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Review: Stanley Hauerwas
The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson Eerdmans Publishing Co. (2018)
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On September 17, 2001, TIME magazine named Stanley Hauerwas "America's Best Theologian". The irony of the award was likely lost to most. Hauerwas had spent his career calling the church away from the center of national attention and back to the margins. And in the shadow of 9/11, Hauerwas' lively and outspoken pacifism coupled awkwardly with the American thirst for vengeance. Perhaps TIME hoped to highlight Americana ideals and virtues, but even then, the virtues Hauerwas championed had very little to do with America and everything to do with a different Kingdom.
On September 17, 2001, TIME magazine named Stanley Hauerwas "America's Best Theologian". The irony of the award was likely lost to most. Hauerwas had spent his career calling the church away from the center of national attention and back to the margins. And in the shadow of 9/11, Hauerwas' lively and outspoken pacifism coupled awkwardly with the American thirst for vengeance. Perhaps TIME hoped to highlight Americana ideals and virtues, but even then, the virtues Hauerwas championed had very little to do with America and everything to do with a different Kingdom.
At the age of 78, Hauerwas—a theologian and ethicist at Duke Divinity—has been thinking and teaching and writing about virtue for his entire career. His first paperback, Vision and Virtue, was published 40 years before The Character of Virtue, and his most famous work—A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic—was recognized by Christianity Today as one of the twentieth century's one hundred most important books on religion.
Hauerwas' writing draws from Barth and Bonhoeffer, Yoder and MacIntrye. He has been a fierce critic of the increasingly diluted, mainstream liberal wing of American Christianity for decades. And yet, because he is so openly disdainful of American militarism and consumerism, he is considered by some to be a card-carrying member of the evangelical left. Despite all of his pedigree and controversy, when given the opportunity, Hauerwas will often retreat into his blue-collar heritage when describing himself. He is the son of a Texan bricklayer, familiar with the work needed to set a firm foundation. And that foundation-laying work seems to be precisely what he is doing in The Character of Virtue.
In a book that is unlike any of his others, one that is at times both illuminating and haunting, Hauerwas distills centuries of religious belief and decades of his own meditations into heartfelt epistles to his godson, each a devotional argument for embracing biblical virtue.
I. Overview
In The Character of Virtue, Hauerwas takes on an unfamiliar role: godparent. While teaching at Duke, Hauerwas was invited by his friend and colleague, Dr. Samuel Wells, to be the godparent to Wells' son, Laurence. Even though godparenting is unfamiliar to many of us today, the fairy godmother's pumpkin coach and Herr Droosselmeyer's nutcracker have taught us that godparents and good gifts go together. Hauerwas grants his godson a good gift of an unexpected kind: fifteen letters, each arriving on the anniversary of Laurence's infant baptism, each focused on a particular virtue.
The virtues Hauerwas considers are expansive. They go beyond traditional traits like courage, humility, and patience and include qualities like joy, humor, and justice. In total, Hauerwas addresses kindness, truthfulness, friendship, patience, hope, justice, courage, joy, simplicity, constancy, humility (and humor), temperance, generosity, and faith. Each letter ends up timely for Laurence and timeless for the rest of us. They make up separate facets of a single gem, refined by intense pressure, reflecting and refracting moral light in different ways, under different circumstances.
And they are delightful! Hauerwas, writing in the second person, is freed to speak with an engaging simplicity and directness without ever losing his trademark elegance. Each letter is a meditation that deserves to be read and explored more than once, and not merely for the profound insight. Hauerwas turns the ordinary into the extraordinary, gathering animals and chores and games into his letters. Indeed, Hauerwas manages to make baseball, that "slow game of failure" (94) philosophically compelling, which even I have to admit is no small feat!
Perhaps the most startling feature of The Character of Virtue is Hauerwas' vulnerability. As godfather, Hauerwas exposes himself in away that has rarely (if ever) been seen in his other works. He describes himself as an angry person (76) and muses openly about how he was forced to confront his own impatience and mediocrity during his bricklayer training (77–78). Hauerwas talks candidly about his working-class background, how it nags at him, and how it contributes to his sense that, in spite of all his academic success, he does not belong in the academic world (154–55). He reminds Laurence repeatedly of his fear that, as he grows older, his age will hinder their relationship (67, 85–87, 164–66). And like many Texans who no longer live in their Lone Star State, he is homesick for that “hard but wonderful world” where says he loved and was loved (90). Suffice it to say that the angry Anabaptist—the same one who famously declared "Jesus is Lord, and everything else is bullshit"—is found here to be unusually mellow, even melancholy.
