Stanley Hauerwas was raised in Pleasant Grove, Texas, in a working class family. As the son of a bricklayer, Hauerwas was early on apprenticed to the craft of bricklaying under his father. The experience was extremely formative for his later life, as he himself has often compared the skill and hard work that bricklaying requires with both his own approach to theological work and the challenges of living a fully Christian life.

After leaving Pleasant Grove, Hauerwas matriculated at Southwestern University, a liberal arts college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. He received a B.A. there in 1962. He went on to earn the B.D., M.A., M.Phil and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University. Upon delivering the prestigious Gifford Lectures in 2001, Hauerwas would also be awarded an honorary D.D. from the University of Edinburgh.

Following his graduation from Yale University, Hauerwas taught first at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, before joining the faculty at the University of Notre Dame in 1970. He was later invited to assume a faculty position at the Divinity School of Duke University in 1983, where he currently teaches in the area of theological ethics.[1]

Hauerwas' influences are wide-ranging, including figures as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Soren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Howard Yoder, and Alasdair MacIntyre.

His theological writings occasionally veer into the area of paleo-orthodoxy, though this is not a label he has ever claimed. Hauerwas has sometimes been associated with narrative theology or post-liberalism, both of which are often attached to Yale scholars Brevard Childs (a biblical scholar under whom Hauerwas studied in the 1960s), Hans Frei, and George Lindbeck.

Hauerwas writes of narrative as "the necessary grammar of Christian convictions" in that Christian claims are inextricably linked to what God has done in history and to the ongoing story of God's people as they move through time. This sense of a "hypertemporal God" Hauerwas claims to have gotten from John Howard Yoder, who impressed upon him the need of always locating God's actions in the "timeliness" of the created order as witnessed by the Bible. He has explained this understanding of a people (i.e., church) constituted by their ongoing story with God in terms of a pointed and oft-repeated aphorism:

My claim, so offensive to some, that the first task of the church is to make the world the world, not to make the world more just, is a correlative of this theological metaphysics. The world simply cannot be narrated - the world cannot have a story - unless a people exist who make the world the world. That is an eschatological claim that presupposes we know there was a beginning only because we have seen the end ... [C]reation names God's continuing action, God's unrelenting desire for us to want to be loved by that love manifest in Christ's life, death, and resurrection.

Though Hauerwas believes that the strong distinction between the church and the world is a necessary mark of the Christian life, it is also a view that has drawn criticism. What he sees as a faithful way of constituting a people of God, others see as defining him as a "sectarian, fideistic, tribalist." Hauerwas collaborated with William H. Willimon (now a bishop in the United Methodist Church) in 1989 to offer an accessible version of his vision of the Christian life in the book Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony.

Time magazine in 2001 named him "America's Best Theologian". He responded by saying "'Best' is not a theological category."

That same year, he was invited to give the Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews in Scotland, which were published as With the Grain of the Universe, (ISBN 1-58743-016-9) a text in which Karl Barth's interpretation of St. Anselm's analogy of faith was featured. In 1997 he gave the Scottish Journal of Theology lectures at Aberdeen, published as Sanctify Them in Truth (1998).

Deontological and Utilitarian Thought

The basic Utilitarian rationalization for research on human beings is the ends justify the means. This means that any sort of research on a human being is justified by the possibility of successfully saving others. For example, all cancer research would be justified by the possibility of finding a cure for cancer, which would inevitably save the life of many others. The utilitarian argument focuses on the greatest good for the greatest amount of people or the greater good. Under the utilitarian justification it is one’s duty to sacrifice him or herself if it would save others as long as one’s societal worth is less than the combined societal worth of the others. Therefore, if either a doctor or a homeless person must die to save the lives of many others, the homeless person must sacrifice himself since he is worth less to society than the doctor.

The Deontological argument against research on human beings is that a person is an ends in themselves. This means we cannot use people for any purpose. The Deontological argument relies on the belief that one should treat others as he or she would like to be so treated. Say someone was suffering from a terminal illness and they are likely to die shortly. Under deontology, research cannot be done on this person even if it means saving the lives of millions. Deontology focuses on keeping your principle at all times no matter the situation.

Hauerwas's Understanding of Experimentation

Stanley Hauerwas finds these two moral theories very limiting because they are quandary ethics, cases that rely on extreme situations. He believes that there needs to be a third reasoning that falls somewhere in between these two. He believes that the basic doctor-patient relationship should be built on trust and caring. This characterizes him as more of deontological thinker; however, he does believe in research on human beings. Hauerwas’s perspective is that there needs to be a middle ground between these two perspectives. The patient becomes dehumanized through research; however, without this research there would be little medical improvement. Hauerwas therefore believes this middle ground should focus on caring for the patient instead of curing. With this, Hauerwas believes we do not have the moral understanding to handle current medicine.

As mentioned above, Hauerwas believes that the moral issue of experimentation on humans cannot be answered from a utilitarianism versus deontological perspective. He believes that society lacks a cohesive understanding of the notions of “the good of mankind” and “the rights of the individual.” Only when this issue is solved can society come to a conclusive decision on how science should be used to serve humans needs. Therapeutic and nontherapeutic experimentation on humans are differentiated by the intent of the procedure. Therapeutic experimentation is meant to help the patient with their current needs, while nontherapeutic experimentation has no intention of helping the patient, but to collect research for the benefit of future patients. The issue becomes: should medical progress be helping the current patient or the future patient? Stanley Hauerwas believes society has no consensus of the meanings of health and illness, which contributes to the issue of how patients should be treated. Only when society comes to a universal understanding of these issues can the moral dilemma of experimentation on humans be resolved.

