After introducing the five articles that comprise this focus issue, I consider Hauerwas's claim that he is a theologian without a position. The claim has merit, I hold, since Hauerwas writes in response to what he reads, which is his way of learning it better. Moreover, he writes socially, characteristically soliciting help from his friends. As such, he purposefully makes himself accountable to those he addresses. In his later years this accountability has extended especially to the Church and to the (...) Bible, which helps explain why Hauerwas cares so deeply about his sermons, which he takes to be his most important work. (shrink)

Virtue and deontological ethics are now commonly contrasted as rival approaches to moral inquiry. However, I argue that neither metaethical party should seek complete, solitary domination of the ethical domain. Reductive treatments of the right or the virtuous, as well as projects that abandon the former or latter, are bound to leave us with a sadly diminished map of the moral territories crucial to our lives. Thus, it is better for the two parties to seek a more cordial and equal (...) relationship, one that permits metaethical pluralism, and acknowledges mutual dependence. I do not seek to prescribe how that relationship should look: this essay offers less a positive metaethical position than a prolegomenon to such a position, one that attempts to head off harmful attempts to reduce the territory of the aretaic to that of the deontic, or that of the deontic to the aretaic. (shrink)

In this review essay, I consider the recent work of students of Stanley Hauerwas on matters related to political theology. Eight books (and scattered articles) are treated in two groups: one more theoretical, the other more practically oriented. Of special interest is whether and how Jeffrey Stout's concerns about Hauerwas's negative political "influence" apply. I suggest that while sometimes narratives of decline dominate overmuch, these works rightly and creatively seek to expand our political imagination beyond the narrowness of modern nation-state (...) politics and its attending capitalist assumptions. Moreover, in all cases, Hauerwas's students stress a kind of political embodiment of Christ in the practices of particular communities, beginning with the Christian Church, but including also medicine, economy, and family. Spread out, this embodiment combats a pervasive modern Gnosticism, trains us in patience and hope, and gives room for a more truthful description of Church and world. (shrink)

In this paper I examine criticism of Hauerwas's critique of American democracy and liberalism, and of American violence and war, as sectarian and politically irrelevant. This twin account has the merit of engaging his critics from left and right. I show that his critique of American Christians, and their support of America's ways of promoting justice and freedom at home and in the world, has analogies with Foucault's genealogical project in France, and represents a more powerful critique of American imperialism (...) and militarism, and of a compliant church, than efforts to sustain the purchase of rights talk or liberal justice in contemporary theological ethics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTStanley Hauerwas's contribution to the study of Christian ethics is analyzed in the course of offering an overview of his work, including his early reflections on “vision,”“narrative,” and moral agency; his continuing focus on Christian virtues and practices in contrast to the ethos of moral and political liberalism; and his specific attention to the meaning of peaceableness and the rejection of violence. The essay concludes by considering Hauerwas's legacy as a postliberal theologian, a critical participant in American Protestant ethics, and (...) a conversation partner with Roman Catholics. (shrink)

Next SectionPublic discourse in continental Europe gives a uniquely prominent place to human dignity. The European Christianities have always taken this notion to be an outgrowth of their theological commitments. This sense of a conceptual continuity between Christianity and secular morality contributes to the way in which these Christianities, especially (but not exclusively) in Germany, have perceived their public role. In an exemplary manner, this essay engages the secularized societal environment. In meeting the secular discourse on its own home ground, (...) it seeks to recapture the theological roots of that discourse's defining value commitments. The challenges that modern societies present for Christians are seen not as a threat that would destroy a presumed original societas Christiana. Instead, these challenges create an opportunity to transform the Gospel's message so as to have it conform to, but also allow it to criticize, contemporary scientific knowledge about the world and man. Bonhoeffer's rendering of the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms here makes it possible to link the Christian understanding of man as “in the image of God” with the secular affirmation of human dignity. As an intermediate concept, “incarnate reason” allows the bioethical discourse to preserve crucial aspects of the Christian tradition, while at the same time giving space to a constructive as well as critical exchange with secular discourse partners. (shrink)

This paper offers an assessment of the prospects for Christian engagement with public bioethical debates in a contemporary British context. One recent example, the debate provoked by proposed legislation for research involving human admixed embryos, is examined briefly. It is argued that this debate has some problematic features that are characteristic of public ethical debates in this context. Next, a proposal is offered as to how such bioethical questions may be approached from within a Christian theological tradition (specifically, a Reformed (...) Protestant tradition). This proposed approach makes use of four “diagnostic questions” to assess whether technological proposals and practices such as the creation of human admixed embryos can be consistent with the distinctive Christian narrative of creation, sin, salvation through Christ, and promised future hope. The final section offers some reflections on how Christians and churches might engage, on the basis of this theological approach, with public ethical debates such as the one about admixed embryos. (shrink)