Still, these new vulnerabilities do not swallow Hauerwas' familiar tropes. "We have entered a time in which truth no longer matters in our public life," Hauerwas laments a year after the election of President Donald Trump. "And people of character like you are going to find that this is a difficult world to negotiate" (188). From the first letter until the last, Hauerwas warns against the “desperate” times in which Christians live, not because of some kind of phantom persecution, or the loss of religious liberty, but because of the dangerous secular liturgies which tempt the church to obsess over power. "As faithful followers of Christ in a world of war," Hauerwas declares, "we cannot imagine being anything other than nonviolence" (79–80). This indignant fire in Hauerwas' belly was central to Dr. Wells decision to chose him as his son's godfather. Wells writes:
“What makes him [Hauerwas] angry is to see the way, particularly in the United States, Christianity has been transposed into a benign form of therapy or a soundtrack for nationalist ideology, and, in particular, the way that project has been underwritten by some of America’s most famous and distinguished theologians...This anger turns constructive when Stanley seeks to identify, first, on what ground the church’s faith should instead stand, and second, how the church forms the character of its members.” (24-25)
And in all of this, Hauerwas cements himself as a theologian who, perhaps unlike any other, has grasped an acute sense of time and place, how each shape both us and the church, and how we, as pilgrims from a different Kingdom, can learn to love our foreign home without that love taking on the violent and tyrannical attributes of the Powers.
Perhaps the most startling feature of The Character of Virtue is Hauerwas' vulnerability. As godfather, Hauerwas exposes himself in away that has rarely (if ever) been seen in his other works. He describes himself as an angry person (76) and muses openly about how he was forced to confront his own impatience and mediocrity during his bricklayer training (77–78). Hauerwas talks candidly about his working-class background, how it nags at him, and how it contributes to his sense that, in spite of all his academic success, he does not belong in the academic world (154–55). He reminds Laurence repeatedly of his fear that, as he grows older, his age will hinder their relationship (67, 85–87, 164–66). And like many Texans who no longer live in their Lone Star State, he is homesick for that “hard but wonderful world” where says he loved and was loved (90). Suffice it to say that the angry Anabaptist—the same one who famously declared "Jesus is Lord, and everything else is bullshit"—is found here to be unusually mellow, even melancholy.
Still, these new vulnerabilities do not swallow Hauerwas' familiar tropes. "We have entered a time in which truth no longer matters in our public life," Hauerwas laments a year after the election of President Donald Trump. "And people of character like you are going to find that this is a difficult world to negotiate" (188). From the first letter until the last, Hauerwas warns against the “desperate” times in which Christians live, not because of some kind of phantom persecution, or the loss of religious liberty, but because of the dangerous secular liturgies which tempt the church to obsess over power. "As faithful followers of Christ in a world of war," Hauerwas declares, "we cannot imagine being anything other than nonviolence" (79–80). This indignant fire in Hauerwas' belly was central to Dr. Wells decision to chose him as his son's godfather. Wells writes:
“What makes him [Hauerwas] angry is to see the way, particularly in the United States, Christianity has been transposed into a benign form of therapy or a soundtrack for nationalist ideology, and, in particular, the way that project has been underwritten by some of America’s most famous and distinguished theologians...This anger turns constructive when Stanley seeks to identify, first, on what ground the church’s faith should instead stand, and second, how the church forms the character of its members.” (24-25)
And in all of this, Hauerwas cements himself as a theologian who, perhaps unlike any other, has grasped an acute sense of time and place, how each shape both us and the church, and how we, as pilgrims from a different Kingdom, can learn to love our foreign home without that love taking on the violent and tyrannical attributes of the Powers.
Readers will be drawn into The Character of Virtue's insightful mix of profound, prophetic reflection and nervous godfathering, watching as Hauerwas' gently nudges his godson not only towards the virtues themselves, but to an examination of the practices that form those virtues, and how they can take root and blossom in the life of Christian community. In my view, it is this combined approach which grounds Hauerwas. It allows him to weave Gospel values into flesh-and-blood experiences, many his own, in a way that Hauerwasians have rarely seen before. And by linking these letters to Laurence's baptized identity in the Christian community, Hauerwas uses his life's work like an anchor, tethering his godson to the strength and wisdom of the church so that Laurence might navigate the troubled waters that will come.
Together, this collection of letters outlines the image of a man who has lived a long life, and who continues to explore the far reaches of morality, mortality, and legacy. And we, the readers, are the beneficiaries.
II. Criticism
As an avid Hauerwasian myself, I am hesitant to criticize such a personal piece of genius. And yet, I could not help but feel haunted—if that's even the right word—by a persistent, deflating sense that the letters felt more performative than pastoral.
