A Prophet Against the Empire

American Spectator ^ | April 5, 2011 | Mark Tooley

[robowombat]

A Prophet Against the Empire By Mark Tooley on 4.5.11 @ 6:07AM

Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir By Stanley Hauerwas (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 308 pages, $24.99) Almost every article about Duke University ethicist Stanley Hauerwas references Time magazine's having named him America's "best theologian" in 2001. So it's natural that Hauerwas starts his own memoir with it, slightly tongue in cheek. He may not be America's "best" theologian, but he certainly is among its most influential. A Methodist who now attends a "peace" oriented Episcopal church, Hauerwas is the chief popularizer of the growing neo-Anabaptist movement among today's Protestants and Evangelicals. He is the premier disciple of the late Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, who reinterpreted the Cross of Jesus Christ into primarily a rejection of all violence. If Yoder was the architect of the modern neo-Anabaptist surge, Hauerwas is its most effective evangelist. In surely a divine irony, Hauerwas was acclaimed by Time just in time for 9-11, which enhanced his rejection of all military force, no matter the provocation, not to mention nearly all things pertaining to the American "empire." Lay people who live in the real world will never, and should never, abandon mainstream Christianity to follow the Yoder-Hauerwas re-interpretation of the faith. Neither will non-clerics ever agree to shun all military and police power, no matter the ensuing chaos, in pursuit of an abstract theory. .......

By all appearances, Hauerwas, who has spent his whole adult life in academia, is joyfully indifferent to the real world implications of his principles. And interestingly, perhaps as a relief to some, his memoir does not dwell with any length on his theology or how he came to it. It is instead a fairly entertaining personal remembrance, starting with his working class childhood in a small Texas town.

[robowombat]

Unlike many utopian liberals this fellow does admit there might be a downside to acting on his beliefs. But, hey , if your feelings are pure yor're not really responsible for bad outcomes. Being a liberal progressive means you never have to be sorry.

In a recent lecture, Hauerwas readily admitted, logically, that widespread pacifism may in fact increase violence in world, but such is the cost of faithfulness. Here is the chief problem for Hauerwas and his growing band of ardent followers in Christian academia and among the clergy. Defining Christianity chiefly as a pacifist sect ignores 95 percent of Christian tradition and places nearly all churches, except Mennonites and Quakers among a few others, as agents of error. It also makes Christianity chiefly a philosophy for insulated clerics and academics.

[STD]

And raise the White Flag of Surrender!

[Mrs. Don-o]

What I have against pacifism --- and I come to this from long, long experience --- is that it makes a Just War AND a Just Peace almost impossible, and thus vitiates any real peace movement.

Here's how it typically works:

• Pacifist proclaims that it is our moral duty to renounce all act of physical force.

• People go all starry-eyed for a moment and sigh, "How beautiful those people are, what Gandhis! What Francis of Assisi's! What Angels-we-have-heard-on-high!"

• Situation comes up which requires force.

• People say, "Well, that's a wonderful ideal, but this is the real world, and so: anything goes. Kill 'em all, nuke 'em til they glow, etc. etc."

It completely obviates all reflection on what CANNOT, and what CAN, be morally tolerable, and even morally obligatory, in the exact, and rightly-executed, and measured use of force.

Thus it never gives people the realistic option of being good soldiers in a just war. Instead, ot gives people the false choice of being either conscienceless killers, or hapless victims. And more often than not, they end up both: the worst of both worlds.