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Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir

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I became aware of Hauerwas through a professional colleague in the late 90's. While my area of expertise is in Bible more precisely, I have not had direct reason to read all that Hauerwas has written. Like many others, though, I've heard Hauerwas present papers at professional meetings or other events and knew him to be quite a "character" and I wanted to "hear" his story - especially since he connected it to such a great story from Hebrew Scripture with reference to Hannah and Samuel.

What a delight to read this text. It is precisely what it claims to be - a memoir. What most resonated with me as an individual reader is the fact of Hauerwas's honest portrait of his life's story - particularly the intersections of his work as a student, as a colleague figuring out how to navigate professional/academic guilds, and his life with Anne and Adam, his first and their child. As a student, he was just moving forward and searching - but not out to prove anything, it seems. As an academic, in his own story, he notes how green and crass he was, turning people off and not pleasing all but being honest. In particular, I valued how his life as an academic took place in conversations with so many other academics - the persons with whom he worked that shaped how he thought and what he read and how he come to converse and lecture on various topics. In his life with his wife, he notes the difficulty, pain and ambiguity that came with being married to someone who would later have psychotic breaks that he and Adam tried to manage and live with and through. And, of course, how being the son of a bricklayer and, by his own testimony, a bricklayer himself wove itself through his life's story.

I found the memoir to be hopeful for for those who might be in academia or theological colleges/seminaries - those younger or older in complex marriages - those new to academia or young in it. Hauerwas's story testifies to the reality that a person can't manage or create a perfect life to become a "Stanley Hauerwas" - each person must simply live life with integrity. Mature and grow with your own life's story.

Hauerwas's story is personal and memorable.

The book is not a must read for many people - but for those in theological/philosophical work within "the academy" - this memoir offers much personal and anecdotal wisdom for thinking about one's own life and profession.

Length:: 2:52 Mins

In this video, Wunderkammer Magazine sits down with Stanley Hauerwas and asks him to describe his memoir.

At the dawn of this new millennium, Time magazine declared Stanley Hauerwas America's "Best Theologian," a label that the tough-talking Texan routinely uses to poke fun at himself. How can anyone rank theologians--like handicapping golfers or giving stars to restaurants! Nevertheless, Time magazine took this task seriously, publishing a profile that described how the "rough speech and pointed views" of this brick-layer's son sometimes are "scandalous" among academics and religious leaders.

First of all, I can assure you that the Time declaration hasn't gone to Hauerwas' head. In his new memoir, he writes: "If theologians become famous in times like ours, surely they must have betrayed their calling. After all, theology is a discipline whose subject should always put in doubt the very idea that those who practice it know what they are doing."

I do agree that Stanley Hauerwas has a powerful prophetic voice. He is solidly American, solidly Christian and solidly accomplished as one of our greatest scholars--yet he uses that firm foundation to address the world like a latter-day Isaiah, Jeremiah or Micah, crying out for justice and a complete rethinking of our global priorities. To use "Hauerwasian" terms, he's often telling us to get up off our rear ends, scrape away the accumulated gunk of convenient, self-centered spirituality--and get our hands dirty in engaging with the real needs of the world.

That's why reading his memoir is such a pleasure. We spend time with Hauerwas exploring his experiences growing up as a bricklayer's son. His lifelong respect for hardworking men and women is a major reason that he preaches so regularly about the dangers of social divides. In this book, that preaching connects directly with his own youth, his own family: "I have spent my life in buildings built by people like my father, buildings in which the builders have felt they do not belong," he writes. The irony, he adds, is this: "My father was a better bricklayer than I am a theologian."

If you're reading this review, you're already drawn to Hauerwas' prophetic voice for some reason. But, until now, you may not have found a good starting place to read his books and discuss them with friends. As a long-time discussion leader myself, I can see "Hannah's Child" as that ideal starting point for a lot of readers who'll come to appreciate our "Best Theologian" through connecting with his life story.

It is no secret that I am a "fan" of Stanley Hauerwas, the famous theologian who is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Christian Ethics at Duke Divinity School. I've read enough Hauerwas to know that he desires neither my fandom, nor the fame that has produced "fans" like myself. He desires that I follow Jesus Christ, and that I hold to Christian convictions because they are true. He desires that the church would live in a way that gives a truthful witness to the Lordship of the One whose love moves the sun and the stars. His theology is wrought through with a passion for honest speech, an embodied faith, a commitment to Christian nonviolence, a love for story, and an indebtedness to the friendships that God has gifted him during his life. He is a man who has experienced a lifelong "lover's quarrel" with the Church, yet his commitment to that love is unfailing. His memoir reflects all of these themes.

I've never read a book quite like Hannah's Child. Perhaps this is because I have not read many memoirs. Yet I found Hannah's Child delightful. Hauerwas tells his story in compelling, clear language, and I found this book a joy because it provides a context within which to place Hauerwas's theological writings. It is indeed true that Hauerwas has come a "long way" from his beginnings in Pleasant Grove, Texas. But when Hauerwas's thought is placed within the frame of his stories of family, upbringing, bricklaying, and church, books like Community of Character and Resident Aliens, to name two of my favorites, suddenly take on a more robust shape.

