Bretherton: CT837 (b)
One Violent Patient Son of A Bitch
Hauerwasian Ecclesiology as Radically Finite Democracy
CT837.10 Review, March 21, 2013
Stanley Hauerwas grew up in Texas being groomed for bricklaying, about the farthest thing from the philosophical theology he ended up pursuing. Educated at Yale and associated with the post-liberal and narrative schools of theology, he recalls at one time considering himself a Niebuhrian, perhaps due in no small part to his being educated by one of them (though not the one we initially think). He taught briefly at Augustana College before moving on to Notre Dame, where he succeeded in bringing John Yoder to the faculty as well. He describes his departure from Notre Dame in less than friendly terms, and came to Duke in 1984, where he would become known, in September 2001 issue of Time Magazine, as "America's Best Theologian," a title he persistently rejects.
But the first thing you need to know is that the "Stanley Hauerwas" you think you know is not Stanley Hauerwas you will see. By this I mean that Hauerwas has been made into an effigy, that the Stanley Hauerwas we speak of is not the Stanley Hauerwas you will discover walking the halls of the Divinity School. Though we might think we "call it like [we] see it," Stanley insists that "You can only see what you have learned to say."[1] As a way of getting around this apparent paradox, he invites you to refer to him by whatever you're most comfortable with, whether that is Dr. Hauerwas, professor, Stan, Stanley, or even "hey asshole." A self-acknowledged rhetorical exhibitionist, "vocabulary is everything"[2] for Stanley, and he recognizes the infinite finitude to which language lends itself. This may be why he simultaneously is and is not Stanley Hauerwas, and why he frequently uses language he rejects: words like "American (or Texan)," "homosexual," "ethics," "best," "nonviolent," and even "Stanley Hauerwas." One quickly learns that to call Stanley an asshole does not mean what one might think, for in Texan, it is a term of endearment. But you'd only know that by watching him and learning to say it carefully, for by his own admission, Stanley is one violent son of a bitch.
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This week we turn our attention to two essays of Stanley's that address the phenomenon of democracy in conversation with Jeffrey Stout and Romand Coles in which he leverages John Howard Yoder and Sheldon Wolin to define and critique political assumptions and claims. However, what we think we mean when we say "democracy" is varied. A straightforward definition might point back to the Greek roots of the word itself, which comes from demos, for "people," and kratos, for "force" or "power." In that case, democracy is simply the rule of the people, something akin to popular sovereignty. For Stout, democracy is "a practice of giving and asking for reasons."[3]
Hauerwas criticizes Stout's account of democracy as giving and asking for reasons for hinging upon its inherent legitimization of ruling powers. After all, to whom are such questions directed, and who has determined (or enforced) their legitimacy? That this question is made possible suggests that the burden of proof for legitimacy rests upon the shoulders of the people doing the giving and asking, and in so doing, maintains a transactional kind of legitimation from which the ruling powers may remain conveniently absent. But Hauerwas does "not see why we need to give rulers legitimating accounts... for doing what they say they have to do for our survival."[4] Indeed, Stout's framing of democracy is insufficient insofar as it expects those being ruled to validate those doing the ruling by looking to them for answers and reasons. If democracy is to be rule of the people, then it must subvert any notion of power or rule that simply reinforces the rule of the few over the many. Democracy is therefore better understood as a way of exercising authority over the authorities that claim to be our own benefactors, what Hauerwas calls "an arrangement for minority leverage."[5] Genuine democracy is subversive of typical power dynamics, it assumes that authority rises from below; it does not trickle down from above. This is why Stout's account of democracy needs so much work, since instead of subverting coercive powers it merely reinvents them. But "if democratic theory provides accounts that legitimate the ruling powers, then the subversive thrust of democratic practice is in danger of functioning in a purely ideological manner."[6] Democracy must constantly question the reigning power dynamic of the few over the many. Political forms that amount to little more than ideologies cannot be a practice.
