Christianity is not some ideal toward which we ought always to strive even though the ideal is out of reach. Christianity is not a series of slogans that sum up our beliefs.
Stanley HauerwasRead
The church doesn’t have a social strategy, the church is a social strategy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The church's existence and function serve as a strategy for social engagement and community building.
This quote by Stanley Hauerwas emphasizes that the essence of the church transcends mere programs or strategies; rather, the church itself embodies a way of living and connecting within society. It suggests that the church’s presence and its communal aspects inherently create a strategy for social interaction and transformation, highlighting the fundamental role of faith communities in addressing social issues.
Themes
ChurchSocial StrategyCommunityFaithInteraction
In practice
Example use cases
During a sermon about community service, this quote can be used to emphasize the church's role in social engagement.
More from Stanley Hauerwas
All quotes →My way of putting it is that Christians are called to live nonviolently not because we believe nonviolence is a strategy to rid the world of war, but in a world of war as faithful followers of Christ, we cannot imagine being anything other than nonviolent.
Stanley HauerwasRead
Advent is patience it's how God has made us a people of promise, in a world of impatience.
Stanley HauerwasRead
War is America's central liturgical act necessary to renew our sense that we are a nation unlike other nations.
Stanley HauerwasRead
To kill, in war or in any circumstance, creates a silence. It is right that silence should surround the taking of life. After all, the life taken is not ours to take.
Stanley HauerwasRead
The most creative social strategy we have to offer is the church. Here we show the world a manner of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers.
Stanley HauerwasRead
Similar quotes
On the mountains there is freedom!_x000D_ The world is perfect everywhere,_x000D_ Save where man comes with his torment.
Friedrich SchillerRead
Peace can only be secured by justice; never by force of arms.
William PennRead
We as black people are not a monolithic bunch. We are not all the same, and neither are women. Instead, we are all individuals who have these extraordinary stories to tell and share with each other that will enrich all of our lives and help us all become more ourselves and better people.
Tracee Ellis RossRead
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.
Edmund BurkeRead
The individuation of dharma practice occurs whenever priority is given to the resolution of a personal existential dilemma over the need to conform to the doctrines of a Buddhist orthodoxy. Individuation is a process of recovering personal authority through freeing ourselves from the constraints of collectively held belief systems.
Stephen BatchelorRead
There cannot be perfect civilization until Man realizes that the rights of every living creature are as sacred as his own.
David Starr JordanRead