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Theologian Stanley Hauerwas to Discuss
"Why No One Wants to Die in America"

Posted January 8, 2002

A Conversation with Stanley Hauerwas

HOLLAND -- Dr. Stanley M. Hauerwas of the Divinity School at Duke University will present "Why No One Wants to Die in America" as this year's Danforth Lecture at Hope College on Monday, Jan. 21, at 3:30 p.m. in Winants Auditorium of Graves Hall.

The public is invited. Admission is free.

The Sept. 17, 2001, issue of "Time" magazine named Hauerwas America's Best Theologian, calling him "contemporary theology's foremost intellectual provocateur."

Dr. Allen Verhey, who is the Evert J. and Hattie E. Blekkink Professor of Religion at Hope, has said, "In Stanley Hauerwas faith is joined to intellectual passion, rigorous scholarship, and an engaging presence. He is surely one of the best theologians at work in America today, and a lot of the rest of us think and live more faithfully because of Stanley's work."

Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School. He has published more than 300 scholarly articles and is the author or editor of more than 30 books, including "Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony," "Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth-Century Theology and Philosophy" and "Christians Among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics."

He has sought to recover the significance of the virtues for understanding the nature of the Christian life. The search has led him to emphasize the importance of the church, as well as narrative, for understanding Christian existence. His work cuts across disciplinary lines as he is in conversation with systematic theology, philosophical theology and ethics, and political theory, as well as the philosophy of social science and medical ethics.

Hauerwas lectures widely to church and academic audiences. He delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectureship at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland in 2001, as well as previous events at McMaster University, Yale University Divinity School, Tokyo Biblical Seminary, the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark, and the Evangelical Contribution on Northern Ireland.

He has been on the faculty at Duke University since 1984, and was director of graduate studies at Duke from 1985 to 1991. He taught at the University of Notre Dame from 1970 to 1984, and was previously on the faculty of Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill., for two years.

Hauerwas did his undergraduate work at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. He graduated from Yale Divinity School with a B.D., and holds an M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Yale University Graduate School.

He has honorary doctorates from DePaul University and the University of Edinburgh. He is a member of the Society for Christian Ethics, the American Academy of Religion and the American Theological Society.

The Danforth Lecture is sponsored by the Hope College department of religion with support from an endowment established by the Danforth Foundation of St. Louis, Mo. The program was established by the foundation "to deepen and enlarge the religious dimension of the campus family through speakers whom can reflect on the broad, interdenominational and yet positive sense of the Judaeo- Christian perspectives of life and existence."

Some of the many distinguished scholars who have visited the campus through the program in the past include Dr. Martin E. Marty of the University of Chicago Divinity School; Dr. Lewis B. Smedes of Fuller Theological Seminary; Dr. Phyllis Trible of Union Theological Seminary; Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff of Yale Divinity School; and Dr. Fernando F. Segovia of The Divinity School of Vanderbilt University.

Graves Hall is located on College Avenue at Graves Place (11th Street).

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