Seeing as Theologizers has not been enlightened by our favourite Stan for some time, here is David Fitch with some favourite Hauerwas quotes…

http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/the-timeless-hauerwas-some-more-quotes-and-some-of-the-things-i-continue-to-learn-from-“the-man-”/

- Jim Robertson

Eric Metaxas has written a new biography of Bonhoeffer. Titled Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, the book examines Bonhoeffer’s life and his place in the evangelical world. CT has an interview with Metaxas that introduces the work.

CT gathers some viewpoints; the first is reproduced below, but check them all out.

“I’ve thought for a long time that Christians need to step up and criticize—I wouldn’t use the word denounce, condemn, or anything like that—but criticize and correct fellow believers who behave badly, in public especially, or who are involved in immoral practices privately that become known. What we do is, especially in evangelical circles, we publicly criticize each other for heresies or heterodox ideas, such as open theism, but we don’t often publicly criticize each other for flagrantly bad behavior. People have been very quiet about these things, and we need to say something and let it be known that they do not represent the evangelical world. I think that when you use a word like denounce orcondemn, you’re just playing into their game and acting like them, and so people are just going to point to that and say, ‘See? They’re all like that.’ We should be civil toward fellow believers, but very firm, and say, ‘We’re not necessarily rejecting the people, but we’re rejecting their practice.’ I don’t think it’s really going to work with Fred Phelps and his family, but I think we need to distance ourselves from their practices, certainly.”

Roger Olson, theologian, Baylor University

I came across this via my wanderings through the op-ed pages of The Guardian. Václav Havel gave a pretty astounding speech at the opening ceremony of international architecture conference Forum 2000.  He begins with architecture and urban sprawl but moves into a passionate and pointed critique of the pointless self-confidence and metaphysical emptiness of modern western civilization. From his speech:

Years ago when I used to drive by car from Prague to our country cottage in Eastern Bohemia, the journey from the city centre to the signboard that marked the city limits took about fifteen minutes. Then came meadows, forests, fields and villages. These days the selfsame journey takes a good forty minutes or more, and it is impossible to know whether I have left the city or not. What was until recently clearly recognisable as the city is now losing its boundaries and with them its identity. It has become a huge overgrown ring of something I can’t find a word for. It is not a city as I understand the term, nor suburbs, let alone a village. Apart from anything else it lacks streets or squares. There is just a random scattering of enormous single-storey warehouses, supermarkets, hypermarkets, car and furniture marts, petrol stations, eateries, gigantic car parks, isolated high-rise blocks to be let as offices, depots of every kind, and collections of family homes that are admittedly close together but are otherwise desperately remote.

Having grown up in Calgary, one of the least densely populated and most sprawling cities on Earth, I know his pain.  Some more highlights:

There is emerging a new type of a previously described existential phenomenon: unbounded consumer collectivity engenders a new type of solitude….We are living in the first truly global civilisation. That means that whatever comes into existence on its soil can very quickly and easily span the whole world….However, the most dangerous aspect of this global atheistic civilisation is its pride. The pride of someone who is driven by the very logic of his wealth to stop respecting the contribution of nature and our forebears, to stop respecting it on principle and respect it only as a further potential source of profit….I sense behind all of this not only a globally spreading short-sightedness, but also the swollen self-consciousness of this civilisation, whose basic attributes include the supercilious idea that we know everything and what we don’t yet know we’ll soon find out, because we know how to go about it. We are convinced that this supposed omniscience of ours which proclaims the staggering progress of science and technology and rational knowledge in general, permits us to serve anything that is demonstrably useful, or that is simply a source of measurable profit, anything that induces growth and more growth and still more growth, including the growth of agglomerations. But with the cult of measurable profit, proven progress and visible usefulness there disappears respect for mystery and along with it humble reverence for everything we shall never measure and know, not to mention the vexed question of the infinite and eternal, which were until recently the most important horizons of our actions. We have totally forgotten what all previous civilisations knew: that nothing is self-evident.

Please go read the whole thing.

Another nugget I’ve been sitting on for awhile. Caspar Melville writing for The Guardian discusses why he thinks we need to move on from the New Atheism. From the Guardian:

But at 6pm at the Royal Society of the Arts the magazine I edit, New Humanist, will be hosting a debate called “After New Atheism: where next for the God debate” where the panellists – award-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, conservative philosopherRoger Scruton, historian Jonathan Rée, the whole thing chaired by Laurie Taylor – will be invited to consider how we can move beyond the crude and simplistic perspective on religion popularised by New Atheism.

Does this make me a hypocrite? I’m going to say “no”, though I would wouldn’t I? The fact that I can both defend and attack it represents my ambivalence about the phenomenon of New Atheism, or more precisely my certainty that New Atheism is very good at some things and bad at others.

And for the perspective of someone who attended the event, check out Mark Vernon’s article, “A Dead End on the God Debate.”

I’ve had this article kicking around in my inbox for some time, waiting for me to get around to posting it. Christianity Today interviews Marilynne Robinson about her new book, “Absence of Mind,” a witty and thoughtful attack on bad science and the New Atheism. From CT:

“The mind, whatever else it is, is a constant of everyone’s experience, and, in more ways than we know, the creator of the reality that we live within . … Nothing is more essential to us.” So observes Marilynne Robinson in her recent work, Absence of Mind, a slim polemic aimed at today’s popular-science writers: evolutionary psychologists E. O. Wilson and Steven Pinker, philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, and biologist/general grump Richard Dawkins. Such writers, says the Pulitzer-winning novelist, tend to reduce the person to brains, explaining away the strangeness and mystery of human experience. This reduction not only runs counter to our deepest intuitions; it’s also bad science, offered under the pretense that the modernist thinkers of the past 200 years have already answered the question of our existence.

You can find the book on Amazon.ca here.

Check out this great interview with Stanley Hauerwas, conducted by Milton Friesen. Milton is the Director of Operations and an all-around cool dude at Cardus, a Christian public policy think-tank based in Hamilton who are at the forefront of Christian public policy discussions in this country. From Cardus:

Stanley Hauerwas is a leading theologian in North America. In 2001 he was named “America’s Best Theologian” by Time Magazine. He is a Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University and also holds a joint appointment at Duke Law School. His newest book, Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir, was published in April of 2010.

An essay written by Glen Stassen, which we talked about during one of our theologizing gatherings.

Theologizers September schedule is as follows:

Tuesday, September 7th – 7:30 to 9:30 PM @ TBD – FALL POTLUCK
Tuesday, September 14th – 7:30 to 9:30 PM @ TBD
Tuesday, September 28th – 7:30 to 9:30 PM @ TBD

Theologizers is kicking off the fall the best way we know how: with food and friends. At Theologizers we explore ideas old and new, wrestle with great thinkers, and explore our faith more deeply.
We’ll be holding a fall potluck on Tuesday, September 7th and we’re inviting everyone who is curious about the group. Tell your friends at Urban Bridge and beyond; we’d love to see you there. Details will be announced once numbers are confirmed. Please RSVP to Scott Drennan at s.drennan@gmail.com.
We‘ll be starting our next book, John Yoder’s masterpiece “The Politics of Jesus,” on September 14.