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    Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Expanded 25th Anniversary Edition)
    Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Expanded 25th Anniversary Edition)
    Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Expanded 25th Anniversary Edition)
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    Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Expanded 25th Anniversary Edition)

    By Stanley Hauerwas and Bishop William H. Willimon

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    Only when the Church enacts its scandalous Jesus-centered tradition, will it truly be the Body of Christ and transform the world. Twenty-five years after its first publishing, Resident Aliens remains a prophetic vision of how the Church can regain its vitality, battle its malaise, reclaim its capacity to nourish souls, and stand firmly against the illusions, pretensions, and eroding values of today's world.


    Resident Aliens discusses the nature of the church and its relationship to surrounding culture. It argues that churches should focus on developing Christian life and community rather than attempting to reform secular culture. Hauerwas and Willimon reject the idea that America is a Christian nation, instead Christians should see themselves as "residents aliens" in a foreign land. Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon maintain that, instead of attempting to transform government, the role of Christians is to live lives which model the love of Christ. Rather than trying to convince others to change their ethics, Christians should model a new set of ethics which are grounded in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAbingdon Press
    Release dateApr 15, 2014
    ISBN9781426788604
    Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Expanded 25th Anniversary Edition)
    Author

    Stanley Hauerwas

    Stanley Hauerwas is professor emeritus of ethics at Duke University where he held the Gilbert T. Rowe chair for more than twenty years. Among his numerous publications are Sanctify Them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified (1998) and Living Gently in a Violent World, with Jean Vanier (2008). His latest publication is Fully Alive: The Apocalyptic Humanism of Karl Barth (University of Virginia Press, 2023).

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      Book preview

      Resident Aliens - Stanley Hauerwas

      PREFACE

      In his letter to the Philippians, Paul uses an image that appeals to us, that serves as a symbol for the change in mood we describe in this book. After asking the Philippian church to have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus (no small order for ordinary people), Paul tells this forlorn, struggling church, God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure (2:13). In you. Then Paul reminds them, Our commonwealth is in heaven (3:20).

      In the space of a few lines, Paul has called the Philippians to be part of a quite spectacular journey—namely, to live and to die like Christ, to model their lives so closely upon Christ that they bear within themselves the very mind of Christ. Yet he also calls them to rejoice (3:1), because in them, in their ordinary life together as congregation, God is enjoying them as divine representatives in the world. Great demands, but also great joy, at the wonder, at the adventure of being the church.

      The image that evokes this adventure for us is, again, found in Philippians 3:20—our commonwealth is in heaven. Moffatt more vividly translates this politeuma as We are a colony of heaven. The Jews in Dispersion were well acquainted with what it meant to live as strangers in a strange land, aliens trying to stake out a living on someone else’s turf. Jewish Christians had already learned, in their day-to-day life in the synagogue, how important it was for resident aliens to gather to name the name, to tell the story, to sing Zion’s songs in a land that didn’t know Zion’s God.

      A colony is a beachhead, an outpost, an island of one culture in the middle of another, a place where the values of home are reiterated and passed on to the young, a place where the distinctive language and life-style of the resident aliens are lovingly nurtured and reinforced.

      We believe that the designations of the church as a colony and Christians as resident aliens are not too strong for the modern American church—indeed, we believe it is the nature of the church, at any time and in any situation, to be a colony. Perhaps it sounds a bit overly dramatic to describe the actual churches you know as colonies in the middle of an alien culture. But we believe that things have changed for the church residing in America and that faithfulness to Christ demands that we either change or else go the way of all compromised forms of the Christian faith.

      The church is a colony, an island of one culture in the middle of another. In baptism our citizenship is transferred from one dominion to another, and we become, in whatever culture we find ourselves, resident aliens. As a pastor and as a layperson, we intend this to be a critical, but hopeful, reflection on ministry for pastors and their churches in the light of our inclusion in the colony called church: critical, because we believe that church thought and life need to change direction; hopeful, because in your church and ours, God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

      To be resident but alien is a formula for loneliness that few of us can sustain. Indeed, it is almost impossible to minister alone because our loneliness can too quickly turn into self-righteousness or self-hate. Christians can survive only by supporting one another through the countless small acts through which we tell one another we are not alone, that God is with us. Friendship is not, therefore, accidental to the Christian life.

      While writing this book together, we have been acutely aware of the many friendships that make our lives possible—not least of which is the friendship we enjoy with each other. We hope, moreover, this book makes evident our indebtedness to our friends, far and near, who live better lives than we and who, in so doing, make our lives better. There are some we need to thank in particular for reading, criticizing, and improving the manuscript generally—Professor Michael Cartwright of Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, Professor Greg Jones of Loyola College in Maryland, Mr. Steve Long and Mr. Phil Kenneson of the graduate program in religion at Duke University, and Dr. Paula Gilbert of the Divinity School at Duke. We have dedicated the book to two persons we are honored to call friends who provide leadership in training women and men for the ministry of Jesus Christ. As deans of the Divinity School at Duke, they have never let us forget that the intellectual love of God and vital piety must be one. They make our lives possible.

