Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir

by Stanley Hauerwas

I do think that the first task of the church is to make the world the world.

The church

For many years, however, I did use the language of the job in contexts of school and church. I did so in part, I think, because I did not want to lose my bearings — my sense of where I had come from. That said, I suspect my use of profanity was more complex than simply an attempt to stay connected with my working-class roots. I also used the language of the job in school and church because I discovered that speaking this way upset the pious, and I took delight in that result. I hated the hypocrisy that niceness cloaks. As I grew older, however, I found my reputation for having a foul mouth to be more of a burden than a blessing, so I did my best to let such language return to being that of “the job.”

USe of profanity

Thus Jesus does not tell us that we should try to be poor in spirit, or meek, or peacemakers. He simply says that many who are called into his kingdom will find themselves so constituted. We cannot try to be meek or gentle in order to become a disciple of this gentle Jesus, but in learning to be his disciple some of us will discover that we have been gentled.

Anthro

In particular, it became clear to me that questions surrounding how to understand the person and work of Christ are integrally related to our understanding of what it means for us to be human.

Anthro

up. I thought the crucial question was not whether Christianity could be made amenable to the world, but could the world be made amenable to what Christians believe? I had not come to the study of theology to play around.

It is so tempting to think you need to have a “position” if you are to be a “thinker.”

Christianity is the ongoing training necessary to see that we are not fated.

nonviolence is not a recommendation, an ideal, that Jesus suggested we might try to live up to. Rather, nonviolence is constitutive of God’s refusal to redeem coercively. The crucifixion is “the politics of Jesus.”

Being careful with my language meant that I should not, as I was wont to do, use profanity. I had continued to talk like a bricklayer. There were certain words that I knew how to use and that were, not surprisingly, offensive to people at a place like Notre Dame. I also used a wide range of other words that people might have thought offensive. I used those words because that is the way I had learned to speak. I confess that I often found the middle-class and upper-middle-class etiquette that dominated university life oppressive. I certainly was not above sometimes using words that I knew would offend precisely because I knew they would offend. It took an article some years later in Lingua Franca, in which I was described as “the Foul Mouth Theologian,” to make me quit using the most offensive words. I simply became tired of and bored with having that aspect of my life made into such a “big deal.”

foul language

In this sense, the notion of being out of control is one that stands as an alternative to Niebuhrian realism. The problem with “realism” is that it can shut down the imagination. These were theological lessons I was learning from Yoder.

For me, learning to be a Christian has meant learning to live without answers. Indeed, to learn to live in this way is what makes being a Christian so wonderful. Faith is but a name for learning how to go on without knowing the answers. That is to put the matter too simply, but at least such a claim might suggest why I find that being a Christian makes life so damned interesting.

Faith