Archive for stanley hauerwas

Academic Conferences Overseas This Week

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , on April 12, 2012 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

Well I’m off to the other side of the pond for the next week or so to deliver academic papers at two conferences, the first in England and the second in Italy. The British conference is the Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland meeting, which takes place every two years. The International Thomas Merton Society, the larger organization, hosts a conference in North America every two years and on the alternate year the TMSGBI hosts a conference in Europe. For the last several meetings the conference has taken place on the campus of Oakham School, an elite British boarding school that is Thomas Merton’s alma mater. It’s located in the very cozy little town of Oakham in County Rutland in the British Midlands. I have had the great privilege to present papers there for the previous two meetings and I’m very much looking forward to returning this weekend. I have made lasting friendships with Merton scholars from Europe and I’ve really come to enjoy my time spent in the town of Oakham. The title of my paper this year is: “Raids on the Impossible: The Poetics of Nonviolence in Merton, Caputo and Hauerwas.”

Following this conference in the UK, I’ll head to Italy where I’m presenting at a conference on interreligious dialogue located in the home land of the Franciscan family, Assisi!  The conference is titled, Where We Dwell in Common: Pathways for Dialogue in the 21st Century. This conference is drawing top scholars from around the United States and Europe. I’m humbled to be on the same program with such an outstanding collection of theologians and other academics. What is also nice is that a number of friends that I’ve met over the years at different academic gatherings and conferences stateside will be in attendance or presenting papers too, so I’m looking forward to catching up with them. While the schedule will surely be a busy one, just having the opportunity to spend a few days in the town of Assisi is exciting. It’s been eight years since I was last there and it is the first time that I’ve been to Assisi as a Friar.

So if my postings are somewhat infrequent, please pardon the delay. I’ll try to give a little play-by-play as best I can throughout the travels, so stay tuned! It will all depend on internet access at various locations throughout my travels and will also depend on my schedule during these conferences. Please keep me in prayer and remember all those who are traveling from various locations to reach both of these very important gatherings.

Peace and good!

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The Complicated Relationship Between Discipleship and Patriotism

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , on April 10, 2012 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

Ok, you can tell what I nerd I am: last night I was reading my copy of the latest issue of the journal Modern Theology in which a review symposium was published on Stanley Hauerwas’s “theological memoir,” Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir (2010), and I was struck by the contribution of R. R. Reno, of First Things fame. Those familiar with Hauerwas’s history and background know that he was once on the editorial board of First Things, but resigned in the early 2000s over a disagreement in the publication’s editorial policy to support and defend the U.S. government’s handling of Afghanistan and Iraq. Hauerwas, a leading proponent of the centrality of nonviolence in Christian ethics, could not in good conscience continue to be so closely associated with a board that stood for something about which he so significantly disagreed. This, I believe, has a lot to do with shaping Reno’s decision to end his piece in Modern Theology.

Concluding with some musings about his own intellectual development and worldview, ostensibly inspired to introspection by Hauerwas’s memoir, Reno writes:

In fact one could say that he [Hauerwas] has been the great theorist of our need to be formed by a real community of faith. But as a consequence I have been less and less engaged by the rhetoric of separation and critique that runs through so much of Hauerwas’s commentary on the moral challenges facing contemporary Christians in America, a rhetoric moreover that far more than theological doctrines of denominational loyalties make his followers identifiable as Hauerwasians. I see myself as a sinner, not an outsider. I am an American Christian whose natural love for his country can certainly become perverted. But I need not push away my patriotic emotions, for that same love can be a fitting way to serve my neighbor, and the transcendence of self encouraged by patriotism can prepare my heart for the higher love of God. Bourgeois upper-middle-class life? Capitalism? Again, these features of modern life are occasions for many dangerous temptations but they are also fully capable of Christian habitation (326).

I disagree, so call me a Hauerwasian. What Reno seemingly desires is to have his proverbial cake and eat it too. He wants to bear the name Christian for apparently genuine and faithful reasons, but he also wants to rally to support his “patriotic emotions” in ways that he feels exist in symbiotic relationship with, if not even in positively formative ways to, his Christian faith.

