Quotes by Stanley Hauerwas - Page 3

Christians are nonviolent not, therefore, because we believe that nonviolence is a strategy to rid the world of war, but because nonviolence is constitutive of what it means to be a disciple to Jesus.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Disciple
Nonviolence
Strategy
War Believe World
Christians
War World Believe
Rid
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The 'Cold War' impinged on the daily lives of Americans. The wars after 11 September 2001 have been fought without the general American population having to make any sacrifices. It goes on, and so do we.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Cold
Cold War
Population
September
Wars
Daily
Daily Lives
Fought
Sacrifices
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Most of us believe that we possess some aspect of eternity that will insure some kind of survival beyond death. The only problem with those strategies is they forget that only God is eternal. We are finite.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Aspect
Eternal
Finite
Survival
God Death Believe
Insure
Possess
Strategies
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By the time I had got to college, I had begun to read and had decided that most of what Christians believed could not be credible. So I became a philosophy major at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Credible
Begun
By The Time
Christians
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Many who become theologians in our time think their task is to try to determine how much of what has passed for Christianity they still need to believe and yet still be able to think of themselves as Christians.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Christianity
Determine
Our Time
Passed
Task
Theologians
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The movement that Jesus begins is constituted by people who believe that they have all the time in the world, made possible by God’s patience, to challenge the world’s impatient violence by cross and resurrection.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Jesus
Believe
People
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Christianity is not a set of beliefs or doctrines one believes in order to be a Christian, but rather Christianity is to have one's body shaped, one's habits determined, in such a way that the worship of God is unavoidable.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Believe
Christian
Order
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I cannot imagine a more realistic faith than the Christian faith. At every turn, we are told we are death-determined creatures and that our lives, our all too brief lives, at the very least will be complex if not difficult.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Christian Faith
Realistic
Brief
Complex
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I should like to think how we write as theologians would reflect our confidence in the One who makes that writing possible. That is one of the reasons, moreover, that the scriptures remain paradigmatic for how we are to write.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Moreover
Reflect
Remain
Scriptures
Theologians
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It is often observed that the first casualty of war is truth, but how do you tell the truth without betraying the sacrifice of those who accepted the terms of battle? War is a sacrificial system that creates its own justification.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Accepted
Battle
Justification
Sacrifice
Betraying
Casualty
Creates
Observed
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My father was a better bricklayer than I am a theologian. I am still in too much of a hurry. But if the work I have done in theology is of any use, it is because of what I learned on the job, that is, you can lay only one brick at a time.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Jobs
Father
Use
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I have come to think that the challenge confronting Christians is not that we do not believe what we say, though that can be a problem, but that what we say we believe does not seem to make any difference for either the church or the world.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Believe
Christian
Thinking
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In the Crusades, getting the Holy Land back was the goal, and any means could be used to achieve it. World War II was a crusade. The firebombing of Tokyo by Doolittle and the carpet bombing in Germany, especially by the British, showed that.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
War
Achieve
Bombing
British
Carpet
Germany
Holy
Holy Land
Land
Mean
Tokyo
World War Ii
War World Back
Crusade
World War
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It turns out that the God whose word will stand forever does not exist to insure our fantasies that we will not have to die as individuals or as a species. Such a God, moreover, does not invite us to presume we can comprehend God's creation.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Creation
Species
Turns
Comprehend
Fantasies
Individuals
Insure
Invite
Moreover
Presume
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The Christian fact is very straightforward: To be a student is a calling. Your parents are setting up accounts to pay the bills, or you are scraping together your own resources and taking out loans, or a scholarship is making college possible.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Accounts
Bills
Calling
Resources
Scholarship
Scraping
Setting
Straightforward
Loans
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Just as an athlete with natural gifts may fail to develop the fundamental skills necessary to play their sport after their talent fades, so people naturally disposed to faith may fail to develop the skills necessary to sustain them for a lifetime.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Athlete
Fades
Lifetime
Skills
Naturally
Fundamental
Gifts
Sustain
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The church is constituted as a new people who have been gathered from the nations to remind the world that we are in fact one people. Gathering, therefore, is an eschatological act as it is the foretaste of the unity of the communion of the saints.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Church
People
Unity
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The god most Americans say they believe in is just not interesting enough to deny. Thus the only kind of atheism that counts in America is to call into question the proposition that everyone has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Atheism
