A Community of Character

Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic

Stanley Hauerwas

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 1991
• ISBN:
  9780268076610
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Systematic Theology & Ethics

Selected by Christianity Today as one of the 100 most important books on religion of the twentieth century.

Leading theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas shows how discussions of Christology and the authority of scripture involve questions about what kind of community the church must be to rightly tell the stories of God. He challenges the dominant assumption of contemporary Christian social ethics that there is a special relation between Christianity and some form of liberal democratic social system.

PART ONE

The Narrative Character of Christian Social Ethics

1. A Story-Formed Community: Reflections on Watership Down

1. Ten Theses Toward the Reform of Christian Social Ethics

Luther began the Reformation by posting ninety-five theses which were meant to reform the church. I will begin with ten theses, but I can hardly claim to have such a grand project in view. While my theses are meant to be reforming, I propose only to challenge some of the conventional wisdom about the nature of Christian social ethics. Primarily I choose this manner for a mundane reason—I have more to say than I can defend here, but I intend to say it anyhow.1 In this way, I can at least expose the central presuppositions of my position in spite of my inability to defend it.

1.1 The social significance of the Gospel requires the recognition of the narrative structure of Christian convictions for the life of the church.

Christian social ethics too often takes the form of principles and policies that are not clearly based on or warranted by the central convictions of the faith. Yet the basis of any Christian social ethic should be the affirmation that God has decisively called and formed a people to serve him through Israel and the work of Christ. The appropriation of the critical significance of the latter depends on the recognition of narrative as a basic category for social ethics.

1.2 Every social ethic involves a narrative, whether it is concerned with the formulation of basic principles of social organization and/or concrete policy alternatives.

The loss of narrative as a central category for social ethics has resulted in a failure to see that the ways the issues of social ethics are identified—i.e., the relation of personal and social ethics, the meaning and status of the individual in relation to the community, freedom versus equality, the interrelation of love and justice—are more a reflection of a political philosophy than they are crucial categories for the analysis of a community’s social ethic. The form and substance of a community is narrative dependent and therefore what counts as “social ethics” is a correlative of the content of that narrative.

1.3 The ability to provide an adequate account of our existence is the primary test of the truthfulness of a social ethic.

No society can be just or good that is built on falsehood. The first task of Christian social ethics, therefore, is not to make the “world” better or more just, but to help Christian people form their community consistent with their conviction that the story of Christ is a truthful account of our existence. For as H. R. Niebuhr argued, only when we know “what is going on,” do we know “what we should do,” and Christians believe that we learn most decisively “what is going on” in the cross and resurrection of Christ.

1.4 Communities formed by a truthful narrative must provide the skills to transform fate into destiny so that the unexpected, especially as it comes in the form of strangers, can be welcomed as gift.

We live in a world of powers that are not our creation and we become determined by them when we lack the ability to recognize and name them. The Christian story teaches us to regard truthfulness more as a gift than a possession and thus requires that we be willing to face both the possibilities and threats a stranger represents. Such a commitment is the necessary condition for preventing our history from becoming our fate.

1.5 The primary social task of the church is to be itself—that is, a people who have been formed by a story that provides them with the skills for negotiating the danger of this existence, trusting in God’s promise of redemption.

The church is a people on a journey who insist on living consistent with the conviction that God is the lord of history. They thus refuse to resort to violence in order to secure their survival. The fact that the first task of the church is to be itself is not a rejection of the world or a withdrawal ethic, but a reminder that Christians must serve the world on their own terms; otherwise the world would have no means to know itself as the world.

1.6 Christian social ethics can only be done from the perspective of those who do not seek to control national or world history but who are content to live “out of control.”

To do ethics from the perspective of those “out of control” means Christians must find the means to make clear to both the oppressed and oppressor that the cross determines the meaning of history.2 Christians should thus provide imaginative alternatives for social policy as they are released from the “necessities” of those that would control the world in the name of security. For to be out of control means Christians can risk trusting in gifts, as they have no reason to deny the contingent character of our existence.

1.7 Christian social ethics depends on the development of leadership in the church that can trust and depend on the diversity of gifts in the community.

