Back in November I posted here about a conference held last year at Duke law school on the theology of Stanley Hauerwas and the law. There I expressed some doubt that much of use would be discovered. Given the occasional, frequently over-the-top comment of Hauerwas and his epigones (apparently known as Hauerbots in some circles), I thought that the only meaningful stance of Hauerwas toward the law would be criticism. Not that there's anything wrong with criticism, I believe it's a distinct part of the calling of Christian academics. Yet criticism alone become tiresome and seems easily to degenerate into hectoring.
But I may have been wrong. Perhaps a Hauerwasian take on the law has something to offer to those called to participate in the life of the law. At least that's the burden of David Skeel's piece, Hauerwasian Christian Legal Theory (abstract here). Skeel first identifies what makes so much of Hauerwas's writings on the law and social matters generally outré, a stance that Skeel identifies as prophetic engagement that "typically involves standing up against the violence of the state, or directly opposing the state in other ways." Skeel distinguishes the prophetic stance from the participatory in which the commentator makes positive suggestions for how a particular social problem might be solved.
Hauerwas typically assumes the prophetic stance, according to Skeel, for two reasons. First because Hauerwas locates the center of the Christian voice in the the church. Or, perhaps more specifically, as the Church. The Church bears witness of God's redemption of the world; it doesn't exist to make the world run more smoothly. After all, there's something profoundly and deeply wrong with the world that makes its redemption necessary. In turn, this suggests that helping the the modern liberal state help itself along the path of perdition is hardly the Church's calling. Even worse, providing that state (or any other) with a justification for its idolatrous self-sufficiency is contrary to the Church's calling.
Secondly, the Church lacks what could be called the institutional competence to give useful advice to the modern state. The work of the state in the modern political order is simply too complex for the Church as an institution to provide detailed policy advice. The question of at exactly what rate should capital gains be taxed not only presumes the legitimacy of market capitalism--a presupposition Hauerwas believes the Church should question--but is not the kind of question that the Church could meaningfully answer. To the extent the Church functions as a policy think tank it becomes, in Hauerwas's terminology, invisible, like the Social Gospel movement of the early twentieth century.
Skeel does a fine job, however, of teasing out the occasions when Hauerwas has taken a participatory stance, and how those examples might guide the Church with respect to other issues. Hauerwas's two forays, albeit rather limited, into political participation have been the Civil Rights Movement and abortion. The Civil Rights Movement garners Hauerwas's blessing principally because of its church-centeredness. The Church was not co-opted by politics, it stood with those who themselves were excluded from the political process and did so as the Church, not as a political player. Of course the Civil Rights Movement was also a political movement and involved more than the Church but apparently for Hauerwas the balance was sufficiently opposed to the ways of the world and the American political order as it then existed to justify a participatory stance.
Hauerwas's blessing of the participation of the Church in the politics of abortion are nuanced. At the outset he criticizes the unipolar view of those who advocate the sanctity of life. After all, he asserts, life is not the ultimate value; such a position is more Kantian than Christian. Yet he concludes that "the Christian prohibition of abortion is but the negative side of their positive commitment to welcome new life into their community." In other words, openness to God's work of redemption in the world should make us open to inviting all to join his work, and that includes those not yet born. Even here the voice of the Church should be first internal, encouraging its members to take time for all their children, and secondarily by supporting those outside the Church who are so heavy-laden that their children seem like burdens. Only then should the Church decry the state's failure to protect life.
In the end, Skeel finds much to commend in Hauerwas's advocacy of only a limited role for social-political engagement by the Church. I find much good in such an approach as well but with one large caveat: both Hauerwas and Skeel, it seems, limit their understanding of the Church to the organism, i.e., the body of Christ manifest in the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments. Is the biblical understanding of "Church" so limited? In other words, might "Church" comprise both the organism whose public role should be quite tempered and more broadly Christians who, as such, play a role in whatever polity they find themselves? The Kingdom of God, maybe? Grist for another post.
But I may have been wrong. Perhaps a Hauerwasian take on the law has something to offer to those called to participate in the life of the law. At least that's the burden of David Skeel's piece, Hauerwasian Christian Legal Theory (abstract here). Skeel first identifies what makes so much of Hauerwas's writings on the law and social matters generally outré, a stance that Skeel identifies as prophetic engagement that "typically involves standing up against the violence of the state, or directly opposing the state in other ways." Skeel distinguishes the prophetic stance from the participatory in which the commentator makes positive suggestions for how a particular social problem might be solved.
Hauerwas typically assumes the prophetic stance, according to Skeel, for two reasons. First because Hauerwas locates the center of the Christian voice in the the church. Or, perhaps more specifically, as the Church. The Church bears witness of God's redemption of the world; it doesn't exist to make the world run more smoothly. After all, there's something profoundly and deeply wrong with the world that makes its redemption necessary. In turn, this suggests that helping the the modern liberal state help itself along the path of perdition is hardly the Church's calling. Even worse, providing that state (or any other) with a justification for its idolatrous self-sufficiency is contrary to the Church's calling.
Secondly, the Church lacks what could be called the institutional competence to give useful advice to the modern state. The work of the state in the modern political order is simply too complex for the Church as an institution to provide detailed policy advice. The question of at exactly what rate should capital gains be taxed not only presumes the legitimacy of market capitalism--a presupposition Hauerwas believes the Church should question--but is not the kind of question that the Church could meaningfully answer. To the extent the Church functions as a policy think tank it becomes, in Hauerwas's terminology, invisible, like the Social Gospel movement of the early twentieth century.
Skeel does a fine job, however, of teasing out the occasions when Hauerwas has taken a participatory stance, and how those examples might guide the Church with respect to other issues. Hauerwas's two forays, albeit rather limited, into political participation have been the Civil Rights Movement and abortion. The Civil Rights Movement garners Hauerwas's blessing principally because of its church-centeredness. The Church was not co-opted by politics, it stood with those who themselves were excluded from the political process and did so as the Church, not as a political player. Of course the Civil Rights Movement was also a political movement and involved more than the Church but apparently for Hauerwas the balance was sufficiently opposed to the ways of the world and the American political order as it then existed to justify a participatory stance.
Hauerwas's blessing of the participation of the Church in the politics of abortion are nuanced. At the outset he criticizes the unipolar view of those who advocate the sanctity of life. After all, he asserts, life is not the ultimate value; such a position is more Kantian than Christian. Yet he concludes that "the Christian prohibition of abortion is but the negative side of their positive commitment to welcome new life into their community." In other words, openness to God's work of redemption in the world should make us open to inviting all to join his work, and that includes those not yet born. Even here the voice of the Church should be first internal, encouraging its members to take time for all their children, and secondarily by supporting those outside the Church who are so heavy-laden that their children seem like burdens. Only then should the Church decry the state's failure to protect life.
In the end, Skeel finds much to commend in Hauerwas's advocacy of only a limited role for social-political engagement by the Church. I find much good in such an approach as well but with one large caveat: both Hauerwas and Skeel, it seems, limit their understanding of the Church to the organism, i.e., the body of Christ manifest in the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments. Is the biblical understanding of "Church" so limited? In other words, might "Church" comprise both the organism whose public role should be quite tempered and more broadly Christians who, as such, play a role in whatever polity they find themselves? The Kingdom of God, maybe? Grist for another post.
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