Christian ethic, systematically displaying ideas introduced in his previous works and emphasizing peaceableness as a hallmark of Christian life.

Genres: Theology, Christianity, Religion, Nonfiction, Christian, Faith, Philosophy

Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Stanley Hauerwas (PhD, Yale University) is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He is the author of numerous books, including Cross-Shattered Christ, A Cross-Shattered Church, War and the American Difference, and Matthew in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible.

America's Best Theologian according to Time Magazine (2001), though he rejected the title saying, "Best is not a theological category."

Reviews

[Ian Caveny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stanley Hauerwas writes with that stubborn formal-informality that immediately signifies a serious and radical academic mind-at-work. What begins as a promise of a fresh take of Christian ethics delivers far more, overturning every concept of morality - Christian and secular - that has been proposed for the past centuries, with not a glance to classical ethics nor a moment to spare for Immanuel Kant's Enlightenment project.

The result is an atomic bomb on the entire world of ethics. No, Hauerwas' nonviolence would bemoan such an appellation; the better metaphor would be an earthquake.

One has the feeling that Hauerwas is taking the room in which one stands and turning it upside down, only for you to realize that you've been standing on he ceiling the entire time: he is that convincing, and he writes with such a well-informed conviction on the values of Christ and His Kingdom.

The sixth and seventh chapters are particularly replete with wisdom and theological interventions, but the book as a whole unworks so many uncritical presuppositions we assume regarding ethics, violence, and Christian morality that it would be dizzying to read too quickly. A chapter a day is a fine pace.

Most compelling is how Hauerwas establishes a firm, narrow, and provocative Christian ethic that takes no prisoners, gives no ground, and demands nothing less than the values of the Kingdom. It is a Puritan (in the good sense) vision that nonetheless has the palpability of communal Christian life, the pragmatism of Christian hospitality, and commitment to God's Kingdom purposes.

It is a masterwork of the field, and entirely swallows the postmodern ethical quandaries by redescribing the "quandary" itself as a product of modernity. Hauerwas' narrative theology does the work that do many (secretly) modernist evangelical works have not the power to accomplish. In this one stroke, he deconstructs ethics and constructs (vividly) a thorough description of Christian ethics. It is brilliant.

[Jake Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took a little to get going but great introduction and discussion of how the church and individuals, in response to the way the world is.

[Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I supervised a course on Christian Ethics at Thorneloe University, and I read this as part of my ongoing reflection about Christian ethics.

Hauerwas often does not say anything original. Much of what he says presupposes Yoder, MacIntyre, and others. Hauerwas, however, distinguished himself because of his ability to communicate difficult concepts succinctly and beautifully. In this little primer, he hits key topics (freedom, character, nature, grace, etc.) leading into Jesus and the church with a level of depth and brevity that reveals his mastery of the material. No comprehensive account of Christian ethics is intended here in this 150 page book (indeed if he did, it would be so cursory and dry it would be worthless), but he hits the major issues in just the right way to give a person a "primer."

There are things that the primer does not deal or insufficiently deals with. I really liked what he said about character and agency, but I still wanted him to say more about the nature of free will. I think the power of narrative is true as well, but that leads any evangelical to think: What about the narratives of the Old Testament that seem morally regressive? Hauerwas did not seem interested in offering a hermeneutic of Scripture for Christian ethics that I think would be essential to a primer.

[Nate Pequette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hauerwas continues to be one who speaks to the church in powerful ways especially in this season of our country and life. He helps keep me sane. Christian ethics is not just a list of does and don'ts or a game of "what would I do if..?"...Christian ethics is more about who we are and what narrative we are choosing to live in. As Christians, we are living in the story of the God of Israel and Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. And it is a community living in this story that forms us, which has to be a community of peace. He says the number one Christian ethic is patience. Like Jesus who went to the cross and died by the hands of those who were against him, the empire, we must not use violence to stop injustice. We just live into being places of living out what justice looks like in the story of Jesus death and resurrection. We need to have the imagination and trust that God uses this kind of community to work out justice in the world. We often don't have the patience to watch the crucifixion, we try to stop it no matter what the cost. But without that, we don't get the resurrection. Do we actually believe in this story and this God? Lord in our day today, help my unbelief and help us, your church, to live in your story.

