Interview with Stanley Hauerwas

Dr. Stanley Hauerwas is Gilbert T. Rowe professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School and the author of many books including The Peaceable Kingdom, After Christendom, and most recently With the Grain of the Universe. He has sought to recover the significance of the virtues for understanding the nature of the Christian life. This search has led him to emphasize the importance of the church, as well as narrative, for understanding Christian existence. Time magazine named Hauerwas "America's Best Theologian" in the September 17, 2001, issue, saying he "has been a thorn in the side of what he takes to be Christian complacency for more than 30 years." Hauerwas was interviewed by Sojourners editor Jim Wallis on November 8, 2001. A transcript of that interview follows.

Wallis: Is "pacifist" a word that you use to describe yourself?

Hauerwas: I oftentimes say in public that I'm a pacifist, but I don't like the word for two reasons. One, it's just so passive, and I think Christian nonviolence is very active confrontation with violence. Second, I think the word pacifism sounds like you have a position that is somehow separate from your worship of the crucified Savior. Christian nonviolence is entailed in the very heart of what it means to worship a crucified God. So I don't like the idea that pacifism has some further implication for my belief in Jesus.

Wallis: Let's use "Christian nonviolence" then for this conversation. As somebody who tries to live out Christian nonviolence, how did you respond to Sept. 11? What did that do in your heart and your mind?

Hauerwas: The first thing you feel is just overwhelming sadness. You're stunned like everyone else is stunned, whether you are a pacifist or not. I did a presentation about some of my reactions at another university recently, and one of my friends was there -- and he is not committed to nonviolence at all. He said to me, "You pacifists have nothing to say. Just say you're a pacifist and shut up." Some people think that if you have a position of Christian nonviolence, you don't have anything to say because you're excluded from making discriminating political judgments. In a sense that is right. I always say I represent the "Tonto principle of Christian ethics." When Tonto and the Lone Ranger found themselves surrounded by 20,000 Sioux, the Lone Ranger turned to Tonto and said, "This looks pretty tough. What do you think we ought to do?" Tonto replied, "What do you mean 'we,' white man?"

The assumption is that our reaction should be one that identifies a "we" that combines both the American and the Christian. Yet "we" Christians are called to respond to this terrorizing event in a way that is different from that shaped by American presuppositions. I want to be very clear. Nothing that the United States has done in its foreign policy -- and it's done some very wicked things -- can justify what was done at the World Trade Center. We have to step back and ask what we Christians have done that we find ourselves so implicated in that world that we cannot differentiate our response as God's people from the American people's response. Then that also creates a kind of sadness in me in the sense that I don't want to be alienated from my other non-Christian brothers and sisters, as well as my Christian brothers and sisters, who think that we've got to go kill the bastards. But if that alienation is required, then it's required. There's a kind of loneliness that one cannot help but feel when you feel that you can't do anything other than take a different perspective on these matters -- it seems so out of step today.

Wallis: If we don't say "go kill the bastards," what do we say instead? How do we respond to people who committed not only one horrendous act of destruction, but -- unless we're naive -- are planning on doing some more?

Hauerwas: I think anyone that is committed to Christian nonviolence realizes you're in it for the long haul. You're not going to have an immediate policy response. To ask us to do that makes it sounds like Christians are not nonviolent because we think nonviolence is a strategy to end the world of war. But in the world of war, we cannot imagine anything other than nonviolence as faithful disciples of Christ. So that means that we must go on, as [Karl] Barth said in 1933, as if nothing had happened. Which means that we must work all the harder to build those forms of life that can witness to others that there's an alternative to violence.

If you want me to say, "What's the best possible response that can be made now to this immediate circumstance?" I think something like a just war response makes a lot of sense, but that's the reason you have to be so careful about the language you're using to describe this. I don't like calling it "terrorism" because it's completely uncontrollable -- it doesn't do work that you need it to do for moral discrimination. I think you need to call it murder -- and insofar as it's murder, you want to arrest the perpetrator.

