Scholars@Duke
Stanley M. Hauerwas

Stanley M. Hauerwas

Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Divinity School
Divinity School
stanley.hauerwas@duke.edu
Duke Box 90967, the Divinity School, Durham, NC 27708-0967
308 Old Divinity, Durham, NC 27708
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Selected Publications

Apokalyptisches Christentum, Demokratie und die Pandemie

Journal Article Evangelische Theologie · October 1, 2020 Full text Cite

On God and Democracy: Engaging Bretherton’s Christ and the Common Life

Journal Article Studies in Christian Ethics · May 1, 2020 In this article I try to introduce the overall structure of Bretherton’s book Christ and the Common Life by showing how each chapter displays how talk of God and talk of politics are mutually constitutive. In particular I try to show how Bretherton’s ‘case ... Full text Cite

Kierkegaard, Theology and the Academy

Chapter · January 1, 2019 Cite

Foreword

Book · January 1, 2018 Cite

Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth-Century Theology and Philosophy

Book · January 1, 2018 Wilderness Wanderings slashes through the tangled undergrowth that Christianity in America has become to clear a space for those for whom theology still matters. Writing to a generation of Christians that finds itself at once comfortably?at home? yet oddly ... Full text Cite

Foreword

Book · March 2, 2017 Cite

Creation and covenant

Chapter · January 1, 2017 The chapter argues that the common law is a useful place for ethicists who emphasize distinctive Christian claims to engage contemporary secular morality. The method of the common law is inductive, epistemologically humble, and case centered. Drawing on ke ... Full text Cite

BEGINNINGS: INTERROGATING HAUERWAS

Chapter · January 1, 2017 Stanley Hauerwas is arguably the most well-known figure in theological ethics of the last generation. Having published voluminously over the last 30 years, late in his career he has also published two volumes of essays discussing his corpus retrospectively ... Cite

The strength to be patient

Journal Article Christian Bioethics · April 1, 2016 To set medicine within the context of a good or faithful life requires virtues that give physicians and patients the skills to understand and practice the kind of care medicine is capable of giving. We begin with a prayer that names some of these virtues. ... Full text Cite

Jesus: The justice of god

Conference · April 1, 2016 Cite

Connecting: A response to Sean Larsen

Journal Article Scottish Journal of Theology · January 1, 2016 Full text Cite

How (not) to be a political theologian

Chapter · January 1, 2016 Cite

Sanctify them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified

Book · January 1, 2016 In Sanctify them in the Truth Stanley Hauerwas provides an overview of the development of theology and ethics. He considers how the two disciplines interrelate, discusses the nature of sin, how any account of sin requires a more determinative account of mo ... Cite

HOW to THINK THEOLOGICALLY about RIGHTS

Journal Article Journal of Law and Religion · October 1, 2015 In this essay I offer a nuanced account of my critique of rights language. I argue that my primary concern is not to discount the usefulness of rights language in contemporary expressions of legal and moral duties. Rather my concern is with the overrelianc ... Full text Cite

How to be Caught by the Holy Spirit

Chapter · January 1, 2015 Cite

Apokalyptisches Christentum, Demokratie und die Pandemie

Journal Article Evangelische Theologie · October 1, 2020 Full text Cite

On God and Democracy: Engaging Bretherton’s Christ and the Common Life

Journal Article Studies in Christian Ethics · May 1, 2020 In this article I try to introduce the overall structure of Bretherton’s book Christ and the Common Life by showing how each chapter displays how talk of God and talk of politics are mutually constitutive. In particular I try to show how Bretherton’s ‘case ... Full text Cite

Kierkegaard, Theology and the Academy

Chapter · January 1, 2019 Cite

Foreword

Book · January 1, 2018 Cite

Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth-Century Theology and Philosophy

Book · January 1, 2018 Wilderness Wanderings slashes through the tangled undergrowth that Christianity in America has become to clear a space for those for whom theology still matters. Writing to a generation of Christians that finds itself at once comfortably?at home? yet oddly ... Full text Cite

Foreword

Book · March 2, 2017 Cite

Creation and covenant

Chapter · January 1, 2017 The chapter argues that the common law is a useful place for ethicists who emphasize distinctive Christian claims to engage contemporary secular morality. The method of the common law is inductive, epistemologically humble, and case centered. Drawing on ke ... Full text Cite

