Early Life and Education
Stanley Hauerwas was raised in Pleasant Grove, Texas, in a working-class family. He attended both Pleasant Grove High School (1954–56) and W. W. Samuell High School (1956–58). As the son of a bricklayer, Hauerwas was early on apprenticed to the craft of bricklaying under his father. The experience was extremely formative for his later life, as he himself has often compared the skill and hard work that bricklaying requires with both his own approach to theological work and the challenges of living a fully Christian life.
Hauerwas's family attended Pleasant Mound Methodist Church, where he experienced Baptism, Confirmation and Communion. At the age of 15, he presented himself for ministry at a Sunday night worship service, presuming then that he would be "saved".
After leaving Pleasant Grove, Hauerwas matriculated at Southwestern University, a liberal arts college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. He received a B.A. there in 1962. He was also a member of Phi Delta Theta while at Southwestern University. He went on to earn the B.D., M.A., M.Phil and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University. Upon delivering the Gifford Lectures in 2001, Hauerwas would also be awarded an honorary D.D. from the University of Edinburgh.
Following his graduation from Yale University, Hauerwas taught first at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, before joining the faculty at the University of Notre Dame in 1970. He was later invited to assume a faculty position at the Divinity School of Duke University in 1983, where he currently teaches in the area of theological ethics.
Hauerwas' influences are wide-ranging, including figures as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Soren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Howard Yoder, and Alasdair MacIntyre.
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