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The Hauerwas Reader
Stanley Hauerwas is one of the most widely read and oft-cited theologians writing today. A prolific lecturer and author, he has been at the forefront of key developments in contemporary theology, ranging from narrative theology to the “recovery of virtue.” Yet despite his prominence and the esteem reserved for his thought, his work has never before been collected in a single volume that provides a sense of the totality of his vision.The editors of The Hauerwas Reader, therefore, have compiled and edited a volume that represents all the different periods and phases of Hauerwas’s work. Highlighting both his constructive goals and penchant for polemic, the collection reflects the enormous variety of subjects he has engaged, the different genres in which he has written, and the diverse audiences he has addressed. It offers Hauerwas on ethics, virtue, medicine, and suffering; on euthanasia, abortion, and sexuality; and on war in relation to Catholic and Protestant thought. His essays on the role of religion in liberal democracies, the place of the family in capitalist societies, the inseparability of Christianity and Judaism, and on many other topics are included as well.Perhaps more than any other author writing on religious topics today, Hauerwas speaks across lines of religious traditions, appealing to Methodists, Jews, Anabaptists or Mennonites, Catholics, Episcopalians, and others.
1053 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2001
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About the author
Stanley Hauerwas
167 books287 followersStanley 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."
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
January 15, 2020
Stanley Hauerwas is one of the most well-known and impactful contemporary American theologians, so he's been on my list to read for a while. I had read his book Resident Aliens, co-written with Will Willimon, a few years ago, but I wanted a deep dive into his work. This collection is probably the best place to go for such a dive.
To begin, Hauerwas is brilliant and challenging. He is not a systematic thinker, so his work comes to us through essays. One of his primary points is to challenge the modern liberal pursuit of a sort of universal, disembodied truth. Following thinkers like Wittgenstein and MacIntyre, Hauerwas emphasizes the specific nature of our development of ethics. We learn ethics not by finding some universal truth binding on all, we learn ethics by living in a community in which we are sustained by the traditions and stories that make our community what it is.
Thus, Hauerwas emphasizes that the church does not have a social ethic, the church IS the social ethic. He calls for the church to be the church. Everything he writes emphasizes the place of a Christian in a community. This in itself is refreshing and necessary, if for not other reason than that most Christians (most humans) are shaped by the ideas we uncritically consume throughout our weeks. If we show up to church an hour on a Sunday, there is no way that small amount of time is going to shape us as much as the media and news we consume the rest of the week. I don't recall if Jamie Smith cited Hauerwas in his book You Are What You Love, but I see a lot of common ideas here.
Hauerwas would then challenge the idea that it is our Christian duty to shape the culture. This is a residue of Christendom all the way back to Constantine. It starts our ethical and moral task on the wrong foot. Our job is not, as Christians, to change the world but to live as disciples. Of course, Hauerwas has been accused of calling for Christians to totally leave the world. But Hauerwas is not calling for that. I do wish he had been a bit more concrete in what a Christian living a public life looks like. I suspect he would say this is situational, depending on our context. A Christian in a totalitarian regime will engage life differently then one in a democracy. The thing is, before we can even move into public life we need to be Christians in the church. For example, how can we oppose the nations using violence when Christians aren't even demonstrating a life of nonviolence?
Hauerwas might say, echoing Origen in the early church, that if Christians all just gave up war then the world would be forced to consider other paths to peace than violence. Importantly then, Hauerwas does not offer a pacifism with the promise that we can get the same ends through nonviolence as others do through violence. Hauerwas, in line with all Christian nonviolent teaching, argues we are nonviolent in obedience to Jesus with no promise of "success". We might, as Jesus did, die. Here we see Hauerwas challenge another idol of our culture: the right to and sacredness of life. Christians, he notes, are called to follow Jesus and this may mean death. It is not that life is unimportant, but it is that if you have nothing to die for then you aren't living. The idea of a "right to life" is not rooted in the Christian story, it is rooted in the modern liberal story which Christians, too quickly and uncritically, accepted.
Overall then, this book is a must-read for Christian pastors and leaders as we wrestle with ethics and morals and being Christians. That said, it seems a bit dated and there are a few areas where I wish Hauerwas had been more clear.
Speaking of being dated, when Hauerwas discusses gay marriage he...well, he doesn't discuss gay marriage. He discusses gay people being in the military. We live in a culture where gay marriage is now a legal right. Hauerwas doesn't even mention that as a possibility, nor does he discuss whether Christian churches ought to bless same-sex marriage and how this relates to divorce and other relationships. What about transgender persons? Not even mentioned. Intersex? This book demonstrates how fast our culture has moved. Perhaps we can find principles and tools in Hauerwas to answer such questions, but their absence already makes the book dated.