Deny
Liberty
Pursuit
Pursuit Of Happiness
Life Happiness God
Counts
Proposition
Thus
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My mother desperately wanted children. She had a child that was stillborn - something I learned when I was looking through her 'effects' after she had died. It was then that I discovered my original birth certificate, which indicated the previous birth.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Birth
Birth Certificate
Died
Effects
Certificate
Previous
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My way of putting it is that Christians are called to live nonviolently not because we believe nonviolence is a strategy to rid the world of war, but in a world of war as faithful followers of Christ, we cannot imagine being anything other than nonviolent.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Christ
Faithful
Followers
Nonviolence
Strategy
War Believe World
Christians
War World Believe
Rid
We Cannot
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I was raised in an evangelical Methodist church. Evangelical meant that though you had been baptized and made a member of the church on Sunday morning, you still had to be 'saved' on Sunday night. I wanted to be saved, but I did not think you should fake it.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Baptized
Church
Evangelical
Fake
Raised
Saved
Sunday
Sunday Morning
Meant
Member
Methodist
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Christian salvation consists in works. To be saved is to be made holy. To be saved requires our being made part of a people separated from the world so that we can be united in spite of - or perhaps better, because of - the world's fragmentation and divisions.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Fragmentation
Holy
Salvation
Saved
Spite
World Better People
Better World People
Consists
Divisions
Requires
Separated
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I fear that much of the Christianity that surrounds us assumes our task is to save appearances by protecting God from Job-like anguish. But if God is the God of Jesus Christ, then God does not need our protection. What God demands is not protection, but truth.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Jesus
Jobs
Doe
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One of the problems with the identification of Christianity with love is how such a view turns out to be both anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic. The Jews and Catholics become identified with the law or dogma, in contrast to Protestant Christians, who are about love.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Anti Semitic
Christianity
Contrast
Dogma
Identification
Love Is
Turns
Catholics
Jews
One Of The Problems
Protestant
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The idea is that Jesus overcame death through the Resurrection. What that does is fail to appreciate the fact that the resurrected Christ is the crucified Christ. It's not like, 'Oh, that was just a mistake, now it's over.' Jesus continues to suffer from our sins.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Christ
Mistake
Resurrection
Crucified
Fail
Overcame
Suffer
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I am just postmodern enough not to trust 'postmodern' as a description of our times, for it privileges the practices and intellectual formations of modernity. Calling this a postmodern age reproduces the modernist assumption that history must be policed by periods.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Assumption
Description
Periods
Postmodern
Modernist
Practices
Privileges
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The world does not have time to be with the poor, to learn with the poor, to listen to the poor. To listen to the poor is an exercise of great discipline, but such listening surely is what is required if charity is not to become a hatred of the poor for being poor.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Charity
Discipline
Time Great World
Required
Surely
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Jesus is the politics of the new age; He is about the establishment of a kingdom; He is the one who has created a new time that gives us the time not only to care for the poor but to be poor. Jesus is the one who makes it possible to be nonviolent in a violent world.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Establishment
New Age
Nonviolent
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Israel knew that there was no greater gift than to be given God's name, but that gift was a frightening reality that threatened to consume her. Israel, who would be tempted by the idolatrous presumption she possessed God's name, rightly never forgot she could not say God's name.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Frightening
Possessed
Presumption
Tempted
Threatened
Consume
Forgot
Rightly
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Consider the problem of taking showers with Christians. They are, after all, constantly going on about the business of witnessing in the hopes of making converts to their God and church. Would you want to shower with such people? You never know when they might try to baptize you.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Christian
Church
People
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I think the language of sacrifice is particularly important for societies like the United States in which war remains our most determinative common experience, because states like the United States depend on the story of our wars for our ability to narrate our history as a unified story.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Remains
Sacrifice
Unified
Wars
Depend
Societies
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I have assumed my clear commitment to a Trinitarian orthodoxy was sufficient evidence that I have not intentionally ignored the role of the Holy Spirit. It may be true, however, that my work has been so Christ-centred, I may have given the impression that the Holy Spirit is an afterthought.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Afterthought
Commitment
Holy
Holy Spirit
Ignored
Impression
May
Orthodoxy
Roles
Sufficient
Assumed
Be True
Intentionally
Sufficient Evidence
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The very idea that you could have separation between mosque and state from Islam's perspective is the imposition on them of Christian practice. Islam doesn't really have a place for state. They are a universalistic faith like Christianity, but they think there is no country that bounds Islam.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Bounds
