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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.