BEGINNINGS: INTERROGATING HAUERWAS

Chapter · January 1, 2017 Stanley Hauerwas is arguably the most well-known figure in theological ethics of the last generation. Having published voluminously over the last 30 years, late in his career he has also published two volumes of essays discussing his corpus retrospectively ... Cite

The strength to be patient

Journal Article Christian Bioethics · April 1, 2016 To set medicine within the context of a good or faithful life requires virtues that give physicians and patients the skills to understand and practice the kind of care medicine is capable of giving. We begin with a prayer that names some of these virtues. ... Full text Cite

Jesus: The justice of god

Conference · April 1, 2016 Cite

Connecting: A response to Sean Larsen

Journal Article Scottish Journal of Theology · January 1, 2016 Full text Cite

How (not) to be a political theologian

Chapter · January 1, 2016 Cite

Sanctify them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified

Book · January 1, 2016 In Sanctify them in the Truth Stanley Hauerwas provides an overview of the development of theology and ethics. He considers how the two disciplines interrelate, discusses the nature of sin, how any account of sin requires a more determinative account of mo ... Cite

HOW to THINK THEOLOGICALLY about RIGHTS

Journal Article Journal of Law and Religion · October 1, 2015 In this essay I offer a nuanced account of my critique of rights language. I argue that my primary concern is not to discount the usefulness of rights language in contemporary expressions of legal and moral duties. Rather my concern is with the overrelianc ... Full text Cite

How to be Caught by the Holy Spirit

Chapter · January 1, 2015 Cite

Foreword

Journal Article Theology and Literature after Postmodernity · January 1, 2015 Cite

Theology and Literature after Postmodernity

Book · January 1, 2015 This volume deploys theology in a reconstructive approach to contemporary literary criticismto validate and exemplify theological readings of literary texts as a creative exercise. It engages in a dialogue with interdisciplinary approaches to literature in ... Cite

How I think I learned to think theologically

Journal Article American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly · September 1, 2014 Stanley Hauerwas draws upon the Aristotelian philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor to reflect upon his own approach to theology. Like MacIntyre and Taylor, Haurwas rejects the modern theoretical "position from nowhere" that demands "a ground ... Full text Cite

Niebuhr one more time: A response to Santurri

Journal Article Journal of Religious Ethics · September 1, 2013 In this essay Stanley Hauerwas offers a response to Edmund Santurri's review of Reinhold Niebuhr's An Interpretation of Christian Ethics. © 2013 Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc. ... Full text Cite

Sexing the ministry

Chapter · January 1, 2013 Cite

Bearing reality: A Christian meditation

Journal Article Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics · January 1, 2013 In this essay I draw on the work of novelist J. M. Coetzee and philosophers Cora Diamond, Stanley Cavell, and Stephen Mulhall to reflect on what it might mean to do Christian ethics without denying the "difficulty of reality." I then turn to John Howard Yo ... Full text Cite

Review of Rowan Williams's Faith in the Public Square

Journal Article Theology · January 1, 2013 Full text Cite

Hauerwas on "hauerwas and the law": Trying to have something to say

Journal Article Law and Contemporary Problems · December 20, 2012 Cite

Remembering how and what i think: A response to the JRE articles on Hauerwas

Journal Article Journal of Religious Ethics · June 1, 2012 In this essay Stanley Hauerwas reflects on his life's work by responding to the critical contributions found in the essays of this volume. Rather than trying to defend a "position," Hauerwas takes this opportunity to offer further insight into how he sees ... Full text Cite

Timeful friends: Living with the handicapped

Chapter · January 1, 2012 In this paper Hauerwas reflects on the significance of the L’Arche communities as exemplars of the true nature of Christian community. He explores the philosophy and theology of Jean Vanier as a mode of embodied theology. Hauerwas reflects critically on Mi ... Full text Cite

Reflection on dependency: A response to responses to my essays on disability

Chapter · January 1, 2012 In this final chapter Hauerwas responds to the papers that have been presented within this volume. ... Full text Cite

Having and learning to care for retarded children

Chapter · January 1, 2012 Hauerwas explores the nature of care. Exploring the notion of parenthood and the purpose of having children, he provides a theological framework which reframes our understanding of all children, including those whom we have chosen to label “mentally retard ... Full text Cite

Suffering the retarded: Should we prevent retardation?

