BOOKS, FAITH, WORLD & MORE

A Testimony of Three Theologians

A Review of The Priestly Kingdom, of Hannah's Child, and of Out of Babylon

Daniel Hertzler

The Priestly Kingdom, by John Howard Yoder. University of Notre Dame Press, 2008.

Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir, by Stanley Hauerwas. Eerdmans, 2010.

Out of Babylon, by Walter Brueggemann. Abingdon Press, 2010.

In Christian Century, October 19, 2010, Stanley Hauerwas published a list of "5 picks in essential theology of the past 25 years." Second on the list is The Priestly Kingdom and fourth is James Wm. McClendon’s three volumes; the first one, Ethics, I reviewed in the first issue of Dreamseeker Magazine, Summer 2001.

I was aware of The Priestly Kingdom when it first appeared in 1984, but I had quite forgotten what it said. So reading it was a new experience except for Yoder’s familiar style. Yoder would not accept the sectarian label which some would apply in an apparent effort to minimize the impact of radical ethics. In "The Hermeneutics of Peoplehood," he asserts that "worship is a communal cultivation of an alternative construction of society and of history." 

After listing a group of alternative heroes, he observes that "How pointedly and at what points this celebrated construction will set us at odds with our neighbors will of course depend on the neighbors."
Further, "One of the reasons people deny the faith is, in fact (I suspect) that they think everyone ought to have to believe; therefore they think that the meaning of belief must be adjusted so that it is acceptable or even irresistible to everyone. This is why the sharp edges of particularity must be honed off" (43-44). 

This is essential Yoder; when I read it I asked myself why I did not think to say that. The answer, of course, is because I’m not John Howard Yoder.

These quotations are from "Part I: Foundations." There are two more parts: "Part II: History" and "Part III: The Public Realm." Two chapters in the third part are of particular interest. In "The Christian Case for Democracy," Yoder   takes as his text Jesus’ comments in Luke 22: 24-27 on how rulers perform, along with some illumination from Weber, Troeltsch, and the Niebuhr brothers. 

He observes, however, that government today involves more than domination and violence. "When modern social orders assign to government the administration of many other kinds of services, it is by no means necessary to apply to them all the same church-world dualism which the New Testament applied to servanthood and the sword" (165). 

In other words, some forms of working for government may be seen as Christian vocation. Although he finds that Jesus’ critique of the attitudes of rulers is basic, Yoder concludes that "The least oppressive form of government is what our custom calls ‘ rule by the people’" (171).

The last chapter, "Civil Religion in America," describes in some detail how this religion works and ends with a five-point critique. He finally observes that "We call a nonviolent man ‘Lord’ and with his name on our lips deepen the ditch between rich and poor. We call ‘Lord’ the man who told us to love our enemies and we polarize the globe in the name of Christian values." This, he says, "is idolatry" (195).

Again from an Anabaptist point of view this seems obvious. Why did not the rest of us think to say it?

For some 30 years I have read and listened to Stanley Hauerwas. I met him once, but now in his memoir I get a better understanding of the man. I find as I had heard before that he grew up in a bricklaying family in Texas. It was a cussing family, and after he went to Yale University and became an academic ethicist he kept cussing until he found a magazine article which identified him as "‘the Foul Mouth Theologian.’" This made him "quit using the most offensive words. I simply became tired of and bored with having that aspect of my life made such a big deal" (120).

Hauerwas continually puts himself down. As he says it, he is a bricklayer who somehow went to college and then to Yale University. He stumbled into philosophy, theology, and ethics. He obtained a doctor’s degree and implies that when he got it he was not quite sure what to do, but it seemed he was expected to teach. So he found a teaching assignment at Augustana College.

When that assignment was apparently running out, he just happened to get into Notre Dame and later on to Duke University. He implies that his academic life has been an adventure, one surprise after another. Yet despite himself he has to admit some extraordinary accomplishments.

Of particular interest to me is his account of how he learned to believe in peace from John Howard Yoder. It began when he found a Yoder pamphlet here and there. Then he went to interview Yoder. The interview was not what we would call a success. Yoder was not particularly impressed by this interest in him. But he made available a pile of manuscripts, and Hauerwas acknowledges freely that Yoder converted him to believe that Christians are called to be pacifists.

