Stanley Hauerwas

Last Thursday and Friday I had the opportunity to take some students to the University of Regina for a lecture series by Stanley Hauerwas. Hauerwas is a fairly prominent American theologian who seems most noteworthy for his ability to make Christians on both end of the theological spectrum very uncomfortable. He has written some influential books, some of which are ‘Resident Aliens,’ ‘Unleashing the Scripture,’ and ‘A Community of Character.’ Needless to say it was an interesting experience.
The Thursday night lecture was on pacifism and Hauerwas made some interesting points about the ways in which war provides a kind of illusory meaning to our collective story as a Western society. His points were interesting and I hadn’t heard many of them before.
I will admit that I was far more interested in the Friday morning seminar entitled ‘The End of Religious Pluralism’. Hauerwas didn’t disappoint. His central point was that ‘religious pluralism’ was ‘a load of crap’. No seriously, he did say that. Most of his lectures were full of terminology that went way over my head but he was remarkably succinct on this point.
His central thesis was that if a Christian is going to relate to someone of a different faith the answer is not to unite around shared values of human rights, tolerance, justice or some other nebulous concept. Advocating a ‘third language’ does not solve the problem of religious differences, according to Hauerwas, it is only the last ditch effort of liberal Protestantism to exercise control. By dictating the vocabulary of the conversation, advocates of pluralism are basically underwriting their own ‘religious values’ and forcing them on both sides in the debate. Essentially this kind of dialogue demands that Christians (and indeed all religious adherents) to enter into dialogue as something less than ‘Christian’.

“Christians, if we are to truly love our neighbours, need to stop fudging our belief that God matters.”

Hauerwas called for Christians to be good neighbours with those of other faiths, seeking to truly understand and respect them. But we also need to proclaim Jesus (a message that may have sounded odd in a religious studies chapel at a public university). But this proclamation must be done in a noncoercive and humble fashion.
All in all it was a thoroughly invigorating experience. I certainly enjoyed being ‘in the classroom’ again. It was refreshing to be challenged by a truly remarkable theological mind. I expect to post more on Hauerwas in the days ahead.