What Hauerwas does so well in his writing is call to mind precisely why such a relationship is not tenable. Reno claims that Hauerwas’s position forces like-minded adherents to the margins of Christianity. But in fact, what Hauerwas and others keenly note is that to be Christian is to necessarily stand at the margins of popular culture and society.

This is why it is absurd to claim that a Christian can support war, violence, unbridled capitalism, and the like. Jesus was executed precisely because he was scarily at the margins of his culture — religious and civil. A threat to both the religious establishment of his first-century Palestinian Judaism and eventually viewed by the Roman government as an insurrectionist, Christ could not walk the line for which Reno advocates, because it is simply not what the Good News (Gospel) is about.

Forgiveness for the unforgivable, love for the unlovable, freedom for captives, sight to the blind, relief for the poor, healing for the broken and broken hearted — these are the indicators of God’s Reign. They are, when we are most honest, precisely the opposite of the “Bourgeois upper-middle-class life” and “capitalism” and violence for which Reno claims the possibility of “Christian habitation.”

Reno claims that, although he appreciates Hauerwas’s friendship over the years, “for the most part Hauerwas has not shaped [Reno's] moral judgments.” This much is very, very clear. But even without Stanley Hauerwas’s unique and provocative efforts to awaken the truth of Christian discipleship in the hearts of so many, Reno would be wise to revisit the Scripture to see what it is that Jesus demands of those who wish to follow him. It’s certainly not capitulating with self-righteous justification to the prescripts of popular American culture. It has a lot more to do with denying one’s self, taking up crosses and following in the footprints of the one who not only laid down his life for a friend, but surrendered his will for all.

Photo: Stock

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A Year After Tucson: The Need to Recall Christian Nonviolence

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , on January 8, 2012 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

This reflection is now available in Daniel P. Horan, OFM’s book Franciscan Spirituality for the 21st Century: Selected Reflections from the Dating God Blog and Other Essays, Volume One (Koinonia Press, 2013).

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The Lion, the Witch, and the Pacifist?

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , on July 18, 2011 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

In a recent ABC News opinion piece, the esteemed professor of ethics at Duke University, Stanley Hauerwas, addresses the subject of the popular British Christian author C. S. Lewis and his position on war. Hauerwas begins his essay, titled, “Nonviolent Narnia: Could C. S. Lewis Have Imagined a World Without War?”

Many people are Christians because of the work of C.S. Lewis. With wit and wisdom, Lewis imaginatively exploded the hollow pretensions of the secular. More, he helped many for the first time see the world in the light of fact that “it had really happened once.”

It is, therefore, not easy to criticize Lewis when he has such a devoted following. Yet I must write critically of Lewis because here I want to examine his views concerning violence and war.

I am a pacifist. Lewis was anything but a pacifist. I want to show that his arguments against pacifism are inadequate, but I also that he provides imaginative resources for Christians to imagine a very different form of Christian nonviolence, a form unknown to Lewis, with which I hope he might have had some sympathy.

Before turning to Lewis’s arguments against pacifism, I think it important to set the context for his more formal reflections on war by calling attention to Lewis’s experience of war.

Those who are regular readers of DatingGod.org know of my position on war and violence and that it aligns rather closely with Hauerwas’s. I think it is interesting to take a look at some of the most popular “Christian” literature in the English language and examine it from the perspective of Christian nonviolence.

Click here to continue reading the full-text…

Photo: Duke University

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Paved with Good Intentions…A Church Misses the Point

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , on April 9, 2011 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

Ok, so I don’t usually do this. By which I mean, I have yet to do something like this. Now I’m doing something like this. “This” is posting a photo of something that I saw while out and about (today’s feature comes from an afternoon walk in a park that borders a Catholic Church in the Capital District) and commenting on why it caught my attention. Here it is, a sign that advertised the 2011 Lenten “theme” for this unnamed parish (to protect the guilty).

While walking on this first real Spring-like day, I spotted this well-made sign outside of the Church. And what caught my attention was the “MEs” all over the thing. I walked up close to examine what the story was, presuming in my innocence that it was a sign denouncing self-centeredness during the season of penance. To my surprise it was exactly the opposite — it was a sign that promoted introspective identity formation.