Chapter · January 1, 2012 In this essay Hauerwas explores the question of suffering. Does developmental disability necessarily have to be equated with suffering? He explores the nature of suffering in its physical, psychological, and social dimensions and relates this understanding ... Full text Cite

The gesture of a truthful story

Chapter · January 1, 2012 Hauerwas presents a moral vision of the church and reframes the way in which we might understand Christian education. He presents a model of the church as a social ethic. The church does not simply do ethics, it is an ethic insofar as it embodies the gestu ... Full text Cite

Suffering, medical ethics, and the retarded child

Chapter · January 1, 2012 Hauerwas explores the nature of suffering as the term is applied to the lives of people with developmental disabilities. He asks the question “whose suffering is it that is relieved by such medical technologies as amniocentesis?" Is it the suffering of the ... Full text Cite

Must a patient be a person to be a patient? Or, my uncle charlie is not much of a person but he is still my uncle charlie

Chapter · January 1, 2012 Hauerwas urges us to move away from the concept of the ‘person.' He suggests that the concept of ‘person’ is inadequate but probably also misleading and even dangerous. As a regulative notion to define the relation between doctor and patient the concept of ... Full text Cite

The retarded, society, and the family: The dilemma of care

Chapter · January 1, 2012 This paper develops the theme of care which was begun in chapter 9. Here Hauerwas focuses on the importance of the family in the process of caring for people with developmental disabilities. He explores the motivation behind parenting and offers some pierc ... Full text Cite

The retarded and the criteria for the human

Chapter · January 1, 2012 The criteria for what is understood as authentic ‘humanhood’ have been much discussed in contemporary bioethics. Many of the ‘traditional’ arguments for the essence of humanness necessarily exclude people with developmental disabilities. Such definitions c ... Full text Cite

The church and the mentally handicapped: A continuing challenge to the imagination

Chapter · January 1, 2012 In this essay Hauerwas explores the experience of children with developmental disabilities and their parents. Arguing against the problemitization of disability Hauerwas asks the piercing question: What are children for? He presents a case for suggesting t ... Full text Cite

Community and diversity: The tyranny of normality

Chapter · January 1, 2012 Hauerwas explores dimensions of the question: ‘what is normal.' Exploring the ideas of normality and difference he offers a critique of the ‘principle of normality.' What is normality? Normality as it is often formulated can be dangerous for people with de ... Full text Cite

Witness

Chapter · January 1, 2012 Cite

A Dialogue Between a Theologian and a Lawyer

Journal Article Law & Contemporary Problems · 2012 Link to item Cite

Breaking Bread: Peace and War

Chapter · April 20, 2011 Full text Cite

The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics: Second Edition

Book · April 20, 2011 Featuring updates, revisions, and new essays from various scholars within the Christian tradition, The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics, Second Edition reveals how Christian worship is the force that shapes the moral life of Christians. Features new ... Full text Cite

What is radical about the ordinary?

Journal Article Scottish Journal of Theology · January 1, 2011 Link to item Cite

Pragmaticsm and Democracy: Assessing Jeffrey Stout's Democracy and Tradition

Journal Article Journal of the American Academy of Religion · June 2010 Full text Cite

On violence

Chapter · January 1, 2010 It is not easy to criticize a writer who has done so much good as C.S. Lewis. Yet I must here write critically because I am to address his views concerning violence and war. I am a pacifist. Lewis was not. Indeed, not only was he not a pacifist, he argued ... Full text Cite

"Writing-in" and "writing-out": a challenge to Modern Theology

Journal Article Modern Theology · January 1, 2010 Link to item Cite

Why Christian Ethics Was Invented

Chapter · November 26, 2007 Full text Cite

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Chapter · November 26, 2007 Full text Cite

Overture: Matthew: Making the Familiar Strange

Journal Article Homily Service · January 1, 2007 Full text Cite

The writing on the wall: Resources for furthur reflection

Journal Article Journal of Religion, Disability and Health · September 28, 2005 Stanley Hauerwas notes the strengths of M. J. Iozzio's article and then points to other writers who explore the issues of dependency, relationality, and remembering. Copyright © by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. ... Full text Cite

The retarded, society, and the family: The dilemma of care

Journal Article Journal of Religion, Disability and Health · January 1, 2005 This paper develops the theme of care which was begun in chapter 9. Here Hauerwas focuses on the importance of the family in the process of caring for people with developmental disabilities. He explores the motivation behind parenting and offers some pierc ... Full text Cite

