Embodying our Distinctive Witness
A Feature Review of
Jesus Changes Everything: A New World Made Possible
Stanley Hauerwas, Charles E. Moore (Editor)
Paperback: Plough Publishing House, 2025
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Reviewed by FW York, PhD
I need to begin this review with something of a confession: what you will read here will be quite biased. Not only did Hauerwas direct my master’s thesis, but he has written a foreword for at least one of my books. Maybe more. Who can keep up with all he’s written? Regardless, he’s a friend, a mentor, and something of a rockstar (if such a thing is possible) in the field of Christian ethics. I imagine he would protest the descriptor of being a rockstar; though, he would, no doubt, laugh about it. Regardless, one of the many things I learned from him is that there is no neutral space by which we make arguments. Therefore, I am, just like you, too biased to be objective—so do with this review what you will.
In his most recent book, Jesus Changes Everything, you will find very little that is ‘new’. Yes, many of the short essays within the book have been updated and/or edited ‘down’ to get to the central task of the book—the central task of the book being, what does it mean to follow Jesus? (xxix). Anyone who has extensively studied the work of Hauerwas will recognize most of what this book includes. Yet, somehow, this book feels like fresh content. That’s an achievement in itself. First, each essay begins with scripture and addresses, specifically, why the teachings of Jesus matter for how Christians live right here, right now.
I imagine this makes the book far more appealing to smaller groups within an ecclesial setting as opposed to the academy. For instance, in Jesus Changes Everything, you will not read much about MacIntryre, Vattimo, or Wittgenstein. Rather, the focus is on what it means to take Jesus at his word. For this reason alone, the content—while familiar—feels new. Indeed, I think this format is an incredible way of introducing people to Hauerwas. Despite the demanding implications of Hauerwas’s work, the material here is not remotely dense. It’s entirely accessible, and it introduces more of his complex ideas in a way that makes his arguments very clear. Rather than folks getting tripped up over his supposed ‘fideism’ or his indebtedness to the virtue tradition, readers can simply read Hauerwas’s thoughts on Christian discipleship. To be fair, this has always been the primary concern of Hauerwas—that is, how do Christians live as Christians in such a way that if Jesus is not who he claims to be then their lives would be unintelligible? Even the way that sentence is worded is more complicated than how this book is written. This is not to say he has not written accessible literature; it’s just to say that while his writings have always been for the church, it’s not always been written to the church (he would likely disagree with that sentiment).
As he is an academic asking these questions primarily within the academy, his work has been, at times, daunting. Of course, he has published books such as Resident Aliens, The Truth about God and Cross Shattered-Christ. These books are far more accessible than, say, his book, A Community of Character. Nevertheless, Jesus Changes Everything feels more like a deliberate attempt to remind his readers that he is a Christian simply talking to other Christians about the teachings of Jesus. Nothing more, nothing less. Similar to a certain Mennonite theologian who heavily influenced Hauerwas, this book, while obviously shaped by all that Hauerwas has written, read, and studied, strips everything down to its bare necessities and reminds its readers that the church has one job: to be the church. Whatever this may mean, and it certainly means a lot, it, at bare minimum, requires that Christians embody the distinctive eschatological witness to which they are called. The subversive Kingdom of God is ever present. It is not here to maintain the status quo, nor is it even here to disrupt the status quo if by that one means Christianity is first and foremost about justice. Rather, these brief articles remind Christians that they have an even more daunting, more difficult task than fighting for abstract accounts of justice. Christians are called to take Jesus’s words seriously, and to practice them in such a way that the world can’t help but recognize how scary, gratifying, and weird the teachings and person of Jesus are.
FW York
F.W. York is a professor who has a PhD in this kind of thing, but finds rescuing donkeys to be far more rewarding. Go figure.
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