A Better Hope
Resources for a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy, and Postmodernity
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
By his own admission never one to duck a good fight, Stanley Hauerwas has in the past three decades established himself as one of our most important and most disputatious theologians. With A Better Hope, he concentrates on the constructive case for the truth and power of the church and its faith, "since Christians cannot afford to let ourselves be defined by what we are against. Whatever or whomever we are against, we are so only because God has given us so much to be for."
Hauerwas here crystallizes and extends profound criticisms of America, liberalism, capitalism, and postmodernism, but also identifies unlikely allies (such as Chicago Archbishop Francis Cardinal George) and locates surprising resources for Christian survival (such as mystery novels). Interlocutors along the way include Reinhold Niebuhr, John Courtney Murray, and, in a significant and previously unpublished essay, social gospeller Walter Rauschenbusch.
Never boring and often telling, A Better Hope demonstrates how a thinker so often accused of being "tribal" and "sectarian" is at the same time one of few contemporary theologians read not just by other theologians, but by political scientists, philosophers, medical ethicists, law professors, and literary theorists.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
American Christians are a people of hope. But according to Hauerwas, professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School, they are inclined to misplace it. They look for salvation in capitalism, in democracy, in postmodernity and in their practical progeny: modern medicine, seeker-sensitive worship and "ethics" (divorced from theology). In this volume, Hauerwas, a committed pacifist who nevertheless loves a good fight, argues that the church offers a better hope and provides resources to resist the idolatrous assumptions that underlie these Enlightenment-bred systems of thought and action. Written in his classic styleDsweeping, engaging and provocativeDthis book does not necessarily break any new ground, but Hauerwas is typically unapologetic about that. ("Given the entrenchment of the position against which I am arguing, I can only say again what I have said before in the hope of establishing new habits.") Since this is a collection of essays written at other times for other purposes, no easily discernable argument connects the book from start to finish. His writing is sometimes more fierce than tight and, of course, some essays are better than others (the essays on worship and on being "sinsick" are especially good). Those who know Hauerwas will enjoy this, and those who don't may consider it a fine way to become acquainted with his thought.