Suffering, medical ethics, and the retarded child

Journal Article Journal of Religion, Disability and Health · January 1, 2005 Hauerwas explores the nature of suffering as the term is applied to the lives of people with developmental disabilities. He asks the question “whose suffering is it that is relieved by such medical technologies as amniocentesis?” Is it the suffering of the ... Full text Cite

Community and diversity: The tyranny of normality

Journal Article Journal of Religion, Disability and Health · January 1, 2005 Hauerwas explores dimensions of the question: ‘what is normal.’ Exploring the ideas of normality and difference he offers a critique of the ‘principle of normality.’ What is normality? Normality as it is often formulated can be dangerous for people with de ... Full text Cite

Having and learning to care for retarded children

Journal Article Journal of Religion, Disability and Health · January 1, 2005 Hauerwas explores the nature of care. Exploring the notion of parenthood and the purpose of having children, he provides a theological framework which reframes our understanding of all children, including those whom we have chosen to label “mentally retard ... Full text Cite

Must a patient be a person to be a patient?: Or, my uncle charlie is not much of a person but he is still my uncle charlie

Journal Article Journal of Religion, Disability and Health · January 1, 2005 Hauerwas urges us to move away from the concept of the ‘person.’ He suggests that the concept of ‘person’ is inadequate but probably also misleading and even dangerous. As a regulative notion to define the relation between doctor and patient the concept of ... Full text Cite

The retarded and the criteria for the human

Journal Article Journal of Religion, Disability and Health · January 1, 2005 The criteria for what is understood as authentic ‘humanhood’ have been much discussed in contemporary bioethics. Many of the ‘traditional’ arguments for the essence of humanness necessarily exclude people with developmental disabilities. Such definitions c ... Full text Cite

The gesture of a truthful story

Journal Article Journal of Religion, Disability and Health · January 1, 2005 Hauerwas presents a moral vision of the church and reframes the way in which we might understand Christian education. He presents a model of the church as a social ethic. The church does not simply do ethics, it is an ethic insofar as it embodies the gestu ... Full text Cite

Suffering the retarded: Should we prevent retardation?

Journal Article Journal of Religion, Disability and Health · January 1, 2005 In this essay Hauerwas explores the question of suffering. Does developmental disability necessarily have to be equated with suffering? He explores the nature of suffering in its physical, psychological, and social dimensions and relates this understanding ... Full text Cite

Timeful friends: Living with the handicapped

Journal Article Journal of Religion, Disability and Health · January 1, 2005 In this paper Hauerwas reflects on the significance of the L’Arche communities as exemplars of the true nature of Christian community. He explores the philosophy and theology of Jean Vanier as a mode of embodied theology. Hauerwas reflects critically on Mi ... Full text Cite

The church and the mentally handicapped: A continuing challenge to the imagination

Journal Article Journal of Religion, Disability and Health · January 1, 2005 In this essay Hauerwas explores the experience of children with developmental disabilities and their parents. Arguing against the problemitization of disability Hauerwas asks the piercing question: What are children for? He presents a case for suggesting t ... Full text Cite

Reflection on dependency: A response to responses to my essays on disability

Journal Article Journal of Religion, Disability and Health · January 1, 2005 In this final chapter Hauerwas responds to the papers that have been presented within this volume. © 2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. ... Full text Cite

The case for abolition of war in the twenty-first century

Journal Article Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics · January 1, 2005 IN THIS ESSAY WE ASK WHETHER CHRISTIANS HAVE THE RESOURCES AND the commitment to make the theological-ethical case for ending war as an instrument of international and national policy in an authentically Christian, intellectually coherent, and practically ... Full text Cite

Between christian ethics and religious ethics: How Should Graduate Students Be Trained?

Journal Article Journal of Religious Ethics · January 1, 2003 By focusing on questions concerning what kind of training graduate students in theology and ethics and religious ethics should receive, I try to initiate a conversation we need to have about the kind of work the JRE should foster. © 2003 Journal of Religio ... Full text Cite

September 11, 2001: A pacifist response

Journal Article South Atlantic Quarterly · December 1, 2002 Full text Cite

The art of description: How John Noonan reasons

Journal Article Notre Dame Law Review · April 1, 2001 Cite

The Truth about God: The Decalogue as Condition for Truthful Speech

Journal Article Neue Zeitschrift fur Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie · January 1, 1998 Full text Cite

Christian Ethics in America (and the JRE) : A Report on a Book I Will Not Write.

