#360: The Church, Culture, & How Jesus Changes Everything with Stanley Hauerwas

Today’s conversation is a bit of a departure from our usual worship leader/worship industry conversation. I’m talking with Stanley Hauerwas.

Here’s his bio:

Stanley Hauerwas, a theologian and Christian ethicist, is professor emeritus of theological ethics and of law at Duke University. He is the author or editor of more than fifty books, including Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (1989), which he co-authored with William H. Willimon. His lower-middle-class upbringing informed his later approach to theological and ethical questions (at one point, he was apprenticed to his father, a bricklayer). In 2001, Time magazine named Hauerwas “America’s Best Theologian”; he replied that “best” is not a theological category. 

Stanley will turn 85 this year.

I’m new to Stanley’s work but absolutely devoured his new book Jesus Changes Everything as well as his landmark work, Resident Aliens. I find his thinking incredibly helpful in navigating our current times. He don’ts pull any punches or hide behind any veneer of religiosity. 

Topics Covered:

• Stanley’s love of travel and baseball
• How Stanley came to faith in Christ
• The influence of Karl Barth
• How Stanley “got saved”
• The similarities between evangelicalism and protestant liberalism
• How Christian “experience” gets us off track
• How Jesus changes everything

Resources Mentioned:

• Show Sponsor: Planning Center
• Jesus Changes Everything: A New World Made Possible by Stanley Hauerwas
• Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony by Stanley Hauerwas
• Lives of the Saints by Fr. Alban Butler
• Dogmatics in Outline by Karl Barth
• God Matters by Herbert McCabe
• Friendship and Ways to Truth by David Burrell
• Naming God: Addressing the Divine in Philosophy, Theology, and Scripture by Janet Soskice

Show Sponsor: Planning Center

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