Stanley Hauerwas

Stanley Martin Hauerwas (born July 24, 1940) is an American theologian, ethicist, and public intellectual.

Hauerwas originally taught at the University of Notre Dame before moving to Duke University.

Hauerwas was a longtime professor at Duke, serving as the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School with a joint appointment at the Duke University School of Law.

Stanley Hauerwas was born in Dallas, Texas, on July 24, 1940, and was raised in nearby Pleasant Grove, in a working-class family.

He attended both Pleasant Grove High School (1954–56) and W. W. Samuell High School (1956–58).

As the son of a bricklayer, Hauerwas was early on apprenticed to the craft of bricklaying under his father.

The experience was extremely formative for his later life, as he himself has often compared the skill and hard work that bricklaying requires with both his own approach to theological work and the challenges of living a fully Christian life.

Hauerwas's family attended Pleasant Mound Methodist Church, where he experienced baptism, confirmation, and communion.

At the age of 15, he presented himself for ministry at a Sunday night worship service, presuming then that he would be saved.

After leaving Pleasant Grove, Hauerwas matriculated at Southwestern University, a liberal arts college affiliated with the United Methodist Church.

He received a Bachelor of Arts degree there in 1962.

He was also a member of Phi Delta Theta while at Southwestern University.

He went on to earn Bachelor of Divinity, Master of Arts, Master of Philosophy, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Yale University.

Following his graduation from Yale University, Hauerwas taught first at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, before joining the faculty at the University of Notre Dame in 1970.

He was later invited to assume a faculty position at the Divinity School of Duke University in 1983, where he taught in the area of theological ethics until his retirement in 2013, though he continues to write and speak at Duke as a senior research fellow.

Earlier in 1997 he gave the Scottish Journal of Theology lectures at Aberdeen, published as Sanctify Them in Truth (1998).

Hauerwas has long been associated with narrative theology and postliberal theology (which are closely related but not necessarily synonymous movements).

Both of these movements are attached to Yale biblical scholars Brevard Childs, Hans Frei, and George Lindbeck.

Hauerwas is considered by many to be one of the world's most influential living theologians and was named "America's Best Theologian" by Time magazine in 2001.

He was also the first American theologian to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in over forty years.

His work is frequently read and debated by scholars in fields outside of religion or ethics, such as political philosophy, sociology, history, and literary theory.

Hauerwas has achieved notability outside of academia as a public intellectual, even appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Though Hauerwas is most well known for his work related to ethics and political theology, he has written widely on a range of subjects, including philosophical theology, political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, law, education, bioethics, and medical ethics.

Hauerwas is known for his fierce criticism of liberal democracy, capitalism, and militarism.

He is also a critic of both Christian fundamentalism and liberal Christianity.

He is commonly cited as a member of the evangelical left.

Hauerwas's work draws from a number of theological perspectives, including Methodism, Anabaptism, Anglicanism, and Catholicism.

Among his most important contributions to modern theology are his advocacy of and work related to virtue ethics and postliberal theology.

Hauerwas's book, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic, was named as one of the one hundred most important books on religion in the 20th century by Christianity Today.

His most widely known book, however, is likely Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, which was co-written with William Willimon.

Upon delivering the Gifford Lectures in 2001, Hauerwas was also awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Edinburgh.

Time magazine in 2001 named him "America's Best Theologian".

He responded by saying, "'Best' is not a theological category."

In 2001 Hauerwas was also invited to give the Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, which were published as With the Grain of the Universe, a text in which Hauerwas argued that Karl Barth was the foremost "natural theologian" of the Gifford Lectures.

Such an argument is controversial since Karl Barth is well known as an enemy of natural theology.

For Hauerwas, however, Barth argued that Christian convictions about the world describe God's good creation as it is while emphasizing that such convictions cannot be understood apart from Christian witness.

This, according to Hauerwas, is what makes Barth a proper natural theologian in comparison to Reinhold Niebuhr and William James, who were also featured in the lectures.

In the fall of 2014, he also assumed a chair in theological ethics at the University of Aberdeen.

In 2014 he was appointed to a chair in theological ethics at the University of Aberdeen.

Hauerwas was influenced by a wide range of thinkers, including Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Howard Yoder, Alasdair MacIntyre, Michel Foucault, and William James.