Journal Article Journal of Religious Ethics · January 1, 1998 Link to item Cite

Virtue, Description and Friendship: A thought experiment in Catholic moral theology

Journal Article Irish Theological Quarterly · December 1, 1996 Full text Cite

How Christian ethics became medical ethics: the case of Paul Ramsey.

Journal Article Christian bioethics · March 1995 Over the last century Christian ethics has moved from an attempt to Christianize the social order to a quandary over whether being Christian unduly biases how medical ethics is done. This movement can be viewed as the internal development of protestant lib ... Full text Cite

Communitarians and medical ethicists: or "why I am none of the above".

Journal Article Christian scholar's review · March 1994 Recent medical ethics has been shaped by liberal presuppositions, but in challenging those assumptions, Christians must be careful not to adopt communitarian assumptions instead, which tend to promote community as a good in itself. Rather, argues Stanley H ... Cite

Why I am neither a communitarian nor a medical ethicist.

Journal Article The Hastings Center report · November 1993 Cite

In praise of Centesimus annus.

Journal Article Theology · November 1, 1992 Link to item Cite

House calls to Cardinal Jackson.

Journal Article Second opinion (Park Ridge, Ill.) · April 1992 Cite

Catholicism and ethics: a reply to the editorial entitled "Sobering thoughts".

Journal Article North Carolina medical journal · February 1987 Cite

Will the Real Sectarian Stand Up?

Journal Article Theology Today · January 1, 1987 Full text Cite

Medical care for the poor: finite resources, infinite need.

Journal Article Health progress (Saint Louis, Mo.) · December 1985 Health care in this nation is becoming multitiered--with the poor in jeopardy of being excluded from even minimal care--because of the mistaken belief that money can buy unlimited health care for everyone. But our medical resources are finite, and choices ... Cite

The Gesture of a Truthful Story

Journal Article Theology Today · January 1, 1985 “Put simply, religious education is the training in those gestures through which we learn the story of God and God's will for our lives”. It is ongoing training in the skills we need in order to live faithful to the kingdom that has been initiated in Jesus ... Full text Cite

The family as a school for character

Journal Article Religious Education · January 1, 1985 Full text Cite

Why the truth demands truthfulness: An imperious engagement with hartt

Journal Article Journal of the American Academy of Religion · March 1, 1984 Full text Cite

Abortion: why the arguments fail.

Journal Article Hospital progress · January 1980 Christians have so far failed to show why abortion is an affront to Christian convictions. Rather than arguing when life begins, Christians must show that Christianity as a way of life which recognizes God as Lord of life makes abortion unthinkable. ... Cite

Reflections on suffering, death and medicine.

Journal Article Ethics in science & medicine · January 1979 Cite

Religious concepts of brain death and associated problems.

Journal Article Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · November 1978 Full text Cite

Ethical issues in the use of human subjects.

Journal Article The Linacre quarterly · August 1978 Cite

Memory, community and the reasons for living: theological and ethical reflections on suicide and euthanasia.

Journal Article Journal of the American Academy of Religion. American Academy of Religion · September 1976 Full text Cite

Understanding homosexuality : a symposium.

Journal Article Pastoral Psychology · March 1, 1976 A psychiatrist, an ethicist, and a pastoral counselor comment on the ways in which they conceive of homosexuality in their work, reflection, and efforts at counseling. Although each writes in isolation from the others, a surprising degree of consensus emer ... Link to item Cite

The demands and limits of care--ethical reflections on the moral dilemma of neonatal intensive care.

Journal Article The American journal of the medical sciences · March 1975 Decisions regarding the care of deformed and retarded infants pose difficult ethical and moral dilemmas for both physicians and parents. Ethical inquiry regarding such questions must be concerned with how we see and understand the dilemma for conceptualiz ... Cite

The moral limits of population control.

Journal Article Thought · September 1974 Full text Cite

The retarded and the criteria for the human.

Journal Article The Linacre quarterly · November 1973 Cite

Abortion: the agent's perspective.

Journal Article The American ecclesiastical review · February 1973 Cite

Aslan and the new morality.

Journal Article Religious Education · November 1, 1972 Link to item Cite

The significance of vision : toward an aesthetic ethic.

Journal Article Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses · June 1, 1972 Link to item Cite

Theology and the New American Culture: A Problematic Relationship

Journal Article The Review of Politics · January 1, 1972 Full text Cite

Situation Ethics, Moral Notions, and Moral Theology

Journal Article Irish Theological Quarterly · January 1, 1971 Full text Cite