Modern Theology 28:2 April 2012
Realizing Pleasant Grove: The Real Presence of the Exchaton in the LIfe of Stanley Hauerwas
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Stanley Hauerwas’s memoirs, Hannah’s Child, could easily have donned another title: A Long Way from Pleasant Grove. The first time we encounter Hauerwas reminiscing about the long distance from his hometown of Pleas- ant Grove, Texas is when, during a lecture in Louvain, Belgium on “The Non-violent Terrorist: In Defense of Christian Fanaticism,” he blurts out, “This is a long way from Pleasant Grove!” (p. 17). Indeed, Hauerwas confides that even after more than twenty-five years of teaching at Duke University he still finds himself thinking, “This is a long way from Pleasant Grove” (p. 17). The distance between the working-class roots of his brick-laying background and the academic finesse of his intellectual environment (in which he was crowned by Time magazine as the “best theologian in America” in 2001) is a theme that runs throughout the book. Many a time, Hauerwas references the long distance he has traversed away from the world of Pleasant Grove. When receiving the honour of being invited to deliver the Gifford Lectures in 2001, Hauerwas could not but think a mistake had been made: “I am from Pleasant Grove, Texas. I had assumed that I was not in the intellectual league of most of the scholars who have given the lectures” (p. 262). Clearly, by this time, Hauerwas had “come a long way from Pleasant Grove” (p. 283).
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