ABSTRACT
Stanley Hauerwas's own ecclesial politics appear structurally no different from the ecclesial politics of the Constantinian Settlement, if the politics of the church are to be those of a distinctive society with a distribution of powers that are not solely clerically led and cultically focused. This chapter discusses four key areas of concern. The first involves Hauerwas's eschatology and the possibilities for a distinctively Christian theology of liberation which it suggests. The second is the continuing tendency for politics to concern itself with the human or linguistic community and thereby to ignore the non-human world. The third relates to the possibilities of power intrinsic to ecclesial politics. The fourth is the Christological concentration of Hauerwas's thought and the question of whether a more explicitly pneumatological and sacramental approach would offer additional resources for sustaining his politics of Christian freedom within the mystery of God's ways with the world.
