“Christian non-violence imitates Jesus’s nonviolence, but it also participates in Jesus’s self-emptying into sinful humanity, his sharing in the brokenness of the world. It is this peacemaking that we enact in sharing the broken bread of the Eucharist”.
Hauerwas was interviewed by Sojourners editor Jim Wallis on November 8, 2001. A transcript of that interview follows.
“So fierce is Hauerwas’s protest against Niebuhr that any concession on pacifism is taken as an offense against the nonviolent God of Jesus Christ”.
“Abortion is not some little mistake. Abortion is a reflection of who Americans are: People in the United States are supposed to concentrate on themselves and pursue happiness; thus, they ask themselves, “Why should we bother having children?””
“When I described myself as a “high church Mennonite” many years ago I was not kidding.”
“Christians in modernity thought their task was to make the Gospel intelligible to the world rather than to help the world understand why it could not be intelligible without the Gospel.”
“Yet like it or not John changed my life, and I think he ought to be held accountable for that. Reading Yoder made me a pacifist. It did so because John taught me that nonviolence was not just another “moral issue” but constitutes the heart of our worship of a crucified messiah.”
