Leading Christian ethicist to speak on discipleship

Professor-author Stanley Hauerwas to deliver free lecture

By Roxanne King

Named America’s Best Theologian by Time magazine in 2001, Stanley Hauerwas will deliver a lecture on Christian discipleship at 7 p.m. Nov. 17 in Bonfils Hall of the John Paul II Center.

Hauerwas’ talk is titled, “Discipleship as a Craft: the Church as Disciplined Community.” The lecture is a special event being co-sponsored by the Archbishop’s Office and the Catholic graduate school the Augustine Institute. The lecture is free and open to the public.

“Everyone is invited,” said Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute. “Hauerwas is one of the leading ethicists in the country and one of the pioneers in the call to return to virtue teaching.  He also makes a vigorous call for Christians to give a strong, and when necessary, counter-cultural witness to the world today—his message is very relevant to the needs of the church today.”

Hauerwas is a professor of law and of theological ethics at Duke University.  A distinguished author, his book “A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic,” was selected as one of the 100 most important books on religion of the 20th century by Christianity Today. His educational background includes doctoral degrees from Yale and from the University of Edinburg.

“The reason I think the focus on discipleship is crucial is because it makes Jesus the center of our lives,” Hauerwas said by phone from his office in Durham, N.C. “Gospel discipleship isn’t some general ethical admonition that makes sense separate from, but it means to follow Jesus—it (places) Christology at the heart of the moral life.

“What I mean by the church as a disciplined community is a community in which the fundamental story is told in a manner that you can name virtues correlative to the story,” he added. “Discipline is a mode of formation. I know that discipline has bad press today but if you think of the habits you need to learn to play baseball, well that’s what discipline means. So discipline is a form of freedom.”

Hauerwas’ talk will explore the importance of formation in the moral life and how everyday Christians can live virtue in a practical way.

“Stanley Hauerwas was a professor and mentor of mine when I studied at Duke University,” said Gray. “He is simply one of the best teachers I ever had. He is an amazing speaker and thinker, and on a personal level I have to say he knew well the art of mentoring. His talk on discipleship is extraordinary—no one will want to miss it.

“Stanley is both brilliant and passionate,” Gray continued. “He is simply incapable of uttering a dull sentence or making an irrelevant argument.  This talk will be a powerful challenge to what Christian discipleship is all about and what it means for us Christians to be a disciplined community known as the church.  If I know Stanley, it will be a clarion call to arms for Christians to wake up and start to live out in a radical way their identity in Christ.”

Hauerwas’ vision of discipleship, Gray said, fits well with the vitality of Catholicism currently being experienced in the Denver Archdiocese with its renaissance of vocations to the priesthood, with the education of the laity in evangelization, catechesis and sacred Scripture, and in the growth of lay movements and apostolates.

“This is a rare opportunity to listen to one of the most read and influential Christian thinkers alive today,” declared Gray. “There is no Christian speaker that is more exciting in my mind than Stanley Hauerwas.  You won’t be disappointed.”

The John Paul II Center is located at 1300 S. Steele St. Bonfils Hall is the red brick building at the east end of the campus.