Theologian's feisty faith challenges status quo; forget labels. Stanley Hauerwas is antiwar, anti-death penalty and antiabortion - Cover Story

Hauerwas said American Christians are "more American than ... Christian." In the Duke Magazine interview, Hauerwas said the current identification of God and country is deeply troubling.

"Let me be as clear as I can be, the God of `God and country' is not the God of Jesus Christ," he said. "Yet this is not a development that began with Sept. 11. One of the issues before American Christianity is whether the God we worship is the God of Jesus Christ.

"American Christians simply lack the disciplines necessary to discover how being Christian might make them different," he said.

While the resurrection story is one of triumph for the Christian, Hauerwas doesn't want people to forget allegiance to Jesus includes being "united with him in his death."

Hauerwas understands that true Christian pacifism may carry a heavy price.

"Christians must be ready to die, indeed have their children die, rather than betray the gospel.... Christians are not called to be heroes. We are called to be holy."

Excerpts from Hauerwas

The essential presupposition of peacemaking as an activity among Christians is our common belief that we have been made part of a community in which people no longer regard their lives as their own. We are not permitted to harbor our grievances as "ours." When we think our brother or sister has sinned against us, such an affront is not just against us but against the whole community. A community established as peaceful cannot afford to let us relish our sense of being wronged without exposing that wrong in the hopes of reconciliation. We must learn to see wrongs as "personal" because we are part of a community where the "personal" is crucial to the common good.

It is an unpleasant fact, however, that most of our lives are governed more by our hates and dislikes than by our loves. I seldom know what I really want, but I know what or whom I deeply dislike and even hate. It may be painful to be wronged, but at least such wrongs give me a history of resentments that, in fact, constitute who I am. How would I know who I am if I did not have my enemies?

One of the deep difficulties for people in the United States is what I call the Groucho Marx Principle. Groucho Marx said he wouldn't want to belong to a country club that would have him for a member. The same problem holds true in making moral choices. Would you want a moral life that you've created? Most people wouldn't, so cynicism has become the primary virtue of U.S. public life. Cynicism ensures that there's absolutely nothing worth dedicating one's life to in a way that totally encompasses it. One always wants to be able to dissociate oneself from one's engagements at any given moment.

A way to counter this cynicism is to point out some of the delusions we have about choice in our lives. For example, in a marriage course I used to teach at the University of Notre Dame, I always gave the students one absolute they could write down and put in their pockets; when times got tough they could pull it out and say, "God, it's great to have an absolute to guide my life." My absolute was that you always marry the wrong person. It's a reversible absolute, though: You also always marry the right person. The point is we don't know who we are marrying.