Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary: Conversations Between a Radical Democrat and a Christian

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In 'Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary' the theologian Stanley Hauerwas and the political theorist Romand Coles reflect upon possibilities and practices of radical democracy and radical ecclesia that meet in the textures of relational care for the radical ordinary. They shift political and theological imaginations beyond contemporary political formations (e.g. global capitalism, the mega-state, empire), which they see as based on both the denial and production of death. Hauerwas and Coles call us to a revolutionary politics of "wild patience" that seeks transformation through attentive listening, relationship-building, and careful tending to places, common goods, and diverse possibilities for flourishing. Both authors translate back and forth across - as well as dwell in the tensions between - the languages of radical democracy and of trial, cross, and resurrection. Through varied genres - from essays, to letters, from co-writing to dialogue - Hauerwas and Coles enact a politics evangelical in its radical receptivity across strange differences, and which cultivating power in relation to vulnerability. The authors argue that there is as strong a relation between imagination and hope as between imagination and the encounter with and memory of those who have lived with receptive generosity toward the radical ordinary. Throughout this book they think extensively in relation to specific lives and groups: from the early Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organizing efforts, through L'Arche communities, to contemporary faith-based radical democratic efforts by the Industrial Areas Foundation. Pushing and pulling each other into new journeys of political imagination, this conversation between a radical Christian and a radical democratic trickster spurs us toward a politics that acknowledges and enacts the powers of the radical ordinary.STANLEY HAUERWAS is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School, Duke University.ROMAND COLESengages in grassroots politics in Durham, North Carolina, and is Associate Professor of Political Science and Germanic Languages & Literature at Duke University. Previous publications include 'Beyond Gated Politics', 'Rethinking Generosity', and 'Self/Power/Other'."This book gives me hope. It takes the conversation over Christianity and democracy in a most welcome direction: away from ism-mongering and abstractions, down to earth, where instructive and inspiring examples can be found.¿In the practices of people like Ella Baker, Ernesto Cortés, and Jean Vanier, Hauerwas and Coles¿find intimations of a politics worth emulating. that, it seems to me, is exactly where we should be looking." - JEFFREY STOUT, Princeton University