Reviews for Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir

The average rating for Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-06-20 00:00:00 Noel Gassett Stanley Hauerwas - the blue-collar, cursing theologian - is a beast. I mean this not in the British sense (though he can be that sort of beast if you are on the opposite side of a theological debate with him), but in that he devours books, works with dizzying rapidity, and writes more than most people read. Yet the "vitae" within his "curriculum vitae" is equally interesting. His life has been a long struggle to understand the God of the Bible within the context of being an apprentice bricklayer, a student, a teacher, a father, and a husband to a mentally ill wife. His struggle to live with his wife forms the main conflict of his story - how do you love someone who cannot receive your love; how do you live with someone so delusional she might kill you in your sleep? For twenty five years, Hauerwas dealt with this conflict as he continued to publish and dedicate his works to a wife who gradually hated him more and more. During most of his life, Hauerwas seems to have been a lukewarm Christian by his own estimation. He never could pray - until he began to write prayers to read before class at the end of his career. He also seems to have had a meager diet of Scripture. How does such a preeminent theologian scrape by with such a limited engagement with the discipline of prayer and reading Scripture? By his own admonition, he wasn't even sure he was a Christian when he began teaching. But Hauerwas' story isn't about his own crappy spirituality, but about how the Triune God shaped and molded him over the years until he finally become a Christian - one who could respond prophetically to 9/11, who could write a heartfelt eulogy for his beloved father, or who could endure so much abuse from his wife without returning it. Despite his unspiritual disposition, Hauerwas was formed by a Master Craftsman and built up like well-layed brick house. Another big theme in Hauerwas' story is the way in which friendship sustained him. Influenced by Aristotle and Aquinas, Stanley sees friendship as a virtue - something that we work at and is formed little by little over time. It is the iron that sharpens our own iron. Of course, Hauerwas' wit and sardonic humor come through often in this memoir. For instance, commenting on what it is like to teach at a small liberal arts college, he blurted out in a staff meeting that "our task is to give parents the impression that by sending their daughters to Augustana [the college he was at] they would not lose the virginity they had already lost in high school." Ouch! Yet I can guarantee he was naming more truth than the school's admission brochure. Ultimately, for those trying to use Christianity to insulate themselves from the world, he would always quickly point out that the world is present in the church too. Hauerwas' life is marked by erudition, but at the end of the day it's his prophetic character and ability to name (as he puts it) "bullshit in the church" that marks him as an important character in theology. At the end of his life, Hauerwas did live into his mother's prayer that he would be dedicated to the church; he is Hannah's child - a Samuel for yet another wayward generation.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-12-01 00:00:00 Robert Taylor Splendid book. Hauerwwas is a theologian on the faculty of Duke Divinity School. Texas boy--graduated from Southwestern in Georgetown, TX. His father was a brick layer and so was he. Very powerful voice. Only book I have ever written quotes from as I read it. Here are some of the passages that caught my attention-- "I have, moreover, tried to live a life I hope is unintelligible if the God we Christians worship does not exist." "The first task of the church is not to make the world more just but to make the world the world." "to be a Christian meant that you could never protect yourself from the truth." "Jesus does not tell us that we should try to be poor in spirit, or meek, or peacemakers. He simply says that many who are called into his kingdom will find themselves so constituted." "We are complex creatures constituted by contradictions we refuse to acknowledge." "But if God is the God of Jesus Christ, then God does not need our protection. What God demands is not protection, but truth." "the problem with most pastors and theologians was that the way they went about their business did not require the existence of God." "Change, if it is significant, takes time. At least change takes time if you remember that finally any change that is accomplished nonviolently comes about through persuasion."