Informed Consent

Hauerwas finds little justification for human experimentation through informed consent. He argues that a patient’s understanding of an experimental procedure will never approach that of his or her physician’s understanding. He questions even the possibility of a patient reaching a state of “informed consent.” He further believes that if individuals reach such a state of “informed consent”, this does not mean individuals should consent, or fully understand the meaning of their consent. “For persons can misuse themselves even if they do so voluntarily and with full knowledge.” Individuals consenting to experimentation through the justification of the human good, turn themselves into objects for the use of the experimentation. The issue is further complicated for Hauerwas as to whom should be considered for medical experimentation. The use of prisoners only proliferates social stereotypes and denigration. He believes that informed consent is necessary for human experimentation, but it does not provide justification for our willingness to submit and participate in experimentation.

Language of Rights

Hauerwas finds the language of “rights” to be disturbing as it assumes that people relate to others as strangers, and lends even the understanding of the family to that of a contractual society. He argues that being part of a family, however, is not a voluntary undertaking. As such, when one is part of a family, the kinds of responsibilities each member holds are in relation to each other. Hauerwas finds that as a parent, you have a duty to your children, not just because you brought them into existence, but because the role of parent is to ensure the children are brought up in a way that is conducive to the community’s values. Thus, the issue with “rights” language is that it attempts to prevent maltreatment of individuals to the point of exclusion of familial and communal responsibility. Hauerwas’s bottom line is that there can be no real society if its members only relate in terms of noninterference. The language of rights destroys society because we regard people as strangers instead of assuming the responsibility towards them as family and members of the community that we share.

Hauerwas believes that there is a difference between the concept of death and the criteria for death. The concept of death “involves a philosophical judgment of a significant change that has happened in a person” and therefore “is a correlative of what one takes to be the necessary condition of human life, e.g., the potential for consciousness” The criteria of death, however, are “those empirical measurements that can be made to determine whether a person is dead, such as cessation of respiration or a flat EEG” Thus, brain death is a criteria of death that may serve “as a symbol of when it is time to die” One must not delay death so long that it no longer possible to die a good death.

On the subject of suicide, Hauerwas challenges the claim that autonomous suicide is morally acceptable, but also wants to distinguish himself from the position that denies rational suicide. Hauerwas feels that suicide can be and often is a rational decision of an “autonomous” agent, but doesn’t agree with the notion that it is justified. He contends that suicide as an institution must be considered morally doubtful, as the life that we are given should be considered a gift bestowed upon us by God. To many, the term rational suicide is based on the assumption that the decision to live or die depends on whether life has a meaning or purpose. Hauerwas, however, contends that the reason we should live on, is because our lives are not ours, and as such, reminds us that there is a commitment to keep on living. Yet, while there may be times in our lives where suicide may seem rational, mere existence allows us to enjoy certain joys, such as helping another, or healing the sick, that should be enough to sustain our commitment to living.

According to Hauerwas, a “good death is a death that we can prepare for through living because we are able to see that death is but a necessary correlative to a good life”. A long death may give a person more of a chance to have a good death because he may be able to get himself morally in line during that time period, but it is also possible to die well quickly if you have lived morally. A good death also requires that the death be morally in proportion with the way one lived and was sustained, and occurs in a way that allows those caring for us to see that they are sustaining us.

Many of his books are collections of essays; some are structured monographs. Among his more commonly known works are:

• Vision and Virtue: Essays in Christian Ethical Reflection (1974)
• Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics (1975)
• Truthfulness and Tragedy: Further Investigations into Christian Ethics (1977)
• A Community of Character (1981) ISBN 0-268-00735-7
• A Primer in Christian Ethics (1983) ISBN 0-268-01554-6
• Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society (1985) ISBN 0-86683-957-7
• Suffering Presence: Theological Reflections on Medicine, the Mentally Handicapped, and the Church (1986)
• Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between (1988)
• Life in the Christian Colony (with William Willimon) (1989) ISBN 0-687-36159-1
• Naming the Silence: God, Medicine and the Problem of Suffering (1990)
• After Christendom: How the Church Is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (1991) ISBN 0-687-00929-4
• Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America (1993) ISBN 0-687-31678-2
• Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secular (1994)
• In Good Company: The Church as Polis (1995)
• Where Resident Aliens Live (with William Willimon) (1996)
• Christians Among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics (with Charles Pinches) (1997)
• Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth Century Theology and Philosophy (1997)
• Sanctify Them in Truth: Holiness Exemplified (1998)
• A Better Hope: Resources for a church confronting capitalism, democracy and postmodernity (2000)
• The Hauerwas Reader (2001) ISBN 0-82232-691-4
• With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology (2001) ISBN 1-58743-016-9
• The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics (with Samuel Wells) (2004)
• Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Non-Violence (2004) ISBN 1-58743-076-2
• That State of the University: Academic Knowledges and the Knowledge of God (2007)
• Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary: Conversations between a Radical Democrat and a Christian (with Romand Coles) (2008)
• Stanley Hauerwas on America’s God: Lecture at Church of the Incarnation, Dallas, Texas, on March 7, 2010. Retrieved Aug 13, 2010 here.
• "Disciplined Seeing: Forms of Christianity and Forms of Life," South Atlantic Quarterly 109:4 (Fall 2010), 765-790 (with Brian Goldstone) http://saq.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/109/4/765