📧 “Request re. Stanley Hauerwas”
I’m writing journalists and other members of the media to ask them to publish an Open Letter I have sent to organizers of the Radical Vocation Conference to remove Stanley Hauerwas from their list of featured speakers. I emailed them privately on August 31st, informing them of my request and asking for a timely response. No response was given to my request, so I am issuing an Open Letter to organizers of the event as well as the wider Anglican and Episcopal leadership, many of whom will be in attendance.
This is important because Hauerwas, the only lay person on the featured speaker list, has repeatedly undermined the ordained authority of priests in his own tradition. He has done this by denying multiple requests by parish priests and diocesan bishops to address behavior which I’ve alleged is abusive, and which culminated in a November 2016 demand for an exchange of favors.
Hauerwas is scheduled to speak September 20th at 6pm, and I have given organizers ample time to respond by either addressing the merits of my claims or acting in good faith by denying Hauerwas special privilege as a lay person and as an alleged abuser of social power. Following their silence, I am reaching out to members of the religious and secular media alike as I promised I would, since Hauerwas’ biography makes mention of his 2011 TIME Magazine designation as “America’s Best Theologian.” I hope you will support public dialogue and civic engagement by publishing my Open Letter, which I have not changed from the version organizers of the RADVOCO event were sent.
Finally, as an Iraq veteran who studied under Hauerwas as well as another featured speaker for the event, Tom Wright, it is my considered belief that Hauerwas is a central figure in a culture that teaches soldiers and veterans to hate themselves, to feel shame for their service. I know from personal experience as a mentor to over 150 fellow veterans in over a decade that his rhetoric is not value neutral. Because of this culture, many veterans, secular and Christian like, are afraid to speak up about how polarizing binaries force them into impossible crises of identity, forcing them to perceive themselves, as our society has taught them, as only either a murderer or a hero.
Removing Stanley Hauerwas will not solve this crisis, but it will interrupt systems of dehumanization that I know, from both first hand experience as well as academic training, are fueling the military suicide rate in our country.
I beg you to consider contributing to creating a more nuanced and considerate public discourse by expecting the same from those we bless with platforms of any size or place by publishing my Open Letter.
Thank you for your consideration