On one hand, this is not such a bad thing. One could read this effort as a attempt to get at what someone like Thomas Merton would call “the True Self.” But, I thought that it really doesn’t lead the reader — likely other quickly passing walkers or joggers on the trail like me — in that direction. Instead, the question “Your Job This Lent?” is answered with “Me.”

I think the more challenging and more authentically Christian answer is “WE.”

The focus of the Christianity is community driven. While we are responsible moral agents, we are also members of “The Body of Christ,” which is the Church. No one is a Christian on his or her own, therefore the Church, while it should promote a call to metanoia in the lives of its members, needs to be about asking questions of how are we as a community living up to our call to follow Christ? We do that as one of many, united together in Baptism and the Spirit. As Stanley Hauerwas might suggest, the answer to the “Me” question arises out of the collective discernment of the “who are WE” question.

Just some food for thought.

Photo: Dan Horan, OFM’s phone

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Battle Hymn of the ‘Tiger Christian’

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on January 24, 2011 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

So, I recently read Amy Chua’s increasingly controversial book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Penguin 2011), and I had told several friends while I was reading it that I would absolutely not write about parenting and whether I agreed with Prof. Chua in her approach to the task — as a friar who would never have children of his own, I simply feel that it is not my place to pick a side (as if there were real sides to choose).

So I won’t do that. Instead, I found myself intrigued by the possibility this ‘Chinese approach to parenting’ might offer to other aspects of our lives, particularly in living a Christian life. Therefore, I want to talk a little about that and how the book resonated with my own experience of childhood and life.

I really liked the book. There, I said it. I’m sure, like Chua, I will be immediately criticized by some for my apparent disregard for the psychological well-being of children in the rearing process. But, I think that what is often missing in the lives of today’s young adults is a formative experience of discipline and high expectations.

While reading the book I often thought about Christian character in the way that theologian Stanley Hauerwas has discussed it in his work. The notion of character ethics, rooted as it is in the traditional understanding of virtue, relies on the notion that one must work at living and acting a certain way.

This way of being-in-the-world is shaped by the operative narrative of the person, which in the case of Christianity should be the Gospels. One becomes a Christian, makes Christian decisions and acts like a Christian by doing it. One asks questions of him or herself such as “what kind of person do I wish to become?” in place of more traditional moral questions like “what ought I do?”

The response, “I wish to become a Christian,” requires that one practices being a Christian: Both in the performative sense of the word practice (as in, I practice medicine or I practice law) and in the disciplinary or training sense (as in, I need to practice the piano).

What would the Church look like with parents, mentors and peers that helped each other practice Christian living in a way that resembled Chua’s Chinese parenting? What might it look like if the Body of Christ, that is the Church, was composed of “Tiger Christians?”

Our expectations of ourselves and others would be elevated, accountability might increase and the way we lived might be more in-step with what we ultimately desire in wholeheartedly following Christ. But it wouldn’t be easy. And, as Chua’s story reveals, things that yield the greatest reward in life are rarely easy.

We might not like the process, but chances are we would be better off for the results. At least that is what Chua’s daughters, to some degree, expressed. It is also, as I look back on my young life, something that I appreciate. My parents were not Tiger Parents, certainly not like Chua was, but they also weren’t — at least compared to the experiences of many of my classmates — the epitome of Western Parents either. Like Chua, there were things that my brothers and I had to do that we didn’t want to do, at least as kids. Now, I am very grateful for the way my parents raised me and my brothers. I wouldn’t be who I was today otherwise.

Ice skating comes to mind, it is something my two brothers closest in age to me and I joke about sometimes, but have come to appreciate later in life. My dad had us out on the ice not long after we were able to walk, usually decked out in a hockey helmet, our little skates tight on our feet. Now my brothers and I are excellent skaters.

