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

Hauerwas, Stanley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1587430762 ISBN 13: 9781587430763

Publisher: Baker Academic & Brazos Press, 2004

Synopsis

September 11, Afghanistan, Iraq--more than ever, this is a time for the church to be taking up the question of what, as Christians, our response to violence should be. In Performing the Faith, Stanley Hauerwas revisits the familiar territory of political nonviolence through discussion of the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer-Christian ethicist, theologian, and by some definitions, martyr. This book is an intriguing commentary on Bonhoeffer's bold claim that if our common life rests on lies and injustice, we cannot be a community of peace. Pastors, seminarians, and those interested in Christian ethics are among the many who will be interested in this new word from an unwavering, faithful voice.

About this title

About the Author

Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University. His previous books include With the Grain of the Universe, A Better Hope, and The Peaceable Kingdom.

Review

''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 --Wipf and Stock Publishers

About this edition

• Publisher: Baker Academic & Brazos Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1587430762
• ISBN 13: 9781587430763
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256