Offering a corrective via Yoder's Christian Witness to the State, Hauerwas is concerned that too often government authority is either unwilling or unable to acknowledge its own finitude and subordination to God's purposes. Any politics without eschatology is doomed, however, for "government authority is God's instrument in a process that will lead to its own defeat."[7] Any attempt to justify the indefinite existence or effectiveness of a human institution which is bound for the grave would be folly; refusal to acknowledge that governments are ordained by and subordinate to God is idolatry. To divert attention and energies, governments frequently instill in their people the sense that time is limited, that we are always running out of time to do the things we should (which conveniently also serve the state's own interests). Therefore, "at the heart of Yoder's politics is time;"[8] for time is part and parcel to "the social assumptions that lead Christians to assume the necessity of war"[9] of which Yoder and Hauerwas want to divest the Church. In a world that "assumes we do not have time to be political,"[10] we frequently resort to violence in order to control history, a vain attempt to avoid the fate of every human person and institution: death.
Sheldon Wolin helps Hauerwas explain the politics behind an ecclesial emphasis on time, for "the polis required... a kind of 'nervous intensity'"[11] whereas the Stoicism that Christians adopted "contemplated political life as it was acted out amidst a setting as spacious as the universe itself"[12] for "Plato's political science is... of a heroism chastened by the foreknowledge of eventual defeat." The apocalypse that Christians patiently await guarantees continual movement toward worldly defeat, whereas a politics without eschatology funded an imaginary of time "in classical terms of cycles"[13] that "could only lead to despair." Christianity brought time to politics and gave the polis an end, a telos toward which it could indefinitely process, not in terms of legitimacy, but of justice. "History was thus transformed into a drama of deliverance enacted under the shadow of an apocalypse that would end historical time and, for the elect, bring a halt to suffering."[14] Therefore, "the time to care for the 'weakest' member is equally important for appreciating how the church might embody democratic ideals."[15]
However, worldly justice is insufficient for this apocalyptic relief, for the reigning paradigm of justice (i.e. John Rawls) operates under a politics of fear and a denial of the very history that makes apocalypse possible. Liberal political theorists seek to deny contingency by either assuming or constructing an ahistorical politics, a politics without a past, without painful and subjective memory. Liberal notions of democracy require an existence with no past and, ironically, no future. Hauerwas learns from Wolin that "democracy can only succeed temporarily as a witness to a political mode of existence that exists through memory."[16] Memory requires that we submit ourselves to the contingency of time, over which we can exert no control. In that way, our subordination to time is practice for subordinating ourselves to God. Christian refusal "to be hurried along by impatient government authority is therefore a practice properly subordinated to the contingencies of time and memory, like those we cultivate by being "'more relaxed and less competitive about running the world' and make use of what is given us,"[17] especially the weakest members among us.
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To Hauerwas, Coles' and Stout's account of democracy are both based in practice; for Coles it is not a giving and asking for reasons, but "a generative activity in which people seek to reinvent it in challenges and contestations concerning the questions of what it might become,"[18] and is dependent upon "those who embark beyond democracy's dominant forms to give it greater equality, freedom, and receptive generosity toward others." In this way, democracy is never stagnant and predictable, but vibrant and living, in the same way the Church is always "looping back to test current practices by the Lordship of Christ."[19] Coles is therefore impressed by Yoder's notion of the church "'reaching' back to scripture to test… whether it is being faithful to Jesus."[20]
This constant reinvention, of becoming the thing it always might in a world of constantly shifting circumstances, is where democracy and Christianity share a common task. If the world is always coming up with news forms of idolatry and government authorities are ceaselessly constructing new ways to coerce submission, then perhaps Christianity and democracy have much in common. However, the Christological differences between Coles and Hauerwas must not be overlooked. That Coles is "a member of no church"[21] might explain the absence of any emphasis on human moral frailty in his account of democracy. Indeed, Hauerwas reminds us "at the heart of Yoder's understanding of the church is the confession of sin."[22] Considering this, Christians might rightly raise questions about the character of the "those" who do the embarking beyond democracy's dominant forms. Hauerwas is keen to critique the overconcentration on the role national leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. to the detriment of the local individuals who make a narrative like his possible. In fact, Hauerwas ponders (with Charles Marsh) whether such a frail view of what Christians call "the doctrine of sin" was part of the reason that organizations like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ultimately disintegrated.[23]
Indeed, the most significant difference between the church and the world is its willingness to admit wrongdoing and accept death as an inescapable reality. The dependence of liberal democracies upon the rhetoric of glory denies guilt and the inevitability of death. Here we return to a properly eschatological understanding of memory, for the church rests in peace upon the memory of her martyrs, whose glory was reflective of Christ. The heroes of worldly politics reflect only the state, and therefore any life that might exist after death does so only upon the lips of those who praise them, who will in turn expire as well. Rome and its "heroes cannot possess the moral self-knowledge that comes from a right relationship with God."[24] Hauerwas suggests that the liberal view of justice cannot possibly rest in a victimizing mentality, that justice cannot only make sense in Christological terms. By seeking justice instead of glory, "the church contributes to radical democracy"[25] and "makes possible a patient people capable of the slow, hard work of a politics of place"... "signifying for the world what the world can become."
