Also by this author: Little Prayers for Ordinary Days
Series: Plough Spiritual Guides #9
Published by Plough on March 11, 2025
Genres: Non-Fiction, Christian Life, Social Justice
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How can we make the gospel central to our lives?
For decades, Stanley Hauerwas has been provoking Christians with his insistence that if they would only follow their Master, it would impact all areas of life, from the personal to the societal.
The lanky Texan whom Time magazine dubbed “America’s theologian” for his zinging insights into today’s ethical questions says Christians should stop bemoaning their loss of cultural and political power and instead welcome their status as outsiders and embrace the radical alternative Jesus has had in mind for them all along.
These accessible readings selected from Hauerwas’s seminal books will introduce a timely, prophetic voice to another generation of followers of Jesus tired of religion as usual.
This book is part of a series that collects significant writings from different figures in church history. Jesus Changes Everything offers twenty-five readings from Stanley Hauerwas, a well-respected theologian. The book begins with an introduction by Tish Harrison Warren, and then the series editor, Charles E. Moore, explains for new audiences who Hauerwas is. Both writers highlight how difficult it is to pigeonhole this man’s thinking into an ideological camp, and they reflect on how striking and challenging many of his insights are. The readings deliver on these expectations, and feel fresh and insightful.
The readings focus on what it means to be Jesus’s disciple, and the author challenges Christians in the West to stop looking for renwed political and social power and influence, and to follow the way of Jesus as laid out in the New Testament. Hauerwas has many provocative things to say about the type of community the church ought to be, and how Western Christians should handle matters like money, politics, and war. The brevity of each reading sometimes works against the author’s points, since he doesn’t have time to unpack nuances or respond in a substantial way to good faith objections. There are times where he seems to just drop a zinger and move on. However, I found this book insightful and thought-provoking, even when I disagreed.
The readings come from some of Hauerwas’s previously published works, and some of them splice together passages from different projects. I appreciate that Hauerwas was personally involved in preparing these readings for excerpted publication, because this ensures that the patched-together writings still reflect his ideas and intent. However, some of the readings feel a bit choppy at times, and there are some abrupt transitions. I enjoyed this book regardless, and I especially appreciated the reflections about The Sermon on the Mount and about what it means for the church to be a truthful community.
Jesus Changes Everything: A New World Made Possible is a thought-provoking essay collection that will appeal to people who want to sample this theologian’s writing, and to longtime readers who would appreciate these bite-sized selections of Hauerwas’s academic works. Because this book has short chapters and is brief overall, it is far more accessible than other books by the author, while still representing many of the key ideas and core themes from his longer works.