      Duke University Divinity School

      1989

      CHAPTER ONE

      The Modern World: On Learning to Ask the Right Questions

      Sometime between 1960 and 1980, an old, inadequately conceived world ended, and a fresh, new world began. We do not mean to be overly dramatic. Although there are many who have not yet heard the news, it is nevertheless true: A tired old world has ended, an exciting new one is awaiting recognition. This book is about a renewed sense of what it means to be Christian, more precisely, of what it means to be pastors who care for Christians, in a distinctly changed world.

      A Changed World

      When and how did we change? Although it may sound trivial, one of us is tempted to date the shift sometime on a Sunday evening in 1963. Then, in Greenville, South Carolina, in defiance of the state’s time-honored blue laws, the Fox Theater opened on Sunday. Seven of us—regular attenders of the Methodist Youth Fellowship at Buncombe Street Church—made a pact to enter the front door of the church, be seen, then quietly slip out the back door and join John Wayne at the Fox.

      That evening has come to represent a watershed in the history of Christendom, South Carolina style. On that night, Greenville, South Carolina—the last pocket of resistance to secularity in the Western world—served notice that it would no longer be a prop for the church. There would be no more free passes for the church, no more free rides. The Fox Theater went head to head with the church over who would provide the world view for the young. That night in 1963, the Fox Theater won the opening skirmish.

      You see, our parents had never worried about whether we would grow up Christian. The church was the only show in town. On Sundays, the town closed down. One could not even buy a gallon of gas. There was a traffic jam on Sunday mornings at 9:45, when all went to their respective Sunday schools. By overlooking much that was wrong in that world—it was a racially segregated world, remember—people saw a world that looked good and right. In taking a child to Sunday school, parents affirmed everything that was good, wholesome, reasonable, and American. Church, home, and state formed a national consortium that worked together to instill Christian values. People grew up Christian simply by being lucky enough to be born in places like Greenville, South Carolina, or Pleasant Grove, Texas.

      A few years ago, the two of us awoke and realized that, whether or not our parents were justified in believing this about the world and the Christian faith, nobody believed it today. At least, almost nobody. Whether we are with Pentecostals, Catholics, Lutherans, or United Methodists, we meet few young parents, college students, or auto mechanics who believe that one becomes Christian today by simply breathing the air and drinking the water in the generous, hospitable environment of Christendom America. A few may still believe that by electing a few Christian senators, passing a few new laws, and tinkering with the federal budget we can form a Christian culture, or at least one that is a bit more just. But most people know this view to be touchingly anachronistic. All sorts of Christians are waking up and realizing that it is no longer our world—if it ever was.

      We in no way mean to imply that, before 1963, things were better for believers. Our point is that, before the Fox Theater opened on Sunday, Christians could deceive themselves into thinking that we were in charge, that we had made a difference, that we had created a Christian culture.

      We believe the world has been changed but that change did not begin when the Fox Theater opened on Sunday. The world was fundamentally changed in Jesus Christ, and we have been trying, but failing, to grasp the implications of that change ever since. Before the Fox Theater opened on Sunday, we could convince ourselves that, with an adapted and domesticated gospel, we could fit American values into a loosely Christian framework, and we could thereby be culturally significant. This approach to the world began in 313 (Constantine’s Edict of Milan) and, by our reckoning, ended in 1963. Of course, Constantinianism had begun earlier than 313 and ended before 1963, but dates, like birth and death, remind us that the way things were and are is not set in stone.

      We are not suggesting that all Christians from 313 to 1963 have been unfaithful. Much can be said for those Christians who sided with the Constantines of our world—given what they perceived to be their alternatives. Much can be said for those who sought to uphold a day of rest for all God’s creation through discouraging any form of behavior (e.g., attending Sunday movies) that fell short of praise to God. Moreover, we are aware that from 313 to 1963 many Christians found ways to dissent from the coercive measures necessary to ensure social order in the name of Christ. What we are saying is that in the twilight of that world, we have an opportunity to discover what has and always is the case—that the church, as those called out by God, embodies a social alternative that the world cannot on its own terms know.

      The demise of the Constantinian world view, the gradual decline of the notion that the church needs some sort of surrounding Christian culture to prop it up and mold its young, is not a death to lament. It is an opportunity to celebrate. The decline of the old, Constantinian synthesis between the church and the world means that we American Christians are at last free to be faithful in a way that makes being a Christian today an exciting adventure.

      One of our former parishes was next door to the synagogue. One day over coffee, the rabbi remarked, "It’s tough to be a Jew in Greenville. We are forever telling our children, ‘That’s fine for everyone else, but it’s not fine for you. You are special. You are different. You are a Jew. You have a different story. A different set of values.’

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