Book review
Hannah’s Child, by Stanley Hauerwas
By John H. Adams, Layman Correspondent, October 13, 2010
When the world-renown Stanley Hauerwas, Time Magazine’s “best” theologian in year 2000, speaks, people listen – and often grimace when he spews a torrent of profanity.
Duke University, where Hauerwas, 70, now reigns as a professor of ethics in the Divinity School and the School of Law, recognizes the problems Hauerwas’ language causes. On a university Web page with a link to a video of a Hauerwas’ lecture, the university includes a warning that some listeners might be offended.
We learn from Hauerwas’ memoir that his language was a permanent etching from his experiences as a youth in Texas, particularly in helping his father, a brick mason, on construction projects. Upon being interviewed for a professorship at Notre Dame, Hauerwas says he told the quite conservative interviewer, “I am from [Pleasant Grove] Texas. That is where it takes six syllables to say ‘Gawd dammm.’”
He got the job anyhow.
Hauerwas’ memoir is a rambling story, cluttered with name-dropping, and an overly written account of his first marriage to a woman who had deep mental problems, including proclaimed expectations that some of his friends would have affairs with her.
He titles the memoir Hannah’s Child because his mother, barren like Hannah, prayed like Hannah for a child, promising to dedicate him to the Lord. Hannah’s offspring was Samuel, the first of the great Old Testament prophets.
Stanley Hauerwas
The better stuff arises from that sense of destiny to do God’s work. He recounts with delight in the steps taken toward being a latter-day Samuel.
After leaving Pleasant Grove, Hauerwas got a bachelor of arts degree from Southwestern University, a United Methodist school, and B.D., M.A., MPhil and Ph.D. degrees from Yale.
Somewhere along the line he began what he describes as a “process” of becoming a Christian – unfinished even today. He doesn’t refer to a moment of conversion. He disdains traditional theology, particularly doctrine.
“I’m not interested in what I believe,” he says. “I am not even sure what I believe. I am more interested in what the church believes.” He includes the skeptic’s response, “Which church?” and then lists his past and present affiliations – Mennonite, Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran and Episcopalian. He concludes that he is among the “ecclesiastically homeless,” but adds, “I have friends in diverse places,” and friends of theological diversity.
But Hauerwas does believe passionately in one doctrine: pacifism. After 9/11 and a surge of patriotism, Hauerwas went public with his view – arguing that it was not optional for Christians. That resulted in some strained relationships.
Over the years, Hauerwas was an admirer of the late Richard Neuhaus, editor of First Things, an independent Catholic publication with broad appeal to Protestant evangelicals. Neuhaus often thought well of Hauerwas, who was chosen to become a member of the First Things board.
Hauerwas describes Neuhaus as one of the neoconservatives that his wife warned against, but, “I regarded Richard as a friend. I found his ‘Americanism’ a bit hard to take, but then I always thought if Richard ever had to choose between America and Jesus, he would go with Jesus.” 
Hannah’s Child, A Theological Memoir
By Stanley Hauerwas;
© 2010, 288 pages, $24.97
(some new and used copies from $16.49 to $10.92).
Neuhaus did respond to the issue of pacifism in an editorial suggesting that “those who in principle oppose the use of military force have no legitimate part in the discussion about how military force should be used.” So Hauerwas resigned from the First Things board.
Being nondoctrinaire, Hauerwas has had a low view of the practicality of studying Scripture. After finishing his multi-degree education at Yale, Hauerwas got his first job teaching at Augustana College in Illinois in 1968. After years of theological preparation without serious Biblical study, he had to prepare for teaching the Old and New Testaments by reading the Bible.
Apparently that didn’t suffice. He made enough waves that the conservative Lutheran school did not renew his contract. But they liked him at Notre Dame, where he became one of the first Protestants to teach Catholic theology and his reputation grew internationally.
After Duke added Hauerwas to its star power list, he was told that, ahem, he should refer to Scripture in his sermons in the Duke Chapel.
Hauerwas has written better books than Hannah’s Child, including Christian Aliens: Life in a Christian Colony, which he co-authored with William H. Willimon, a Methodist Bishop and former dean of the Duke University Chapel.
But for all his radical tendencies, he does make one clear declaration: Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, was buried and rose again from the grave.
“Faith is but a name for learning how to go on without knowing the answers … that’s why I find that being a Christian makes life so damned interesting.”
That’s Professor Stanley Hauerwas for you. You’ll find his book interesting, too.