The Missing Church in American Political Theory Post 2

On Recovering Stanley Hauerwas for 21st Century Politics

This series of posts is about recovering the work of Stanley Hauerwas for the politics we are living in America today. In the previous post, I discussed the current post-Hauerwas malaise amidst graduate studies in theology and political theory. I then warned that connecting Hauerwas with the current postliberal/illiberal political movements in the U.S.A. risks losing Hauerwas’ contribution for today’s political climate. In what follows, I use an article by David Congdon to illustrate how the link is often made between Hauerwas and Christian Nationalism. I aim to show how this link is not only wrong, but in the process misses Hauerwas’ contribution so crucial for today’s Christians navigating the current political landscape.

Congdon’s article, entitled ‘What Has New Haven to Do With Hungary? On Theological and Political PostLiberalism” (The Journal of Religion, vol 105, no. 4/ Oct 2025), draws a direct line of influence from the theological postliberal movement of Yale (New Haven) in the 60’s-80,’ of which Hauerwas was a part, to the current day postliberal political movement, which describes many Christian Nationalist Conservatives like J.D. Vance, Deneen, Rusty Reno, Ahmari, The Heritage Foundation, etc., and is symbolized in the article by the authoritarian government of Hungary. Congdon argues that New Haven somehow leads to Hungary.

Congdon outlines in great detail the history of the two movements: postliberal theology (which includes Hauerwas) and postliberal political thought and politics. I greatly appreciated it. In the process, he charts the things the two movements share in common. These commonalities, together with the fact that the Yale New Haven school preceded the ‘Hungary’ postliberal school, is for Congdon evidence that the one opens the door for the other.

I won’t engage the force of the entire article in this series of posts. Instead I’ll focus on three of the commonalities between postliberal theology and postliberal politics that emerge from the Congdon article (similar to what James K.A. Smith did HERE). I choose these three commonalities because they transcend the article. They make up what has become the common “Hauerwas leads to nationalism” trope. With each of these commonalities however, I’ll show how Hauerwas actually goes in a completely different direction than do the Christian Nationalists. And the direction Hauerwas goes, which is the church itself as a viable political social reality engaging the world, is the option we need for our time and yet is missing from our current theological imagination for Christian politics in America today.

So here goes with common theme no. 1.

Interrogating the Modern Autonomous Self

Congdon mentions early on in his piece that one of “the key planks of postliberal theology” is its “assault on individualism.” (p. 417) This is the first of the three commonalities I’ll examine. Although Congdon weaves this theme in and among other themes, there can be no doubt that this is a cornerstone ‘plank’ of both postliberal theology ala Hauerwas/Lindbeck and current day postliberal political thought thinkers of postliberal politics. In fact, in reading Patrick Deneen on this theme, in his Why Liberalism Failed, one might easily confuse him with Hauerwas. Let’s examine this further.

Hauerwas argues that the “self’ is an achievement only possible within social communities, social commitments, cultural languages, and narratives of meaning. For Hauerwas, the cultural formation of democratic liberalism undermines all of this. He goes to great lengths in his early work to describe liberal democracy as a form of politics committed to the presupposition that a social order and a corresponding mode of government can be formed on self-interest and consent alone. The result, he says, is “a self-fulfilling prophecy, a social order that is designed to work on the presumption that people who are self-interested tend to produce that kind of people” (Community of Character p.80). Sounding a lot like Deneen, the problem of liberalism as a social philosophy is in its own success, shaping a consumerist, divided, empty populace.

Post Liberal political theory does much the same. One of the movement’s intellectual leaders Patrick Deneen, in his Why Liberalism Failed (Yale Press, 2016), argues, in Hauerwas fashion, that the autonomous individual is an illusion of liberalism, liberated from “particular places, relationships, memberships, and even identities...” In the process “the autonomous self is … subject to the sovereign trajectory of the very forces today that are embraced as the tools of our liberation.” “Claiming to liberate the individual from embedded cultures, traditions, places, and relationships, liberalism has homogenized the world in its image …” (p.16-17). This so-called liberation of the individual requires all the tools of the state to enforce it via social organization. In the process, the liberal democratic state becomes a “liberal imperialism” from which we now need liberation from (ch. 2).

The Ubiquitous Critique of the Modern Self

More generally speaking, this critique of the modern autonomous self is hardly new or unique to Hauerwas or postliberal politics. It’s well-worn turf in the field of culture studies. For sure, Lindbeck of Yale was early on in applying Wittgenstein, and the way linguistic cultural formation works, to the formation of the self. And Hauerwas was a pioneer for the recovery of virtue ethics for modern Christian Ethics in the 70’s, thereby leading the way on understanding the shortcomings of the modern autonomous self. But there’s a wide swath of literature and research that stands behind and around this critique. It spans across academic disciplines from Europe to N America, from post WW2 to the present. It cannot be ignored.

