Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Ingratiating theology is always boring. This book is exciting just because it displays an uncompromising Christian who thinks about matters of great general concern. Stanley Hauerwas’s extraordinary intellectual energy constantly jolts one into reconsidering what one had previously taken for granted. He illustrates how a vigorous theology can participate in the common conversation."—Robert N. Bellah, author of
Habits of the Heart "Stanley Hauerwas is one of the few prophetic voices of our time—idiosyncratic, cantankerous, and challenging."—Cornel West
"Stanley Hauerwas’s criticisms of the American pieties are unanswerable. His alternatives are likely to be considered an outrage. Hooray for Hawerwas! There’s no one I’d rather be reading."—Frank Lentricchia
Table of ContentsPreface 1
Introduction / Positioning: In the Church and University But Not of Either 5
Part I. Behind the Lines
1. Constancy and Forgiveness: The Novel as a School for Virtue 31
2. On Honor: By Way of a Comparison of Karl Barth and Trollope 58
3. Why Truthfulness Requires Forgiveness: A Commencement Address for Graduates of a College of the Church of the Second Chance 80
Part II. Engagements
4. The Democratic Policing of Christianity 91
5. Creation as Apocalyptic: A Tribute to William Stringfellow with Jeff Powell 107
6. Can a Pacifist Think About War? 116
7. Whose "Just" War? Which Peace? 136
8. Why Gays (as a Group) Are Morally Superior to Christians (as a Group) 153
9. Communitarians and Medical Ethicists: Or, "Why I Am None of the Above" 156
10. Killing Compassion 164
11. The Church and the Mentally Handicapped: A Continuing Challenge to the Imagination 177
Notes 187
Index 233