As for the contents, you'll find Hauerwas's story from his humble beginnings, to his growth as a thinker at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, on to Yale Divinity School, and then forward to Yale Graduate School, earning his Ph.D. He tells of his first marriage to his wife, Anne, who suffered from mental illness. And he reflects on his friendship with his son, Adam, whom he considers a great blessing. He tells of his progression from Augustana College to Notre Dame, then on to Duke, and how through the years his thought was influenced by the thought of Barth, Yoder, and Bonhoeffer, to name three theologians he mentions. Along the way he tells of various friendships he established and enjoyed, as well as his growth as a teacher. He tells of his relationship with Paula Gilbert, their marriage, and their involvement in the life of Duke Divinity School. Perhaps most interesting is Paula's influence on Hauerwas in suggesting that he should make prayer a part of his classroom experience at the Divinity School, a development Hauerwas is deeply thankful for.

This memoir is enjoyable reading, particularly for those who are familiar with Hauerwas's theological writings. Who knew that the life of a theologian could be so interesting?

Having studied with Stanley and been a member of the Notre Dame community about which he writes, I believe that Hannah's child is a genuine and unabashedly truthful rendering of his experiences and reflections. He was a young theologian at the time in the 70s that I knew him, but was beyond his years in courage and insight. It is interesting to see how John Howard Yoder, whom I had in class, so influenced his thinking about the Church and pacifism. Stanley was open to the experiences of Notre Dame, the Holy Cross Fathers, his fellow academics inside and outside of Theology. He changed and grew and explains it nicely in his memoir.

He always invited, encouraged and demanded that people speak up, support or criticize authority as appropriate and fearlessly ask the questions of oneself and your friends that might not have an answer or at least not a convenient or safe answer. His pacifism and his definition of Church has not been without cost to him in terms of academic acceptance or lost friendship. His careful fearlessness, some would call it impulsive, but he is too reflective to be impulsive, was especially evident after 9/11/2001 when his pacificism came up against the patriotism and nationalism that was strongly exhibited after that tragedy. It would have been easier to be silent and hold his reflections privately, but as he had criticized the Church for its stand during the Holocaust, he would not have been honest if he kept quiet. I know from his Notre Dame days that he was close to Robert Wilken, the great church historian. Wilken reacted agrily to Stanley's reflections given at University of Virginia and questioned whether Stanley believed at all in national loyalty. For Stanley and Robert that severely strained their friendship. What makes Stanley to be himself is the fact that commitment is not trivial and his taxonomy of loyalty puts his loyalty to his Christian Commitment ahead of any national affiliation. Wilken got it wrong, it seems, at least from the point of view of the memoir. Stanley does not lack national loyalty at all, rather he experiences a higher loyalty based on his belief in the change in history that took place in the death and resurrection of Jesus. He has a loyalty above patriotism. His other books explored how Christians in the first couple of centuries put their belief ahead of any loyalty to secular powers. This eroded over time when, after Constantine in 325 A.D., the Church either provided secular government or was complicit in it. This book shows how Church, a church, churches, should not and cannot be coopted by the current culture but must, not by its words so much but by its actions and the living out of its beliefs, serve as a corrective to inevitable weaknesses of any culture or government. Roman Catholic bishops have strived to do this, but their actions of late in failing to address sexual abuse have made their words empty because their actions, or lack thereof, are shouting too loudly. One important insight that Stanley shares is that it is not so much what you do wrong that gets you into trouble, but rather the explanations and rationalizations that you make about what you have done that ruins you. In WWII, the Church, churches chose survival to preach another day, Hauerwas notes, rather than confront the Nazi horror. They chose institution over mission which is, I suppose, the ultimate lack of faith that the mission is from God and that God will support it. Likewise, in managing the sexual abuse crisis, the Bishops chose survival of the institution over their mission - again a lack of faith to think that if the mission is from God it will perdure -- how different from the days of the martyrs who chose to die rather than compromise their calling.
Stanley has been criticized for seeing the Church as living apart from culture in order to critique it rather than being totally involved in it, so as to convert it from within. Both approaches require real courage whether inside or outside to hold on to convictions and speak the truth to power. Stanley does it with consistency as have other notable Christians like Congressman Robert Drinan, the Jesuit, who did it from within the corridors of power. Both can work, if and only if, there is the courage of conviction.
What it interesting in the memoir, is that someone who so desparately desires friendships, is and was willing to give it up for the sake of his faith and commitments. He lost friends rather than compromise or be silent. It shows both his commitment to what is genuine about friendship and what is genuine about faith. I recommend this book as a primer to more fully benefit from his other books.

