Category: Stanley Hauerwas

Stanley Hauerwas destroyed my hermeneutical paradigm.

In December 0f 2006 I finished my first semester of seminary studies, grabbed a ride to the airport, and flew to New York City to attend the wedding of a couple of my close friends. I gave myself one extra day of travel to explore Manhattan afterwards. As my wanderings around the Big Apple came to a close I stopped into a Boarders (remember those?) by Madison Square Garden to browse. I came across a series of essays titled The Hauerwas Reader edited by J. Berkman and M.G. Cartwright. This book is an anthology of  essays by the Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas.

The Hauerwas Reader

I was challenged by what I was reading, so much so that I bought the book. I resonated with Hauerwas’ arguments, even when I couldn’t fathom the implications. Yes, Christian should live as an alternative people. Yes, Christians should refuse to kill. Yes to this and yes to that! Now what am I supposed to do with these arguments?

I am asking this question still.

One essay destroyed my black-and-white hermeneutical paradigm. It humbled me. I realized that I had a lot to learn regarding interpreting the Scriptures. I have been on a quest to reconstruct my hermeneutical approach to Scripture ever since.  The article was a short, three page piece that Hauerwas had written for the Charlotte Observer in 1993 when one of the major national debates was over whether homosexuals could serve in the United States military. It was titled, “Why Gays (as a Group) are Morally Superior to Christians (as a Group).” (You can access it through Google Books, pp. 519-521 here.)

In the opening paragraph Hauerwas wrote:

“I am ambivalent about recent discussions concerning gays in the military. I see no good reason why gays and lesbians should be excluded from military service; as a pacifist I do not see why anyone would want to serve. Moreover, I think it a wonderful thing that some people are excluded as a group. I only wish that Christians could be seen by the military to be as problematic as gays (p. 519).”

He proceeded to argue that we were excluding homosexuals from the military as a way of trying to restore some sense of morality in a world where our morality was already out of order. We didn’t know why we were doing what we were doing as a nation. We didn’t have sexuality “figured out” anymore than homosexuals did. Hauerwas wrote this stringing remark:

“As a society we have no general agreement about what constitutes marriage and/or what good marriages ought to serve. We allegedly live in a monogamous culture, but in fact we are at best serially polygamous. We are confused about sex, why and with whom we have it, and about our reasons for having children (pp. 519-520).”

Hauerwas argued that our moral confusion led to our grasping at straws, seeking a scapegoat, someone to call “immoral” so we would know how to define ourselves as “moral.” Then Hauerwas turned the tables on us Christians as he has righteously done for many years. He asked what it would look like if the Catholic tradition of “just war” was persuade with as much vigor as our stance against homosexuals in the military. He asked what it would look like if Christians were so dedicated to love and non-violence that the military considered Christians a threat to their aims just like they considered homosexuals a threat.

What if Christians prayed for peace? What if Christians refused to submit to anyone, even a general, whose orders were not aligned with the peace of Christ? What is Christians sought to witness to Christ at all times? He wrote this pithy paragraph:

“Finally, consider the problem of taking showers with these people. They are, after all, constantly going about the business of witnessing in hopes of making converts to their God and church. Would you want to shower with such people? You never know when they might try to baptize you (p. 521).”

Then he ended with these words:

“If gays can be excluded as a group from the military, I have hope that it could even happen to Christians. God, after all, has done stranger things in the past.

“However, until God works this miracle, it seems clear to me that gays, as a group, are morally superior to Christians (p. 521).”

I was a bit stunned. The thought came to mind, “Why do I judge homosexuals, especially Christians who struggle with homosexuality, yet honor Christians who serve in the military and possibly kill other humans?” Another thought came to mind, “Why does the church accept Christians in the military when Jesus spoke so straightforwardly about killing and violence? Why do we dedicate worship gatherings to honor military veterans, especially around the 4th of July? How have we explained away the call to ‘turn the other cheek’ and to never ‘return evil for evil’ so easily?”

If you were to ask me once every day for a week whether or not Christians should serve in the military I will say, “No!” three times; “No” twice; and “Maybe” twice. That is my pacifism.

What I have found most perplexing is how Christians can give so much energy to explaining why homosexuality is a sin while honoring Christians who participate in war as heroes saying nothing about the sins they commit. If you kill another person in Iraq you can come back to the United States and likely receive financial aid to attend almost any evangelical seminary around. This is not so if you write on your admissions essay, “I think I might be homosexual.”

I am not advocating the compatibility of Christianity with homosexuality. I am suggesting that our conversation on this topic is more rhetoric than substance. I agree with John Byron that this is a subject where we have shown little intellectual muscle strength, often fearing what might be said if we use the “h” word (see “Homosexuality: When will the church really have a conversation?”).

