Stanley Martin Hauerwas (/ˈhaʊərwɑːs/; born July 24, 1940) is an American Protestant theologian, ethicist, and public intellectual.

He was also the first American theologian to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in over forty years.

His work is frequently read and debated by scholars in fields outside of religion or ethics, such as political philosophy, sociology, history, and literary theory.

Stanley Hauerwas was born in Dallas, Texas, on July 24, 1940, and was raised in nearby Pleasant Grove, in a working-class family.

[11] Hauerwas's family attended Pleasant Mound Methodist Church, where he experienced baptism, confirmation, and communion.

[12] After leaving Pleasant Grove, Hauerwas matriculated at Southwestern University, a liberal arts college affiliated with the United Methodist Church.

Upon delivering the Gifford Lectures in 2001, Hauerwas was also awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Edinburgh.

[17] Hauerwas was influenced by a wide range of thinkers, including Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Howard Yoder, Alasdair MacIntyre, Michel Foucault, and William James.

[21] This, according to Hauerwas, is what makes Barth a proper natural theologian in comparison to Reinhold Niebuhr and William James, who were also featured in the lectures.

[22] Both of these movements are attached to Yale biblical scholars Brevard Childs, Hans Frei, and George Lindbeck.

[31][32][33][34][35] In January 2017, Hauerwas wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post in which he argues that U.S. President Donald Trump is an exemplar of American civil religion and distorted theology.

Reinhold was also one of the primary subjects of Hauerwas' 2000–2001 Gifford Lectures, which were later republished in book form under the title With the Grain of the Universe.

[41] In particular, Hauerwas argues that Reinhold Niebuhr was deeply influenced by William James, accepting a pragmatist epistemology.

In his book The Peaceable Kingdom Hauerwas offers commentary on two classic essays written by the Niebuhrs for The Christian Century on the subject of the Conflict in Manchuria.

In the first essay, entitled "The Grace of Doing Nothing", H. Richard Niebuhr argues that humans are self-interested and egoistic and that Christians, because they are subject to these same flaws, should remain non-violent even in a time of war.

In his commentary Hauerwas acknowledges that both brothers make important points, but critiques Reinhold's view, ultimately agreeing with H. Richard Niebuhr.

The concept of death "involves a philosophical judgment of a significant change that has happened in a person"[53] and therefore "is a correlative of what one takes to be the necessary condition of human life, e.g., ... the potential for consciousness".

[53] The criteria of death, however, are "those empirical measurements that can be made to determine whether a person is dead, such as cessation of respiration or a flat EEG".