Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir

by Stanley Hauerwas

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