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The nature of Christian ethics is determined by the fact that Christian convictions take the form of a story, or perhaps better, a set of stories that constitutes a tradition, which in turn creates and forms a community. Christian ethics does not begin by emphasizing rules or principles, but by calling our attention to a narrative that tells of God’s dealing with creation. To be sure, it is a complex story with many different subplots and digressions, but it is crucial for us at this point in the book to see that it is not accidentally a narrative.”

Unflinching and clear. Just the kind of primer I had been looking for.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good primer on Christian ethics. Hauerwas doesn't present much that's original. He seems mostly to be presenting and building on the work of Alisdair MacIntyre and John Howard Yoder. It's a 150 page primer, so Hauerwas doesn't go into much detail, but he hits the high points pretty well. I particularly appreciate his thoughts on the importance of narrative and community and the way the Church *is* an ethic rather than the place where ethics are worked out in the abstract.

[Joseph Sverker · Rating 5 out of 5]

En fantastiskt övertygande bok och väl argumenterad för att att kristen etik främst handlar om vilken sorts person man är och vill vara. utifrån det agerar man sedan etiskt. Etik är partikulärt och Hauerwas ifrågasätter om etik kan vara allmän i annat än abstrakta filosofiska problemställningar. Vad som är problemet med dessa är att de hindrar oss att tänka kreativt och de för in en sorts determinism som Hauerwas menar inte finns. Jag kan verkligen förstå att den här boken fortfarande upplevs som så pass aktuellt efter dryga 25 år av så många. Jag är själv en av dem som tror att den kommer att leva vidare länge till.

[David Batten · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed and will take parts of this book with me, especially his definition of ethics and the value of evaluating the outcome of our the way our communities live in determining how we should live. However, I found his ideas on nonviolence to be asserted more than argued. I wanted him to convince me, and while I see more of the value he is aiming for I do not feel persuaded of whether we can or should get there.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an early work of Hauerwas' (early 80s) which draws heavily from the moral philosophy of Alisdair MacIntyre and the social ethics of John Howard Yoder. Here, he depicts the task of Christian ethics in terms of the particularity of the community of faith, moving away from foundationalst axioms/universals/etc. and toward a communal understanding of the "good" and the "true". While this certainly leaves the reader feeling quite uneasy, I can't help but resonate with Hauerwas' thoughts. He wants to say (and, I think, rightly so) that "goodness" is a contingent category. That is to say, we cannot understand goodness as an ideal set of right or wrong actions, positions, etc. that universally appeals to the consciences of all people. Instead, he argues that the Church is the community wherein right knowing and true goodness can exist, not by virtue of its superior rationality, but instead by virtue of its association with the Truth, that is Jesus. Goodness is not a category that makes sense outside of the Church's accordance with the Triune God manifest in the life of Christ. It is a relational, communal set of virtues.

Readers may be frustrated by the lack of clear lines of argumentation, namely because this book is a presentation of his position rather than a thorough defence of it. As such, Hauerwas' emphasis on peaceableness as the governing virtue of the Church or the unsubstantiated appeals to narrative left me feeling like I really needed to sit down with him to hash out these ideas.

[Steve Irby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quarantine-Book #51:

I just finished "The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics," by Stanley Hauerwas.

I've been sold on Hauerwas since "Resident Aliens."

Hauerwas does something I've seen only a few do: he gives a background review of the people who influenced his thought and how. Mainly he speaks to how Yoder challenged him to take the life--not just death and resurrection--of Jesus serious.

"And the less sure we are of the reasons of our beliefs, the more dogmatically we hold to themas our only still point in a morally chaotic world," p 5.

"Christianity is defended not so much because it is true, but because it reinforces the 'American way of life'," p 12.

"A 'truth' that must use violence to see its existence cannot be truth," p 15.

Basic information in the first chapter is that there is no unqualified ethic; an ethic demands a qualifier. The following chapter demands that this qualifier be "Christian." The qualifier is the narrative which encompasses "ethic."

Christian ethics is not primarily about thou shall and thou shall nots but rather about how to properly envision the world. We require a story and if we doubt the story we can doubt the thou shall and thou shall nots.