I’m thinking here of how the Frankfurt school of post WW2 saw the way self-formation was inextricable from cultural forces, and explored what to do about it. See for example Horkheimer, Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, the chapter on “culture industries,” “the bourgeois self” etc. I’m thinking here of Foucault, Judith Butler on “subjectivity,” bio-power, regimes of knowledge, and formation of self within power relations. I’m thinking of Louis Althusser on interpellation and ideological forces of the state. See his famous 1970 essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. In a completely different stream, Charles Taylor examined the self via his “Sources of the Self” (1989) and The Secular Age (2007). The streams of research are endless examining “the self” as formed within culture, language, power. Postliberal political thinkers therefore, arguing for the unsustainability of the detached autonomous individual, are doing nothing new. The fact that Yale postliberal theology was doing this earlier than the postliberal political thinkers hardly proves a line of causation.

Today, whether it is the “cogito,” the romanticist self, the autonomous self generated ex nihilo from one’s own internal being, free from culture and formation, the Enlightenment idea of the modern autonomous self is frankly naïve. And yet I would say this naïvete lingers unexamined among evangelicals, post-evangelicals, mainline protestants and what I’ll call the Disney generations. It is assumed in the way we talk about sexuality, gender, racism, economics and yes politics. This naivete among evangelicals is probably why James K A Smith felt it necessary to start his cultural liturgy series by taking aim at the “discrete autonomous self” myth, calling it out as “Bobble-head Christianity,” a Christianity that assumes discipleship happens through the cognitive mind-self learning info from the head up and then making decisions, telling the body what to do. (Desiring the Kingdom 2009, 42-43).

Congdon sees the critique of the modern self at work in the development of narrative and virtue ethics with MacIntyre, the Lindbeckian cultural linguistic themes of culture formation, as well as the postliberal political movements. Hauerwas is firmly in the middle of all this. There is no doubt that the political New Right of postliberalism (or illiberalism), which emerged to prominence with Deneen’s book Why Liberalism Failed (2018), and found a theological dialogue partner in the journal First Things, had the critique of the modern autonomous individual, and its liberation, as its foundation piece claiming a society cannot be held together apart from a cultural core of values which can shape selves to live for purposes beyond themselves. In this, both Hauerwas and the post-Liberal politics can agree.

Congdon however, seems to go a step further, when he describes how the “rejecting of individual autonomy” led the New Right to support “mechanisms of authoritarian state power” to establish cultural values and roles to form the right kind of society (p.423). It is a bit tricky to assert that Deneen and others in the postliberal political movement argue directly for a Christianity aligned with state control of society. Nonetheless, I agree, this seems to be the direction they go. Catholic integralism as well as protestant Christian Nationalists like Stephen Wolfe draw heavily on political theorists like Patrick Deneen to undergird their proposals for such an alignment of the State and Christianity to order a society with Christian values and institutions. Deneen himself argues for a Christian coalition of elites that can unite a vision of the “common good,” an “aristopopulism,’ that can harness the forces of the government to defend the cultural traditions of what he sees as the common people, ie. the Christian majority. Today there is little doubt that Christian Nationalists like J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley, Tucker Carlson, The Heritage Foundation (Project 2025) have drawn their intellectual inheritance from Deneen and other likeminded postliberal political thinkers.

And so Congdon I think is right in this regard. There is a line that runs from postliberal political thought to Christian Nationalism, from the critique of the modern self to authoritarian state Christianity. The question is whether the same is true of postliberal theology? Is there a line from it, and Hauerwas, to Christian authoritarianism/nationalism? Is there an avenue that runs from Hauerwas to a Christian Nationalism?

Is Pacifist Hauerwas An Authoritarian?

There are two parts to address in this question. There is the “individualism” part and the culture part. In other words, can a political theory both honor the individual, his or her freedom/self determination to be a self in formation, while at the same time providing the space for culture, a culture sufficient enough to make self-formation possible, which by definition imposes on the self?

In relation to these two parts, democratic liberalism emphasizes the freedom of the individual from all enforcement of any culture upon the individual. The agency of the individual is paramount and must be protected at all costs against the enforced encroachment of tradition, religion, and culture upon it. Individual rights must be in place. Individuals must make up their own minds as to what culture they choose to partake. This is the “modern” Enlightenment impulse. But in the process liberalism enforces a culture which strips the self of any culture that can provide the resources for making such choices, for becoming a self. This in essence is the postliberal argument.

Postliberal politics, on the other hand, emphasizes the need for a culture, and a set of cultural practices, sufficient to generate the values necessary to be a self in the world. This cultural center of values becomes paramount, and absolutely necessary to hold a society together. It is in essence what allows for the freedom of individuals to opt out and live on its fringes. But without this center there is no society, and no whole selves, and therefore all we have is chaos. This center therefore must be held together with the coercive powers of then state. This leads to a set of cultural elites coalescing a value infused political state that governs the masses (Deneen’s “aristopopulism”), a pathway to a Christian Nationalism.