I'd say the same with his discussion of suicide. He seems to lump it in with euthanasia and discuss it as if its a reasonable choice, and an immoral one, people make. He takes no account of depression or mental illness. In my opinion, it just comes off as callous. Do we say to an alcoholic or a depressed person to just...stop being depressed? This takes no account of the fact it is a sickness and not a rational choice (or from a Christian perspective, there may be supernatural realities to deal with). If I had friends struggling with things like alcoholism, depression and thoughts of suicide, I don't see anything Hauerwas wrote here as helpful.
Finally, I wish Hauerwas had engaged more with the realities of a post-Christian culture. Some writers like Hauerwas tend to idolize the early church, with Christendom as the enemy, and the hope we just go back. But we can't just go back. Hauerwas doesn't quite do this. Yet so often as he spoke about the church, all I could think was that the church is the problem. In a post-Christian world, we see plenty of people who are not "Christians" but who live more Christ-like lifestyles than self-proclaimed Christians. There are historical reasons for this (see Tom Holland's Dominion). Where is this church Hauerwas speaks of? I suspect he would say we just need to have faith in the church, as irrational as it seems. I would track with that. In spite of its flaws, the church is my family. He may also point out the invisible universal church is not "the church"; the church is the concrete physical reality in a specific location. So don't worry about the "Church" but instead build a community of Jesus people in your location.
I am with all that. Amen.
I guess I am not sure what I want. Perhaps I just want to see Hauerwas interact with people like Charles Taylor and others who write about the big shifts in our culture. I think I just lack the faith in the church Hauerwas has. I see the church up against iPhones and Netflix and all the other things that shape us, that shape children from the crib, and I wonder what the future will look like? I am not sure how to end this review and maybe that's a testament to the book - Hauerwas gave me lots to think about and I am going to be chewing on it for a while...
To begin, Hauerwas is brilliant and challenging. He is not a systematic thinker, so his work comes to us through essays. One of his primary points is to challenge the modern liberal pursuit of a sort of universal, disembodied truth. Following thinkers like Wittgenstein and MacIntyre, Hauerwas emphasizes the specific nature of our development of ethics. We learn ethics not by finding some universal truth binding on all, we learn ethics by living in a community in which we are sustained by the traditions and stories that make our community what it is.
Thus, Hauerwas emphasizes that the church does not have a social ethic, the church IS the social ethic. He calls for the church to be the church. Everything he writes emphasizes the place of a Christian in a community. This in itself is refreshing and necessary, if for not other reason than that most Christians (most humans) are shaped by the ideas we uncritically consume throughout our weeks. If we show up to church an hour on a Sunday, there is no way that small amount of time is going to shape us as much as the media and news we consume the rest of the week. I don't recall if Jamie Smith cited Hauerwas in his book You Are What You Love, but I see a lot of common ideas here.
Hauerwas would then challenge the idea that it is our Christian duty to shape the culture. This is a residue of Christendom all the way back to Constantine. It starts our ethical and moral task on the wrong foot. Our job is not, as Christians, to change the world but to live as disciples. Of course, Hauerwas has been accused of calling for Christians to totally leave the world. But Hauerwas is not calling for that. I do wish he had been a bit more concrete in what a Christian living a public life looks like. I suspect he would say this is situational, depending on our context. A Christian in a totalitarian regime will engage life differently then one in a democracy. The thing is, before we can even move into public life we need to be Christians in the church. For example, how can we oppose the nations using violence when Christians aren't even demonstrating a life of nonviolence?
Hauerwas might say, echoing Origen in the early church, that if Christians all just gave up war then the world would be forced to consider other paths to peace than violence. Importantly then, Hauerwas does not offer a pacifism with the promise that we can get the same ends through nonviolence as others do through violence. Hauerwas, in line with all Christian nonviolent teaching, argues we are nonviolent in obedience to Jesus with no promise of "success". We might, as Jesus did, die. Here we see Hauerwas challenge another idol of our culture: the right to and sacredness of life. Christians, he notes, are called to follow Jesus and this may mean death. It is not that life is unimportant, but it is that if you have nothing to die for then you aren't living. The idea of a "right to life" is not rooted in the Christian story, it is rooted in the modern liberal story which Christians, too quickly and uncritically, accepted.
Overall then, this book is a must-read for Christian pastors and leaders as we wrestle with ethics and morals and being Christians. That said, it seems a bit dated and there are a few areas where I wish Hauerwas had been more clear.