So the whole war language seems to me overblown and misleading at this time because B52s turn out to be very crude police officers. In the most recent Catholic Worker newspaper, they have a column by Jean Vanier about the World Trade Center bombing, and he ends by saying, "Let us give our hand to all those around the world who suffer, who cry out and are fearful. Be one in prayer. Let us remember that the smallest gesture of beauty and tenderness done with humility and confidence will bring unity to the world and break the chain of violence." I think that is what we have to believe. If you don't believe that, then nonviolence is surely evil and wrong. But what we can do is go on enacting in life small gestures of beauty and tenderness as a witness to the world that we do not have to be driven by revenge. My best hunch right now is that the allies of nonviolent people are political realists. Political realists have a sense that bombing a Stone Age country back to the Stone Age is exactly what bin Laden wants us to do. So you're just recruiting for the next 20 years. That doesn't seem smart to me on political realist ground.

Wallis: If we're against the bombing -- and we say that our lives should be about what Jean Vanier's saying -- is there any more we can say about a better way to combat either terrorism or murder that is planning to strike again? What do people like us have to say is a better path?

Hauerwas: We'd have been better off going through the Arab link. Islamic people have as much trouble with bin Laden as we do. We would have been much better off trying to be patient and working with all the complexities that that might have meant -- to see if they could have brought him to some justice. I'm talking about an Islamic court. We would have been better off working through the U.N. as some agency that could enter into active negotiation.

I want to be very clear. I don't think the Taliban or bin Laden are nice people. I know this would be very difficult, but what are your alternatives? When you ask those kind of questions, it makes it sound like I need to have a foreign policy as a pacifist. What that is asking me to do is accept the world up to this point and then try to make it work out. I say to just war people: How in the world are you going to have a just war when you have a Pentagon and a State Department built on national self interest? Just war isn't built on national self interest, but the Pentagon and our State Department's foreign policy are built upon political realism informed by national self interest. To ask me now, "Okay, what would you pacifists do?" means I've got to accept those presuppositions. I'm not going to do that.

We need to turn around to the churches and say, "Where have we been that we don't represent the kind of patience that political leaders in America can count on to say "We're going to be in this for the long haul -- and we're going to have to pursue a policy that will ask you to be very patient in the face of evil." We Christians have been schooled for that! And if our leaders don't know that there's a significant body of people that are committed to that… How could you have had the Civil Rights movement without the patience of the black church? You've got to have people schooled in the gospel to say, "We would rather lose than fight wrongly."

Wallis: I'm back to your friend here who would say, "You pacifists should just say you're pacifists and shut up." You want to say that pacifists can offer prudent judgments about how things should proceed. I'm trying to get to those. We've done the critique of the bombing and the violence. What about a global police force?

Hauerwas: I think a police force is the best institutionalization of what just war should be about. But then the arresting agent is not the same as the judging agent. In war, those two are the same. I am extraordinarily sympathetic with the police in this country, because we take them from a social class usually just above criminal class, put them in the most complex social situations, and then we blame them for becoming hardened. Give me a break. What we need to do is to ask ourselves, "What kind of social cooperation do we need that can make it possible for people to be called to the police function of the state in a manner that they will have some confidence that they will never have to kill anyone?" I'm willing to do that. I'm deeply committed to it as a matter of fact.

In the international arena, it's even harder, but I would certainly like to start envisioning the possibility of that kind of police force. The difficulty is of course police are only legitimated to intervene in violent contexts where there is a prior legal restraint. I can arrest you for theft because I know what theft is. The problem in the international arena is there is not that much law that can give you direction to know what to do, and the way you've got to build it up is through common action, but God knows that's going to be a hard matter. I'm certainly willing to enter into those kinds of discussions and hopefully make some modest arrangements in that regard.

Wallis: Could you support a police operation that was sent to capture and bring bin Laden and his network to justice?

Hauerwas: I'm never quite sure what to do with those kind of questions. They're right up there with "What would you do if your grandmother's going to be raped and you need to kill somebody?" Given the alternatives, of course I can support it! (Laugh.) Yes, that's certainly the least violent alternative we have, and I would think that's good. It would be an interesting question, "Could I be part of such a force?" And the answer is "I don't know." I don't know until I see. I might be. I might be able to provide all kinds of support in a way that wouldn't necessarily commit me to carrying a gun. I don't think I could ever carry a gun. By the way, I think our bombing right now is against the Geneva convention. It's just like Yugoslavia -- it's awful. The Geneva Convention requires you to use the means that are more likely not to involve civilian casualties. You need ground troops, not bombing.