I find it also of interest that he reflects on Yoder’s problem with women and how the church disciplined him. This summary helps me better understand what happened and why. He writes, "If I learned anything from John Howard Yoder, it is not to trust yourself to know yourself" (242). He describes how Yoder perceived that men and women should touch each other non-sexually. He began to practice this, but it was perceived as harassment of women.

The church attempted to discipline him, a difficult assignment when the person who had misbehaved was so intelligent. But Hauerwas reports that John was received back into the Prairie Street Mennonite Church on the last Sunday of 1997. He died on December 30 of that year.

"How John’s community responded to his inappropriate relations with women, for all the ambiguities and confusions associated with that response, is also a lesson in its own right. It is a testimony to a community that has learned over time that the work of peace is slow, painful and hard" (246).

A major theme in the memoir is the mental illness of Stanley’s first wife, Anne. This began to be apparent soon after they were married although he reports that there were signs before hand which he was not able to interpret. They had one son, Adam, and Stanley became the major caregiver for him. For 24 years he tried to support his wife as he was able, allowing her to choose the house they would buy when they moved from South Bend, Indiana to Durham, North Carolina. She finally left him and he was to find another wife, Paula, a true soul mate.

In the Introduction he writes, "I’ve written this memoir in an effort to understand myself, something that would be impossible without my friends. . . . It is also about God—the God who has forced me to be who I am" (xl). In the Epilogue, he returns to the question of why he wrote. "Friends, particularly younger friends, began to ask me to give an account of my life. . . .

"I would like to think that this book might fall into the category of ‘testimony’ but I’m not confident that what I have done deserves that description" (285). At any rate, people who have read and considered Hauerwas’ theological and ethical writings will find this account of interest.

Walter Brueggemann is an Old Testament scholar. One might not expect him to be writing a book on peace. But then Brueggemann has considered the Jewish exile and restoration and reflected on the message of the prophets. These become the background for this book

He takes note of the Jewish experience leading up to Babylon, then comes to rest on their life after Babylon, when Persia was the dominant empire. Persia permitted Jews to return from Babylon.
Jerusalem was rebuilt, but as Brueggemann observes, this was not a free Jerusalem. "In the Persian Empire . . . the local tradition vis-a-vis the empire had to be one of accommodation and resistance; accommodation enough to survive and prosper, resistance enough to maintain a distinctive identity and ethic" (131).

He says that "Doin’ Time in Persia" is a model for the U.S. churches confronting the U.S. empire. That America is an empire is documented by references beginning with the Monroe Doctrine and leading to the Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt, the Yalta agreements, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the invasion of Iraq.

He finds the American churches specializing "in captivity in selling out to the dominant culture" (151). He suggests that "our engagement with empire can quickly become a case of the frog in the pot of boiling water. A little support of war, a little indifference about the environment, a little disregard of poverty, a failure to notice racism or sexism . . . a little of this and a little of that, and all too soon comes a lethal society."

He cannot imagine the churches resisting the empire "except perhaps in the most sectarian practices of peace churches or among Pentecostals. . . . So what are the bishops, priests, pastors, and teachers of the church to do? . . . He concludes that "A responsible hermeneutic for the church amid empire would teach us that social analysis is always taking place in Scripture. The texts constantly engage in the contest between power and truth telling, a contest we would do well to join ourselves" (152).

I have not perceived any sort of connection between Brueggemann and Yoder or Hauerwas although he makes the above casual reference to the peace churches. But Brueggemann makes effective use of the prophets and the Jews as models for the church using the same ultimate source as Yoder and Hauerwas.

In a Christian Century article "In the Meantime" (August 23, 2011), Richard J. Mouw uses Abraham Kuyper and Leslie Newbigin as authorities to support his position in relation to the American empire. He is somewhat familiar with Anabaptism and notes in passing Resident Aliens published in 1989 by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon. He indicates that their position is not his position, and he justifies participation of Christians in the police and the military. However in the end he acknowledges "the Constantinian danger of forming an unhealthy-and unfaithful-alliance between the church and political power."

If he really wants to consider this issue and is not willing to deal with the Mennonite Yoder and the two Methodists Hauerwas and Willimon, maybe he would be willing to study the position of Brueggemann, who is in his Reformed tradition.

As for us with our Anabaptist history, if as time goes on our radical juices are failing, we may find renewal in these three testimonies. They outline a Christian way of life which is less than comfortable with the secularized religion of the American empire.

—Daniel Hertzler, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, is an editor, writer, Sunday school teacher, and instructor for the correspondence course, Pastoral Studies Distance Education.