Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence - Softcover

Hauerwas, Stanley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 149822296X ISBN 13: 9781498222969

Publisher: Wipf and Stock, 2015

Synopsis

""Folksy, eclectic, disarmingly humble, and astonishingly wide-ranging, Hauerwas offers us a provocative reading of Bonhoeffer that, not surprisingly, assimilates him closely to John Howard Yoder. At the same time, Hauerwas replies to recent criticisms of his work by Jeffrey Stout. Contending that truth depends on performance far more than on theory, Hauerwas steps forward as a pacifist gadfly for a more truly faithful church and a more recognizably democratic society."" --George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary ""This book shows how lively and fecund Hauerwas's thought remains. A dazzling performance, capable of entertaining and instructing professional theologians as much as those who think the world might be a better place without theologians in it."" --Paul J. Griffiths, University of Illinois at Chicago ""Stan Hauerwas has done it again! He is able skillfully to blend into his book the passion for truth and justice of two of his greatest influences, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and John Howard Yoder. He takes these heroic advocates for peace into his own present-day struggle for the soul of the American nation. Hauerwas, an admirable Christian pacifist himself, dares Christians to be the 'Jesus people' they claim to be and to follow Jesus into the gospel path of nonviolence."" --Geffrey B. Kelly, author of Liberating Faith: Bonhoeffer's Message for Today ""Never totally predictable. Always a fresh perspective. And yet once again in these essays--on narrative, politics, Bonhoeffer, and the church--we hear the engaging, discerning, and brilliant voice we have come to know as Stanley Hauerwas."" --Mark Thiessen Nation, Eastern Mennonite Seminary ""Contending with and learning from the witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose life is often thought to provide a Christian alternative to pacifism, Hauerwas deepens the account of Christian nonviolence he has been articulating for decades. His theology is strengthened and clarified by his encounter with the exemplary figure of Bonhoeffer."" --Alan Jacobs, Wheaton College ""Without loss of the provocative edge that has made him a vital and distinctive Christian voice, Hauerwas's Performing the Faith allows him to cast a retrospective eye on his work. At the same time, in a brilliant essay under the title of the book, he develops a profoundly important description of faithfulness."" --Dennis O'Brien, University of Rochester Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School, Duke University.

About this title

About the Author

Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School, Duke University.

From Booklist

If the cover and subtitle lead readers to expect a sustained engagement with Bonhoeffer, they will be disappointed. For better or worse, Hauerwas is an occasional writer, and this is another collection of the occasional pieces for which he is known, organized around a cluster of issues related to pacifism and pacifist response to the events of September 11, 2001, and their aftermath. It does contain an engagement with Bonhoeffer, one that will prompt many to wish it were more sustained. Bonhoeffer and Hauerwas are natural allies on the matter of faithful performance, and the combination of Bonhoeffer, Hauerwas, and the late John Howard Yoder, facilitated by Hauerwas' many pieces on Yoder, makes for a potentially revolutionary conversation. This collection, particularly its first part, constitutes a tentative, fragmentary, and provocative first step toward including Bonhoeffer in such a conversation. Tentativeness, fragmentariness, and provocation are almost certainly what Hauerwas had in mind, for they are consistent with his manner of working and are certainly what his readers have come to expect. Steven Schroeder
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About this edition

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 149822296X
• ISBN 13: 9781498222969
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 254