Friday, October 15, 2010

Tilling to interview Stanley Hauerwas

http://www.dukenews.duke.edu
Some great news: your esteemed Chrisendom host has been given the exciting opportunity to interview Stanley Hauerwas as part of his UK visit, for a feature on the UK Christian Bookshops Blog, christianbookshopsblog.org.uk.

What 5 questions would you suggest I ask him?

6 Comments:

At 10/18/2010 3:40 AM, Blogger Stephanie said...

Ha! Exciting. I have no particularly good questions to ask, but on his office door he has a large number of entertaining photographs, including one of a church billboard that says "STANLEY HAUERWAS IS GOING TO HELL FOR MAKING FUN OF OUR SIGN."

-Steph

 
At 10/19/2010 1:28 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Well Stanley, old chap, if you could answer only 5 questions, what would they be? And what answers would you give?"

(and keep fingers crossed that he doesn't notice that's two questions gone already...)

 
At 10/22/2010 8:02 PM, Blogger azk said...

"What is the theological significance of profanity?"

 
At 10/24/2010 7:21 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hope this isn't too late! I'm reading the Reader with a younger theologian friend who gets to send me two questions for each chapter. For the first chapter he asked me to flesh out a very important but complex paragraph (sorry for the long quote)

Certainly the protestant Reformation changed the language for how Christians understood “ethics,” but far more important were changes in the ways Christians related to their world. In earlier centuries, the Christian understanding of life could be articulated in the language of natural law, but it was assumed that natural law was only intelligible as part of divine law as mediated by the church. What was lost after the Reformation was exactly this understanding of the church as the indispensable context in which order might be given to the Christian life. For example, with the loss of the rite of penance in Protestantism(,) casuistry as an activity of moral theologians was lost. Such a loss did not seem to be a problem as long as it was assumed that everyone “knew” what it meant to be Christian. However, as it became less and less clear among Protestants what it “means” to be Christian there have increasingly been attempts to “do” ethics. The difficulty is that no consensus about what ethics is or how it should be done existed. As a result, theologians often turned to philosophy for resources in their search for an ethic -- resources that ironically helped create the problem of how to relate theology and ethics because now it was assumed that “ethics” is an autonomous discipline that is no longer dependent on religious conviction.

Basically, what I would ask him is what exactly he is saying was lost in the Reformation (and how that contributed to the creation of a distinct discipline called "Christian ethics")? I think I know, but I'd like to hear him flesh this out a bit.

Hope this gets in! :)

 
At 10/31/2010 10:59 PM, Blogger Chris Tilling said...

Hey steph! Very funny

Thanks to you all for suggestions - the questions are all away.

 
At 12/20/2010 2:02 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

A Little late obviousl, but I've been asked this before for other people doing future interviews, and I always say the same thing.
"Who is your favorite cartoon chicken?"
And believe it or not, mine, over every one elses suggestions, gets asked 90 % of the time.
I think it contributes to making the rest of the interview alot less stuffy and more relaxed.
By the way, my favorite is Foghorn Leghorn. Got to go with the classics.

 

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