Christianity
Imposition
Islam
Perspective
Separation
Mosque
No Country
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From the perspective of the one committing suicide, his or her act can be one of the most perverse forms of moral manipulation, as it abandons those left behind to their shame, guilt, and grief. Suicide is something like a metaphysical "I gotcha!" It is often an attempt to kill or wound others.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Grief
Perspective
Suicide
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In Britain, when someone says they do not believe in God, they stop going to church. In the U.S., many who may have doubts about Christian orthodoxy may continue to go to church. They do so because they assume that a vague god vaguely prayed to is the god that is needed to support family and nation.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Britain
Orthodoxy
God Family Believe
Assume
Doubts
Prayed
Vaguely
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The most creative social strategy we have to offer is the church. Here we show the world a manner of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Church
Creative
World
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At least one reason for trying to live lives that make a difference is that by so living, we hope we will not be forgotten by those who benefit from our trying to make a difference. Yet to try to insure we will not be forgotten too often results in desperate manipulative strategies that are doomed to fail.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Desperate
Doomed
Forgotten
Manipulative
At Least One
Benefit
Fail
Insure
Make A Difference
Strategies
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Liberal Christianity, of course, has enemies, but they are everyone's enemies - sexism, racism, homophobia. But liberal versions of Christianity, which can be both theologically and politically conservative, assume that what it means to be Christian qua Christian is to have no enemies peculiar to being Christian.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Christian
Christianity
Conservative
Peculiar
Racism
Sexism
Versions
Everyone
Assume
Course
Enemies
Liberal
Politically
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My mother had heard the story of Hannah and Samuel, so she prayed that if God would give her a son, she would give that son to God. That was a perfectly appropriate thing for her to do, but as I observe, she did not have to tell me she had made such a promise. In particular, she did not have to tell me when I was six.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Appropriate
Promise
God Mother Me
Hannah
Observe
Perfectly
Prayed
Samuel
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One of the problems we currently have is there hasn't been in the population any serious engagement with the ethics of war because we have an all-volunteer army. I would think the return to the draft would be an intervention that would require discussion that might be more helpful in terms of our ability to limit war.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Army
Discussion
Engagement
Ethics
Population
Return
Currently
Draft
Limit
One Of The Problems
Require
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[W]e must first experience the kingdom if we are even to know what kind of freedom and what kind of equality we should desire. Christian freedom lies in service, Christian equality is equality before God, and neither can be achieved through the coercive efforts of liberal idealists who would transform the world into their image.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Christian
Effort
Lying
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We Protestants automatically assume that the Pharisees are the Catholics. They are the self-righteous people who have made Christianity a form of legalistic religion, thereby destroying the free grace of the Gospel. We Protestants are the tax collectors, knowing that we are sinners and that our lives depend upon God's free grace.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Christianity
Collectors
Destroying
Our Lives
Self Righteous
Tax
Gospel
Assume
Automatically
Catholics
Depend
Sinners
Thereby
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Part of what my work has always been about is to show that the apocalyptic character of the gospel makes the everyday possible. It gives us the time that lets us care for one another as we are ill, helps us care for one another as we experience broken relationships, and helps us take the time to worship God in a world of such violence.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Broken
Everyday
Ill
Worship
Time God Work
Gospel
God Time Work
God Work Time
Lets
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A social order bent on producing wealth as an end in itself cannot avoid the creation of a people whose souls are superficial and whose daily life is captured by sentimentalities. They will ask questions like “why does a good God let bad things happen to good people ” such people cannot imagine that a people once existed who produced and sang the psalms. If we learn to say “God ” we will do so with the prayer “My God my God why have you forsaken me?
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Order
People
Prayer
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Another hallmark of Christianity is that salvation is not individualistic-it's not something one person receives for himself or herself. Salvation is the reign of God. It is a political alternative to the way the world is constituted. That's a very important part of the story that has been lost to accounts of salvation that are centered in the individual. But without an understanding that salvation is the reign of God, the need for the church to mediate salvation makes no sense at all.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Church
Political
Understanding
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The basis for the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is not what works but rather the way God is. Cheek-turning is not advocated as what works (it usually does not), but advocated because this is the way God is - God is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. This is not a stratagem for getting what we want but the only manner of life available, now that, in Jesus, we have seen what God wants. We seek reconciliation with the neighbor, not because we feel so much better afterward, but because reconciliation is what God is doing in the world through Christ.
Stanley Hauerwas / Theologian
Jesus
Selfish
Ungrateful
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