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The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer In Christian Ethics

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This book is the best introduction to "Christianity according to Hauerwas." This is not a general survery of different ideas about Christian ethics. But rather a presentation of a distinct way of doing "Christian ethics" (which really means a distinct way of doing Christianity). Hauerwas rejects both "liberal" and "conservative" versions of Christianity because both are ultimately based in the thought patterns of the classical Liberalism, which falsely presents itself as religion based on universal reason. In reality, all reason and religion is based on particular truth claims, embodied in the narratives that shape different communities. Hauerwas presents the truth of the Christian narrative, emphasizing how it must be embodied in the Church, if any one is ever to see that it is true. Particularly important in the demonstation of Christian truth claims is the Church's commitment to peace (a very particular form of Christian non-violence). To grasp the significance of what Hauerwas is saying in this book, is to have commonly accepted understandings of the Church and Christian "ethics" radically challenged, and possibly to have them replaced by a wonderfully compelling account of what it means to be a Christian.

For four weeks I resisted the professor who had assigned Hauerwas; I battled Hauerwas on narrative's value and on his "obvious" lack of appreciation for the Brothers Niebuhr. I'd take Augustine's "just war" or Mouw's Divine Command ethics any day. Then it happened. I started doing ethics in the middle; I pitched three fourths of Kant and most of the consequentialists. I saw peace as the singular Christ trait, and I was ashamed and penitent. I read on through more and more Hauerwas to find how to "do church" as just such an authentic--albeit alien community. I don't know if I'm ready to walk over hot coals to march on Kosavo, but if Hauerwas left, I'd follow. To read Hauerwas changes Christians. Others probably won't "get" him because it takes a hefty amount of divine intervention to trust God that much. In the year since I first read this book I have had to re-think and/or re-tool everything about being a Christian. This is authentic Christianity--not the accommodationist Warrior-Christianity of Constantine, Belfast and Belgrade--and dare I say most American "chump-morality" preaching. Go ahead, fight with Hauerwas. I double dare ya! Watch the tools of peaceableness metamorphose you. I know.

Stanley Hauerwas is without a doubt one of the most influential theologians if not the most influential of the contemporary theological milieu. The Peaceable Kingdom, is an excellent starting point for those wanting to dive into Hauerwas. This is one of his earlier works and written at an accessible level. Much of what he says is restated in his immensely popular work co-authored with William Willimon in Resident Aliens, which is a must read as well. Hauerwas's engagement with such a variety of disciplines provides a profound work on what it means to be a Christian. His most noticeable influences being Karl Barth, John Howard Yoder, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Ludwig Wittgenstein among others (see xix). Whether or not you agree with Hauerwas you have to engage him. His writing is exceptionally readable and spiritually challenging. If you're not a Christian his work won't make sense, that's part of the point. If you are a Christian after reading this book you will pray.

I bought Hauerwas' book after hearing him speak at Azusa Pacific University last week, and have been since ferociously reading through the book (though I am not sure Hauerwas would appreciate my ferocity as it tends towards violence). The basic thesis of Hauerwas' book is the possibility of the church being a social ethic (rather than "having" a social ethic) through an understanding of Israel as the story of God and Jesus' life, death, and resurrection as the primary means by which we live within a peaceable (pacifist) kingdom.

The first four chapters are a kind of groundwork for the last four chapters. The first chapter, "Christian Ethics in a Fragmented World," explores why many Christians try to universalize their particular social ethic as one that applies to all people. He speaks of the difficulty as well of having a Christian ethic when religion has been so privatized in the west. In the second and third chapters, he spends a significant amount of time speaking to a qualified Christian ethic - one that is not universalized, but qualified by the particular life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Freedom for Hauerwas in the Christian ethic is one that "derives from having a well-formed character" rather than being in control or the ability to make free choices. For Hauerwas, there is no "self" that a person has separate from our environment and community. In other words, there is no sense in searching for our "true self" or "unconscious I" because none such self exists abstractly from the environment around us. In this case, character can only be defined as "a gift from others which we learn to claim as our own by recognizing it as a gift."

Hauerwas goes on in later chapters, after laying this foundation, that Jesus gives us an example of the ultimate dispossession of one's life. That is to say, Jesus gave up all control over his life when he did not accept the temptations of the devil in the famous temptation narrative. Rather than taking on the notion of "hero" by taking on the power of a political kingdom, he took on the role of first martyr by giving himself up powerlessly to the Empire. It was in Jesus' refusal to take on coercion or violence that the church is a social ethic. We are not to have a social ethic, but be a social ethic.

In the latter chapters, Hauerwas tries to explain how all this might "work" in the church. He tries to move away from an unhelpful talk on making "right" decisions, and rather discusses how such `decisions' are not really decisions at all, but rather the natural outgrowth of our character (as it has been formed by others above). Thus, he spends a long time talking about the sociological character of community, boundary markers, and how all of this plays into the communities' self understanding in its basic practices and behavior.

He ends the book comparing the Neibuhr brother's now famous theological argument on how to respond to Japan's invasion of Manchuria. While the actual situation has long since past, Hauerwas argues that their dialogue can help inform our understanding things like nuclear disarmament (or, perhaps, in light of 9/11, terrorism). The first brother H. Richard Niebuhr talked about how "doing nothing" is always doing something. For the lack of action does not necessarily mean disinterst. His brother Reinhold, on the other hand, argued that America must use coercion in order to bring about the relative justice to China without violence. Hauerwas, as he makes clear throughout the book, sides with H. Richard Niebuhr, but also notes that the argument is not so simple as "becoming non-violent." Non-Violence is not something you choose and then start doing any more than a smoker can quit cold turkey. It something that takes a life to master.

I cannot begin to suggest the book highly enough to people of all theological traditions. Hauerwas has made one of the classical arguments for Christian non-violence articulately and honestly. The book has helped me recently to form my thoughts in my own relationships and community in regard to many difficult decisions.

Enjoyed the book. I went into with a hunch that I would already agree with most of it, but it did present some new and compelling ideas. I specifically enjoyed his critique of our culture's tendency to view independence, autonomy, and individual freedom as the ultimate goal of human life. Also in classic Hauerwas style he was always sure to emphasize the importance of narrative for ethics.

It was a good "warm-up"/introduction in the field of Christian ethics. I would also warn those conservative war supporting evangelicals out there to go into with an open mind. Because Hauerwas places non-violence as being central to Christian ethics.

The Peaceable Kingdom is subtitled "A Primer in Christian Ethics". However, unlike most introductory ethics books Hauerwas' book is not issue based offering a chapter on say abortion, war or any other issues). Instead however invites the reader to gain a insight into a christian ethics based not issues but the Christian story and the Community of God. This book is an excellent introduction to Hauerwas' thought that unlike his other essay based books reads very well.

One of the advantages of this edition is the helpful postscript Hauerwas has written marking the twenty years since the book's initial publication. Twenty years on Hauerwas still claims this is the most helpful introduction to his thought, I tend to agree.

This is a good book to read if you haven't read Hauerwas before.

Hauerwas puts ethics under theology. He began his career looking at systematic theology and decided christian ethics is basically theology. Hauerwas' other platforms include denying a 'natural law' or any universal ethic. Ethics should be studied according to their 'historical community' (christian ethics, Jewish ethics, Marxist ethics etc). We don't know what is moral unless we know God and know that he demands us to be holy as he is holy.

A main theme through Hauerwas' many writings concerns his trending towards pacifism, rejection of any national 'exceptionalism' and avoiding the temptations of pleasing the enlightenment philosophies. The church should avoid rationalizing its existence through functional religion. The enlightenment bred 'natural law', individual freedoms and rights. Too often the church tries to advance that ethic forgetting it is not connected with theology.

Churches thus begin morally justifying democracy or Americansim based on 'natural law' when Christian ethics, based under theology, should not be considered connected directly to these principles. Supporting personal 'rights' logically leads to violence. As Hauerwas explains, the church is to be in a peaceable kingdom. Hauerwas explains his own hesitation to take this point. "The last thing I wanted to be was a pacifist, mainly because I longed to do ethics in a way that might be widely influential." pg. xxiv

At least Hauerwas states his convictions, knowing they would not be taken seriously. The book was a very easy read and through the introduction I learned a little about the author's personal life and thoughts. Those minor details often help me remember an author's positions.

Interesting book. His main thesis is that within society at large Christians should not claim to be anything else other then Christians. Furthermore, their concern should be in building the church up and not worrying as much about the greater society. Furthermore, he is not so much interested in issues and in the person. In other words, any confusion about what a person is to do is because the individual does not know who they are. Once they understand who they are then the decisions will come naturally. These points, as well as some other, are controversial. This book gives Hauerwas' controversial positions a systematic explanation. Not everybody is going to agree with him, but yet his ideas have become influential and are important to understand.

Hauerwas is like many theologians out there who say a lot about something without really saying much at all.
While there is much to commend this book on, most of it is surrounded by fluffy long sayings that don't actually mean very much.

Hauerwas does well to point out as Christians we should not attempt to do ethics without qualifying our ethic as distinctively Christian, and that our ethic is built upon the foundations of the narrative of Scripture as well the community that is to embody that narrative- the Church. Also, I like how Hauerwas stresses that deciding what actions are ethical can only be properly understood based on our understanding of "being" a Christian.

As commendable as all this is, Hauerwas does not deal too much with what the Scriptures actually say. He tends to make assumptions that sound like they are Biblical. For example, Hauerwas tends to put a virtue such as peace on top of his hierarchy of virtue. Yet, he doesn't really attempt to explore what the Scriptures say on peace. He eventually comes to understand peace as non-violence/war. However, is such Biblical? However, if that is so, then why did Jesus tell his disciples to carry around a sword? If Jesus was against violence, then why did He affirm the use of violence as a means of establishing justice, by dying on the cross? Scripturally speaking, there is a time when justice must choose violence in order for justice to be established. Scripturally speaking, there is a time for war (Eccl 3:8).

It is ironic that while Hauerwas has much to say for Christians being faithful to the narrative of Scripture, that Hauerwas turns so little attention to what the Scriptures say. He consistantly is vague in dealing with the Scriptures, and really does not interact with them throughout this book. He simply pays mere lip service to them. He seems much more interested in interacting with Barth, MacIntyre, McCormick, Niebuhr, and Yoder, than with Jesus or Paul.

I am not totally against the pacifist position, and it has much appeal to me. I believe that Christians should not participate in war that is ultimately selfish in nature. I believe if Christians partake in war, then it should only be for the purpose of defending the nation, or protecting another nation that is completely innocent. I believe such can be justified from the fact that Romans 13 teaches that the government has been given the sword by God.

It does not take much of a leap in logic to say that if Christians are part of that government that has been given the sword, then Christians have the right and duty to, when is warranted, to participate in war in the name of justice. Even Hauerwas himself admits that he has sympathy for this position, and admits that it cannot be discounted as a possibility for Christians (p. 114-115). However, he refuses to really even dialogue with this position and simply says that most the time that justice is not really the underlying issue of why a war is waged. Then he goes on to say that true justice is never established through violence; in spite of the fact that justice was established through the violence of the cross.

Ultimately the position Hauerwas takes up is that the Christian should rely on providence as the only option instead of taking up arms, and being patient enough to do so. This isn't exactly earth-shattering theology. All that Hauerwas does is a lot of tap dancing throughout this book, with the occassionally impressive maneuver that impresses the crowd.