{"id":863,"date":"2012-03-01T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T17:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/practicalmattersjournal.ecdsdev.org\/?p=863"},"modified":"2015-09-01T15:44:39","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T19:44:39","slug":"war-and-the-american-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/2012\/03\/01\/war-and-the-american-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"War and the American Difference: An Interview with Stanley Hauerwas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his book,\u00a0<em>War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity<\/em>\u00a0(Baker Academic 2011), Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas argues that war is one moral experience that all Americans in the United States<sup><u>1<\/u><\/sup>share. It is \u201cthe glue that gives Americans a common story.\u201d Americans, therefore, make war and need war, because war makes &#8220;us who we are.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Why war? To answer this question, Hauerwas continues a familiar refrain from his previous writings: that the United States is a liberal society that recognizes no common source of value, meaning, and identity. Americans have no shared story, rather they are united by a shared fear of death, which is to be avoided at all costs. For Americans, Hauerwas argues, freedom means the attempt to live as though death is only a \u201ctheoretical possibility\u201d which can be successfully evaded. Americans rely on the unconstrained accumulation of wealth and consumption to sustain this fantasy, and wage war to secure it.<\/p>\n<p>In the second half of the book, Hauerwas explores dimensions of the Christian experience that provide responses to the culture of war in American life. For Hauerwas, the Church is a local presence in a globalized world that receives the world with patience and generosity instead of belligerence. The Church in \u201cdiaspora,\u201d witnesses to God\u2019s call to peace and reconciliation as revealed in the story it tells about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n<p>In this interview, I discuss with Professor Hauerwas the main themes of his book and his reasons for writing it.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/134992860?title=0&amp;amp;byline=0\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Photograph by The National Guard.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h4>Notes<\/h4>\n<ol>\n<li><u><\/u>I follow the trope of Hauerwas&#8217; book by using &#8220;American&#8221; as an identifier for the citizens of the United States of America.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his book,\u00a0War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity\u00a0(Baker Academic 2011), Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas argues that war is one moral experience that all Americans in the United States1share. It is \u201cthe glue that gives<\/p>\n<div class=\"post-readmore\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/2012\/03\/01\/war-and-the-american-difference\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":862,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,29],"tags":[43,45,42,151],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/2009-Army-National-Guard-Honor-Guard-Competition.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":870,"href":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions\/870"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}