Currently, I'm working on a review (with a friend) of a book that came out late in 2007, written by friends (of mine and each other). The book is Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary, written by Stanley Hauerwas and Romand Coles. I met Professor Hauerwas for the first time in 2002 when, as an incoming student to Duke University's divinity school, I was sent by my advisor to his office with the instruction that I had to take Hauerwas' seminar on virtue ethics. At the time, neither did I know much about Hauerwas nor did I forsee the influence he would have on my thinking, my reading lists and my choice of interlocutors. While in Aberdeen, Scotland, I started corresponding with Professor Coles as I considered switching my Ph.D. from theology to political theory. During that time, I read many of the chapters of this book as they were emailed back and forth between Coles and Hauerwas. Later, back at Duke University, I'd take a seminar on Kant taught by Coles.
I guess I love the book because it offers what is so often lacking in academic texts, pictures of the engagement that goes on between scholars (and friends). Obviously, knowing the two of them adds to my enjoyment, but I think it nice to see the two working on understanding and learning from their shared commitments and differences. The inclusion of letters between the two helps, something which one usually gains access to only after a scholar's death. So, until we get the review finished, here's a few lines from one of Hauerwas' letters which I think are worth hearing again:
Though not the newest book, I heartily recommend it.
In an odd way you and I are haunted in quite similar ways. You claim that you are haunted by John Yoder, but John would not have wanted you to be haunted by John Yoder. He would have wanted you to have been haunted by Jesus. And remember the Jesus he would have wanted to haunt you was the Jesus who has been raised from the dead. The only difference between us is that I try to put my body in positions in which I cannot avoid being hauted by that Jesus. This mean I go to church. Indeed going to church is one of the most exciting things I do.
That I go to church does not mean I think that Jesus is only to be found there. It just means that he has promised to show up there in a manner that can help us discern how he shows up in other places. Thus, my claim that the first task of the church is not to make the world more just but to make the world the world, is not meant to restrict God's care of us to the church. Rather, it is a way to remind us that whatever we mean by politics, justice, or democracy will be determined by how we have learned to celebrate, that is, to worship. (CDRO, 105)