Wallis: I would prefer ground troops, too, and then I think, "Wait a second, what am I saying?" How do we think this way as nonviolent people?

Hauerwas: We want to support those who would rather die than murder. If you take Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- if you call the World Trade Center terrorism, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrorist acts. And I've had people say, "Well, that was war." And I say, "Well, you murder in war, too." The question is, would the American people have been ready to have more American soldiers die and more Japanese soldiers die on the beaches of Japan rather than to commit the murders of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? That's who we want to be: a people that would rather have more people die than to have to do a murderous act. I think that's who the military is, by the way. I think the military was profoundly embarrassed about the bombing in Yugoslavia. They're honorable people. I think there are probably some of them who are embarrassed about the bombing we're doing in Afghanistan, because they understand that part of what they're about is that they would rather die than murder. I give high credence to that.

Wallis: There's a pacifist view that says, "Jim, Stanley, you shouldn't even be going there. All we should be doing is what Jean Vanier's suggesting, and we should tell the government that they can't do anything either." And then the terrorists attack again and again and again.

Hauerwas: I understand. What bothers me about that position -- which, of course, I have great respect for -- seems to me to accept the Niebuhrian view of nonviolence; namely, people that are committed to nonviolence are fine as long as they understand they're politically irresponsible, and they go off and just abandon their brothers and sisters. What you and I are trying to do is to think through how we can join in certain possible political alternatives in a manner that does not compromise our witness to nonviolence. This is where [John Howard] Yoder's critique of Constantinianism becomes important, and that's such a complex subject. Of course he didn't necessarily associate it with Constantine, but there is a part of Christian nonviolence that I represent -- that I hope is what John represented -- a certain sense that, finally, we're not running the world. But in a world we're not running, we want to be an alternative that forces imaginative possibilities that wouldn't be there otherwise. That's what I'm trying to imagine.

Wallis: What was John Howard Yoder doing with the ethics of a global police force near the end of his life?

Hauerwas: I don't really know. John was the earliest Christian witness to the state. He said, "Look, a Christian might be able to be a policeman. They would just have to go to the church and have it discerned." It would depend a lot on the social context, because there's just no unified idea of what a policeman is out there. And in certain societies, in England, for generations, police didn't carry guns! Would a Christian be able to be a policeman in England? Maybe. So I think that's what John was about, insofar as he saw that the police function of the state is something that Christians honor even though they might not be able to participate in the actual function itself.

Wallis: Right now you're raising sort of a two-kingdom…

Hauerwas: Remember, [Yoder] always stayed away from that. There is no Lutheran two-kingdom view that ontologically just has to be there. The only difference is the difference of agency. Those who have been claimed by Christ have a different alternative in the world than those who are not. And that's part of what salvation is about!

Wallis: Does Romans 13 give to the state legal and judicial and police authority? Do even nonviolent Christians have to recognize that?

Hauerwas: Only if you start with Romans 12:8 which says "Do not take vengeance." (Laugh.)

Wallis: But is justice possible without vengeance?

Hauerwas: Yes! It is! And we expect the state to live that way, because God has made it possible. One of the worst things that could have happened was the chapter division between 12 and 13 where people just start reading at 13 and don't go back to Romans 12:14.

Wallis: So then that rules out capital punishment, but it gives the ability to apprehend, even by the use of force, a serial killer.

Hauerwas: Yeah. And hopefully to apprehend using the least violent means possible. To offer concrete alternatives means you have to be different. We love violence. When was the last time you went to see a movie about peace? I mean, we're attracted to violence. It's dramatic. It gives us a moral, heroic role! You've got to be really embedded in a different set of practices to force a different imagination.

Wallis: Reflect with me on Gandhi, who said that when you have a lunatic in the village, the first thing you have to do is capture the lunatic and then deal with the lunacy. And then [Dietrich] Bonhoeffer, who struggled with whether or not to join in the assassination of Hitler. And Jacques Ellul and his struggles with these questions.

