“The Hauerwasian Mafia” May 1, 2008
Posted by Zack in Minnesota | 3 commentsTim 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.
