John B. Thompson, Living Holiness: Stanley Hauerwas and the Church (Epworth, 2010), 166pp (with thanks to Epworth for a review copy)
In recent years there have been several British attempts to engage more systematically with Stanley Hauerwas' vast corpus of work (notable are Sam Wells, Transforming Fate into Destiny [Paternoster, 1998, Cascade, 2004], John Colwell, Living the Christian Story [T & T Clark, 2001] and John Thompson's PhD dissertation, The Ecclesiology of Stanley Hauerwas [Ashgate, 2003]), what makes this different is its attempt to make Hauerwas more accessible and also to demonstrate the difference Hauerwas' theology might make for the local church.
Part One then, gives five chapters on the Hauerwas project using the concept of holiness - picking up Hauerwas' emphasis on character (Recovering Holiness), story (Narrating Holiness) and church as political (Emobodying Holiness). A final chapter (Challenging Holiness) engages with some of the criticisms Hauerwas has faced. Here I think Hauerwas gets off a little light, as we might expect in a book extolling the virtues of his theology.
It is part two which make the book worth reading. Under the heading 'Improvising with Stanley Hauerwas' are six chapters on congregational life, discipleship, Scripture, mission and witness. In one chapter, Thompson tells the story of a church in Doncaster where he was priest and how they were church in that place. In another, Thompson introduces us to DOXA, a discipleship course he was part of developing, which 'explores the formative character of worship' and another how the church is the answer to consumerism and pluralism.
Thompson has a good grasp of Hauerwas - I'm sure I read somewhere (was it in Faithfulness and Fortitude?) that Hauerwas thinks us Brits are his best readers - and although I think Sam Wells' God's Companions provides the best description of the implications of Hauerwas' theological ethics in practice, Thompson makes a good addition in this attempt to make church faithful, or in this case, holy. Hauerwas is often criticised that the church he writes about is too ideal and does not exist, it is the likes of Thompson and Wells, that demonstrate that this is not the case.
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