After Christendom? How the Church is to Behave if Freedom, Justice and a Christian Nation are Bad Ideas. Stanley Hauerwas. Abingdon, 1991.

At first glance, it might seem that this review is out of place in an issue centered on the theme of social justice. However, despite the book’s abrasive title, I maintain that it is a valuable tool for understanding what justice is, and how we – as followers of Christ – are to pursue it.

This self-proclaimed sequel to RESIDENT ALIENS is a collection of six essays, which contains a number of jewels (e.g., "How marriage is a subversive act" or "How we educate Christians in a liberal society"). However, given the theme of this issue, I have chosen to focus my comments on Hauerwas’ essay on justice: "Why justice is a bad idea for Christians." Despite the essay’s provocative title, Hauerwas begins by affirming that Christianity is a faith that cares deeply about justice, about having compassion for those who are oppressed or marginalized. From there however, he quickly gets to his point: the Church has been inclined by broader culture to think of justice in terms of the individualized language of rights. The problem with justice therefore is our understanding of what justice is and how we should pursue it.

When it comes to justice, many Christians – on both sides of the political spectrum, "right" and "left" – have fallen for the Machiavellian lie that "the ends justify the means." Hauerwas says, "The crucial question is not whether an appeal to justice is warranted, but rather as Alasdair MacIntyre has argued, the more basic issue is "Whose Justice?" (49. Alasdair MacIntyre’s meaty book WHOSE JUSTICE? WHICH RATIONALITY? is a valuable read for anyone trying to understand what justice is and how to pursue it.)

Perhaps the most disturbing instances of the Church’s appeals to justice, are the times that it has been quick to label the wars of the government as just. Certainly, the communist government of North Vietnam, and more recently the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, were oppressive, but in addressing these situations, any proposed solution must likewise be subjected to the scrutiny of justice. John Howard Yoder, a major influence on Hauerwas’ work, has – in his book WHEN WAR IS UNJUST – used the historical criteria of "Just War" theory to provide us with a means for evaluating whether any war is just (and through this exercise, Yoder comes to the conclusion that the just war criteria are so stringent that they render all wars unjust.)

Hauerwas however turns his focus not toward the "establishment’s" appeals to justice, but rather toward the anti-establishment appeals to justice of liberation theology, and specifically those contained in the work of Gustavo Gutierrez. Hauerwas observes that Gutierrez’s pursuit of justice is just as concerned with individualistic rights as the oppressive establishment that he opposes. Furthermore, Gutierrez’s description of justice in terms such as "freedom from all servitude" lies in sharp contrast to Jesus’ call for his followers to freely serve. Thus, Hauerwas concludes that – despite liberation theology’s explicit concern for the poor and oppressed – their concepts of justice and the pursuit of justice are skewed.

These overviews of the Church’s appeals to justice lead one to wonder why Christ’s followers have been so fixated on the concept of justice? Hauerwas has an answer for this question: "The current emphasis on justice among Christians springs not so much from an effort to locate the Christian contribution to a wider society as it does from Christians’ attempts to find a way to be societal actors without that action being colored by Christian presupposition." Thus, justice is a sort of common denominator that is convenient for the Church to appeal to in order to stay relevant. However, the difficulty is that the world and the Scriptures define justice in vastly different ways. Hauerwas summarizes his position in this way:

In the interest of working for justice, Christians allow their imaginations to be captured by concepts of justice determined by the presuppositions of liberal societies and as a result, contribute to the development of societies that make substantive accounts of justice less likely. Out of an understandable desire to be politically and socially relevant, we lose the critical ability to stand against the limits of our social orders. We forget that the first thing as Christians we to hold before any society is not justice but God (68).

Hauerwas then emphasizes that this position does not mean that the Church is to cease working for justice. What it does mean however is that there is a sharp distinction between the perfect justice of God and the imperfect justice for which the nations clamor. This essay has been particularly helpful for me in developing my understanding of justice because it reminds me that the Church, as a holy nation set apart from the nations of the world, has been called to think critically about the claims of the world. Hauerwas’ final sentence puts it well: "As Christians we will speak more truthfully and be of greater service by refusing to continue the illusion that the larger social order knows what it is talking about when it calls for justice" (68). Thus, in making this claim, Hauerwas is in good company – not only with the writers of Scripture but also with the Early Church (see Origen’s Against Celsus VIII.73) and other movements in Church history (eg., the Anabaptists) that understood the Church’s call to holiness as prior to its call to relevance.

It has been my experience that there is an on-going tension in the so-called 'emerging church' circles between relevance and holiness. I pray that we would listen carefully to Hauerwas’ words and see clearly that our primary calling as the people of God is to holiness, to be a people set apart from the ways of the world who model for the world the way of Jesus. If we seek first the holy Kingdom of God, we will be taught to be a just people. Our hope for justice can only lie in our obedience to Jesus!

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"Hauerwas then emphasizes that this position does not mean that the Church is to cease working for justice. What it does mean however is that there is a sharp distinction between the perfect justice of God and the imperfect justice for which the nations clamor."

Isn't that what we (human beings) have done all along? We "exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man..." I would love to see a more systematic figuring of what it means for Christians to strive for justice while retaining allegiance to Christ's kingdom.
--Andrew Tatum ( tatum dot andrew at gmail dot com ) on 2/8/2007; 8:29:59 PM