*WARNING: There's lots of blue and offensive language in this post. It fits with what truthful language Stan himself uses. Don't read on if you may be offended.
Stanley Hauerwas is transitioning out of the classroom and into a research-filled "retirement". He'll still supervise PhD students, write and contribute, but his teaching in the classroom days are behind him. Since "Stan the Man" -- as some of us have called him over the years -- is "retiring" (what the hell* it means for a theologian to retire is beyond me), I thought it appropriate to write my own retrospective on Stan.
So, here goes.
I didn't go to Duke because of Stanley. I went to Duke to study with Fred Herzog. Fred unfortunately died, though, my first semester at Duke. So I had to scramble for a new adviser. Not knowing whom to choose, I was placed with Stan.
That simple turn became one of the greatest gifts God gave me.
I still remember reading the Peaceable Kingdom for the first time just after becoming Stan's student and being amazed that, given my overexposure to reactionary campus evangelicalism in college, theologians were capable of making me believe that going into ministry mattered for the world.
I had entered seminary on an academic track. But when my bishop urged me toward ordination, Stan counseled, "Well, I guess you better listen, then".
Stan was the one who exposed me to John Howard Yoder's Politics of Jesus. When Fred had told me to read Barth's Dogmatics in Outline to balance his own God Walk, I found myself drawn into a more orthodox Christianity. Yoder made me take the Bible seriously. So I have Stan to thank. (Stan was right; Yoder is "a complete mindfuck"*.)
I thank God for having been taught by Stan -- both inside the classroom and out. At the end of his Gifford Lectures, Stan recommends that to discover what a true argument for God's existence looks like, we need to attend to lives like those of Yoder, Pope John Paul II, and Dorothy Day. Given that the Hauerwasian project seemed to get Christians to live what they claim to believe, I thought this hermeneutical principle ought to apply to the Hauerwasian project as well, and so I entered parish ministry. It's been my work with the sick and suffering, working and poor, who've confirmed again and again how right Stan is.
Even as I'm thankful for him, there are still times I think he's an asshole*. I still get pissed off when I recall an exchange from our philosophical theology seminar. Reading some article about Deweyan democracy, I commented that I thought such an account challenged me to remember that, despite the academic pretensions with which we were being inculcated at Duke ("you are here to save the church"), I should be open to the truths and perspectives that non-theologically-educated Christians had to offer -- that often, lay people were the ones who educate the educated, and that their voices needed to be valued and made audible. To which Stanley replied, "do you really want Nascar-rednecks telling you how to read the Bible?" Chortle chortle. Everyone laughs. So he didn't hear me say, "actually, by Dorothy Day's account, yes". What an asshole.
(I have often wondered how someone so proud of his brick-laying Texan roots could make such a statement. Its probably because he was a brick-laying Texan. While it's easy to criticize the redneck who moved to yuppie bohemia, its a pretty empty criticism coming from the yuppie bohemian trying to become a redneck. In the end, we are all assholes. See 1 John 1.8-9.)
I suspect this is why folks still jump on the anti-Stan bandwagon. We want so much out of our heroes that when they're real and faithful -- even if flawed -- it's easier to reject them.
I can't count the times he told us, "You've already ruined your lives. You're in seminary". And each time I've objected. We were there because we didn't want our lives wasted by ordinary successes. We do wrong by the master to make of him a rock star -- in many ways, his (in)famous slogan on meaning reeks of the irony of a theological "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
For all that we make of Stan, for all I know I have wanted him to be for me, is as fucked* up as any of us can hope to be. And that is why, in giving life and form to the words of God that give life and form the chaos that is his life, Stan witnesses to us the truth of Christian faith -- that we are all in need of such re-creation if the language of our living is to be doxological instead of demonically narcissistic. In my temptations to idealize, I am thankful for Wittgenstein's cry, "back to the rough ground!" I pray that, freed from foolish idealism, I may genuinely count Stan among my friends. I am thankful that his words have helped me become better friends with Jesus, and with Jesus' church.