The British, I have discovered, assume that Americans are more religious than they are.

Stanley Hauerwas

I am not convinced that the U.S. is more religious than Britain. Even if more people go to church in America, I think the U.S. is a much more secular country than Britain.

Stanley Hauerwas

In Britain, when someone says they do not believe in God, they stop going to church. In the U.S., many who may have doubts about Christian orthodoxy may continue to go to church. They do so because they assume that a vague god vaguely prayed to is the god that is needed to support family and nation.

Stanley Hauerwas

I am an enthusiastic participant in a church, but I have never been particularly concerned with denominational identity.

Stanley Hauerwas

I am a Congregationalist with Catholic sensibilities. Which probably explains how I ended up in a Episcopal church.

Stanley Hauerwas

I confess I take perverse delight as a theologian in the controversies surrounding postmodernism.

Stanley Hauerwas

Liberal Christianity, of course, has enemies, but they are everyone's enemies - sexism, racism, homophobia. But liberal versions of Christianity, which can be both theologically and politically conservative, assume that what it means to be Christian qua Christian is to have no enemies peculiar to being Christian.

Stanley Hauerwas

War is America's central liturgical act necessary to renew our sense that we are a nation unlike other nations.

Stanley Hauerwas

Americans assume that we never go to war to sustain our wealth, because war must be understood as a moral enterprise commensurate with our being a democracy.

Stanley Hauerwas

Theological writing is usually done in essays or books, but I hope to show that if we concentrate on sentences, we may well learn something we might otherwise miss.

Stanley Hauerwas

I should like to think how we write as theologians would reflect our confidence in the One who makes that writing possible. That is one of the reasons, moreover, that the scriptures remain paradigmatic for how we are to write.

Stanley Hauerwas

I want to challenge the presumption that the world cannot know it is the world unless there is an alternative to the world.

Stanley Hauerwas

When love becomes what Christianity is all about, we can make no sense of Jesus's death and resurrection.

Stanley Hauerwas

Ask yourself: if that is what Jesus is all about - that is, getting us to love one another - then why did everyone reject him?

Stanley Hauerwas

Jesus is the politics of the new age; He is about the establishment of a kingdom; He is the one who has created a new time that gives us the time not only to care for the poor but to be poor. Jesus is the one who makes it possible to be nonviolent in a violent world.

Stanley Hauerwas

The 'Cold War' impinged on the daily lives of Americans. The wars after 11 September 2001 have been fought without the general American population having to make any sacrifices. It goes on, and so do we.

Stanley Hauerwas

To be sure, those who are actually engaged in combat - those who actually see the maimed bodies and mourning mothers - struggle more than the rest of us to make sense of the reality of war.

Stanley Hauerwas

I do not want to convince Christians to work for the abolition of war, but rather I want us to live recognizing that in the cross of Christ, war has been abolished.

Stanley Hauerwas

Being a Christian has not and does not come naturally or easy for me. I take that to be a good thing because I am sure that to be a Christian requires training that lasts a lifetime.

Stanley Hauerwas

One of the challenges Christians confront is how the politics we helped create has made it difficult to sustain the material practices constitutive of an ecclesial culture to produce Christians.

Stanley Hauerwas

Stanley Hauerwas Quotes

The British, I have discovered, assume that Americans are more religious than they are.

I am not convinced that the U.S. is more religious than Britain. Even if more people go to church in America, I think the U.S. is a much more secular country than Britain.

I am an enthusiastic participant in a church, but I have never been particularly concerned with denominational identity.

I am a Congregationalist with Catholic sensibilities. Which probably explains how I ended up in a Episcopal church.

I confess I take perverse delight as a theologian in the controversies surrounding postmodernism.

War is America's central liturgical act necessary to renew our sense that we are a nation unlike other nations.

Americans assume that we never go to war to sustain our wealth, because war must be understood as a moral enterprise commensurate with our being a democracy.

Theological writing is usually done in essays or books, but I hope to show that if we concentrate on sentences, we may well learn something we might otherwise miss.

I should like to think how we write as theologians would reflect our confidence in the One who makes that writing possible. That is one of the reasons, moreover, that the scriptures remain paradigmatic for how we are to write.

I want to challenge the presumption that the world cannot know it is the world unless there is an alternative to the world.

When love becomes what Christianity is all about, we can make no sense of Jesus's death and resurrection.

Ask yourself: if that is what Jesus is all about - that is, getting us to love one another - then why did everyone reject him?

Jesus is the politics of the new age; He is about the establishment of a kingdom; He is the one who has created a new time that gives us the time not only to care for the poor but to be poor. Jesus is the one who makes it possible to be nonviolent in a violent world.

The 'Cold War' impinged on the daily lives of Americans. The wars after 11 September 2001 have been fought without the general American population having to make any sacrifices. It goes on, and so do we.

To be sure, those who are actually engaged in combat - those who actually see the maimed bodies and mourning mothers - struggle more than the rest of us to make sense of the reality of war.

I do not want to convince Christians to work for the abolition of war, but rather I want us to live recognizing that in the cross of Christ, war has been abolished.

Being a Christian has not and does not come naturally or easy for me. I take that to be a good thing because I am sure that to be a Christian requires training that lasts a lifetime.

One of the challenges Christians confront is how the politics we helped create has made it difficult to sustain the material practices constitutive of an ecclesial culture to produce Christians.