Speaking of being dated, when Hauerwas discusses gay marriage he...well, he doesn't discuss gay marriage. He discusses gay people being in the military. We live in a culture where gay marriage is now a legal right. Hauerwas doesn't even mention that as a possibility, nor does he discuss whether Christian churches ought to bless same-sex marriage and how this relates to divorce and other relationships. What about transgender persons? Not even mentioned. Intersex? This book demonstrates how fast our culture has moved. Perhaps we can find principles and tools in Hauerwas to answer such questions, but their absence already makes the book dated.
I'd say the same with his discussion of suicide. He seems to lump it in with euthanasia and discuss it as if its a reasonable choice, and an immoral one, people make. He takes no account of depression or mental illness. In my opinion, it just comes off as callous. Do we say to an alcoholic or a depressed person to just...stop being depressed? This takes no account of the fact it is a sickness and not a rational choice (or from a Christian perspective, there may be supernatural realities to deal with). If I had friends struggling with things like alcoholism, depression and thoughts of suicide, I don't see anything Hauerwas wrote here as helpful.
Finally, I wish Hauerwas had engaged more with the realities of a post-Christian culture. Some writers like Hauerwas tend to idolize the early church, with Christendom as the enemy, and the hope we just go back. But we can't just go back. Hauerwas doesn't quite do this. Yet so often as he spoke about the church, all I could think was that the church is the problem. In a post-Christian world, we see plenty of people who are not "Christians" but who live more Christ-like lifestyles than self-proclaimed Christians. There are historical reasons for this (see Tom Holland's Dominion). Where is this church Hauerwas speaks of? I suspect he would say we just need to have faith in the church, as irrational as it seems. I would track with that. In spite of its flaws, the church is my family. He may also point out the invisible universal church is not "the church"; the church is the concrete physical reality in a specific location. So don't worry about the "Church" but instead build a community of Jesus people in your location.
I am with all that. Amen.
I guess I am not sure what I want. Perhaps I just want to see Hauerwas interact with people like Charles Taylor and others who write about the big shifts in our culture. I think I just lack the faith in the church Hauerwas has. I see the church up against iPhones and Netflix and all the other things that shape us, that shape children from the crib, and I wonder what the future will look like? I am not sure how to end this review and maybe that's a testament to the book - Hauerwas gave me lots to think about and I am going to be chewing on it for a while...
June 4, 2009
Hauerwas is to theology what a bottle of four hundred dollar version of Pinot Noir is to someone who rarely drinks wine. It isn't for everyone, and more people than not simply don't have the palate for him at first than do.
He speaks hard truths, and he does not speak them as nicely as many outside of the theological realm think that someone who "does theology" for their living think one should. What many don't realize is that he can and does speak tersely because his intended audience is to those inside of the church.
If you can get past the tone and timbre of his writing (which I actually enjoy and see not as a handicap but as a feature) then I encourage you to do so - he has many insights which those within and without the church would do well to hear and to process.
He speaks hard truths, and he does not speak them as nicely as many outside of the theological realm think that someone who "does theology" for their living think one should. What many don't realize is that he can and does speak tersely because his intended audience is to those inside of the church.
If you can get past the tone and timbre of his writing (which I actually enjoy and see not as a handicap but as a feature) then I encourage you to do so - he has many insights which those within and without the church would do well to hear and to process.
March 21, 2017
These essays are everything: erudite, funny, prophetic, irreverent, challenging, honest, consistent ethic of life... They make you want to stop people on the street to show them the lines you've starred.
March 28, 2020
Every pastor in the United States should be familiar with the work of Stanley Hauerwas. His vision for the church is one that would do a tremendous amount of good if widely shared. This book is an excellent collection of his academic work, so if you're up for a precise and technical read, it'll be great for your ministry. You can also pick and choose essays pretty easily by topic. If you have my contact info and want to dig in, feel free to hit me up for recommendations.
November 13, 2023
Hauerwas is sometimes unintelligible, sometimes, irascible, sometimes lost in technicalities of his guild, often self-contradictory. And yet he is always fresh, relevant, alive, grounded in actual human community living collectively before God in a broken world in partnership with other sinners. The book is huge. The selections are well chosen and beautifully arranged with an eye to both theme and development.
May 11, 2018
I have enjoyed reading Hauerwas' full length monographs, but this is such a helpful reference to find "that one time Hauerwas explained it like...." also seeing his thought progress through the years is a nice portrait of academic humility. Check out Hannah's Child as a companion memoir to these writings
March 24, 2019
Classic Hauerwas. That is all I can truly say. A pleasure to read.
July 3, 2020
A gold mine. Nothing less. Incredible resource.