I see articles like James Emery White’s “The ‘No’ and ‘Yes’ to Culture Wars” where he advocates for Christians taking a political stance against same-sex marriage and I wonder why same-sex marriage is one of his “yes” answers while our nation’s military industrial complex is not?! Why is homosexuals aiming for a monogamous relationship worth our time, but the death of thousands of people (many who are not Christians, therefore damned in White’s worldview) isn’t?

I appreciate Christians like Tim Keller who are asking, “How do we acknowledge the image of God in all humans, including homosexuals ?” Yet I wonder what Keller says to an soldier home from duty about whether or not s/he could reenlist if s/he is a Christian (see “Tim Keller on how to treat homosexuals”)?

I am not asking Christians to affirm homosexuality as moral. I am asking why other matters of greater importance are ignored. What do we do with homelessness, disease, addiction, war, famine….on and on. Why is it “social gospel” for someone to make a call to care about these issues?

Christians who advocate military service for Christians often make arguments from silence like, “Well, John the Baptist and Jesus are depicted as meeting military personal and they never tell them to quit.” Sometimes I hear, “Yes, Jesus calls us to ‘turn the other cheek’ but [insert qualifications A, B, and C, including possible qualification D regarding "practicality in our sinful world."]! What if a Christian advocates for monogamous homosexuality by saying, “Well, in Romans 1 Paul isn’t writing about loving, monogamous homosexual relationships because he had never seen one.”? We respond, “Oh c’mon, you can’t argue from silence when we have so many clear passages that teach against it.” Or if someone says, “Yes, homosexuality was wrong back then, but we are in a different cultural milieu!” we accuse them of relativizing Scripture. God forbid they appeal to being “practical in our sinful world.”

It may be possible to affirm Christian military service while denying Christians being homosexual, but many of the arguments I hear are selective at best, disingenuous at worst. I wish more Christians would be smacked by someone like Stanley Hauerwas and forced to ask themselves, “What is my hermeneutical paradigm for saying biblical prohibition A no longer applies while biblical prohibition B does.” I think we have a long, long way to go to say we have done the hard exegetical and theological work to which John Byron calls us. I think many of us might discover our application of Scripture is already relativized by the majority culture. It is kind of like this comic:

Christian allegiance to the State according to Origen of Alexandria.

Origen of Alexandria

Today is Veteran’s Day in the United States. We remember those who gave their lives fighting on behalf of our nation in various causes. I have mixed emotions about these types of days. On one hand, I am thankful for the nation in which I live. I wouldn’t trade it for places like North Korea, China, Iran, Pakistan, and other places that seem to lack the stability and domestic peace of our nation. On the other hand, I pledge a higher allegiance to Christ and I cannot find much wiggle room as his disciple for celebrating war and participation in war. There is a great tension here.

Origen of Alexandria recognized this tension. In his apologetical work Contra Celsum he responds to a pagan named Celsus who had written against Christianity several decades prior. One of the charges leveled by Celsus against Christians is that their refusal to participate in the armies of Rome made them bad citizens (oddly enough an argument many Christians use against other Christians who won’t serve in the army). Origen wrote the following response (Celsus’ words are in italics) in Contra Celsum VIII.73-74:

In the next place, Celsus urges us “to help the king with all our might, and to labor with him in the maintenance of justice, to fight for him; and if he requires it, to fight under him, or lead an army along with him.” To this our answer is, that we do, when occasion requires, give help to kings, and that, so to say, a divine help, “putting on the whole armor of God.” And this we do in obedience to the injunction of the apostle, “I exhort, therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority;” and the more any one excels in piety, the more effective help does he render to kings, even more than is given by soldiers, who go forth to fight and slay as many of the enemy as they can.

And to those enemies of our faith who require us to bear arms for the commonwealth, and to slay men, we can reply: “Do not those who are priests at certain shrines, and those who attend on certain gods, as you account them, keep their hands free from blood, that they may with hands unstained and free from human blood offer the appointed sacrifices to your gods; and even when war is upon you, you never enlist the priests in the army. If that, then, is a laudable custom, how much more so, that while others are engaged in battle, these too should engage as the priests and ministers of God, keeping their hands pure, and wrestling in prayers to God on behalf of those who are fighting in a righteous cause, and for the king who reigns righteously, that whatever is opposed to those who act righteously may be destroyed!”

And as we by our prayers vanquish all demons who stir up war, and lead to the violation of oaths, and disturb the peace, we in this way are much more helpful to the kings than those who go into the field to fight for them. And we do take our part in public affairs, when along with righteous prayers we join self-denying exercises and meditations, which teach us to despise pleasures, and not to be led away by them. And none fight better for the king than we do. We do not indeed fight under him, although he require it; but we fight on his behalf, forming a special army— an army of piety— by offering our prayers to God.

