Hauerwas between Martin and Malcolm

I'm reading through a bracing book by Stanley Hauerwas entitled Unleashing Scripture: Rescuing the Bible from Captivity to America.

His thesis is that the controversy between fundamentalist/literalist readings of the Bible and the liberal protestant historical-critical approach is a smokescreen veiling the root of it all: that both these tendencies are captive to American culture insofar as both presuppose that "common sense" of the individual is sufficient to get to the "true meaning" of the text (which does not exist as such outside the interpretative community of the Spirit).

In doing so, they both fall captive to the notion that Scripture is apolitical: thus falling into the trap of allowing the culture to insiduously condition their politics. This has the sum total effect of blinding us to the power of Scripture within our cultures and communities. Hauerwas insists, for example, that the Sermon on the Mount is unintelligable to a Church that is committed to war as a means of achieving objectives; or that Jesus' teachings on money defy "common sense" to a people formed by the disciplines of capitalism.

Rather, Hauerwas suggests that the formation of disciplines by the Church precedes the reading of Scriptures, i.e. the reading of Scripture vs the reading of Scripture as someone who has answered the call "follow me". This training in inculturation and contextual reading then allows us to articulate fresh scriptural force into our present situations.

It might seem like a leap of logic, but this book made me think a lot about a question I get asked [surprisingly] often by my students: "who do you think was right - Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X?" One was an integrationist; the other was a revolutionary seperatist.

My answer is both were right: King's radical Christian pursuit of justice and Nonviolence, as well as Malcolm X's critique of corrupt society and articulation of an alternative 'citizenry'. Both were relevant [to the Church] because of the unique experiences of Black Christians - and Hauerwas would argue that this would form a rich fabric from which to articulate the Scripture in a powerful way.

A good practitioner of this is James H. Cone. He puts it like this:

"Martin King’s philosophy is relevant because of his accent on justice, and on the need for people to organize, collectively, in order to transform this society. That is why I refer to Martin King as a political revolutionary. He transformed the political and social arrangement between black and white in America.

Malcolm X transformed the way black people think about themselves, and the way in which white people think about black people. Before Malcolm X, we were “negroes” and “coloreds,” and if you called black people “black” in the 1940s or 50s, we would have been upset. Malcolm X, however, helped people understand themselves as black, and to affirm that blackness as something of worth and dignity. So in that sense, Malcolm X was a cultural revolutionary.

King referred to himself as a Negro almost until the day he died. Malcolm X was black in the 50s, and he died making blackness and Africa crucial to African Americans’ identity. So, we today are black because Malcolm gave us the right to think about ourselves on our own terms and not how the white or dominant culture has forced us to think."

Chuck Hauerwas into a blender with Cone and... viola:

"As we examine what contemporary theologians are saying, we find that they are silent about the enslaved condition of black people. Evidently they see no relationship between black slavery and the Christian gospel. Consequently there has been no sharp confrontation of the gospel with white racism. There is, then, a desperate need for a black theology, a theology whose sole purpose is to apply the freeing power of the gospel to black people under white oppression."

These will be important reads as Australian Christians re-learn the Cross from the perspective of Aboriginal killings and the Stolen Generation.