Modern Disbelief and the Church

Stanley Hauerwas hates to love. Professor H is often asked to write articles for various publications so this in itself is not so surprising, but this case was a little unusual. This mainstream news magazine had not featured a column by a theologian since the early fifties. He was selected because the editor (though not religious) had taken a course in modern theology while an undergraduate. The course left him unprepared for the professor. I will let him speak for himself. “A few weeks later I called him to try out my initial idea. I said, ‘I think I have a terrific title—Christians in the Hands of Flaccid Secularists.’ There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. I waited. Finally, ‘that’s interesting,’ I said, ‘you do not get it, do you?’ ‘Get what?’ That the title is a play on Jonathan Edwards famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t read much nineteenth century stuff.’ At that point, I knew that this was not going to work. I told the editor, ‘I do not know how to write even half-serious theology for people who no longer have sufficient knowledge to tell which God it is that they no longer believe in.’.......that is the problem with modern atheism; it is just so uninteresting. Of course we can hardly blame atheists for that, since Christians have for some time been offering atheists less and less to disbelieve.”