'The Gospel Makes the Everyday Possible'
70-year old Duke theologian Stanley Hauerwas explains his new memoir, addresses his critics, and explains why he says, 'We're all congregationalists now.'
Interview by Andy Rowell | posted 9/09/2010 09:44AM
For 40 years, Stanley Hauerwas has challenged Christians to live like Christians. He does not fit neatly into the conservative vs. liberal categories that have dominated discussions of American Christianity since the early fundamentalist vs. modernist controversies. Some call him a "post-liberal" because he urges all Christians to return to historical Christianity and to sharpen their thinking.
In 1970, Hauerwas joined the faculty of Notre Dame University, in 1983, he moved to Duke Divinity School, and earlier this year, he published his memoir, Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir (Eerdmans, April 2010). In some ways, he is a professor of professors—widely read by academics for his creative, forceful, and provocative application of Christian thought to a wide range of issues. But he also appeals to blue-collar readers who sense that this son of a bricklayer is one of them—willing to say that many smart-sounding professors are philosophically incoherent.
Andy Rowell, a doctoral student in theology at Duke Divinity School, spoke with Hauerwas about his life, his work, and his hopes and concerns for his evangelical students.
For 40 years you have been reflecting theologically on the habits, virtues, and vices of Americans. Now you have put yourself under the microscope. Why did you write this memoir? Or is it an autobiography?
An autobiography indicates something closer to a chronology, and I didn't want to be limited to that. A memoir is usually meant to expose one's subjectivity. For me that creates some difficulty as I do not want to privilege the objective-subjective distinction. I wrote this book because people had asked me to do it. I had resisted doing it, partly because it's such an invitation to narcissism. But it turned out I'm just narcissistic enough to do it [Laughs]. When I began to think about it, I thought I saw how to do it. It became an obsession that I had to do. I'm glad I did it. It is a different genre from my other writing. People write me and tell me that different aspects of it have struck them.
You say at the end of your memoir Hannah's Child that the process of writing helped you realize that you are in fact a Christian. Did the process of reflecting on the events of your life give you perspective on the whole?
I don't want to be silly and think that I didn't know I was a Christian prior to writing the book, but what the book hopefully makes candid is how a recognition of one's identity as a Christian has everything to do with how your friends acknowledge what you are. I try to help us see how friendship is constitutive of our ability to claim who we are.
You write about the pressure you felt to go forward at revival services at your childhood United Methodist Church in Texas. You did not feel right about responding insincerely to emotional appeals.
I didn't think one should fake it.
Did books save you? Did the journey of the intellectual life through college, Yale, Notre Dame and Duke keep you a Christian?
I really have lived in books. Books are friends. They are some of the friends that make you who you are. Reading is an exercise for learning how to write and vice versa. I have read myself into being a Christian, but I have also written myself into being a Christian.
Because your first wife Anne was struggling with mental illness, how did you and your son Adam cope?
We did it by having extraordinary friendship with one another. We did it by activity: by throwing Frisbee, by riding our bicycles. We did it by going to church a lot. We did it by having friends that were supportive. I also took up running as a way to deal with the stress of the situation. When Paula and I were getting married, I picked Adam up from college from the airport, he said, "I'm not doing very well." He said, "It's this marriage. You and I were the married couple and we just took care of Mom. This is the divorce." We had to go on and we knew it couldn't be the same, but it is very gratifying to have a son who is as lovely as he is.
September (Web-only) 2010, Vol. 54
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