This describes the present state of the current war over politics in the U.S. (and many other developed democracies in the West). This debate simmers below the surface of much of the current divide between the liberal democrats and the populist right in the U.S.

The conundrum is, can any political system do both? 1.) Protect the freedom of individual agency, as well as 2.) provide culture formation?

As already mentioned, this question pulsates through the entire gamut of culture studies referenced above. But in the midst, there is Hauerwas offering an approach which theologically does both 1.) and 2.).

In regard to the individual’s agency, Hauerwas’ argues that selves are formed, their agency grows, within a narrative, provided within a culture. Sounds illiberal? Sure. But for Hauerwas, a person is an agent because they can claim their actions, their history and experiences as part of a story they can call their own. It is in this interactive process, self and story, that one is truly free and can inhabit decisions of meaning and purpose. (See for example chapter 3 of Peaceable Kingdom). Individual agency is not possible apart from one’s “ability to inhabit our character”. As opposed to ensuring freedom by stripping the individual of the cultures, narratives, traditions (ala Democratic Liberalism), Hauerwas sees freedom as only possible within the process of finding oneself within those things, finding oneself in a story.

At this point, the democratic liberals are raising a red flag. We’re headed for autocracy and imposed culture, enforcing the one true narrative and culture on people, in order that they might find themselves? This is a recipe for Christian Nationalism all over again!

But Hauerwas is a Neo-Anabaptist to the core on the issues of power and the state. His theology of power is driven by the realization that God has revealed who God is and how God works in the crucified Christ. And so we learn to know God’s power in vulnerability, gentleness, serving, submitting mutually to the power of God at work in the non-violent reign of Jesus. God’s power can never be coercive. By definition God’s power is always an expression of God’s love, can never usurp a person’s agency.

This way of power and life defines Jesus and the life we live as church in this Kingdom of Jesus. This God never imposes Himself or His story on anyone. Instead this God comes to be with and among us. And it is in this social space of living Christ’s relational transforming forgiving reconciling power that selves can be found in Him, never coercively, but in the story of what God is doing to save the world. And so the church is this utterly unique political possibility, made possible under the death, resurrection and reign of Jesus Christ, built on God’s power of love, mutuality, relation and the Holy Spirit, where both a culture can be lived without coercion, and selves can be found in freedom.

Hauerwas’ solution to the failure of democracy therefore, is not some Christian alignment with the state. It is rather the church and it is profoundly the church as a politic. Any alignment of the church of Jesus Christ with the coercive powers of the state, is an anathema to Hauerwas’ theology. The answer to the failure of liberal democracy is not a God ordained state. It is an alternative political reality made possible in the life, death, and resurrection of the living Christ, i.e. the church.

By definition, the state and its powers is now relativized. Government has a limited role to play within God’s history of redeeming the world. But it is a side manager, an ordinance made necessary by a sinful world. It is in essence always temporal, withering away. The church is the center of God’s history, not the government.

This is the third option of Hauerwas, for which there is little political imagination for today.

Where is this Church?

But of course, such “big-talk” of the church will be met with skepticism. The church in America is largely viewed as a failure, a place of moral decay, broken leadership, abuse of power. It looks more like the world’s politics than the politics of Jesus. So who, in their right mind, is going to look to this church for a way out of the broken decaying politics of our time? Given this set of circumstances, how can anyone take Hauerwas’ proposal seriously?

It all feeds into what I have been calling “the missing church” in the politics of evangelical and protestant churches. The church’s role, for these churches, is always to be played out in the field of the world’s politics. Whether evangelical or protestant mainline, it’s the same thing: the church provides volunteers for the world’s politics, to influence those politics towards Christian principles. Inevitably, the church gets absorbed into the world’s politics. Its democratic liberalism versus national conservatism all over again.

The church itself as politic, where Jesus is Lord, and therefore runs on a different kind of power than the world, goes missing. “Impractical” they say. “Never happen.” It all speaks to the failure of imagination for a church that can actually be the church of Jesus Christ in these most grievous of times for the politics of United States.

But as I said in the previous post, maybe the reason why Hauerwas’ church doesn’t exist is because of the very thing we do to it, i.e. marginalize it making it the mere servant of the world’s politics. Maybe we should listen to Hauerwas all over again, as we meet the challenge of our broken country and its ugly politics? Maybe it’s not time to write off Hauerwas? Maybe it’s time to double down on Hauerwas? Double down on a vision for a church that can be a different culture, devoid of worldly coercion, sufficient to invite the world into a social and personal transformation made possible only in Christ. As I’ve heard Hauerwas say, “let us not preach down to our own limitations.” Just because it is not yet visible, does not mean it is not possible. And the broken politics of our times is crying out for something different.

I continue to explore the recovery of Hauerwas for our 21^st century politics in the next post, examining the accusation that Hauerwas leads to a tribalism, an Us vs Them, Christ against Culture politics. If you’re interested, be sure to subscribe to this substack to get notified when the next post hits. Most likely in two weeks. Comments are open, and as always, I welcome comments that further the conversation.