Set free from freedom: Stanley Hauerwas among Baptist politics

Abstract

Our dominant political culture understands freedom primarily as the individual’s right to choose. Such freedom, typically described as purely procedural, elevates the good of the nation state over that of the church. In fact, such freedom makes the church invisible since the only imaginable politics is that of the state. Following Stanley Hauerwas, I argue that seeing the church itself as a polis, a politics, enables Baptists and other Christians to practice an alternative freedom—one grounded in an ecclesial way of life made possible by the Triune God. In conclusion, I suggest that saying the ancient creeds is one way to remember more fully this alternative freedom.