This is an analytical book review of Stanley Hauerwas’ A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic.
Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School and he holds a joint appointment with Duke Law School. Hauerwas’ Methodist roots and diverse education and work experience contributes to an ecumenical theological stance that is not liberal (12). In addition to his ecumenicism, he is cross-disciplinary, as “he is in conversation with systematic theology, philosophical theology and ethics, political theory, as well as the philosophy of social science and medical ethics.”
The thesis of this book is that Christian morality and ethics can only make sense and be applied to one’s life when one is living within the continuing narrative of the Christian story. As a result, Hauerwas frames everything he writes about in this book around the concept of narrative because without narratives, there is a loss of community (18).
- This book is essentially divided up into three parts. The first part addresses how every community needs to be rooted in a narrative. For Christians, Jesus and the Kingdom of God is the narrative that forms the church (50). Furthermore, it is the Christian’s belief in the authority of Scripture and God that enables the church to be the contrast model/community to a society that does not value authority.
- The second part of the book continues to emphasize the importance of narrative in understanding the church since Christians are a “storied people” worshipping a “storied God” (91). Hauerwas claims that Christians need to cultivate hope and patience in their life in order to be a contrast narrative to this world (128). For the Christian to grow in character, it is crucial that he/she learn to participate in the story of the people of God, rather than just hear about it (152).
- Consequently, the first two parts set up the theoretical basis for the third part, where he applies the concepts addressed in the first two parts to discuss what kind of ethic the church should have toward the family, sex, and abortion. His discussion is framed around the fact that one cannot separate one’s views on the family, sex, and abortion from the greater narrative of the church.
I love the way Hauerwas decides to address the family, sex, and abortion in the last section, since these are the pressing ethical issues that the church needs to be firm on, in order to be a contrast society.
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