Coming May 15, 2010: Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir (Eerdmans).
This introduction is now (January 31, 2010) available for download at Eerdmans's website.
Dr. Hauerwas is Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School.
I also recommend four snippets from interviews with Hauerwas from theworkofthepeople.com.
In this first video (1:50) Hauerwas describes the comfort of the tactile in baptism which remind us of the reality that we in our dying are not alone.
Aloneness from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.
In this second video (2:55) Hauerwas worries about efforts that focus on church growth which end up producing homogenous congregations and entertaining worship in which the people are spectators rather than participants .
In this third snippet at Are You Aware You're Going To Die? or at Facebook (3:58), Hauerwas reflects on how many Christians live in denial that they are going to die.
In this fourth snippet (1:12) only at Facebook, Hauerwas says, "because we are not in control anymore, we are free."
See also more audio by Hauerwas at http://itunes.duke.edu/ and Socratic Audio Files.
See also Hauerwas's other recent books:
I also highly recommend the fascinating dense article by Hauerwas on theological interpretation of Scripture.
Stanley Hauerwas, "Why 'The Way the Words Run' Matters: Reflections on Becoming a 'Major Biblical Scholar,' in The Word Leaps the Gap: Essays on Scripture and Theology in Honor of Richard B. Hays (ed. J. R. Wagner, A. K. Grieb and C. K. Rowe; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 1-19.
which can be read at Google Books here.
Update December 21, 2009
Here are three more recent Hauerwas articles.
1. Tuesday, December 15, 2009
How Do You Know a War is a War?
"The Hope of All the World": Ekklesia Project Responses to President Obama's Nobel Speech.
2. Stanley Hauerwas: What only the whole church can do
Faith & Leadership
December 21, 2009
3. "WRITING-IN" AND "WRITING-OUT": A CHALLENGE TO MODERN THEOLOGY (p 61-66)
STANLEY HAUERWAS
Published Online: Dec 8 2009 10:37PM
Modern Theology Volume 26 Issue 1 (January 2010)
Special 25th Anniversary Issue Modern Theology: a quarter century retrospect and prospect. See my post about it: 25th Anniversary Edition of Modern Theology
Modern Theology is usually available online to subscribers only but this issue is available online for free.
If you need subscribers only access: I have access to it through the Duke University library and my Duke NetID and Password. (Go to Duke Divinity Library. Find e-Journals. Search: Modern Theology.) But I can also access it through Durham County Public Library. In other words, many of you may also have access to Modern Theology through your public library. Look under "Research" or "Magazines" and you may have access to "Academic Search Premier" with your library card.
Update January 31, 2010
Halden Doerge has a number of posts about Stanley Hauerwas at his blog Inhabitatio Dei. See especially Why can’t Hauerwas just be a witness? from January 27, 2010 with 98 comments from a number of scholars including Nathan Kerr, D. Stephen Long, James K. A. Smith, and Gene McCarraher.
Related posts:
Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer course with Stanley Hauerwas
What does Hauerwas's course have to do with church leadership?
Comments
5 responses to “The latest from Stanley Hauerwas: Memoir and Movies”
Thanks for this. I’m sure to buy and read this book!
I have placed below two comments I have written about Hays and Hauerwas.
http://nijaygupta.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/hauerwas-defends-his-hermeneutic/
The piece by Hauerwas in Hays’s festschrift is fascinating not least because Hauerwas and Hays are both involved in my project here at Duke. There is just too much to comment on but I would merely say that in 1996 when writing Moral Vision of the New Testament, Hays was trying to explain how one might draw from the insights of biblical studies (i.e. what is done at SBL) in order to engage life’s issues (sometimes called “ethics”). In other words, Hays took on the project of explaining how “preaching” or “writing a commentary” or “doing theology” should happen–a monstrous task. He embarked later with a cross-disciplinary group of scholars to put out The Art of Reading Scripture in 2003.