The authority necessary for leadership in the church should derive from the willingness of Christians to risk speaking the truth to and hearing the truth from those in charge. In societies that fear the truth, leadership depends on the ability to provide security rather than the ability to let the diversity of the community serve as the means to live truthfully. Only the latter form of community can afford to have their leaders’ mistakes acknowledged without their ceasing to exercise authority.

1.8 For the church to be, rather than to have, a social ethic means we must recapture the social significance of common behavior, such as acts of kindness, friendship, and the formation of families.

Trust is impossible in communities that always regard the other as a challenge and threat to their existence. One of the profoundest commitments of a community, therefore, is providing a context that encourages us to trust and depend on one another. Particularly significant is a community’s determination to be open to new life that is destined to challenge as well as carry on the story.

1.9 In our attempt to control our society Christians in America have too readily accepted liberalism as a social strategy appropriate to the Christian story.

Liberalism, in its many forms and versions, presupposes that society can be organized without any narrative that is commonly held to be true. As a result it tempts us to believe that freedom and rationality are independent of narrative—i.e., we are free to the extent that we have no story. Liberalism is, therefore, particularly pernicious to the extent it prevents us from understanding how deeply we are captured by its account of existence.

1.10 The church does not exist to provide an ethos for democracy or any other form of social organization, but stands as a political alternative to every nation, witnessing to the kind of social life possible for those that have been formed by the story of Christ.

Too often the church’s call for justice unwittingly reinforces liberal assumptions about freedom in the name of the Gospel. The church’s first task is to help us gain a critical perspective on those narratives that have captivated our vision and lives. By doing so, the church may well help provide a paradigm of social relations otherwise thought impossible.

Each of these theses obviously involves highly controversial claims that require disciplined philosophical and theological argument.3 However, I do not intend to supply that kind of discursive argument here, as I am more interested in trying to illuminate what the theses mean and how they are interrelated. In order to do that I am going to tell a story about some very special rabbits that inhabit the world of Richard Adams’ book Watership Down.4 I cannot hope to convince you of the correctness of my theses by proceeding in this way, but I do hope at least to help you understand what they might mean. Moreover it seems appropriate for someone who is arguing for the significance of narrative to use a story to make his point.

2. The Narrative Context of Social Ethics

It would be misleading if I were to give the impression that I am using Watership Down only because it offers an entertaining way to explain my theses. The very structure of the book provides an account of the narrative nature of social ethics that is seldom noticed or accounted for by most political and social theory. Adams’ depiction of the various communities in Watership Down suggests that they are to be judged primarily by their ability to sustain the narratives that define the very nature of man, or in this case rabbits. Thus Watership Down is meant to teach us the importance of stories for social and political life. But even more important, by paying close attention to Watership Down we will see that the best way to learn the significance of stories is by having our attention drawn to stories through a story.

Watership Down is at once a first-class political novel and a marvelous adventure story. It is extremely important for my theses that neither aspect of the novel can be separated from the other. Too often politics is treated solely as a matter of power, interests, or technique. We thus forget that the most basic task of any polity is to offer its people a sense of participation in an adventure. For finally what we seek is not power, or security, or equality, or even dignity, but a sense of worth gained from participation and contribution to a common adventure. Indeed, our “dignity” derives exactly from our sense of having played a part in such a story.

The essential tie between politics and adventure not only requires a recognition of the narrative nature of politics, but it also reminds us that good politics requires the development of courage and hope as central virtues for its citizens. As we will see, Watership Down is primarily a novel about the various forms of courage and hope necessary for the formation of a good community. Adventure requires courage to keep us faithful to the struggle, since by its very nature adventure means that the future is always in doubt. And just to the extent that the future is in doubt, hope is required, as there can be no adventure if we despair of our goal. Such hope does not necessarily take the form of excessive confidence; rather it involves the simple willingness to take the next step.

Watership Down begins with the exodus of a group of rabbits from a well-established warren on the slim basis that one rabbit with the gifts of a seer thinks that warren is threatened with destruction. As a result the group is forced to undergo a hazardous journey in search of a new home, ultimately Watership Down, as well as the dangerous undertaking of securing does from the militaristic warren of Efrafa. It is important to note that the rabbits of Watership Down do not leave their old warren as a people (or a rabbithood). They leave only as a group of individuals joined together by their separate reasons for leaving the warren. All they share in common is the stories of the prince of the rabbits, El-ahrairah. They become a people only as they acquire a history through the adventures they share as interpreted through the traditions of El-ahrairah.

