Thursday, March 31, 2005
(2:34 PM) | Dave Belcher:
Stanley Hauerwas is Skilled in the Habit of Speaking the Truth…to Himself
I first saw Stanley Hauerwas speak in 2003 at North Park University, in Chicago. He gave two talks on Bonhoeffer that were later included in his book Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence—which is not really on Bonhoeffer at all. During his talk, he made an aside to the effect of, "Why doesn’t anyone talk about purity anymore?!" This statement completely baffled me at the time, and didn’t really seem to fit with the entire rest of his talk—though now I think I retroactively understand it completely. Confused as I was, I waited in the long line of students and "fans," who wanted their copies of Hauerwas’ books signed, so that I might ask him about this strange comment. I must have waited for a half an hour when I was the next to last person in the line in front of Hauerwas. Time magazine’s "greatest American theologian" finished talking to the person in front of me, and left.Now, I understand that this doesn’t make Hauerwas an asshole, since I would imagine it was a long weekend for him, and he probably had yet another speaking engagement to get to; but, I was the last person in line, so it wasn’t like it would have killed him to take one or two more minutes to address a very simple question (and thus all of the questions raised would have been answered—or at least addressed; I mean, wouldn’t that sort of equality at least kind of prove his notion of the possibility of a Christian community of virtue who live together as friends?).
However, Hauerwas is indeed an asshole—at least when it comes to answering questions, that is. Let me recount a very similar experience at the infamous Seattle Wesleyan Theological Society meeting with Prof. Hauerwas. Stanley entitled his talk, "The End of Protestantism: The Methodist Contribution."
After his talk, I went up to ask Hauerwas a question, in particular with reference to his use of Ephraim Radner—who claims that though the Church is in ruins, we (and by "we," Radner means Anglicans) must cling to her, and not let her die. After another twenty-minute wait, or so, I was again finally the next to last person in line. I could tell that Hauerwas was about ready to jet because he decided to greet all of the four or five us in front of him at once. When he looked at my name-badge and shook my hand he asked, "What are you doing at Vanderbilt?!" (with disdain) and turned back to another person asking him a question. Next, a complete asshole (!) who had not waited in line at all walked right up and stood beside me—and Hauerwas knew that I was next and this guy had not been waiting in line because he met everyone left in line already!—and Hauerwas asked this fucker (a Nazarene, I should add) "Did you have a question?" I was fuming. Finally, after another guy who had wandered up on the other side began to answer this Nazarene’s question for Hauerwas, Hauerwas completely ignored me (and these two who obviously didn’t need to ask Hauerwas anything) and began to walk away. I approached him, told him of my experience at North Park, and that I really wanted to ask him this particular question. As soon as I did, he said, "Ok. So, what are you doing at Vanderbilt?" It was as if my association with this liberal institution was going to keep him from ever giving me the time of day. To top it all off, when I finally asked him my question, his reply was, "Well, that’s why I think it’s so important for us to learn to speak the truth together as friends." He just said the same damn thing he’s been saying for twenty-five years.
And, this gets me—finally—to my point. Hauerwas’ failure to a) take seriously a student from such a supposed liberal haven as Vanderbilt; and b) understand the Church as anything outside of his system of communitarian virtue is evidence enough (for me) of the fact that he does not wish to say anything at all to anyone outside of his discourse, i.e., he is simply talking to himself. This is a trend that I am getting tired of in theological discourse these days. The irony in Hauerwas’ circular system—as in Milbank’s—is that it is grounded in the same liberal tradition that he so despises. For once I wish theology would start getting honest about history; it’s just not true that liberalism is the antichrist…not to mention Hauerwas’ own nationalistic identity (he thinks that theology is best understood in relationship to baseball for God’s sake!), or that, in the end, both Hauerwas and Milbank want a "democracy" of some sort!
