The official resource for all things Stanley Hauerwas.

"I take it to be crucial that Christians must live in a manner that their lives are unintelligible if the God we worship in Jesus Christ does not exist."

Stanley Hauerwas changed my life.  As an undergraduate aiming for law school, he told me “Lawyers are a dime a dozen” and got me thinking about graduate studies in theology.  As a grad student, he was my Doktorvater.  From him I...

I was a first year student at Princeton Theological Seminary, and, as a side-hustle to pay the bills, I took a gig waiting tables at the weekly faculty lunch. One Wednesday early in my first semester, I stood like a wallflower and listened as one of the theology professors held court complaining about someone named Stanley Hauerwas. The griping professor’s forehead was red and beating, and...

I didn't realize quite the impact Dr. Hauerwas would have on my life until it was too late. His written work, essays, and conversations have challenged me to not only take the Gospel seriously but to take myself seriously as a minister of the gospel. It is because of him that I consider the theological role of the pastor for the community as important as the pastoral role we are called to play.

Dr. Hauerwas was my ethics teacher at Duke Divinity. On the very first day of class, he began by addressing the crowded room with his signature Texan accent and said, “Let us pray.” We, the students, dutifully bowed our heads in reverence and waited for the prayer to begin. This was the entirety of the prayer: “Frightening Lord, teaching this class scares the shit out of me. But perhaps...

Stanley was the first critique of the church that I had trusted; he smelled too much like Jesus. His life has been spent trying to pry the church's head from it's own ass. Builds strength of character.

In an age where the lie seems to be coin of the realm, Stanley Hauerwas offers the world what he always has—the truth. It’s a truth he’s been telling most of his life and one which Christians still struggle with. Who deserves our allegiance? Hauerwas has always answered that question with answers few want to hear—Christianity is largely irrelevant to the world because it too quickly sells...

My life and ministry have been blessed by Stanley's friendship.  One learns quite early in a friendship with Stanley, not to ask him his opinion if you do not want the unvarnished truth.  Now, in this wonderful gathering, you too can get the full-frontal Hauerwas.  Get ready to be smacked by the truth in Jesus' name!  One more thing, it has been said of Stanley, as it was said of Barth, that...

Stanley Hauerwas is a rare gift to the church because he refuses to be bound by the rules of the academy in the same way that he refuses to allow us to confine Israel and the church’s God within the walls of our theology. He is a rare gift insofar as he amplifies the voices of those whom establishment theologians would rather ignore in their discomfort—voices like the cognitively impaired...

Quite simply, no one has shaped my theology more than Stanley Hauerwas.

Stanley Hauerwas has been the kind of creative thinker and provocative theologian our age requires. He has been a particular mentor to me and others like me who are trying to sort out a practical theology within the American and secular contexts in which we find ourselves. He is a saint of my devotion, not because I agree with him in all things, but because he has a way of making me...

For many of us caught in the deserts of American Protestantism, Stanley was the fresh drink of water we needed. He opened new ground to be ploughed, for new seed to be sown, so a new crop of theologians could bear witness to God’s work in Christ for the cultural challenges we are facing. He has left an indelible mark on us, changing the way we do and think theology, indeed opening...

The morning of my dissertation defense, right before my defense time, I said a Eucharist in Goodson Chapel to offer my labor to God. Stanley didn’t have to come - he wasn’t on my committee - but he did. It meant the world to me.