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Doing Justice to Difference: Stanley Hauerwas and Public Theology
Author(s) -
Johnson Russell P.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
modern theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.144
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1468-0025
pISSN - 0266-7177
DOI - 10.1111/moth.12602
Subject(s) - economic justice , theology , philosophy , antithesis , politics , political theology , moral evil , environmental ethics , sociology , epistemology , law , political science
Stanley Hauerwas’s theology is widely read as a rejection of the world in favor of the church, and thus the antithesis of politically‐engaged, publicly‐minded theologies like Reinhold Niebuhr's. However, Hauerwas's critical work can be more fruitfully understood as an effort in disambiguating concepts like “love” and “justice.” Attending to the role language plays in Hauerwas's thought shows how neo‐Anabaptist theology acts as a corrective to, not a rejection of, public theology. Charles Mathewes's The Republic of Grace is one example of a neo‐Augustinian political theology that takes Hauerwas's conceptual clarifications seriously.