We become a citizen of the Kingdom in God's history upon salvation and the ethic of this is less about what one does than who one is, or the doing and being should be the natural reflection of the church. Our being which drives our doing is found in the narrative of our story: the life and death of Jesus. The being > doing is simple and provocative if one thinks on it. The story of God is not simply told; we've messed that up. One assumes the Jesus Narrative and lives into that as witness to the world and uses words, but the story lived into (being) preceed the spoken story (doing).

Hauerwas says that ethics are dependent on context and tradition. I think I'm tracking with him. Just as we shouldn't separate theology (doctrine) and ethics, and every tradition and context ends up with different doctrine then we can expect the ethic to change. (Thinking about the view of tobacco use in Westcoast churches and the view of alcohol use in Southern churches.)

Hauerwas speaking on rights is so me: basically if many see a universal right as the highest good but some are too obtuse to get on board then they should be forced to get on board. This forced egalitarianism is antithetical to peace. Waiting to see if he goes so far as "all rights are negative." I doubt he will.

Within three pages of the halfway point he ends with the philosophical framework for a Jesus ethic and begins on the Jesus ethic. Admittedly too because if its not framed right then holes can be imagined so that one thinks the Jesus ethic not bind them. And it is just here that Hauerwas' writers voice changes from shoring up his ethical methodology (which is quite dry) to writing about his King beautifully.

"Without the resurrection our concentration on Jesus would be idolatry, but without Jesus' life we would not know what kind of God it is who has raised Him from the dead," p 79.

This second half of the book is a thing of beauty which should have forced the subtitle to have "Nonviolence" in it, though that is a shame because "Christian" should be known as nonviolent. Hauerwas pulls a good deal from Yoder and it ends up being a wonderful work. Read this.

#StanleyHauerwas #Hauerwas #ThePeaceableKingdom #ChristianEthics #KingdomEthics #Ethics

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

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/rev...). 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.

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the strength of Hauerwas, especially in this book (as well as Vision and Virtue), is that he offers a compelling vision of being an integrated person. Often talk around ethics does prioritize agency and decision at the expense of the person as a whole (an individual who exists within a particular community at a particular moment within history). His approach to ethics thus makes the connection between one's Christianity and their other roles in life more apparent and more compelling. This is not an insignificant thing as often I think we assume disconnection between our roles and identities when we focus on choices (or those identities and roles are put in conflict with each other).

However, I think his approach does suffer some serious flaws. He assumes that a universalizing morality tempts one to an attitude of self-righteousness. I think this is a fair critique, but he does not apply the same level of scrutiny to his own position. Can claiming the story of being the people of God not also offer a unique temptation to self-righteousness despite a commitment to nonviolence and suffering like Christ? Furthermore, by emphasizing the relativity of ethical language he erodes the sense that we have shared ethical outlooks across communities. In a religiously pluralistic society this is not insignificant. By emphasizing difference I think he undermines potential ethical dialogue and convergence among disparate groups. These issues come to a head when discussing the Christian's commitment to nonviolence. He suggests the "what if" questions that typically arise in response to nonviolence assume a determinism that the Christian story does not assume. Fair enough. The Christian story might call us to suffer (therefore I might reject any inclination to defend myself or fellow Christians), but this offers little resource to those who do not wish to be martyrs or do not see their suffering as a part of a larger narrative. What then is the Christian's responsibility to the atheist who is facing a violent assault or the violation of their rights? I'm just unsure what resources Hauerwas has for dealing with a pluralistic society. Granting that the Christian and the church must embody a way of living that is distinct I would still want to ask what the Christian and the church owe those around us who do not subscribe to our story. We will still need to live within a society with them and to do that trust and faith in one another is necessary and this might require an ethical ground that is located outside of the story Hauerwas tells.

[Austin Mathews · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The task of the Christian people is not to seek to control history, but to be faithful to the mode of life of the peaceable kingdom." (106)

Stanley Hauerwas frames the study of ethics in light of its qualifier; in Christian ethics, 'Christian' determines the way of life. A Christian ought to be shaped and influenced by the Christian narrative, the story and witness of Israel and the church. The Christian must not ask "What do I do?" but "What is going on?" The Christian ought not to use 'effectiveness' as the aim of the ethical life, but instead faithfulness to God. And as Hauerwas argues, the central nature of God is nonviolence.