Swimming was another big deal. We took swimming lessons all summer for years – YEARS. My brothers and I would secretly hope for a thunderstorm in the morning to cancel our lesson for that day (the pool was outdoors). We had no say in the matter and we complained like Chua’s youngest daughter, but we are now all very strong swimmers. A skill for which we are each grateful. School was the same way, our parents were always very involved in our education, taking copious notes during parent-teacher conferences and always siding with the teacher in a dispute (they were not the helicopter parents of today, defending their children blindly at all costs).

But there are things about which I wish I was pushed harder as a kid. The piano is a good example and reading this book reminded me of that. I took piano lessons for just under 2 years, from fourth through fifth grade. I had a very strict teacher, who was superb (in retrospect, but a tyrant to my kid world), but I — like most nine-year-olds — didn’t want to practice. Eventually, my parents said that if I wasn’t going to practice then there was no point in lessons – they were right. So I stopped.

To this day I regret that. I still play the piano, and, as much as it embarrasses me to admit this, I play very well. I play mostly in liturgical settings and I have and continue to receive many very kind compliments and praise. However, every time people lavish me with praise after a big mass or some event where I have played the piano, like during the provincial chapter earlier this month, I have a negative reaction, realizing that my potential was so much greater than it is actualized. If I can play this well after less than two-years of lessons nearly twenty years ago, what could I have accomplished if I was more disciplined, driven and forced to practice?

I think this is relevant to our lives as Christians. There are times when we are just too easy and too laid-back in our striving to live the Gospel. If we were more motivated, more expecting of ourselves and each other, perhaps the Gospel would be lived in a less-blasé manner.

What would it be like to live a more Tiger Christian life?

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The Champion of Character Ethics: Stanley Hauerwas

Posted in Theologians That Rock with tags , on October 22, 2010 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

On September 10, 2001, the last day of normalcy for many in the United States, the 9/17/01 issue of TIME magazine hit the shelves.  TIME named Professor Stanley Hauerwas “America’s Best Theologian.”  A professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School of Duke University, Hauerwas has been both lauded as a brilliant ethical thinker and a figure of some controversy.  The controversy that surrounds Hauerwas generally has to do with his rather provocative and confrontational approach to theological conversation.  He is also known to use some rather flavorful language now and then…and that is exactly the point.

One of Hauerwas’s convictions is that Christianity has, in its popular appropriation and conception, often times devolved into a sentimental caricature of the radical faith Jesus Christ actually calls people to live.  This reduction of Christian faith to something that no longer challenges people to follow in the footprints of Christ has palpably ethical implications.  How can someone who bears the name ‘Christ’ support war?  or greed?  or self-righteousness?  In other words, Christianity has at times become a justifying label that becomes wielded by those who make of it what they please.

Hauerwas’s approach to theological ethics is rooted in a restoration of virtue and character as central elements of Christian living.  Drawing on the tradition of scripture and philosophical insight (particularly that of figures like Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and John Howard Yoder), Hauerwas emphasizes the central place of the narrative in the formation of Christian ethics.  One is a Christian because one lives the story of Christianity.  The story of Christianity, its narrative, becomes the story or narrative that I inherit and contribute to and am shaped by.  It becomes no longer “a story,” but “my story.”

One way to summarize (inadequately, I’m sure) this approach in a nutshell, is to see the reorientation of the Christian’s focus from an act-based reflection on how to live a Christian life to a holistic reflection of Christian personhood.  In other words, it is not so much a matter of asking “should I do this or that,” but instead a matter of asking “who is it that I want to become” and then doing what it is such a person does.  In the case of living a Christian life, it means doing what the Christian story entails.

There is so much that could be said about the thought and work of Stanley Hauerwas, far too much for the space I have here.  For that reason, I think it is most worthwhile for me to merely point to some of the most important texts of his available and direct you to some additional outlets of information by and about him.

Perhaps Hauerwas’s most famous work is The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, 1983).  This has already become a classic in Christian ethics and a text well worth exploring for anybody interested in a constructive and practical examination of the structure and content of contemporary Christian ethics.  Hauerwas has an intriguing to-the-point and creative writing style that draws the reader into his thought.  This is seen in other texts like A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame, 1991), largely considered one of the most important books in theology over the last twenty-five years.

