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Stanley Hauerwas QUOTES

Stanley Hauerwas QUOTES

1 " 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 , In Good Company: The Church as Polis

2 " The Church really does not know what [peace and justice] mean apart from the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. After all, Pilate permitted the killing of Jesus in order to secure both peace and justice (Roman style) in Judea. "

― Stanley Hauerwas , Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony

3 " First of all, it's friendship with God that makes possible friendship with one another in a manner that is not that we just like one another, but that were are joined by common judgments, by God, for the good of God's church. Such friendship occurs not by trying to be each other's friend, but by discovering you were engaged in common good work that is so determinative, you cannot live without one another. Now, if the church is that, it will talk about friendship in a way that avoids the superficiality of the language of relationship. Because relationships are meant to be spontaneous and short. Friendship, if it is the friendship of God, is to be characterized by fidelity in which you are even willing to tell the friend the truth. Which may mean you will risk the friendship. You need to be in that kind of community to survive the loneliness that threatens all of our souls. "

― Stanley Hauerwas

4 " The cross is not a sign of the church's quiet, suffering submission to the powers-that-be, but rather the church's revolutionary participation in the victory of Christ over those powers. The cross is not a symbol for general human suffering and oppression. Rather, the cross is a sign of what happens when one takes God's account of reality more seriously than Caesar's. The cross stands as God's (and our) eternal no to the powers of death, as well as God's eternal yes to humanity, God's remarkable determination not to leave us to our own devices. "

― Stanley Hauerwas , Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony

5 " As a society of unbelief, Western culture is devoid of a sense of journey, of adventure, because it lacks belief in much more than the cultivation of an ever-shrinking horizon of self-preservation and and self-expression. "

― Stanley Hauerwas , Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony

6 " You learn who you are only by making yourself accountable to the judgment of others. "

― Stanley Hauerwas , Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir

7 " On the other hand, activist Christians who talk much about justice promote a notion of justice that envisions a society in which faith in God is rendered quite unnecessary, since everybody already believes in peace and justice even when everybody does not believe in God. "

― Stanley Hauerwas , Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony

8 " Saints cannot exist without a community, as they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of God. "

― Stanley Hauerwas

9 " We would like a church that again asserts that God, not nations, rules the world, that the boundaries of God's kingdom transcend those of Caesar, and that the main political task of the church is the formation of people who see clearly the cost of discipleship and are willing to pay the price. "

― Stanley Hauerwas , Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony

10 " Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol. "

― Stanley Hauerwas

11 " 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 , Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir

12 " The lives of the saints are the hermeneutical key to Scripture. "

― Stanley Hauerwas , The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer In Christian Ethics

13 " 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 , Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir

14 " Gentleness is given to those who have learned that God will not have his kingdom triumph through the violence of the world, for such a triumph came through the meekness of a cross. "

― Stanley Hauerwas , Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir

15 " Whatever it means to be a Christian, it at least involves the discovery of friends you did not know you had. "

― Stanley Hauerwas , Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir

16 " No wonder modern humanity, even as it loudly proclaims its freedom and power to choose, is really an impotent herd drive this way and that, paralyzed by the disconnectedness of it all. It's just one damn thing after another. "

― Stanley Hauerwas , Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony

17 " Having no use for such bourgeois virtues as tolerance, open-mindedness, and inclusiveness (which the revolutionary knows are usually cover-ups that allow the powerful to maintain social equilibrium rather than to be confronted and then to change), revolutionaries value honesty and confrontation—painful though they may be. "

― Stanley Hauerwas , Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony

18 " When the only contemporary means of self-transcendence is orgasm, we Christians are going to have a tough time convincing people that it would be nicer if they would not be promiscuous. "

― Stanley Hauerwas , Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony

19 " The loss of Christendom gives us a joyous opportunity to reclaim the freedom to proclaim the gospel in a way in which we cannot when the main social task of the church is to serve as one among many helpful props for the state. "

― Stanley Hauerwas , Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony

20 " The church… stands as a political alternative to every nation, witnessing to the kind of social life possible for those that have been formed by the story of Christ. "

― Stanley Hauerwas , A Community Of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic