A Better Hope: Resources for a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy, and Postmodernity
Stanley Hauerwas
I remain a devotee of Hauerwas, but I was quite disappointed in this book. Maybe I should chalk it up to having binged on religious books lately. I in fact had decided to go back to secular books for a while before reading this, but the pastor of my new church mentioned to me that he had read this recently and liked it. I guess he found something in it that I didn’t. Unlike other books of Hauerwas’s that I’ve enjoyed (“Truthfulness and Tragedy,” “A Community of Character,” “The Peaceable Kingdom,” “Resident Aliens”) this book seemed completely devoid of a unifying theme, and really came across as “a book of essays I haven’t published anywhere else yet.” Being Hauerwas, of course, there were still some great moments–“Why Time Cannot and Should Not Heal The Wounds of History” in particular struck me as quite insightful.
Time to read some secular books for a while.