And if Celsus would have us to lead armies in defense of our country, let him know that we do this too, and that not for the purpose of being seen by men, or of vainglory. For in secret, and in our own hearts, there are prayers which ascend as from priests in behalf of our fellow citizens.

And Christians are benefactors of their country more than others. For they train up citizens, and inculcate piety to the Supreme Being; and they promote those whose lives in the smallest cities have been good and worthy, to a divine and heavenly city, to whom it may be said, “You have been faithful in the smallest city, come into a great one, where God stands in the assembly of the gods, and judges the gods in the midst;” and He reckons you among them, “if you no more die as a man, or fall as one of the princes.”

Origen seems to wrestle with the same tension then that many Christians do now. He knows there are evildoers. He wants to be a good citizen. He doesn’t deny that wars take place and that other nations may have evildoers, but he doesn’t see a place for Christians to “slay men”. This is a common self-understanding for many Christians in the first few centuries of the church. Origen evokes the Peterine “priesthood of believers” to secure a place for Christians in pagan society that they already gave to their pagan priest as intercessors before deity. Yet he offers an important distinction from the pagan priests who pray exclusively for their nation’s victory– for Christians “our prayers vanquish all demons who stir up war “

Korean War Memorial

On a day like Veteran’s Day I do honor those who gave their lives. For in the kingdoms of this world their is no greater example of selflessness for one’s immediate neighbor. Yet I pray that the day when war will be no more comes quickly. I want to celebrate a time when people do not have to kill people for national interest. While war may be inevitable in this “already, but not yet” age I pray that more Christians would determine to function as a priesthood to the world offering prayers rather that joining military ranks. As Stanley Hauerwas has said, one of the greatest gifts Christians could give the world is the refusal to kill another human. I know this isn’t the type of allegiance to the State that many respect, but I think it is a Christian way of showing allegiance. May God have mercy on our war torn world.

Stanley Hauerwas: “…if the God we Christians worship does not exist.”

I am going to be traveling to southern California for the next few days (San Diego and Los Angeles). This is not something about which I am excited. I don’t like traveling alone without my wife and I don’t like Los Angeles. That being said, there should be some downtime–especially on the flight there and back–so I will be working on editing and  reorganizing my thesis and reading Stanley Hauerwas’ memoir Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir.

I admit that I have not read a ton of Hauerwas, but that doesn’t mean that I lack his influence. What little I have read has impacted my thinking greatly, even if I process it only at an elementary level at best. I think this will be a good book.

In his preface titled “On Being Stanley Hauerwas” he wrote something that stood out from the rest of the page: “I have…tried to live a life I hope is unintelligible if the God we Christians worship does not exist.” (p. x)

That made me stop to think. Do my beliefs (and I am not saying mere cognitive affirmations) mean anything to a watching world? Do I come across as strange not simply because being religious often leads to being odd (more often than not in the worst kind of way), but because anyone who does not share my belief realizes that my beliefs have greatly impacted my way of life?

In other words, if the Christian God does not exist would my religion still have a “place” in society as just another ritual to help me get from birth to death or would I be seen as an absolute fool for giving myself to this non-existent God? If I die, and my God did not exist, I want it to matter. I want my life to have been wasted following my non-existent God. Otherwise, I think my religion is meaningless.

Sunday Quote: Stanley Hauerwas on an Alternative Christian History

The Hauerwas Reader

This quote is taken from an essay by Stanley Hauerwas titled “Should War Be Eliminated?” in The Hauerwas Reader edited by John Berkman and Michael Cartwright (pp. 421-422). When I first read it I was on my way back from New York City where I had just seen the 9/11 memorial for the first time. My initial reaction to being reminded of such a tragedy was that of most Americans–let’s get revenge! In part, I think the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have shown us just how costly revenge is. What Hauerwas says here may be hard to accept (it has been for me at times) but I think is worth wrestling with it:

Christians believe that the true history of the world, that history that determines our destiny, is not carried by the nation-state. In spite of its powerful moral appeal, this history is the history of godlessness. Only the church has the stance, therefore, to describe war for what it is, for the world is too broken to know the reality of war. For what is war but the desire to be rid of God, to claim for ourselves the power to determine our meaning and destiny? Our desire to protect ourselves from our enemies, to eliminate our enemies in the name of protecting the common history that we share with our friends, is but the manifestation of our hatred of God.

Christians have been offered the possibility of a different history through participation in a community which one learns to love the enemy. They are thus a people who believe that God will have them exists through history without the necessity of war. God has done so by providing them with a history through the church. For without the church we are but a scattered people with nothing in common. Only through the church do we learn that we share the same creator and destiny. So the world’s true history is not built on war, but that offered by a community that witnesses to God’s refusal to give up on his creation.