Meanwhile, Hauerwas’s life work has been to argue through philosophy why the Bible should not be the arena of specialized scholars in the academe. He has tried to explain why his area “ethics” cannot be done in a universal way by a guild of scholars from differing religious communities. In other words, Hays is trying to explain to biblical studies scholars that their work can be used for ethics. Hauerwas is trying to explain to ethics scholars that their work can only be done within a community–specifically arguing that Christian ethics should be done with the Bible and in conversation with other Christians. In the end, they come down very close to one another–both United Methodists worshiping with Anglicans–Hauerwas at Church of the Holy Family and Hays at Duke Chapel with Sam Wells. (Wells wrote his dissertation–a sympathetic treatment–on Hauerwas). Both appreciate John Howard Yoder because Yoder as an ethicist is savvy about the ethical methodology that Hauerwas appreciates–doing ethics in the church by the church while his work is infused with references to Scripture like a New Testament scholar.
A side note: evangelicals, though to a great degree in agreement with Hauerwas and Hays, often don’t understand them. It is important for everyone to understand the backgrounds and situations Hays and Hauerwas are writing against–both grew up in nominal American liberal mainline Christian homes where they learned little about the Bible, Christ and the Church–they came to warm-hearted faith later in life–and then labored in the halls of the fragmented theology university departments where New Testament, ethics and theology are different disciplines and never should intersect–this is what they are arguing against. Many others at Yale (where both did graduate work) also had this experience and thus some call them “post-liberals.” For evangelicals, one has to first understand where these people are coming from to understand why they are arguing the way they do–the folk they came from have a series of presuppositions that Hauerwas and Hays feel responsible to engage.
http://euangelizomai.blogspot.com/2009/11/etsibrsbl-2009-reflections-part-two.html
As one of the speakers said, the biblical studies people particularly like the volumes of the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible which are more like other commentaries done by biblical studies scholars. Telford Work’s on Deuteronomy was mentioned positively) while other volumes (Jaroslav Pelican’s and Stanley Hauerwas’s) less positively.
Two of my teachers are Stanley Hauerwas and Richard Hays. Hays does not quite understand what Hauerwas was trying to do in that commentary. While Hauerwas in Hays’s festschrift defends strongly his method and characterizes the assumptions behind historical-critical scholarship as philosophically naive.
At first glance they seem worlds apart, but on further investigation, they seem far closer.
Hauerwas is particularly keen to avoid elaborate speculative reconstructions of what occasioned New Testament texts. In other words, regarding Matthew, he does not care to spend that much time reconstructing what the “Matthean Community” that produced the text thought and did.
However, he particularly appreciates readings that notice literary devices in the text. He is very interested in the internal structure of the document and allusions to the overarching story of Scripture.
It seems to me that in general Hays shares these inclinations as do most evangelical biblical scholars.
Furthermore, at this year’s SBL, Hays did a paper entitled “Spirit, Church, Eschatology: The Third Article of the Creed as Hermeneutical Lens for Reading Romans” which I recorded and posted with permission at
Audio from SBL: Gaventa, Hays and Gorman on Romans as Christian Theology.
This sounds quite similar to the comments about the Nicene Creed being the basis of the Scriptural commentary in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible–see introduction by Rusty Reno.
Furthemore, Hauerwas praises Kavin Rowe and Marcus Bockmuehl–both New Testament scholars who Hays thinks highly of.
Hauerwas also praises the conclusions in The Art of Reading Scripture which Hays himself also cited in his presentation.
It seems to me that the Brazos series reveals the frustrations theologians have with biblical scholars and has the potential to help Christian scholars move toward a consensus somewhere in the middle.
Joel Willitts, after reading your reviews of R. T. France’s Matthew commentary, it occurs to me that Hauerwas would probably appreciate what you call France’s “common-sense approach to the higher critical issues and methodology that is commendable.” Like France, Hauerwas is skeptical about the degree to which one can correctly date Matthew or reconstruct the nature of the Matthean community. Hauerwas like France also spends little time on introductory issues–focusing instead on commentary and narrative structure.
Good to see you at SBL Andy
I’ve had the gift of being able to read through the manuscript of Hannah’s Child, and it is indeed wonderful. It is amazing the work that man accomplished in the midst of so much going on in his home life.
Thanks for your comments Clay, Michael and Brad.