No contemporary theologian is perhaps more uncomfortable with fame than Stanley Hauerwas. Although gaining in influence for a number of decades, one publication, Time Magazine, would go so far in 2001 as to name him America's most influential theologian. Although Hauerwas likely felt more comfortable with the invitation to offer the 2000–01 Gifford Lectures, he still found himself confronted by reservations over giving a set of lectures intended by their benefactor to “‘promote and diffuse Natural Theology’” (p. 262).
Some suggest that Hauerwas’ discomfort with such forms of fame is driven by his propensity to play the role of the contrarian. For example, in To Change the World (2009), James Davison Hunter characterized Hauerwas as “relentlessly negative” (p. 164). One must admit that at times this son of a Texas bricklayer almost seems to revel in his ability to foster discomfort beneath the skin of individuals with well-defined perceptions of what is good, decent, and even holy. However, perhaps Hauerwas’ memoir, Hannah's Child, will bring those critics a step closer to realizing that an unrelenting commitment to the Church and those who love her is what truly defines Hauerwas’ vocation as a theologian.
While Hauerwas’ bricklaying father proved to have an important influence on his life, a dimension of his mother's role in his life is the one memorialized in the title of this work. Hauerwas’ parents married late and endured a number of challenges and even tragedies in relation to their efforts to have children. Having read Hannah's prayer in the Old Testament, Hauerwas’ mother offered a similar petition. Hauerwas thus opens his memoir by acknowledging that “I vividly remember my mother telling me that I was destined to be one of God's dedicated” (p. 3). Like Samuel, Hauerwas has “played a Samuel-like role and challenged the religious establishment of the day” (p. 4). Although Hauerwas initially believed he was called to be a minister, he found that his vocation was to serve as a theologian in the academy. In the end, he claimed that this calling is one defined by efforts to “make the connections necessary to articulate clearly what it means to say that what we believe is true” (p. 157). Like Samuel, at times these connections have proven unsettling to the religious establishment.
The story of Hauerwas’ development as a theologian proves to be largely chronological in nature. He begins with the story of how his mother understood his calling in life and concludes by discussing his struggles to maintain this calling under the weight of fame. Chapters are divided roughly by the time he spent as a student at Southwestern University and Yale University, and then as a faculty member at Augustana College, the University of Notre Dame, and Duke University. Each one of these institutions exercised a formative impact upon his life. For example, Hauerwas acknowledges “I am not sure if I became a Christian at Yale, but I certainly began to be a theologian because of what I learned there” (p. 49). At Notre Dame, Hauerwas contends, “I began the slow, agonizing, and happy process that has made me a Christian” (p. 95). As a result, these chapters also introduce us to the influence that scholars such as John Howard Yoder and Alasdair MacIntyre had on Hauerwas and his work.
While this memoir is largely chronological in terms of its organization, perhaps the larger theme that holds it all together is Hauerwas’ appreciation for the friends who have left their imprint on his life. These people, while often encountered in the academy, largely learned what it means to be a friend in the Church. Such an influence is imprinted in equal measure on Hauerwas’ own life. For example, while in South Bend, Indiana, Hauerwas acknowledges he and his son, Adam, were Christians “because of the people at Sacred Heart [the basilica on campus at Notre Dame] and Broadway [United Methodist Church] who welcomed us into their lives and made us participants in the drama of our salvation” (p. 144). As a result, Hauerwas even turned to his fellow congregants at Broadway for advice when he was struggling with whether to leave Notre Dame for Duke. Woven into these pages are the lessons Hauerwas has learned from people like Adam, his wife Paula Gilbert, friends from South Bend such as David Burrell, and friends from Durham, North Carolina such as Stuart Henry.
Despite the immeasurable joy that the gift of Christian friendship has offered Hauerwas over the course of his life, his memoir also accounts a measure of great pain emanating from his marriage to Anne Harley. Married just prior to his enrolment at Yale University, Hauerwas and Harley were married throughout the course of time he spent as a student and then through his years at Augustana and Notre Dame. Anne, afflicted with mental illness, left Hauerwas shortly after they moved to Durham, ending twenty-four years of marriage. The details in between are painful to read and must have been even more painful to write. At the end of his marriage to Harley, Hauerwas writes, “I was exhausted. Adam was gone [a student at Haverford College]. When Anne declared that she intended to leave me, she did not seem to be crazy. I finally told her to do what she had to do” (p. 200). Hauerwas is thus to be commended for reminding all of us that the formative details in our lives are both joyful and painful in nature. Together, such details converge to form our calling in life.
In addition to the influential roles that both friendship and pain played in Hauerwas’ life, we are also confronted with the reality that the fame that has found Hauerwas (regardless of what he might think of it) has come in part through hard work. This commitment to hard work for Hauerwas is one that reaches all the way back to his father. Laying brick is hard work. However, we must remember that Hauerwas’ father practiced his craft under the punishing sun in Dallas, Texas. Hauerwas acknowledges, “I loved working for my father. I loved the bond hard work established between workers” (p. 29). Hauerwas writes theology much like he learned to lay brick. He arrives at the office early and takes just as much joy in putting in a full day of effort as he does in the well-crafted fruits of his labor. For him, the product and the process are much more closely linked than most individuals think. This well-habituated inclination is perhaps what kept Hauerwas going through the trying moments that came with the conclusion of his marriage to Anne Harley. Discussing these details, Hauerwas writes: “The marriage was finally over. I was not sure what that meant, but I would do what I had always done. I would put one foot in front of the other and keep going. I got up the next morning and did what I always did. I went to work” (p. 200).
Despite the self-awareness Hauerwas offers in this immeasurably valuable memoir, moments do surface where I wonder if a small form of charity escapes him. Those moments, although few and far between, seem to surface in relation to administrators with whom Hauerwas worked. For example, Hauerwas claimed Dennis Campbell, the Dean of Duke University Divinity School during much of Hauerwas’ tenure, “was ambitious, but it was not clear that his talent befitted his ambition. He wanted to be dean, but it did not seem he wanted to be dean for any reason but to be dean” (p. 174). Like anyone who serves in such a role, Campbell was likely to make decisions that reflected compromise rather than conviction. Some administrative decisions are wrong. However, others prove to be the best possible outcomes forged in conflicted sets of circumstances. One can only speculate how Hauerwas would respond in such circumstances, given that some necessary decisions simply cannot reflect the full measure of our ideals.
In the end Hannah's Child is necessary reading for anyone concerned with the Church, the academy, and the relationship they share in the work of theology. We would all do well to follow in Hauerwas’ footsteps by showing “how we live together in marriage, how and why we have children, how we learn to be friends, and how we care for the mentally disabled are the ways a people must live if we are to be an alternative to war” (p. 274). Although some may persist in their view that such convictions are negative, Hannah's Child reminds us all that our first calling is to be the Church regardless of what the world may think. This memoir is an admirable window into the life of a theologian who will leave his imprint for generations to come.
