“Life in the colony is not a settled affair. Instead he sees it as a call to journey and adventure. Since culture is becoming more hostile to the cross the church must produce disciples who are willing to pay the price but, once again, for Hauerwas, growing hostility is not necessarily a cause for lament. The most “effective” thing the church can do is to become the “actual creation of a living, breathing, visible community of faith” (46) in a hostile world. In doing so this counterculture church becomes the people of the cross, demonstrating God’s love for the world. The confessing church has no interest in withdrawing from the world, but it is not surprised when its witness evokes hostility from the world” (46). In this counterculture “people are faithful to their promises, love their enemies, tell the truth, honor the poor, suffer for righteousness, and thereby testify to the amazing community-creating power of God. Instead, it seeks to transform the world by creating a counterculture of people who live under the reign of Jesus. Hauerwas envisions what Yoder calls the “Confessing Church.” The Confessing church does not take as its primary aim the transformation of the world through the political route of the State. For Hauerwas, blind nationalism is the truly dangerous “tribal” mindset in our world. His message, he understands, brings up the charge of “tribalism.” Is the church its own “tribe” which exists to the exclusion of other tribes? In response, Hauerwas argues that of all the various political identities in our world, “The church is the one political entity in our culture that is global, transnational, transcultural” (42).
We are not chartered by the Emperor” (39). The church is not to be judged by how useful we are as a “supportive institution” and our clergy as members of a “helping profession.” The church has its own reason for being, hid within its own mandate and not found in the world. “The church does not exist to ask what needs doing to keep the world running smoothly and then to motivate our people to go do it. Hauerwas’ brings, at times, a combative and subversive message: In other words, we only begin to understand those terms as we see them in the mission of Jesus and embodied within the church. “The church really does not know what these words mean apart from the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth” (37). We cannot speak to the world about “peace” and “justice” in general ways everyone can agree on. It’s Jesus, and our ability to “see” him, that makes the church truly unique and radical. Instead, “Christianity is an invitation to be part of an alien people who make a difference because they see something that cannot be otherwise be seen with Christ” (24). Hauerwas argues that Christianity is more than just conversion and more than just a vague promotion of disembodied principles of love and social justice. What the church can “only do for itself” is live as the people of God.
“The decline of the old, Constantinian synthesis between the church and the world means that we American Christians are at last free to be faithful in a way that makes being a Christian today an exciting adventure… Now our churches are free to embrace our roots … a faith community that does not ask the world to do what it can only do for itself” (17-18). Instead he says its failure should be celebrated as an opportunity. He doesn’t think the demise of the Constantinian reality is work lamenting. Hauerwas believes the “Constantian” view of the church is falling fast, and perhaps it is now even more so than when Hauerwas wrote Resident Alien. In doing so, both have neglected the primary social concern of the church, being a people who see and follow Jesus. “Both assume wrongly that the American church’s primary social task is to underwrite American democracy” (31). Both have been primarily concerned with making life a little better for the world by promoting a particular social ethic.
Hauerwas’ believes the church has accommodated to the political concerns of the State, what he calls “Constantinianism.” He argues that both the conservative and liberal churches have basically capitulated to the State.
He calls this “social alternative” the polis, the people of God, and the true “political” concern of the church. Hauerwas’ central thesis is that the “church, as those called out by God, embodies a social alternative that the world cannot on its own terms know” (17).