Resident Aliens

by William H. Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas

Book Overview

Only when the Church enacts its scandalous Jesus-centered tradition will it truly be the body of Christ and transform the world. Twenty-five years after its first appearance, Resident Aliens remains a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0687361591
• ISBN13: 9780687361595
• Release Date: September 1989
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Length: 175 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Too Hot to Handle

As a young college student, many years ago, I first came into contact with "Christ and Culture" by H. Richard Niebuhr and :The Cultural Subversion of the Biblical Faith" by James D. Smart. These contacts launched me into the most difficult journey of my Christian life, separating my faith from my culture. Resident Aliens helped me continue this journey. It doesn't really pick up where Niebuhr left off. It is more truthful to say this book reacts against Niebuhr. But, still I would give all three of these books 5 stars, because they helped to form me.WARNING: Hauerwas and Willimon make strong statements about becoming swept up in the culture of this world. Their statements do not play well in our current cultural climate. For instance, on page 35 the authors quote Alasdair MacIntyre, "Dying for this state, . . . is like being asked to die for the telephone company"As you can tell from this quote, this book will be challenging to read, but you could sure get people made at you if you used the wrong quote at the wrong time!

No more plastic Jesus

"What we call 'church' is too often a gathering of strangers who see the church as yet another 'helping institution' to gratify further their individual desires." (p. 138) So say Hauerwas and Willimon in this profoundly disturbing, profoundly liberating book. Their general thesis is that the church has lost its bearings because it's forgotten its Jesus-centered tradition. Rather than dwelling within that tradition, realizing that the church's mission is to build community that exemplifies the Kingdom and the Kingdom's values, Christians too frequently accommodate to the world in order to make their beliefs acceptable. In doing whatever they can to ameliorate the "scandal" of the gospel so as not to offend anyone, they betray the Kingdom and their tradition--and God.This is a disconcerting challenge to those of us who try to be Christians. Even if one doesn't completely agree with Hauerwas and Willimon--in fact, even if one outright disagrees with them--their message deserves serious consideration. In grappling with the thorny question of how to live in the world without being of the world--that is, how to be "resident aliens"--they force us to reconsider our commitment to the good news.One of the more interesting aspects of the book is a theme that Hauerwas has discussed in several of his other books: ethics is primarily a way of seeing the world rather than an objective, rational enterprise. All ethical systems presuppose a view of reality (even the ones that claim to be rational), and this means that in order to get to the heart of a particular ethics, one must examine the tradition from which it comes. Hauerwas and Willimon use this model to argue that Christian ethics, which is based on the eschatological tradition outlined in the Sermon on the Mount, simply can't accommodate ethical principles generated in nongospel traditions. Attempts to do so are misguided.Read this book. It will upset you, as it has upset me. But it's a good upset.

A shockingly candid and timely book, even 10 years later

This book has me hooked on Stanley Hauerwas. I have heard of him and his unusual approach to theological ethics and I thought I'd read this book as my professor recommended it to me. I was startled to find that he had a whole new way of looking at things that I never really quite thought of as lucidly as he and Willimon have. Not only does he highly criticize the church for continually buying in to a Constantinian view of the church, he even critiques such great Theologians as Neibuhr! When someone does that, they either are supremely misinformed or have something very thoughtful to say, and, indeed this book does the latter. Resident Aliens will make you see the church in a whole new light. Members of congregations and pastors alike must read this book as I think it would impact you ministry for God more than any other "seeker friendly" or "purpose-driven" book could possibly do. It particularly is a book that both uplifts and criticized the role of a pastor in a church. While often bleak, Hauerwas and Willimon are brutally honest in the church impotence in BEING the church and instead has often simply become little different than a club where people come to get their "needs" met. The colony image, while not perfect, is challenging as it highlights our need to care for one another, to be, as Rodney Clapp says, "A Peculiar People", and to have our ethics driven by a biblical community, not a national idea of "rights" and "liberties". If I could suggest a book to read for Christians this year, this would be it! Unfortunately, this book has been out for years and I do not see that it has had the impact that it should have. When the full weight of the reality of the post-Christian society we live in in the West hits us, books like this will be our saving grace. Either that, or we compromise until we become indistinguishable from the people around us.

An agenda-setting work for the contemporary church

Hauerwas and Willimon offer a stunningly adept diagnosis for mainline churches and a prophetic warning for evangelicals. Like the evening sun, Christendom is setting in the west, and in this dusk the church has a new opportunity to reclaim the marginal identity God granted it in the first place. If you are a big fan of the Christian Coalition, this book will trouble you. If you believe that church and state go neatly hand in hand, this book will trouble you. If you are searching for perspective on how the church--for the sake of "relevance"--may lose itself in the prevailing culture, this book will be a welcome addition to your library. Ten years after its publication, RESIDENT ALIENS remains a valuable conversation partner for the church. The task remains for church leaders to enflesh the practical ramifications of the work in Christian community. Ultimately, the success of Hauerwas' and Willimon's work will be judged by that end.

A ground-breaking reappraisal of the post-Christendom church

"Resident Aliens" came out in 1989 and continues to be a controversial bestseller among church leaders. The authors argue that the days of "Christendom" are over--Western culture no longer looks on the church as an important prop or support to its values, and will no longer subsidize the church in any way, viz. soccer games and open malls on Sunday morning. And, this is a good thing! At last the church has the opportunity to recapture its role as described in scripture: a colony of "resident aliens" in a foreign country, demonstrating in word and deed that God is God indeed. For church folks who grew up in the 1950's and earlier, this book is a tough pill to swallow. But it points the way toward a revived church with a crucial mission to the world as we begin the "post-Christendom" millenium.