Yes, Hauerwas is vulnerable at times. But readers learn little about Laurence outside of a few observations—his pets, his sister, his family's move to England—and thus miss out on any kind of tangible, dimensional relationship between godfather and godson. The result is a kind of a hollowed-out feeling to his writing, a feeling with which I became increasingly uncomfortable as the book continued. I was left wondering what could have been had Hauerwas and Laurence mined the riches of intergenerational vulnerability, the kind that could have been even more profound in the hands of Hauerwas, the kind that is needed in our fragmented and impatient society today.
Eventually, in his fifteenth and final letter to Laurence, Hauerwas admits that he has decided to prepare the letters for publication. "I'm writing with the knowledge that these letters will be published and I hope widely read" (192). Is it coincidence that this confession is shared in the final letter? Hauerwas has since said so publicly, and has stated repeatedly that the letters were not originally intended for publication. Perhaps even Hauerwas did not realize that these letters were always intended for everyone.
I also found it strange, even striking, that Hauerwas chose not to include Forgiveness among his list of virtues, particularly given his writings and teachings on Christian nonviolence.
I also found it strange, even striking, that Hauerwas chose not to include Forgiveness among his list of virtues, particularly given his writings and teachings on Christian nonviolence.
III. Personal Reflection
Chewing on Hauerwas' letters has reminded me why I was drawn to him in the first place. Hauerwas entered my life at the perfect time, when I was facing a season of doubt in college. And while I was counseled by some to embrace that doubt—a string which, without attention and care, can eventually play itself into disbelief—Hauerwas was the brazen, combative, unapologetic Christian I needed to read. And just as I found his work life-giving back then, I find it so now.
Personally, I was struck most by the chapters on kindness, justice, courage, and friendship. As I read those letters in conjunction with my own personal study and devotions, the book's margins became filled mostly with one-word exclamations; I often felt there was nothing more to say.
There are so many quotes that startled, inspired, or, at the very least, resonated with me. Here are a few:
Personally, I was struck most by the chapters on kindness, justice, courage, and friendship. As I read those letters in conjunction with my own personal study and devotions, the book's margins became filled mostly with one-word exclamations; I often felt there was nothing more to say.
There are so many quotes that startled, inspired, or, at the very least, resonated with me. Here are a few:
- “To be kind in a violent world is very dangerous, but fortunately you [Laurence] will discover you were destined to be kind. The Spirit of kindness stirred in the waters of your baptism, setting you on a difficult and rewarding journey.” This is the not the sort of sentimental kindness that we often think of. Hauerwas is speaking to a principled, interfering kindness that wreaks havoc. Kindness, for Hauerwas, is a demanding virtue, one that forces us to abandon our naturally narcissistic needs and declare "I believe to be kind is the very character of God." By embracing that kind of kindness, we can begin to realize that its most important form is found in our willingness to accept and receive kindness from another.
- "For what is friendship but the discovery that I don't want to tell my story—can't tell my story—without your story?" For Hauerwas, Christian friendship is so much more than friendliness. Friends of character, as he says, are those that last across great tragedies and joys, where one friend can expose his needs to the other without fear of manipulation. We are given a glimpse of what it meant to know and be known at Creation, before sin wrecked this world and left us vulnerable.
- "I do not wish you will have an untroubled life, but I hope the troubles you confront will be those made necessary by your being made a member of the body of Christ." It is regrettable how often we must reminder ourselves that Jesus was not incarnated to make us safe. He dwelt among us to make us his disciples, to admit us as citizens into an upside down Kingdom, to adopt us into a holy family of misfits, and to confront the world and its ways. When we turn our cheek or walk the extra mile, we do not do so because it "works" but because it is God's way to be kind to the ungrateful and selfish. We embrace the ministry of reconciliation not so we might feel a little more at east around our neighbors, but because reconciliation is what God is doing in the world through Christ. And if we are embracing those identities, those commands, those ways of living—if we are Christians and tell the truth—we will face a holy trouble of our God's own making.
There are days where these questions slide off my shoulders, and others where they weigh like a millstone around my neck. And while I am inspired to begin weaving more acknowledgments of these virtues in our family's life, I was most encouraged by Hauerwas' opening promise to Laurence: "All I can promise is that I will try very hard never to lie to you." This rock-solid foundation is what steadies Hauerwas' prophetic, paternal voice. And as a father, I can learn from that.
IV. Recommendation
Overall, I highly recommend this book. While I could not quite shake the impression his letters feel intended for publication from the beginning, I cannot question what this book is: an insightful and accessible distillation of a complicated, consistent theologian's lifetime work.
In the end, The Character of Virtue is a treasure that has already been found for us. Humble, gentle, and compassionate, Hauerwas' elegant letters are not only for godchildren in the faith. They are a guide for all, showing and telling how we can come together, sleeves rolled up, and share in the hard work of sowing the seeds of virtue in the fields of our shared faith.
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