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Posts Tagged ‘Stanley Hauerwas’

Readings from This Semester:

20 Dec

Total Pages: 3834

Total Pages Read: 3047

Total Reading Percentage: 79%

I actually did most of my reading this semester.  My TRP is hindered mostly by two source books which contain a great many more pages than were assigned.  The only book that I really skimped on was Redeeming the Routines.  I just did not have the time/gumption quotient high enough. 

The majority of the books were excellent.  There were a some I disagreed with (looking at you, Moreland).  Sourcebooks will be sourcebooks.  Some were even from the Reformed side of things.

I’ll try, in the coming week, to give feedback on most of the works shown above and listed below.

  1. Redeeming the Routines: Bringing Theology to Life by Robert Banks
  2. Documents of the Christian Church by Henry Bettenson
  3. To Know and Love God: Method for Theology (Foundations of Evangelical Theology) by David K. Clark
  4. Character of Theology, The: An Introduction to Its Nature, Task, and Purpose by John Franke
  5. The Story of Christianity, Volume 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation (Story of Christianity) by Justo L. Gonzalez
  6. Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context by Stanley J. Grenz
  7. Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony by Stanley Hauerwas
  8. History of the World Christian Movement: Earliest Christianity to 1453 by Dale T. Irvin
  9. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity by Philip Jenkins
  10. Readings in Christian Thought by Hugh T. Kerr
  11. Kingdom Triangle: Recover the Christian Mind, Renovate the Soul, Restore the Spirit’s Power by J. P. Moreland
  12. Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible by M. Daniel Carroll R.
  13. Naming the Elephant: Worldview As a Concept by James W. Sire
  14. Kingdom, Church, and World: Biblical Themes for Today by Howard A. Snyder
  15. Models of the Kingdom by Howard A. Snyder
  16. Kingdom Come: How Jesus Wants to Change the World by Allen Mitsuo Wakabayashi
 
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Posted in Christianity, education

 

Liberal Democracy and the Need For War

18 Nov

Christians have historically had problems figuring out how they should relate to the political establishments in which they resided. As seen in an earlier post, Christians have been too eager to align themselves with Liberal Democracies, especially the United States.  In Resident Aliens, Hauerwas and Willimon critique this notion, saying that instead of being Christianity Lite™, Liberal Democracies need war to justify and solidify identity:

“States, particularly liberal democracies are dependent upon war for moral coherence.” [1]

Damn, I think that’s true.  I had previously viewed governments as sometimes morally good, often morally evil, but most of all, morally neutral. And here was an explanation that the best of these governments have a vested interest in unjust violence [2] . [3] Their warning from history is particularly poignant:

“if Caesar can get Christians [in 30’s Germany] to swallow the ‘Ultimate Solution’ and Christians here to embrace the bomb, there is no limit to what we will not do for the modern world.” [4]

6896

A Church that was nuked in Nagasaki.  Where do our allegiances lie?  With the USA, or with God Almighty?

  1. Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, 1st ed. (Abingdon Press, 1989), 35. [↩]
  2. if violence is ever justified [↩]
  3. Though, we should expect states to act selfishly. [↩]
  4. Hauerwas and Willimon, Resident Aliens, 27. [↩]
 
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Posted in Christianity, Politics