Insofar as Coles concerns himself with "what [radical democracy] might become," he has much to gain from, and to offer conversations with, Christians. The Church is a community capable of producing a generous and patient people determined by citizenship apart from, and yet bound to, time and place that forces them to acknowledge "ambiguous historical moments" that properly evoke guilt and signal the persistence of death. The politics of Jesus produce communities of generous receptivity[26] and solidarity necessary for radical democracy. Hauerwas finds Coles' fascination with Yoder curious, since "Yoder is not doing political theory, nor is he describing any real politics. Rather he is doing ecclesiology,"[27] such that "the name for Yoder's politics is 'church'"
What Coles calls "generous receptivity" is very near the patience and vulnerability that is at the heart of "Yoder's understanding of what is entailed by being a disciple of Jesus."[28] Hauerwas here sees fertile soil for conversation between disparate faith traditions and political perspectives, but he is keen to avoid the liberal instinct toward flattening diversity in the name of tolerance. It is important to understand that no "general theory or strategy with other faiths and traditions"[29] is possible without reproducing universalizing (and therefore intolerant) liberal assumptions about tolerance. Instead, Christian interactions in diverse settings like liberal democracies are to be local, occasional, and fragmentary. Such instincts reinforce more realistic and properly eschatological notions of finitude and make a local politics possible. In the end, politics is more about patience than violence.
Questions for further reflections;
If it is "only by engagement with different communities [that] the church learns what it means to be a community of truth and love,"[30] (Coles, 21) and "vocabulary is everything" (Coles, 20), do Christians have the monopoly on truth and love they often claim? Furthermore, what might it mean that "the church precedes the world epistemologically" (Coles, 21) if not etymologically (especially if it is true that vocabulary is everything)?
Footnotes
[1] Lecture number 12, Intro to Christian Ethics course, Duke Divinity School, Spring 2012.
[2] Hauerwas, Stanley and Coles, Romand. "A Haunting Possibility: Christianity and Democracy" in Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary; Conversations Between a Radical Democrat and a Christian (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2008), 18-19. He cites Coles' Beyond Gated Politics; Reflections on the Possibility of Democracy (Minneapolis: University of Michigan, 2005), 20. Heretofore referred to as simply "Coles" for disambiguation.
[3] Hauerwas, Stanley. "Democratic Time: Lessons Learned from Yoder and Wolin," in The State of the University; Academic Knowledges and the Knowledge of God (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 148. Hauerwas points to Stout's Democracy and Tradition (New Haven: Princeton University, 2004), 7. Heretofore referred to as University.
[4] Ibid., 151, with emphasis added.
[5] Ibid., 156
[6] Ibid., 151
[7] Ibid., 155
[8] Ibid., 155
[9] Ibid., 152
[10] Ibid., 155
[11] Ibid., 159. Hauerwas cites Wolin, Sheldon. Politics and Vision; Continuity & Innovation in Western Political Thought, (New Haven: Princeton, 2006), 66.
[12] University, 159 and Wolin, 62.
[13] University, 160
[14] Ibid., 161
[15] Ibid.,157
[16] Ibid., 163
[17] Ibid., 155
[18] Coles, xi.
[19] University, 156, Hauerwas cites Yoder, John Howard. The Priestly Kingdom, (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University, 1984), 69.
[20] Coles, 21
[21] Ibid., 20
[22] University, 158
[23] Coles, 25
[24] Ibid., 26
[25] According to Hauerwas, generous receptivity is a central tenet for Coles' account of radical democracy, appearing on Coles, pp. 18, 19, 20, 22, & 29.
[26] University, 162
[27] Ibid., 157
[28] Coles, 21
[29] Ibid., 20
[30] Ibid., 23
