Toward a Hauerwasian Church Politic Redux
Or, the first 11 pages of my 81 page thesis (that Stanley actually liked!!)
INTRODUCTION
The theological works of Stanley Hauerwas are vast, crossing multiple disciplines from theology to ethics, law to language philosophy. Often described as bold or even controversial, Hauerwas' prolific corpus might be distilled down to this: the story of Jesus Messiah invites us into his life as a social witness of the kingdom in a world seeking to write its own story. While this is perhaps an oversimplification of the dozens of books, hundreds of articles, and lectures that make up Hauerwas' collection of ideas, it is a generalization that is broad enough to be inclusive of his thoughts and narrow enough to point toward some of his particularities. However, I make no apology for the generalization. Offering a sweeping statement that provokes thought and gets the reader’s attention is a very Hauerwasian move. I am in good company with this generalization.
In this paper, I will seek to demonstrate a contextual theology shaped by a few of the concepts Hauerwas offers us. Guiding this work will be what could rightfully be described as an interpretation and implementation of Hauerwas' ecclesiology. If the big picture of Hauerwas' theology is what I stated above, “the story of Jesus Messiah invites us into his life as a social witness of the kingdom in a world seeking to write its own story,” it would be appropriate to not only demonstrate where these ideas are drawn from in Hauerwas' work but also describe how his theology might play out in real life situations. One of the primary quotes I will use to build a contextual theology is this oft-repeated Hauerwas statement: “The first task of the church – the people capable of remembering and telling the story of God we find in Jesus – is to be the church and thus help the world understand itself as the world.”[1]
While he shared many more pithy quotes, the questions that often follow the Hauerwas quote above is: “Where is this church? And what does it look like?” While it would be overly ambitious to claim to demonstrate what the church Hauerwas describes would always look like, this paper aims to present concrete examples of what a church shaped through Hauerwas' thinking looks like in Philadelphia. This paper will endeavor to describe aspects of Hauerwas' ecclesiology and share a contextualized theology using The Table Philadelphia as an imperfect example.
I propose that contrary to many critics of Hauerwas’ seemingly idealistic theological musings, Hauerwas provides both a meaningful critique of the Church and a helpful way forward. Hauerwas' call for the Church to be a distinct witness to the world has his detractors unfairly label him sectarian.[2] Additionally, Hauerwas' claim that the church might be capable of having a distinct, Jesus-centered witness in a fractured world has others claiming that his ecclesiology is overly idealistic.[3] Both critiques are misreads of Hauerwas and demonstrate a preoccupation with realism rather than the aspirational hope for what the church might be if we leaned into the prophetic imagination of Stanley Hauerwas.
Where is This Church?
Critiques of Hauerwas' ecclesiology generally amount to asking, “Where is this church?” Where is an example of a church shaped by the narrative of God’s story, embodying practices as a faithful witness of the kingdom to be a contrasting social witness to the world and being formed in virtue?
In a strict sense, the lack of a distinct faith community, perfectly demonstrating the concrete practices and virtue that Hauerwas envisions the church to be, could be seen as disproving a Hauerwasian ecclesiology. While I am sympathetic to the claim that Hauerwas' ecclesiology is idealistic philosophically and theologically, his detractors may miss the point. That no concrete, fully-formed examples of this church exist yet points to the eschatological nature of Hauerwasian ecclesiology. As a social demonstration of the kingdom, the church is already and still not yet, like the kingdom itself.[4] Therefore, Hauerwas is not idealistic; instead, he is eschatological. Whereas the accusation of idealism implies claiming a church that cannot be, eschatological infers something much different about the church. Eschatological is a particular language in theology that holds hope in the not-yet while remaining fully aware of the already. An eschatological ecclesiology is more not yet rather than not ever.
The problem with critiques of Hauerwas' ecclesiology is not that they are unfounded or should be dismissed without response; instead, they use language differently than Hauerwas and hold firmly to strawman assertions regarding his ecclesiology. To critique Hauerwas within his own language game, idealistic is not a category–for all eschatological hope could be defined as idealistic. Instead, the critique should work within the same language category of eschatology. Therefore, the question is whether or not a Hauerwasian ecclesiology is guilty of an over-realized eschatological claim. Does Hauerwas claim that this perfect church, which he describes, is fully present in this age? Or does Hauerwas point us to the ideal, eschatological ecclesiological vision of the kingdom of God, helping us live in the time between times?[5] If it is the former, then Hauerwas' ecclesiology is over-realized eschatology. However, it appears that Hauerwas is always pointing the church to the end in all things. As he has written, “When Christians begin to think we are at home in the world, our sense that we live ‘between the times’ is not only muted but close to being unintelligible. The recovery of the eschatological vision is crucial for how the church understands her relation to the world.”[6]
Thus, Hauerwas rightly concludes: “My oft-made claim, a claim that many find offensive, that the first task of the church is not to make the world just but to make the world the world, is rightly understood only in light of these eschatological convictions.”[7]
For the contextual theology I put forth in this paper to be plausible, we must begin with an agreement about language. We must agree that Hauerwasian ecclesiology is eschatological in its fullness. The church I pastor, The Table Philadelphia, is a Hauerwasian-shaped church that engages the already in the eschatological hope of the not-yet. It shapes everything we do.
Nevertheless, the question remains: “Where is this church?” To which Hauerwas would rightly (and eschatologically) reply, “It’s where you go to church.”[8] Which is to say, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, the church you are part of right now has the potential to become this kind of church. All faith communities centered on the story of Jesus are pregnant with the possibility of an already and not yet witness to the world. This church, like the kingdom of God, is within you (Luke 17:20-21).
The eschatological intention of Hauerwas' ecclesiology does not have to be received without basis but rather as an invitation into what could be/will be. What Hauerwas' critics claim as idealistic is actually eschatological. The critique may more accurately reveal a lack of Christian imagination among the critics than an actual fault in Hauerwas' ecclesiology. A Hauerwasian ecclesiology is something we live into as we follow Jesus as a social witness. Hauerwas provides us with an imagination of how to live as a witness to the kingdom in this time between times.
If any body of people could risk criticism to pursue a life contrary to what Christendom has offered, is it not Christians? We who are brought into the story of God through Jesus live within the story of Israel, a people who waited for the arrival of their promised Messiah. We wait, too. Waiting is something that the people of God can do. As Hauerwas has said, “We are called to wait, because we serve a God who transformed time by being patient—even willing to die that we might live. Waiting is the fundamental stance of God’s nonviolent love that would give us the time in a hurried world to be a people who have learned to wait.”[9] Therefore, waiting on Jesus' second arrival in glory to bring the fullness of the kingdom to earth–to bring the eschatological completion in the healing of all things.
As the church between the already and the not yet, all concrete living in the hope of the second coming of Christ would wrongly be referred to as idealistic. Nevertheless, what the critics may call idealistic may be faithfulness in hope while waiting for completion. Eschatological living shapes our present-day witness in the already and not yet of the kingdom of God. The Christian is called into a unique social adventure of living in the tension between avoiding reality as all there truly is and denying that current reality is all there ever will be. Hauerwas' eschatological ecclesiology begins with the end as a way to inform how we live in the present. His ecclesiology is not idealistic or lacking evidence; it is merely not fully realized as we have not yet reached the end.
Beginning with a few of the theological ideas from the work of Hauerwas, this paper will explore a contextual theology worked all the way to concrete sidewalks of Philadelphia. Of course, the work is not easy and must be applied through the lens of our local cultures and context. As such, this paper endeavors to describe the faithful embodiment of the practices of Jesus through the lens of Stanley Hauerwas and into the city of Philadelphia.
Each chapter will begin with a quote from Hauerwas to serve as the basis for our theology and practices. After describing the foundational quote, we will move into examples of this theology in practice within our context of Philadelphia. Our practices seek to move the eschatological hope of Hauerwas' ecclesiology into the present-day social witness of the kingdom of God in Philadelphia.
In Chapter One, we begin with discussing what it means for the church to be the church in its particular context. We will explore forming a community of practice as a social witness and share the framework we use at The Table Philadelphia to participate in these practices together.
Chapter Two describes the move from forming the church as a politic organized around Jesus toward the church’s engagement with the world around us. Continuing within the Three Circles framework of church described in Chapter One, we will make a case for The Table Philadelphia’s Neo-Anabaptist approach to being a social witness in the world.
The church's social witness is necessarily centered on Jesus' narrative. In Chapter Three, I will describe the problems that can arise when the particular story of Jesus as Christ is not at the center of our theology and how that affects our social witness to the world. Additionally, we will explore some of the practices of The Table Philadelphia that help to center our lives around Jesus.
Chapter Four will describe the primary reason and ways The Table Philadelphia seeks to center our practices around the story of Jesus. We learn to see Jesus in the meal he gave us. Our social witness is shaped around tables and extended into the world at tables.
The task before us is to see how the church is shaped to be both the church of eschatological life and the bearers of eschatological hope all within the fractured and fragmented cultures of our world. May God grant us patience and discernment as we seek to follow the Spirit into the world.
CHAPTER 1
THE SOCIAL-POLITICAL BODY CALLED CHURCH
“The first task of the church – the people capable of remembering and telling the story of God we find in Jesus – is to be the church and thus help the world understand itself as the world.”[10]
The First Task of the Church
For Stanley Hauerwas, what the church does begins in the story of who the church is. Hauerwas starts by defining that the initial work of the church is to be the church. This statement is not a tautological argument but rather a call to root the work of the church in how the church is called to organize in the narrative of scripture. “The first task of the church – the people capable of remembering and telling the story of God we find in Jesus – is to be the church …” These words are not to be revolutionary or even controversial. That they may be controversial points to how far the church has strayed from its unique calling in the world. Aligning with the powers of this world, Christianity has become more about overtaking the space of others and calling it evangelism rather than making space for God and being a witness.
Hauerwas' call for the church to make being the church its first task is to redirect the church to its unique identity of being the social witness of the kingdom of God. This calling is part of the unfolding story of God in time. The primary focus of the church is being shaped into the church. In this description, Hauerwas makes a compelling argument for what I would call the Neo-Anabaptist position of the church’s engagement with culture.[11] However, before we discuss how the church engages in the cultures around us, we must look more at what Hauerwas means by the church being the church.
The Politics of Hauerwas[12]
Samuel Wells describes three politics at work in Hauerwas' above quote.[13] The first part for Hauerwas is forming the first politic, called the church. According to Wells, this is the work of “the church to rediscover its integrity and identity.”[14] This political formation involves how the church itself, the people who live together under the Lordship of Christ, organize themselves. The first politic in Hauerwas' conception is an interdependent people shaped together by the narrative of Jesus. We call this politic simply, the church.
The second politic in Hauerwas' idea described by Wells takes shape as the church encounters the world in which it lives. “What makes the church the church is its faithful manifestation of the peaceable kingdom in the world.”[15] This second politic of engagement is organized so the world can see itself as distinct from the church. In this contrast, the world would know that it is living differently than the way God invites all humanity to live. While this second politic could be called mission, I propose it is better described as witness. The church testifies to the new possibilities made available through Jesus, acting as a witness to the world.
Wells continues that “the third form of politics is how different parties in the world outside the church relate to one another.”[16] Though fascinating in many ways, this politic is not of particular interest to Hauerwas and his work is not germane to this paper, so will not be addressed.
For this paper, the critical elements in Hauerwas' quote are “the church to be the church” and “the world will understand it is the world.” The current chapter will examine what it means to form the first politic (church) by examining The Table Philadelphia. Chapter 2 will move into the second politic to show how our church seeks to engage the world so “the world will understand it is the world.”
[1] Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 100.
[2] James Gustafson described Hauerwas' ecclesiology as sectarian. Later, Hauerwas wrote a detailed response. See, Stanley Hauerwas, John Berkman, and Michael G. Cartwright, The Hauerwas Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 90–110.
[3] Theo Hobson, “Against Hauerwas,” New Blackfriars 88.1015 (2007): 300–312, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-2005.2007.00156.x.
[4] For Hauerwas, God’s sovereignty is practically identical with the kingdom. The kingdom of God is where the rule and reign of God takes place. While the Church is part of the kingdom of God under the Lordship of Jesus, the church is not the full extent of the kingdom of God. Samuel Wells makes this distinction clear when he writes, “The Church is constantly tempted to a dualism that suggests God’s redemption extends only to itself, or to a triumphalism that confuses servanthood with domination as its mode of relation to the world. The Church has no right to determine the boundaries of God’s kingdom, for such is to limit the sphere of God’s sovereignty.” Samuel Wells, Transforming Fate into Destiny (S.l.: Cascade Books, 2004), 104. Therefore, the Church, as the church, is a witness to the already and not yet reality of the kingdom of God. However, the Church in the present age is not the totality of the kingdom of God.
[5] The idea of living between times is from Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018).
[6] Stanley Hauerwas, Approaching the End: Eschatological Reflections on Church, Politics, and Life (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013), xi.
[7] Hauerwas, Approaching the End, xi.
[8] This is a quote David Fitch would often repeat, in his best Stanley Hauerwas impersonation, in class at Northern Seminary.
[9] Stanley Hauerwas and Robert J. Dean, Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2018), 232.
[10] Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom, 100.
[11] David Fitch writes, “Neo-Anabaptism refers to a group of theologians, scholars, and church leaders who extend the themes of historic anabaptists into the modern-day period. adding the word ‘Neo’ to anabaptism implies that this is a second movement of anabaptists coming after the original anabaptists of the reformation period in postmedieval europe. In extending the anabaptist themes, these figures do so in a manner that engages the philosophical, epistemological, and cultural landscapes of the post-enlightenment West. Many of these Neo-anabaptists have no actual affiliation with the historic anabaptist traditions. Nonetheless, they employ aspects of historic anabaptist themes to engage the problems of contemporary Christian theology and church life.” David Fitch, “Neo-Anabaptism Among Contemporary Christians” in Brian C. Brewer, ed., T&T Clark Handbook of Anabaptism (T&T CLARK, 2021), 579,
[12] The word “politics” refers to the sense of how groups of people, particular people with differing experiences and views, organize together in society and relationships. Luke Bretherton describes this politic as describing how we generate a common life. “Politics is the name for generating this common life and the stark alternative to three other options. When I meet someone I disagree with, dislike, find strange or threatening, I can do one of four things. I can kill them. I can create a structure of domination so I can control them. I can make life so difficult that they run away. Or I can do politics. That is to say, I can form, norm, and sustain some kind of common life––amid asymmetries of power, competing visions of the good, and my own feelings of fear or aversion––without killing, dominating, or causing them to flee. These really are the only options. Human history and the contemporary context are awash with examples of the first three approaches.” Luke Bretherton, Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2022), 41–45, 445–465.
[13] Wells, Transforming Fate, 99.
[14] Wells, Transforming Fate, 99.
[15] Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom, 99.
[16] Wells, Transforming Fate, 99.