September 17, 2022
Great showcase of Hauerwas' work. Excellent editing. Excellent content, even if It's replace SH's "nonviolence" with "self-sacrifice."
January 19, 2015
I read through all but three or four the essays during my stay at my grandmother's, so I'm going to count this quite-thick 729-page volume as a book read. This is a good introduction to Hauerwas. I was already familiar with his work from Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony and A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic. I don't care if Hauerwas is popular--and in a couple of the circles I run in, he is--or edgy, like he is for other kinds of company I keep--I like his work because I like it. And respect it. It's solid and it provokes me. (As Hauerwas reportedly said to one of his students, his job as a theologian is to cause ulcers in others without suffering them himself in the process.) His work is one of the major influences shaping my most current thinking about Christian community and the Christian narrative. And cliché and Hauerwas are like matter and antimatter. Some of my favorite essays were: "Sex in Public: How Adventurous Christians Are Doing It (1978)," "Memory, Community, and the Reasons for Living: Reflections on Suicide and Euthanasia (1976)," and "Abortion, Theologically Understood (1991)". I also found the introduction, "Stan the Man," really helpful in understanding how these essays are integrally linked to who Stanley Hauerwas is as a person, and reflect the non-static quality of his thought over time.
These essays were tough going. Worth it, but tough. I actually bought this book a year and a half ago, but found it too difficult on the first try. It still was tough even with a year and a half more of reading under my belt. Hauerwas is a dense writer and he's pulling on a background in philosophy and ethics I don't have. But not all of his work is as tricky as the Hauerwas Reader. Resident Aliens is a pastoral work that's pretty accessible to the average reader.
A favorite quote from one of the essays in the book:
"I often say to people that I'm a pacifist; but, as you can see, I'm very violent in my language and in many other ways. I'm a smart person, and smart people often use their minds as weapons. I'm always thinking three moves down a conversational ladder of how I can gain the upper hand..." - Stanley Hauerwas
These essays were tough going. Worth it, but tough. I actually bought this book a year and a half ago, but found it too difficult on the first try. It still was tough even with a year and a half more of reading under my belt. Hauerwas is a dense writer and he's pulling on a background in philosophy and ethics I don't have. But not all of his work is as tricky as the Hauerwas Reader. Resident Aliens is a pastoral work that's pretty accessible to the average reader.
A favorite quote from one of the essays in the book:
"I often say to people that I'm a pacifist; but, as you can see, I'm very violent in my language and in many other ways. I'm a smart person, and smart people often use their minds as weapons. I'm always thinking three moves down a conversational ladder of how I can gain the upper hand..." - Stanley Hauerwas
January 5, 2008
Its a collection of articles he has done. He walks through some great applications of anti-foundationalist epistemology, and excellently casts what I would consider a redemptive-historical light on Christian discipleship. Though he might tread in some questionable areas as far as justification by faith goes, he nonetheless has plenty of clarity and insight in the rest.
February 15, 2013
If there's one word to describe him, it's "provocative." There are times I want to cheer him on, and times when I'm certain he's missing the point or making distorted assumptions. Just the titles of some of these essays will cause a stir, but the reader should take each one seriously in its full content.
June 4, 2012
A collection of great essays by a great essayist. Critical of liberalism as essentially imperialistic, and critical of the church's constant temptation to align itself with political powers. Strongly recommended for all who confess the faith.
August 22, 2007
I am convinced that when Christian's look back at this century of theology in America The Hauerwas Reader will be seen as a new beginning.
(get it? if you do, you are as big a geek as me)
(get it? if you do, you are as big a geek as me)
September 6, 2007
Ethics without Theology is powerless; Theology without Ethics is demonic.
January 4, 2009
A good introduction, but its better to read one of his individual books in its entirety. If you're a fanatic devotee, its not a bad reference. What would Stanley say?
September 9, 2009
Ok, so I haven't actually finished it, but it's not the kind of book you read straight through...I'm done with it for now, so I'll put it on "Read"
April 1, 2017
Great recommendation by Jeff. This book was great, I understood most of it besides some of the theological ethics parts which were too dry to fight through. Fully recommend this book. Thanks Jeff.
December 11, 2016
Re-reading some of Hauerwas' articles for clarification and re-orientation
December 2, 2010
I've read a few articles that I really enjoyed, hope to read more before too long.
April 3, 2013
A collection of the writings of one of America's most influential theologians.
May 14, 2017
Great reading on moral development in todays world. On Character, Narrative and Growth in Christian Life. Great Leadership notes too.
June 22, 2025
I was an extremely devout Christian when I bought this book. By the time I finished it I was agnostic. Sometimes reading too much religion makes you bored of it. Same with tv shows.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews