Customer Reviews

Resident Aliens: A Provocative Christian Assessment of Culture and Ministry for People Who Know that Something is Wrong

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"What we call 'church' is too often a gathering of strangers who see the church as yet another 'helping institution' to gratify further their individual desires." (p. 138) So say Hauerwas and Willimon in this profoundly disturbing, profoundly liberating book. Their general thesis is that the church has lost its bearings because it's forgotten its Jesus-centered tradition. Rather than dwelling within that tradition, realizing that the church's mission is to build community that exemplifies the Kingdom and the Kingdom's values, Christians too frequently accommodate to the world in order to make their beliefs acceptable. In doing whatever they can to ameliorate the "scandal" of the gospel so as not to offend anyone, they betray the Kingdom and their tradition--and God.

This is a disconcerting challenge to those of us who try to be Christians. Even if one doesn't completely agree with Hauerwas and Willimon--in fact, even if one outright disagrees with them--their message deserves serious consideration. In grappling with the thorny question of how to live in the world without being of the world--that is, how to be "resident aliens"--they force us to reconsider our commitment to the good news.

One of the more interesting aspects of the book is a theme that Hauerwas has discussed in several of his other books: ethics is primarily a way of seeing the world rather than an objective, rational enterprise. All ethical systems presuppose a view of reality (even the ones that claim to be rational), and this means that in order to get to the heart of a particular ethics, one must examine the tradition from which it comes. Hauerwas and Willimon use this model to argue that Christian ethics, which is based on the eschatological tradition outlined in the Sermon on the Mount, simply can't accommodate ethical principles generated in nongospel traditions. Attempts to do so are misguided.

Read this book. It will upset you, as it has upset me. But it's a good upset.

This book has me hooked on Stanley Hauerwas. I have heard of him and his unusual approach to theological ethics and I thought I'd read this book as my professor recommended it to me.

I was startled to find that he had a whole new way of looking at things that I never really quite thought of as lucidly as he and Willimon have. Not only does he highly criticize the church for continually buying in to a Constantinian view of the church, he even critiques such great Theologians as Neibuhr! When someone does that, they either are supremely misinformed or have something very thoughtful to say, and, indeed this book does the latter.

Resident Aliens will make you see the church in a whole new light. Members of congregations and pastors alike must read this book as I think it would impact you ministry for God more than any other "seeker friendly" or "purpose-driven" book could possibly do. It particularly is a book that both uplifts and criticized the role of a pastor in a church.

While often bleak, Hauerwas and Willimon are brutally honest in the church impotence in BEING the church and instead has often simply become little different than a club where people come to get their "needs" met. The colony image, while not perfect, is challenging as it highlights our need to care for one another, to be, as Rodney Clapp says, "A Peculiar People", and to have our ethics driven by a biblical community, not a national idea of "rights" and "liberties".

If I could suggest a book to read for Christians this year, this would be it! Unfortunately, this book has been out for years and I do not see that it has had the impact that it should have. When the full weight of the reality of the post-Christian society we live in in the West hits us, books like this will be our saving grace. Either that, or we compromise until we become indistinguishable from the people around us.

"Resident Aliens" came out in 1989 and continues to be a controversial bestseller among church leaders. The authors argue that the days of "Christendom" are over--Western culture no longer looks on the church as an important prop or support to its values, and will no longer subsidize the church in any way, viz. soccer games and open malls on Sunday morning. And, this is a good thing! At last the church has the opportunity to recapture its role as described in scripture: a colony of "resident aliens" in a foreign country, demonstrating in word and deed that God is God indeed. For church folks who grew up in the 1950's and earlier, this book is a tough pill to swallow. But it points the way toward a revived church with a crucial mission to the world as we begin the "post-Christendom" millenium.

I found myself personally resonating with several of Hauerwas and Willimon's concerns in "Resident Aliens" about how American Christians tend to think. Hauerwas and Willimon rightly point out that it is absurd to expect a world no longer saturated with Christian language and assumptions to act like Christians. And it is insufficient to rest our hope in the restoration of Christendom, as they perceive that this longstanding era of church-state partnership (whether explicit or implicit) is seriously waning (now much more so than when they wrote RA in 1989).

They suggest that it is insufficient for the church to merely be an institution that tries to make the world a better place. And they find it to be equally unsatisfying for the church to simply try to minimize the discomfort that church-goers and would-be Christians experience in this individualistically-driven and materialistically-obsessed culture. They propose that the way for the church to be a Christian colony in a world that does not know God is to simply "be the church."

It is in this solution phase that Hauerwas and Willimon left me seriously wanting more. They are quite adept at picking apart a host of operating systems and philosophical constructs that many of us use to envision the church, ultimately to the detriment of the work of the church. But when they move into their proposed alternative (which they seemed to attempt at multiple points throughout the book), I was left in a world of abstraction. They kept returning to the idea that the church needs to be the church (without expecting the non-church world to function like the church). And as much as I embrace this general concept, they did very little to help me understand or picture what that means from their vantage point. The most concrete idea that appeared in several places was the suggestion that the church out to be a place of complete (and sometimes brutal) honesty. And as much as I agree, I do not think that being mere truth-speakers is a sufficiently holistic expression of following Christ upon which to base the church. I don't know what they think the church should be.

As a prospective pastor (and therefore, targeted audience for this book), I wanted to know how they recommend that pastors lead a church as a Christian colony? They seem to value preaching, but they are very critical of all of the ways that we have been taught to communicate from the pulpit (careful biblical exegesis, relevance, etc.) other than story-telling. They do not seem to think that pastors should have a vision and try to lead the congregation towards that vision, at least not coming out of seminary ripe with bad ideas of ecclesiology. They do not seem to think that pastors should respond to the needs of their congregants, as these people are saturated with individualistic and consumeristic dogma. They do not seem to think that pastors should care about ministering to a world in need, as social justice is just another reflection of the world's solution system.

To their credit, Hauerwas and Willimon actually manage to come across as relatively even-handed critics, in the sense that they seem to utterly disdain everything and everyone not named Karl Barth. (They are especially critical of anyone named Neibuhr.) But I found their sweeping negativity to be increasingly unhelpful as the book progressed. As accurate as their critiques may be, I found their work to be seriously lacking on the solution side of their thesis and much less poignant than it might have otherwise been had they more intentionally and specifically described what life in the Christian colony should actually look like. Maybe the picture of their hope for the church was painted in the midst of their abstract language, but I struggled to see that painting with any clarity.

Hauerwas and Willimon offer a stunningly adept diagnosis for mainline churches and a prophetic warning for evangelicals. Like the evening sun, Christendom is setting in the west, and in this dusk the church has a new opportunity to reclaim the marginal identity God granted it in the first place. If you are a big fan of the Christian Coalition, this book will trouble you. If you believe that church and state go neatly hand in hand, this book will trouble you. If you are searching for perspective on how the church--for the sake of "relevance"--may lose itself in the prevailing culture, this book will be a welcome addition to your library.

Ten years after its publication, RESIDENT ALIENS remains a valuable conversation partner for the church. The task remains for church leaders to enflesh the practical ramifications of the work in Christian community. Ultimately, the success of Hauerwas' and Willimon's work will be judged by that end.

As a young college student, many years ago, I first came into contact with "Christ and Culture" by H. Richard Niebuhr and :The Cultural Subversion of the Biblical Faith" by James D. Smart. These contacts launched me into the most difficult journey of my Christian life, separating my faith from my culture.

Resident Aliens helped me continue this journey. It doesn't really pick up where Niebuhr left off. It is more truthful to say this book reacts against Niebuhr. But, still I would give all three of these books 5 stars, because they helped to form me.

WARNING: Hauerwas and Willimon make strong statements about becoming swept up in the culture of this world. Their statements do not play well in our current cultural climate. For instance, on page 35 the authors quote Alasdair MacIntyre, "Dying for this state, . . . is like being asked to die for the telephone company"

As you can tell from this quote, this book will be challenging to read, but you could sure get people made at you if you used the wrong quote at the wrong time!

Theaters screen movies on the Lord's Day. Little League baseball and soccer schedules go uninterrupted over the entire weekend. One can find as many shopping opportunities on Sunday afternoon as are available any other day of the week. According to Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, this is a good thing.

The Church has hidden too long behind the Constantinian veneer of an assumed establishment in and acceptance by Western culture. Only now, in light of the West's pronounced cultural apostasy over the last forty years (which in their view was simply the culture ridding itself of a dead relic which it never really respected in the first place), can the Church shake off its lethargy and face the fact that it does not have a true ally in the kingdoms of this world. Rather than taking a defensive or retreatist position however, Willimon and Hauerwas advocate an aggressive position of attack against the Church's exposed enemies.

The answer, say the professors, is for the Church to take this incredible historical opportunity to refocus her energies and resources onto those things which are of essential and primary importance and to take hold of the "adventure of being the church". Rather than disassociating the gospel from its covenant context and presenting it as a set of abstract philosophical ideas apart from Christ, as the Church has done in an effort to make it more agreeable to the post-modern palate, the only hope for the Church is to present the gospel as it was intended by its Author; a relationship between Jesus and His people.

The authors seem strongly opposed to the notion that the task of the Church is one of marketing the gospel in such a way that would make it appear more appealing to the world around her. While for some the correct approach to ministry and evangelism is in a basic sense similar to adding enough sugar to the cough medicine to make it go down and stay down, Willimon and Hauerwas are of the persuasion that the Church is at its best when it is at its boldest. They propose that the goal of the gospel is not to redefine a set of thoughts about the mysteries of God until they make sense, but rather to drastically change lives and to re-form them in the light of the stunning claims of the Word of God.

The meat of the book is wrapped up in the statement, "So the theological task is not merely the interpretive matter of translating Jesus into modern categories but rather to translate the world to Him. The theologian's job is not to make the gospel credible to the modern world, but to make the world credible to the gospel."

It is their thesis that the Church's primary mission is to simply be the Church, the community of Christ, confessing the gospel without apology. The result is a Church that is a culture within a culture, a colony of foreigners in a foreign land passing their language, customs and lifestyle on to their children, loving each other and their God.

If you are looking for a book that will wake you up out of your preconceptions for what the church is or should be, then this book is for you. Even though the book was published 11 years ago it still has great relevance today. Early on in the book the authors make the statement that the day stores stayed open on Sunday was the end of the Constantinism era. In the year 2000 that truth is even more evident! The first three chapters are spent building the case for what the church should be like in a world that no longer supports it. Next comes a review of how pastors experience burnout in trying to please the community/congregation by making the world "a little bit better" to live in. The last chapter is sharp criticism of the seminary process that sets pastors up for failure instead of equipping them for the task leading a flock. This book, more than any I've read to date, has caused me to think and reevaluate what the church is and should be.

In your face challenges to the contemporary church in America which says reclaim what you are, and tells it how: to be not about the current psychological, self-help but countercultural scandal of pure gospel particularity.

They bemoan the historical-critical method and academia which prepares no pastor for church service. Bless their boldness and conviction!

Although the book starts rather slow at getting to its agenda, by the time it reaches the later chapters it is right on. One might summarize its diagnosis of current church leadership by this quote: "What we call church is often a conspiracy of cordiality." "This accounts for why, to many people, church becomes suffocatingly superficial. Everybody agress to talk about everything here except what matters."

The call is to readjust what is meant by a successful ministry. What an insightful analogy used here: To be a successful pastor today is almost as damning as having a happy marriage" i.e. one free from conflict. "Many successful pastors are happy only because they surrendered so early."

To not surrender means preaching the gospel purely and administring the Sacraments according to God's mandate.

What a daring book that for a pastor to ignore is dangerous. To contemplate is worthwhile. To implement is God pleasing.

This book is about what it means to be the Church, and more importantly, the Church in the world.

This book is often critical of various theologies/philosophies that form the very foundation of the Western world, and how the Church has viewed (and consequently, interacted with) the world. Frankly, if you are not already familiar with the philosophies and theologies this book interacts with, you (like myself) will fill somewhat lost trying to figure out what exactly the authors are trying to say. I say this as a Jr. in Bible College. This book is probably better off read by those who are finishing Seminary.

I will have to read this book a second time to get a better feel for what it is saying, because my lack of upper-level education makes it difficult to interact with. I feel that many will probably have to do the same.