Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir (review)

Stanley Hauerwas writes this memoir, he tells us, to discover who he is. But he has learned from John Yoder “not to trust yourself to know yourself. You learn who you are by making yourself accountable to the judgment of others” (242). Not surprisingly, the project was launched by an all-day retreat with the author and fifteen friends; early drafts were widely circulated. The result is a riveting life story remarkably free of guile and exemplary of Hauerwas’s claim that within Christian community ordinary daily living is indeed extraordinary.

There are traces here of Horatio Alger in the academy. Born to a poor bricklayer and his wife in rural Texas, Hauerwas learns the value of hard work, early rising, and going to church; he discovers the joy of theology under a remarkable college mentor; he earns his PhD at Yale, publishes many books, builds lasting friendships, and ascends to a distinguished chair at an elite university. He remains steadfast in marriage to his first wife, even as she descends into a severe bipolar disorder but later wonders whether this choice was false forbearance, subjecting himself and his young son to unnecessary abuse. Most touchingly, Hauerwas assumes total responsibility for the couple’s young son, Adam: getting him breakfast, taking him to school, planning special activities for the afternoon, and taking Adam to worship every Sunday. After divorce, he falls in love with Paula Gilbert, marries her, and with her builds a strong and joyful marriage. Hauerwas stays lovingly connected with his parents even as the intellectual and cultural distance between them widens. All this is true and poignantly told in straightforward, often colorful prose punctuated with wise aphorisms. But two Hauerwasian themes subvert Horatio Alger!

The first is radical contingency, manifest here in the shaping of Hauerwas’s life and thought. Hauerwas does not come out of Yale with a lifetime project in nuce in his dissertation. He writes about matters that in his experience demand immediate theological reflection, such as his early work on the mentally disabled. Equally important is the contingency of friendship, often launched by who is occupying the office next door. Hauerwas’s scholarship does not develop by a carefully planned reading program but by drawing upon the expertise of his colleagues, often reading books with them. There’s a difference, Hauerwas suggests, between reading Thomas Aquinas and reading Aquinas with David Burrell. These friendships may help to account for some of the strange bedfellows appropriated by Hauerwas, such as the unlikely trio of Alas-dair MacIntyre, John Howard Yoder, and Peter Ochs.

The second theme is the discipline of learning to live in a world we do not control, which for Hauerwas means becoming a Christian—that is, participating regularly in the practices of the church (worship, prayer, ministry) and being molded into a spirituality embracing nonviolence, patience, joy, hope, and caring—a spirituality he developed twenty-five years earlier in the final chapter of The Peaceable Kingdom. Through this discipline, suggests Hauerwas, the contingencies of life are transformed into destiny, giving rise to the title of the memoir, Hannah’s Child. Hauerwas’s mother had prayed earnestly for a son with the promise that he would be dedicated to God. Suddenly, this seems not simply a quaint coincidence but a matter of destiny. His whole life, including his theological work, has been a gift for which the appropriate response is gratitude and joy. In the wake of 9/11, having been named by Time magazine as “The Best Theologian in America,” Hauerwas senses that he has been preparing for sixty years for this moment.

This is a compelling book worthy of careful attention in the academy, churches, and—one hopes—beyond the usual circle of Hauerwas’s readers.