More Hauerwas, from the intro to The Peaceable Kingdom:
The reader will find this work to be as much about theology as about ethics. One of its major concerns is to show why Christian ethics is a mode of theology. Indeed, to begin by asking what is the relation between theology and ethics is to have already made a mistake. Christian convictions are by nature meant to form and illumine lives. Since I hold that ethics is theology, in this book I sometimes treat issues, such as the authority of Scripture or the relation of reason and revelation, that are generally reserved for systematic or philosophical theology. I cannot pretend to provide an adequate account or analysis here of these, and other, complex issues, but I hope I say enough to show that such issues cannot be avoided if Christian ethics is at the heart of the theological enterprise.

The disconnect in our enlightenment mindset between orthodoxy and orthopraxis is a culprit in the process leading to a modern day gnosticism that makes theology irrelevant to ethics of practice. This is no clearer for me in the nature of the Christian Right and its “blessings” conferred on national interests as articulated and carried out by the Bush administration (and , to be “fair”, by numerous other examples of EMPIRE throughout history, like Rome, Greece, Nazi Germany, and the U.S.)

This is a major motivation for me to focus my reading and reflecting now upon the theological insights and traditions which have been offered as faithful sytnaces toward the realities of empire. The book, In Search of Paul, in including this emphasis in the subtitle: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom, will no doubt lead me to others (as it already has, like Hauerwas and Yoder, and probably a renewed interest in catching up with the writings of James Carroll , whose book Crusade is among my “devotional books” that I often read a couple chapters at a time. His earlier book, Constantine’s Sword, woudl seem likely to be a future addition to my list.