A particularly handy volume is the Hauerwas Reader (Duke Press, 2001), edited by John Berkman and Michael Cartwright.  This 700+ page tome contains selections from his books as well as a variety of essays on various topics.  His essays have been published in many journals and magazines.  One of my favorite articles by Hauerwas is titled, “America’s God,” which appeared in the 2007 volume of the theological journal Communio.  A piece well worth checking out and one that is emblematic of Hauerwas’s provocative and engaging style.

His most recent project is the memoir Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir (Eerdmans, 2010). It is a wonderful read. Hauerwas has expressed in several instances that he wished that the book might reach wider audiences than the limited theological guild.  I can attest that the text could indeed appeal to a wide audience for it is a compelling story that even the non-theologians could enjoy.  I’ve included below a brief video interview with Hauerwas on the subject of his memoir.

One of my favorite passages in the book comes at a point where he reflects on his writing and his approach to writing.

Writing is hard and difficult work because to write is to think.  I do not have an idea and then find a way to express it.  The expression is the idea.  So I write because writing is the only way I know how to think.  I write, moreover, because I have something to say.  That I have something to say is not a personal achievement.  I have something to say because I am a Christian.  I also have readers who are obligated to care about what I write.  They are called Christians.  What an extraordinary gift.  Audience makes all the difference.  I am an academic, but I do not have to write only for other academics.  I write for a people who, no matter how ambiguous the identification ‘Christian’ may be, think that what theologians say should matter.  I believe that God has given me something to say.  I have been given the work of trying to imagine what i means to be Christian in a world that Christians do not control.

As I re-read this passage, I am reminded of Thomas Merton’s injunction to “think with your pencil.”  Theology is done, not by reflection abstractly in mentis, but concretely on paper.

I have been tremendously influenced by the method and approach to ethics illustrated and expressed by Stanley Hauwerwas.  I continue to find his work captivating and truth-filled.  His own direct, unapologetic tone is something that also resonates with me, because I too feel that theology, religion and faith are not themes to be compartmentalized and reflected on independently from the rest of our lives, but instead we are whole people who should strive to live and act as Christians, reflecting the character communicated in the narrative of Jesus Christ.

Also worthing checking out: A brief interview with Stanley Hauerwas by the Religion News Service titled, “10 Minutes with…Stanley Hauerwas.“

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The Most Important Books in Theology in 25 Years

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on October 5, 2010 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

The Christian Century magazine, a fine publication indeed, has published a cover story of great interest in this week’s issue.  The article is titled, “Essential Theology Books of the Past 25 Years.“  This is a very interesting piece, if only because it reveals so much about each of the contributors.  The Christian Century editors asked eight very prominent theologians the following questions: “Suppose someone who hasn’t been keeping up with theology for the past 25 years now wants to read the most important books written during that time. What five titles would you suggest?”  Each theologian then responded with a little paragraph explaining his or her selection of the particular books.

Interestingly, the most frequently named book was John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory, the seminal work that launched the theological movement known as “Radical Orthodoxy.”  Stanley Hauerwas, Lawrence Cunningham, and Willie James Jennings all mentioned the text.  For those who do not already know, I have done a significant amount of work on the Radical Orthodoxy movement in recent years, with particular attention to Milbank’s contribution.  My Master’s thesis was: “Postmodernity and Univocity: A Critical Assessment of Radical Orthodoxy’s Use of John Duns Scotus.”  In it I spend a considerable amount of energy on Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory.  I would certainly admit that it has become a force to be reckoned with, but that it so ubiquitously present in the forefront of major theologians’ thought appears to suggest that it is even more significant than I originally thought.  I guess I should stick with that line of research in the ensuing years.

I was surprised that only one person, Lawrence Cunningham, mentioned Bernard McGinn’s magisterial multi-volume series: The Presence of God:  A History of Western Mysticism.  It would seem to me that this text deserves much more attention that it received from this poll.

It’s nice to see popular magazines keeping academic theology on the front burner every now and then.  How would you answer the question, which five books would you consider the essential theological texts of the last 25 years??

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