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EMINENT THEOLOGIAN STANLEY HAUERWAS TO SPEAK AT OBERLIN COLLEGE SEPT. 14
SEPTEMBER. 5, 2003—Stanley Hauerwas—one of the most respected and controversial theologians in the United States—will give a free public talk Sunday, Sept. 14 at 7:30 p.m. in Oberlin College’s Lewis Center for Environmental Studies, 122 Elm Street.
"Bonhoeffer on Truth and Politics" will be presented under the auspices of the Office of Chaplains and the Mead-Swing Lecture Committee.
Hauerwas is Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School. In 2001, he became the first American theologian in four decades to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectureship at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland—a distinction many philosophers and theologians consider equal to a Nobel Prize.
In 2001, he received Duke’s Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award; saw The Hauerwas Reader published; appeared on Oprah; and was profiled in TIME magazine, which also named him America’s most influential theologian.
"Hauerwas is contemporary theology's foremost intellectual provocateur," said Jean Bethke Elshtain, professor of social and political ethics at the University of Chicago, in the TIME profile. "His depth charges are just as frequently aimed within that world as outside it."
A thorn in the side of Christian complacency for more than 30 years, Hauerwas recently declared that debates such as the one raging in the Episcopal Church on the consecration of a gay bishop reveals "a myopic vision. …The church could do more good by focusing on world-wide issues like poverty and hunger."
Hauerwas calls Christians to be "resident aliens," confronting worldly issues from a radical perspective of faith. "Christianity should be threatening to America's capitalist way of life," he has said. "Affluence is in direct conflict to Christ's teachings. We're just too damn rich. I’m rich. I'm a full professor at Duke University. I never thought I'd make this kind of money." He counts himself among those who "worship wealth instead of God."
Although Hauerwas’ fundamental interest is in the development of moral discourse within the contemporary Christian community, he lectures widely to church and academic audiences and has written hundreds of essays and articles on dozens of topics.
Avoiding highly technical monographs, he insists that the best theology is most often found in sermons, homilies, prayers, and popular writing and posits that the theologian who is faithful must engage the pressing issues of the culture rather than hide behind impenetrable jargon. He has written 25 books, among them The Peaceable Kingdom, A Community of Character, and (with Will Willimon) Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony.
Media Contact: Betty Gabrielli
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