September 11, Afghanistan, Iraq! More than ever, this is a time for the church to be taking up questions of peace and nonviolence. And who better to offer insight than the extraordinary theologian who for decades has addressed these issues in his work and his life? In ‘Performing the Faith’, Stanley Hauerwas revisits the crucial theological theme of political nonviolence via the evocative writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This book is an intriguing commentary on Bonhoeffer’s dramatic claim that if our common life rests on lies and injustice, we cannot be a community of peace. Hauerwas follows his analysis of Bonhoeffer with an exploration of faith as “performance,” drawing rich analogies between musical and theatrical performance and the living of the Christian life. Next, he turns to Aquinas, Preller, Wittgenstein, and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins to investigate the language of faith and “the contingent character that makes up our world.” He closes with a few words (and a sermon) on the pacifist response to the events of September 11, 2001.
ISBN: 9780281056859 (2004) 256pp