Stanley Hauerwas Christian Quotations

To be a Christian is to be obligated to be charitable. This is true whether you are rich or poor, healthy or ill, old or young, male or female, oppressed or free, established or disestablished.

I have no doubt that for some to become a Christian may involve an experience of ecstasy. Yet I do not think such an experience is necessary for someone to be a Christian.

Christian nonviolence must be embodied in a community that is an alternative to the world's violence.

For Christians do not place their hope in their children, but rather their children are a sign of their hope . . . that God has not abandoned this world.

Christianity is not a set of beliefs or doctrines one believes in order to be a Christian, but rather Christianity is to have one's body shaped, one's habits determined, in such a way that the worship of God is unavoidable.

Christians know that Christianity is simply extended training in dying early. That is what we have always been about.

I have come to think that the challenge confronting Christians is not that we do not believe what we say, though that can be a problem, but that what we say we believe does not seem to make any difference for either the church or the world.

[W]e must first experience the kingdom if we are even to know what kind of freedom and what kind of equality we should desire. Christian freedom lies in service, Christian equality is equality before God, and neither can be achieved through the coercive efforts of liberal idealists who would transform the world into their image.

Consider the problem of taking showers with Christians. They are, after all, constantly going on about the business of witnessing in the hopes of making converts to their God and church. Would you want to shower with such people? You never know when they might try to baptize you.