“The Hauerwasian Mafia” May 1, 2008
Posted by Zack in Minnesota , trackbackTim Keel (who was good enough not to get upset at me for grossly oversimplifying his point of view a couple posts ago) sent me this link, that has a lot to say regarding my current topic.
Here, Tony Jones locates the roots of the clean hands syndrome that plagues Christian radicals these days in a “Hauerwasian Mafia” of theologians that has grown up over the last half century.
Tags: stanley hauerwas, Tony JonesSo the question becomes, what relationship should a follower of Jesus have with public life? Should Christians be involved with politics?
The HM advocates an ecclesiological solution: the church should be a counter-polis, a self-enclosed system that can serve as a model to secular systems (governments, corporations, etc.). In reading the HM literature, you’ll run across many references to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, especially the part about being a “city on a hill.” The church, the HM claims, is just such a city, shining the light of its moral rectitude for all the degenerate world to see and emulate. And you’ll find HM book titles like, Resident Aliens and A Peculiar People, promulgating this tendency, a tendency that has been dissed by critics as “sectarianism” and “Christian enclave theory.”
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Instead of watering down their distinctives to the point of meaninglessness, the church should close ranks and develop an internal coherency that would serve as an example to the world.
Comments»
I read Jones’s post on the so-called “HM” several weeks ago, and, unfortunately, it represents a gross mischaracterization of Hauerwas and of the new theologians (e.g. Bill Cavanaugh) carrying the Hauerwas torch. Hauerwas has successfully refuted accusations of sectarianism and isolationism (usually leveled against him by thoroughbred liberals, in the technical sense, not the popular sense). Dan Morehead’s critical comments of Jones’s thorough misreading of Hauerwas in the subsequent thread are incisively on point. Jones simply provides another unfortunate example (of many) of how easily Hauerwas’s Resident Aliens typology can be misread when it is not read within the broader context of Hauerwas’s thorough critique of Liberalism riddled throughout his vast and prolific oeuvre. Anyone can be excused for not having read Hauerwas’s 30+ books, but one ought not to be excused for writing a public critique of Hauerwas which completely ignores Hauerwas’s devastating responses to such critiques written first more than a decade ago.
Hauerwas is not apolitical. Hauerwas simply is sick to death of Liberalism’s claim that it has a monopoly on what gets to count as political. That is the burden of Hauerwas’s argument, but he has never held a position anything like what Jones calls “Hauerwasian.” It seems that Jones was struggling with and ultimately rejected a Hauerwas that never existed. Good for him.
To be perfectly clear, Hauerwas has never been concerned with having “clean hands.” Rather, Hauerwas has tried to challenge Christians to be a more Christian kind of dirty.
You should also note that this isn’t the first blog to pick up on Tony Jones and the Hauerwas Mafia
David Fitch, a pastor and friend of Jones wrote what I see as a great response in an article called ” Why Emergent Needs the Hauerwasian Mafia” (http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/2008/04/why-emergent-needs-hauerwasian-mafia.html)
I have a huge deal of respect for Hauerwas’ work and while I don’t agree wholeheartedly with every last little thing he says I think Thom really nailed it on the head: It is easy to slam Hauerwas and feel free to do so if you feel he’s really wrong but I think it’s a mistake to miss the critiques he makes as we arrive into this post-Christendom world.
Looking forward to the next series of posts. I wish there was a DC mafia. :S