For this reason Watership Down is fundamentally a political novel. It is concerned with exploring what conditions are necessary for a community to be a viable polity. Thus much of the novel depicts contrasting political communities which bear striking similarities to past and present polities. Sandleford, the warren they must leave, is a traditional class society whose government is determined by loyalty to a strong and competent leader. On their journey they later encounter a warren that has no name but bears a striking resemblance to the modern welfare state in which the freedom of the individual is primary. And the third warren, Efrafa, from which they try to secure some does, is a highly organized and regimented totalitarian society. Each of these societies is characterized by a virtue that embodies its ideal form—i.e., loyalty, tolerance, and obedience.5

Even though none of these communities perfectly represent actual societies, they provide imaginative paradigms for tendencies in every polity, whether it be a state, a corporation, or a church. Basic issues of political theory, such as the relation of individual to community, the primacy of freedom and its relation to justice, and the legitimation of power, are obviously present in each of the communities described. It is extremely tempting, therefore, to interpret Watership Down as a commentary on current actual and theoretical political options. Only Watership Down, itself, seems to be an exception, as it is presented as an ideal society for which there is no ready analogue.

Without denying that Watership Down is a ready source of standard forms of political reflection, the book has a deeper insight to offer for social ethics. Although each society can be characterized by traditional political opinions and theory, Adams’ intention is to show how such discussions are subordinate to the ability of a community to live and tell its stories. As we shall see, the crux of the viability of any society in Watership Down is whether it is organized so as to provide for authentic retelling of the stories of the founder and prince of rabbit history, El-ahrairah.

Adams is trying to help us understand politics not only as it organizes people for particular ends, but also as it forms them to be inheritors and exemplifications of a tradition. In other words, Adams suggests that society can best be understood as an extended argument, since living traditions presuppose rival interpretations. Good societies enable the argument to continue so that the possibilities and limits of the tradition can be exposed. The great danger, however, is that the success of a tradition will stop its growth and in reaction some may deny the necessity of tradition for their lives. The truthfulness of a tradition is tested in its ability to form people who are ready to put the tradition into question, or at least to recognize when it is being put into question by a rival tradition. Of course, as we shall see, some traditions lapse into complete incoherence and can be recovered only by revolutionary reconstitution.6

2.1 The Story-Shaped World of Rabbits

This is all very abstract, but I can make it concrete by calling your attention to the way stories function for the rabbits of Watership Down. First, there are several things about rabbits that we need to know. A rabbit is constantly in danger. Mr. Lockley, a famous expert on rabbits, suggests that rabbits are as strong as the grass (p. 167). That is certainly not very strong, for the strength of grass consists primarily in being able to grow back after it has been stepped on, cut, or burned. And just as grass grows back, so rabbits depend on their stubborn will to survive against all odds. And they are able to survive because they are fast, constantly vigilant, and have the wit to cooperate with one another.

Another thing we need to know about rabbits, at least the rabbits of Watership Down, is that they are lovers of stories. There is a saying among them that a rabbit “can no more refuse to tell a story than an Irishman can refuse to fight” (99). Rabbits are, to be sure, creatures of nature, but their “nature” is the result of the interaction of their biology with their stories. Their stories serve to define who they are and to give them skills to survive the dangers of their world in a manner appropriate to being a rabbit.

The first story told in Watership Down is the story of the “Blessing of El-ahrairah.” I suspect it is not accidental that this is the first story told by the rabbits who left Sandleford, as all new communities must remind themselves of their origin. A people are formed by a story which places their history in the texture of the world. Such stories make the world our home by providing us with the skills to negotiate the dangers in our environment in a manner appropriate to our nature.

The “Blessing of El-ahrairah” is the account of Frith, the god of the rabbits, allocating gifts to each of the species. In the beginning all animals were friends and El-ahrairah was among the happiest of animals, as he had more wives than he could count and his children covered the earth. They became so numerous that Frith told El-ahrairah he must control his people, since there was not enough grass for everyone. Rabbits, however, are intent on living day by day, so El-ahrairah refused to heed Frith’s warning.

Frith, therefore, called a meeting at which he gave a gift to all animals and birds. El...