Who knew? It is less important than we thought whether conservative Christians or liberal Christians have the right answers, because both have been asking the wrong questions (pp. 36ff.).

At the time of its publication in 1989 (Abingdon Press), this accessible (172 pages) but robust book was heralded as a distinctive contribution to the literature of Christian thought and practice, and its insights remain not only timely—14 years later, many seem to have been prescient. In a seminary curriculum, it would fall in the department of practical theology, but its target audience is clearly thoughtful laypersons and clergy in the field who work to inspire and lead them (and to be led by them—this is important).

Both authors are North Carolina-based scholars, one of them also still engaged in parish ministry: Hauerwas is the renowned professor of theological ethics at the Divinity School at Duke University, and Willimon, a celebrated preacher and teacher and longtime pastor, is dean of Duke University Chapel and professor of the practice of Christian ministry in the Divinity School.

They begin with the hilarious recounting of a band of youthful renegades in 1963 (including, apparently, one of the authors), who slip out of a church youth group meeting in order to patronize a Greenville, South Carolina, movie theatre which has defied traditional “blue laws” by opening its doors on a Sunday. In “this last pocket of resistance to secularity in the Western world,” the authors now reflect, this signal event represents “no more free passes for the church, no more free rides…All sorts of Christians are waking up and realizing that it is no longer 'our world'—if it ever was.” (pp. 15-17).

The authors make the case that the church has struggled across nearly two millennia to accommodate its faith to the values of secular societies with “an adapted and domesticated gospel.” Symbolically, they lay this accommodation at the door of the Emperor Constantine who, with the Edict of Milan (A.D. 313), definitively set the stage for states which claim, as such, to believe in something more than their need to exist and to perpetuate themselves, specifically (for us) Christianity. The task became “making the faith credible to the powers-that-be so that Christians might now have a share in those powers.” (p. 22). Likewise symbolically, the defiance of 1963 “blue law” traditions ended that era, and ushered in an age of opportunity, in which the church can, if it will, concern itself primarily with that which is true, rather than that which is expedient.

Hauerwas and Willimon draw a sharp distinction between most ethical systems, which presuppose individualism, and Christian ethics, where ethical decisions are coherent only in the context of the confessing community (pp. 79ff.). This community is composed of “resident aliens, an adventurous colony in a society of unbelief” (p. 49), but it is a colony characterized by movement, rather than entrenchment (pp. 51ff.). Change, and arguments, and taking stock (and second-guessing?), are all part of the journey. If we appropriate Jesus' ethics on that journey, our focus will be eschatological—on the end of history, “…but 'end' in the sense of the purpose, the goal, the result.” (pp. 61-62).

Throughout the book, engaging and powerful ideas are presented in support of the title's argument: for example, that a reason for Christians to have children is in order to pass on the story of the faith (and that a reason not to do so is because the church is ultimately renewed through baptism of new disciples, not by procreation), (pp. 59-60); that the Beatitudes (Matthew 5) are not a proscription for Christian behavior, but a description of God (pp. 83ff.); an extended treatise on “Learning to Enjoy Truth Telling” (Ch. 6); and a riveting examination of the error, deaths, and marks of the church in the account of Ananias and Sapphira (pp. 130ff., account in Acts 5).

While the last chapter focuses more directly on the work and priorities of ordained persons, it also summarizes the desirably alien status of Christians in a democratic, self-determining society, and makes a compelling argument toward understanding and putting on “the whole armor of God.”

Copies of Resident Aliens are available in the parish library, at the Gothic Bookshop in the Bryan Center on the Duke University campus, and at the Southpoint location of Barnes and Noble.

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