Hauerwas: I just spent the summer reading back on all of Bonhoeffer. I'm not at all convinced that when he joined the Abwehr it necessarily entailed the assassination of Hitler. And it's not clear exactly how far he ever went along that path. Who knows what you and I would do if we were put in those circumstances. That's the reason I oftentimes say in public that I'm a pacifist -- because I'm obviously a violent SOB. And I have no faith in my ability to lead a nonviolent life unless I create expectations in you where you will keep me faithful to what I know is true. Pacifism, Christian nonviolence, is a commitment to vulnerability. We have to put our lives in one another's hands, because that's the way God created us -- to be vulnerable. So hopefully I would have friends in those contexts that would prevent me from killing someone. (Laugh.) Because all my passions go the other way.

Wallis: But this police action that we're envisioning would almost inevitably result in someone getting killed.

Hauerwas: Probably. First of all, if they're just warriors, the police, they're the ones who are going to have to put their lives on the line. Remember, they can't have murderers' revenge. Just war won't let you do that.

Wallis: We're saying ground troops or special forces are preferable to bombing. But we're not saying we could participate in them, so we're invoking, if not two-kingdom, at least different-agency.

Hauerwas: After the Gulf war and all the celebration of the guys coming back, I heard a pastor say, "They want me to put yellow ribbons on the altar." And I said, "Yellow isn't a Christian color. Black is. Why don't you drape the altar in black, because those who have done the killing are sad. They're sad. They don't want to be celebrated. They want to mourn. They've had to kill someone." That's the kind of purely Christian conscience that is embodied in these very sad times. The kind of Fourth of July celebration we're in right now is just unbelievably frightening. I don't want to be terribly judgmental about people rediscovering their patriotism, because I think it's a sign of how deeply lonely the American people are that suddenly they feel together. And that's very frightening, because a rootless consumer society suddenly deciding it has something to kill for is a very frightening reality.

Wallis: I think it's good to recognize that the flag is a unifying symbol of grief as well as a symbol of rah-rah U.S.A.

Hauerwas: Yeah, but I've got to say there's a lot of civil religion. One of our problems is how deeply Christianity is identified with civil religion. Somehow we've got to make that differentiation.

Wallis: Is there anything else you want to share?

Hauerwas: I don't know about you, but I just don't feel like I've found a voice about all this yet. I just feel like I'm just swimming around and making it up. I don't know how to say how deeply sad the murders make me, and how deeply sad I am for those that did the murdering. At the same time, I just don't know how to go on in a manner that is healing. I feel like I need to say some things that will at least make possible some kinds of discriminating judgments. But I feel like I want to say more. I don't know what more to say, other than that we Christians really have deeply revealed our accommodation to this culture.

The other thing is that when you're as wealthy as we are, we have to recognize how dumb that makes you -- because wealth really makes you stupid. Our wealth has given us a false security in a way that we haven't had to live like the rest of the world lives. Now the rest of the world has pulled us into that world, and we're mad as hell. I think we really have to rethink the extraordinary wealth we represent. Think of all the wealth we're using right now in all these bombs. Why we couldn't use that kind of wealth to do something about the hunger of people in that area? We obviously used them against the Soviets and then abandoned them. How do we ever start making those turns? Americans are good people -- I really believe that -- but somehow we seem caught in a situation where that goodness can't be expressed in significant ways. The people that fought in Hitler's armies were good people. How do we as Christians begin to have our lives make a difference for living in such a wealthy country in a way that we can make a better life not just for us but for a lot of people.

Wallis: I'm there with you, Stanley. This is different than anything I've seen in 30 years-Central America, Vietnam. But how do you confront this evil? What do you with the face of evil that we saw on Sept. 11?

Hauerwas: When people say, "The world changed on Sept. 11, 2001," we have to say "No, the world changed on 33 A.D." The question is how to narrate what happened on Sept. 11 in light of what happened in 33 A.D.

Wallis: Narrate that for me.

Hauerwas: The sacrifice to end sacrifices was made by God through the sacrifice of his son, and the ending of sacrifice means that we don't continue to sacrifice other people to make the world come out all right. Justice has been done. We've been given all the time in the world to announce that God would not have God's kingdom wrought through violence. That's good news. It's hard news, but it's good news.