Book Table

The Book Table is open every Sunday at noon in the 4th floor alcove in the Bernsen Center.

Ryan Moores's Pick of the Month for January 2009

Resident Aliens

By Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon

"A provocative Christian assessment of culture and ministry for people who know that something is wrong"

Co-authors of this book are Stanley Hauerwas professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School and William H. Willimon bishop of the Southwest Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church.

The purpose of Resident Aliens is to show how the Christian church loses its moral compass when it does not follow a model based on the life of Jesus Christ thereby becoming more and more accommodative to the ways of a secular world.

These difficulties in the church are outlined from Constantine to the Enlightenment right up through our present day. The church from time to time or from place to place may develop a “conservative” or “liberal” bias; however, the authors believe that what is more important is the church’s failure to learn from the example of Christ’s personal relationship with his people as revealed in scripture. The theological linchpin of their argument is the Sermon on the Mount. Christian ethics is not about being a fundamentalist or rationalist but, according to the authors, it is about following a dusty footed Jewish teacher as He, God, encountered His people some 2000 years ago.

The final part of the book describes the frustration and burn out that many Christians experience in a somewhat lonely life of faithful Christian witness.

Reviewed by William E. Diggs