In Admiration of Stanley Hauerwas

On May 10, I posted a blog article titled ”In Admiration of John Wesley and Methodism.” This post expresses my admiration for Stanley Hauerwas, a contemporary Methodist scholar who is celebrating his 85^th birthday next week. 

(Hauerwas in 2022)

Stanley Martin Hauerwas was born in Dallas on July 24, 1940. He grew up in a working-class household located in a suburban area of that Texas city. His father was a bricklayer, and Stanley worked summers with his father from the age of nine.

Upon finishing high school, Stanley enrolled in Southwestern University in Texas, the first in his family to attend college. Then he went to Yale, where he earned his B.D. (M.Div.) degree in 1965 and completed his Ph.D. in theology and ethics in 1968.*

Even though he became a theology and ethics scholar, he retained much of the blue-collar culture of his boyhood. His “salty” language was criticized by some people who thought a university professor shouldn’t use “unacceptable” language.

Hauerwas married in 1962, the year he finished college, and six years later, his only child, a boy, was born. His wife struggled with mental illness, though, and they divorced after 25 years of marriage. In 1989 he married Paula Gilbert, a theologian and an ordained United Methodist minister.

I first learned about Hauerwas by reading Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (1989), a book co-written with William Willimon. That was a rich read for me, and it influenced how many Christians perceived their role in society.  

When I recently looked at the notes I took when I read Resident Aliens again back in 2008, I wrote, “Thirty-six years ago, the authors contended, ‘The times are too challenging to be wasting time pressing one another into boxes called liberal or conservative. The choice is between truth and lies’ (p. 160).”

And then in the concluding sub-section of the last chapter, they aver that

the challenge facing today’s Christians is not the necessity to translate Christian convictions into a modern idiom, but rather to form a community, a colony of resident aliens which is so shaped by our convictions that no one even has to ask what we mean by confessing belief in God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Hauerwas’s newest book is Jesus Changes Everything, a small volume edited by Charles Moore and released by Plough Publishing House in March 2025.** Much in that book is a reaffirmation of what he and Willimon emphasized in Resident Aliens.  

In his ten-page introduction of the author, Moore says that “Hauerwas eludes categorization. He is neither conservative enough for the conservatives nor liberal enough for liberals” (p. xxiv).

In the concluding paragraph of that introduction, Moore states,

Stanley Hauerwas and his writings were a large reason why 30 years ago I left a professorship at a seminary and moved 2000 miles with my wife to join the Bruderhof, a Christian community that shares possessions in common in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount.

Then, in an article published by the Bruderhof in March 2025, Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren writes that she “became a pacifist because of Hauerwas” and that she has “friends who went to seminary to study theology because of Hauerwas’s work. His words change people.”

Hauerwas is a Mennonite theologian/ethicist, as well as being a lifelong Methodist and active in an Episcopal church. Unlike Warren, I became a pacifist long before I knew about Stanley Hauerwas, but I was delighted when I learned that he became a devotee of Mennonite scholar John Howard Yoder.

Unfortunately, Yoder (1927~97), who was arguably the most significant Anabaptist scholar of the twentieth century, badly tarnished his reputation because of his “abusive behavior toward women,” which became public in the 2010s. But his influence on Hauerwas was long before that.

In The Politics of Jesus (1972), Yoder argued forcefully that the life, death, and resurrection of Christ necessitates a nonviolent discipleship as the definitive Christian ethic. Hauerwas adopted and extended that conviction: nonviolence is not optional but obligatory for loyal followers of Jesus.

Authentic Christians are “disciples” of Jesus rather than mere “admirers,” and the primary task of the church is to be the church, a faithful community of Jesus-followers, rather than an organization trying to do things for the benefit of society. Yes, indeed!

 _____

  * I feel considerable affinity with Hauerwas. Born just two years earlier, I am the son of a (working-class) farmer and the first male in the direct-line Seat family to attend college, finishing with a B.A. degree in 1959, graduating from seminary with a B.D. in 1962, and then finishing work for my Ph.D. in 1966. When it comes to nationwide influence, books written, and scholarly articles published, though, there is absolutely no comparison.

** Moore is a contributing editor and author for Plough, the publishing arm of the Bruderhof community, introduced in my 12/5/20 blog post. Moore is also the editor of Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Søren Kierkegaard (1999), a valuable, easy-to-read book, as well as the compiler and editor of Called to Community (2016; 2^nd ed., 2024). Hauerwas wrote the Foreword to the latter.