Thus faithfulness to God (rather than 'accomplishing' and 'controlling') is the Christian ethic, and nonviolence is a way of being in the present, unfulfilled peaceable kingdom. Being Christian means finding alternatives to violence. It means challenging our practices in light of our story ('casuistry'). It means imagining an adventurous world of the Other, the stranger God, where violence is never a lesser evil. Hauerwas does not shy away from detractors' most common arguments against the 'irrationality' and 'irresponsibility' of nonviolence as a lifestyle, and through brilliant turns of intellect he convinced me that nonviolence is the way of the Lord, because God rules the world on the cross. Such peace disrupts the world's normative violence, and provokes further violences upon us and our loved ones; yet this only motivates us to serve and care for the victims of our ever-violent world. Knowing that it is not our mission to change the world, but simply to testify to a loving God, we gain the freedom to wait and the joy of realizing that life itself is not inherently defective, but rather our human proclivity to sinfulness. The kingdom is one of radical peace, not one that waits for a better tomorrow or forces an idealistic utopia, but challenges violence as a possibility with peace as a necessity born out of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

As other reviewers have noted, this book takes flight beginning in Chapter 5, when Hauerwas begins to focus on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the fulcrum of his explication of Christian ethics. "Christian ethics is not first of all an ethics of principles, laws, or values," he writes, "but an ethic that demands we attend to the life of a particular individual—Jesus of Nazareth." To be like Jesus means that we must commit to nonviolence, refusing to treat power and coercion as necessary means to a better end.

I find Hauerwas's description of a follower of Jesus both exciting and challenging because I often feel so far from it in my life. "Jesus proclaims peace as a real alternative," he writes, "because he has made it possible to rest—to have the confidence that our lives are in God's hands." Hauerwas repeatedly calls on Christians to give up the illusion of control that is both alluring and destructive.

I am a writer and a journalist, one who loves narrative and storytelling. Hauerwas's centering of the story of our lives as told by our Christian community strikes the right chords for me. Still, having first read his memoir "Hannah's Child," which detailed his difficult first marriage to a woman who had extreme mental illness, I couldn't help but wonder if Hauerwas's experiences colored his perception that we are, and should be, defined by others, and that there is little clear distinction between what we choose to do and what happens to us. "I am free just to the extent that I can trust others to stand over against me and call my own 'achievements' into question," he writes. This sounds so much like an echo of his description of how his first wife belittled his work that it makes me feel uncomfortable that it becomes for Hauerwas a universal precept. The risk of relationship and community—set against its potentially great rewards—is always that we become defined by others in ways that are untrustworthy.

I find it difficult to read Hauerwas without having a grounding in the other theologians he frequently cites, and I might get more out of his work if I spent more time with the Niebuhrs (both Reinhold and Richard) and John Howard Yoder. Still, since this book is meant to be "a primer in Christian ethics," it would be helpful if more of the analysis could stand on its own.

[William Robison · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an interesting take on radical non-violence. I think Hauerwas could (should?) have gone more into how we should relate to coercive institutions, but there’s a lot of good material to chew on here.

As someone who often gets hung up on questions of “ought” and “should”, the biggest piece I appreciated was Hauerwas’s distinction between “What ought I to *do*?” and “Who ought I to *be*?”, where the former is too divorced from identity and history to be particularly useful as a static ethic, while the latter allows for the important conversations of personal upbringing, identity, and how those constitute our internal decision-making schema.

Favorite quote: “…our character is a gift from others which we learn to claim as a our own by recognizing it as a gift. Our freedom is literally in the hands of others.”

I felt this; I feel so deeply (especially in the past 4-5 months) that who I am is chiefly thanks to others I love and respect in my life, and I have struggled to really express how I feel both as my own “self” and as having emerged out of the combined contributions of many. Now I see that it can be both/and, in a way which leaves neither party the less for it!

Overall, great book; it will definitely be a book I re-read semi-regularly.

[Reynold Witmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is easily one of the best books I've read this year. I'll be forthright with my confessions; I'm pretty sure I didn't "get" everything here. I quickly gave up trying to understand everything and adapted Charles Van Doren's advice to just read it quickly once, no notes, no highlighters. just complete it. Now I'll need to move through it slowly. This not at all a discouraging prospect for me. Again and again while reading this book, I found myself thinking Yes! I'm not entirely sure how we got here, and I can't wait to understand. I have almost no tools to apprehend Christian ethics, narrative or otherwise, but floundering through this book was both meaningful and motivating.
I look forward to understanding better how narrative can be a rigorous and coherent basis for a qualified ethic. Hauerwas's gentle embrace of a qualified ethic made me uncomfortable, but oddly also made more sense to me than any other articulation of Christian ethics I've encountered. Shift to understand ethics first as a description of who we are, secondly what we do, made sense, but I'll need time to sort through it. More could be said about this book, but I'll wait till I have better tools to do so.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not since I read The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God have I read a book so simultaneously intellectually and spiritually/practically (for lack of a better phrase) challenging. Although his discussion carries with it great depth in an academic vein, Hauerwas never hovers too far above the earthy reality of the Church that concretely manifests itself in “budgets, buildings, parking lots and potluck dinners” (p. 107). His refusal to separate theology, ethics and spirituality made for a truly edifying (if demanding) read. Hauerwas has challenged me in my own understanding of ecclesiology, the necessity of non-violence, and having a holistic vision of theological reflection that impacts the life of the Church.

[Joey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. True, I spent the first 50 pages with google in hand, looking up every other word. However, once I got a feel for the vocabulary, and Hauerwas' argument started coming together, I was hooked. In a nutshell, this book is about letting go, realizing that control is an illusion and that virtually every conflict in our lives comes when something or someone threatens our illusion of control and we struggle to restore it. This books speaks about choosing to embrace your place in the Christian narrative and is saturated with scripture encouraging community, selflessness, and being joyful in the midsts of life's surprises. I know it is easy to celebrate a book that reaffirms your own leanings, but I can assure you that this book challenged me in so many ways, and the time it took me to parse through the big words was so very worth it.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I worked through this title, it felt a bit overwhelming with the amount of foundation Hauerwas laid before really digging in. That said, I really appreciated the back half of the book. Concepts like Jesus as the not merely the shining example of virtue but the physical embodiment of God & the true nature of nonviolence being sourced with the heart rather than the action abound here. While these may be taken for granted in circles where this book may be considered, I found Hauerwas' process for arriving at such positions helpful. It has certainly prompted more thought & prayer around the "why" behind active/passive moral, political, & spiritual decisions.

[Roman Purshaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

What Hauerwas proposes can be very beneficial for the Pentecostal church, namely to be mindful of the danger of being surrounded by the “circle of friends,” which only affirms a community’s “illusions” without challenging its connection to the narrative of the Kingdom of God. The outside voices are needed, especially those of the Global context. With thise voices, there should be a constant communal reflection on the narrative of God and its ethical implication regarding virtues and character. This may be very costly, as it implies living in constant uncertainty and dialogue. Moreover, it requires one to stop asking a question, “What ought we to do?” and instead ask, “What we oght to be?”

[Daniel Crouch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not much of a primer, but The Peaceable Kingdom provides a rich introduction to Hauerwas’s theology and postliberalism in general. Its most resonate discussions include an explanation of the shortcomings of conservative and liberal discourse, the narrative and communal underpinnings to character building, the role of revelation in understanding the kingdom, and the acknowledgement of tragedy needed to live out a nonviolent life.

[Joel Hansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This quickly became one of my favorite books! Hauerwas articulates things that I've only felt growing up in the evangelical church, gaps in our understanding and shortcomings in our way of living that must be filled with and formed by the presence of God and community. This is the life of the Kingdom of peace and joy in the face of tragedy.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enlightening Perspective

I found the book to be enlightening overall but did not find it to offer a definitively convincing argument for a theology of non-violence. It felt like steps were missing on the route to the conclusion.

[Jesse Nickel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe I haven't read this book before now. It is one of the most exciting presentations of the centrality of peace to the Christian worldview I have ever encountered. Brilliantly laid out. I will need to read it again very soon.

[Imogen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a huge influence on my ethical thinking and general theological approach and really one of those things that one should not be able to escape a more than cursory education on Christianity without reading. Hauerwas lays out a concise, powerful case for a commitment to absolute non-violence and is refreshing for a theologian in being eminently clear and readable.

Hauerwas takes a brief but reasonably thorough tour through the history of Christian ethical thought and the various philosophical approaches underlying it to come round to his proposition that rather than being either truly situational or deontological, a proper Christian ethic is narrative, in that it sees ethics as not being a matter of rules and decisions but of the kind of person we are and the life of the community in which we situate ourselves. He sets this firmly against a Biblical backdrop and particularly that of the Gospels- I won't get all Biblical scholar on this and expand on his point as much as I am often wont to, but the purpose of the Gospels is that it is the story of Jesus we need, not just disjointed soundbites and grandiose theological reflections on his death and resurrection.

It is in such context that he argues that the kind of people Christians are called to be are people who are opposed to any and all kinds of violence, and who refuse to appropriate violence for short-term ends, because to be a Christian is to know that it is not our job to "make the world come out right". This is not to say that Christian peaceableness is merely sitting on our hands- rather, a commitment to non-violence means recognising that, in our sin and our violent culture, we are all deeply prone to violence and need to go out of our way to dig the seeds of it out of our hearts in radical acts of peace. However, there is no situation in which it is "in character" for Christian people to be soldiers rather than martyrs, to dehumanise others in being violent towards them and so belie our declaration that God's love is wholly indiscriminate and that the universe is not inclined towards death but resurrection.

The book is, however, not without its problems. Nearly three decades after its publication it does show its age more than a little, not least in the angle of its address towards USAmericans facing down global nuclear war under the Reagan presidency. The real failure within Hauerwas's argument might also be attributable to age, but it is still far from excusable: essentially, it is extraordinarily problematic to cry peace from a position of privilege which makes one much less likely to be a victim of our society's most pervasive forms of violence. Hauerwas is a white, middle class, able-bodied man, who I believe is in a heterosexual marriage, and he makes no attempt in The Peaceable Kingdom to address this this undeniable and inherent problem in his position.

Actually, the reverse is quite true- his discussion of abortion bothered me the first time I read the book, but perhaps even more so now. It is truly worrying to find such an influential book baldly state such blatant untruths as "societies which prohibit abortion do so out of a commitment to their children". I think he would find with a little basic research and, uh, thought that the opposite is true- that such societies value children about as much as the women who "incubate" them, that both are objects and property used violently by a pervasive and hegemonic system of patriarchy.

The question of abortion also leads onto another difficulty implicitly raised by but not even touched upon within the book- what do we actually mean by "violence"? His oft-cited example of nuclear weaponry is obviously clear-cut, and one could draw many more from current global events, but given his insistence on the need for what one might call "micro-peaceableness"- that is, a commitment to peaceful relationships on the most minor scales by Christian communities- one has to ask where the line must be drawn. It would obviously be violent for me to punch Professor Hauerwas in the face, but what if I were to sharply interrupt him and dress him down for his display of gender privilege? May we be more "violent" with our language than we are otherwise? What about situations where one can legitimately argue that there is no alternative that is not violent- abortion is perhaps a pertinent example here, since any other situation in which a person might be forced through months of increasing pain and discomfort culminating in a life-threatening physical ordeal would absolutely be considered violent.

Essentially this is an immensely valuable book, and still terrifically pertinent as those who would appropriate and blaspheme the gospel for nationalist and militaristic ends seem only to multiply, but it is not without its problems. I appreciate that many of the issues I've raised go beyond Hauerwas's stated remit of "a primer in Christian ethics", but it does not to any harm to the clarity and precision of one's argument to acknowledge that the matters discussed go further and wider than can be encompassed in a single book.

[John Shelton · Rating 4 out of 5]

While Hauerwas is at his best in the essay (“A Community of Character” is my favorite collection), this is nevertheless a strong monograph with much worth mulling over.

[Van Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard for me to read. Full of great at references.

[Parker Friesen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it for a paper, and unfortunately had to read through quite quickly. Nonetheless it was an excellent book which I will undoubtedly return to for a closer read.

[Austin Spence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not much of a primer, unsure what to call it. I liked his vision of inviting the Christian to rethink questions of ethics in narrative as opposed to action-centric.

[Lucas Svärd · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely poor takes