Like many, I was first introduced to Stanley Hauerwas through his seminal work Resident Aliens (1989). I have since enjoyed much of his very important work and was thrilled when I learned of Hannah's Child (2010) which is characteristic Hauerwas: wily, intellectually aggressive, ecclesiastically vague, always funny, and always provocative. Indeed, as Jeffery Stout noted, "Hannah's Child might well be Stanley's Hauerwas' best book" (back).

The reader is not only invited to journey with Hauerwas from his early Methodism in rural Texas to the elites of the Ivy League at Yale, but is also welcomed into the very private life of Time magazine's "best theologian in America" (2001). Hauerwas candidly narrates his relationship with Anne (his first wife and mother to their son, Adam) who struggled with significant emotional disabilities making their home and marriage a type of precarious prison for Stanley and Adam.

This book sheds much-needed light on marriage, family, community, pain, anxiety, fear, and above all ... Christ, our only hope. Yet Hauerwas admits, "At best, I have never imagined myself to be more than a `broken light'" (277).

Hannah's Child is Hauerwas' attempt "to understand how I became Stanley Hauerwas" (xii). This is a beautifully written, painfully honest, and humble work by one of the most influential writers and thinkers of our time.

For those new to Hauerwas's life and thought, this is a good first step. For those well acquainted with this modern-day prophet, Hannah's Child is essential.

I simply couldn't put down Hannah's Child. Always touching, never pompously academic and occasionally laugh out loud funny. Fit to be read by every Christian who deems her life too standard or too irregular. Hauerwas doesn't just overcome family and career difficulties, he jumps in graciously, redemptively and faithfully. Could anyone report on his community of friends more honestly or more faithfully present? He incorporates his intellectual life's development and influence all along this story, and we see a unique and truly authentic life revealed.
The book is also like being in a prof's bull session where he sketches out the hierarchy of leading thinkers in the field, and you get priceless insights about who's who and where we're going next. My Amazon Wishlist grew exponentially! Best read of this summer!
BTW, Hauerwas--son of a bricklayer; Father of the Socratic method--son of a stonemason. Fits.

Stanley Hauerwas's memoirs were an unexpected gift to me. I had never heard of Hauerwas until a couple of months ago, and finally decided to read this book to get a feel for the kind of person that he is. I figured he must be someone important enough to know about considering Time Magazine called him America's Best Theologian. I was not at all disappointed. At first I was a little thrown off due to his vocabulary (which, come to find out is one of his hallmarks) and yet I eventually came to admire that aspect of him; that he was unwilling to part with the "language of the job" as he calls it from being a bricklayer in his younger years. Even though many might say that having a clean mouth is a mark of the Christian, Hauerwas showed himself again and again to exemplify that which is truly Christian character. His desire not to leave his crazy wife, commitment and love for his son, and his blatant honesty magnify the Jesus that he serves. I highly recommend this book to anyone.

In this book, famed theologian Stanley Hauerwas reviews the arc of his life from his origins in a blue-collar Texas family, to his eventual path into academia and the study of Christian theology. He serves in successive faculty positions at Augustana, Notre Dame, and Duke, and reflects upon the development of his theological perspectives as they relate to the locations and individuals with whom he interacts.

On one level this is an interesting memoir of a life. I also found it to be a fascinating look at the backstage of academia and how advancement is occasioned by contacts and happenstance. It is also engaging as a survey of Hauerwas' developing theological thought and influences. For all these, there is much to be mined here for the reflective individual pondering their own vocation. The concluding chapters also contain a valid indictment of the contemporary "seeker-sensitive" church movement that is obsessed with church growth by patterning church culture around "economic modes of life that are incompatible with the Gospel."

My only complaint about this memoir is Hauerwas' frequent habit of using "quotation" marks to "emphasize" words. This "affectation" becomes "grating" to the reader, and one would "hope" that after all his "scholarly" writing Hauerwas would have been "trained" away from it by now.

I do not have a great familiarity with Hauwerwas's writings apart from 'Resident Aliens' and a few articles, but I heard positive things about his new memoir so I thought it would be worth a try, since the vocation of theologian is one that I aspire to.

The main descriptive term for this book is 'honesty'. Hauwerwas is famed for his straight-talking, and it is on display here. He gives us a clear presentation of his life of faith and study, not holding back on his failings and the many struggles that he has faced. He emerges as a paradoxical figure; a natural intellectual with a working-class background, a theologian of the church who has been without an ecclesiastical 'home' for most of his life, a man with a love of friendship who has often been lonely and misunderstood. The discussion of his relationship with his son and his painful first marriage are especially touching and reveal his indomitable spirit.

His quest with this memoir is to understand how he relates to the entity known as 'Stanley Hauwerwas', America's 'best theologian', and to narrate how the vow of his mother has led him to become a theologian first and then eventually a Christian. Hauwerwas has a lively mind and an engaging style, and I could not put this book down. I thank God for the triumph of the church and of the hope of Christ in his life.