HAUERWAS'S CRITIQUE OF THE POST-ENLIGHTENMENT NATION STATE AND HIS PROPOSAL FOR AN “ALTERNATIVE POLITICAL COMMUNITY”

Hauerwas's conception of the relation between Church and state may be briefly introduced by his assertion that, as “Christianity is mostly a matter of politics—politics as defined by the Gospel,” all members of the Church are faced with the challenge of choosing primarily the allegiance to God over serving Caesar (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 30, 42). Hauerwas's perspective on politics has been characterized as “theological politics.” In contrast with “political theology,” which represents “an attempt to positively meet the challenges of modernity,” Hauerwas's view rather “understands the politics of the world, and relates to it” in the light of a “new politics” sought by the Church itself as “polis” or “civitas” (Rasmusson Reference Rasmusson1995, 11, 188). In this kind of theological politics, the political dimension, although intimately linked to the theological one, is nevertheless unhindered by theology. The political dimension of theological politics remains “a” politics, but not the kind of politics led by the modern state (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2012a, 236).

Hauerwas proposes ambitious phrases to characterize theological politics: “Catholicity without Leviathan” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2011a), “alternative political community” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2001a, 102) and “a new people, an alternative polis, a countercultural social structure called Church” (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 46). These phrases appear attractive in their emphasis on the kind of politics to be pursued within the Christian polis. Nevertheless, they remain unclear as to how much theology or politics is needed for Hauerwas's view to become applicable to the Church communities embedded in spaces of secular politics. For instance, Healy criticizes Hauerwas's perspective on the Church as a political community as “theologically thin” (Healy Reference Healy2014, 102). At the same time, Macedo argues that Hauerwas's view on the alternative politics is so infused with theological elements that it rather seems “utopian, almost apolitical” (Macedo Reference Macedo2012, 171). I will begin by identifying a series of theological elements that depict the formation and activity of the Church in the world. The review of these theological elements may not convincingly show whether Hauerwas's theology of politics is too thin, or too thick. Nevertheless, the first goal of the article will be to show that Hauerwas's use of theological elements is thin enough to permit his engagement with secular political theorists, and at the same time thick enough to remain theologically credible.

Basing his reflection on insights taken from Yoder regarding the relationship between Church and state (Yoder Reference Yoder1994, 105), Hauerwas argues that, since the reign of Constantine, Christianity had become embedded in the institutional structure of the Roman Empire. This is not to say that Constantine himself inaugurated the political life of the Church, but rather that he introduced a distortion in the original political message of the Gospel that had animated the early Church (O'Donovan Reference O'Donovan1996, 215; Cavanaugh Reference Cavanaugh, Scott and Cavanaugh2004, 397). In Hauerwas's view, Constantinianism brought into the political project of the Church the “accomodationist” ideal (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 32; Berkman Reference Berkman, Berkman and Cartwright2001, 13; Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas, Berkman and Cartwright2001b, 443).

This ideal was translated into the political theology of Christianity as a twofold effort of making “an archaic system of belief compatible with modern belief systems,” but also of judging the Church according to secular political criteria, that is “by how well or ill the Church's presence in the world works to the advantage of the world” (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 46). His position is in contrast with Reinhold Niebuhr's view about the necessity for the Church in America to become involved in the social and political life (Niebuhr Reference Niebuhr1967, 57), an orientation which he characterizes as “public-Church view” (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 32). By rendering the faith in a “living” God “irrelevant or private” (37), the modern liberalism adopted by Christians who follow a political theology influenced by the Constantinian perspective endangers the possibility of the Church generating its own political space. This also may lead to the danger of the destruction of the Church itself (32) by negating all its independent political voices and transforming the Church into an institution to be manipulated by the state toward its own agenda.

In contrast with Hauerwas, Stout considers that the kind of space, which is provided by the liberal state and which is wider than the political space of the Church, is sufficient for Christians to manifest their theologico-political ideals as “citizens with strong religious commitments” (Stout Reference Stout2004, 296). Long views Stout's position as overconfident in the potentially unadulterated capacity of political liberalism to allow for the affirmation, in the public square, of “any theology or metaphysics that assumes truth is more basic than the will to power” (Long Reference Long2009, 271). In his view, Stout needs to advance a vision of a democratic tradition that would not treat truth as “mere communal agreement” (279). In other words, Stout needs to advance a satisfactory “metaphysical treatment of truth” (279). It is this metaphysical dimension of truth that Hauerwas emphasizes, Long believes, since, as Hauerwas writes, “the truth that makes Christians distinct is not a truth that is peculiar to them. It is not their truth but the truth for anyone” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2001c, 200; Long Reference Long2009, 320). Long argues that a public conversation between Christians and non-Christians remains possible by virtue of the fact that Christians and non-Christians share “an inevitable surface grammar of what constitutes goodness and truth if they can converse at all” (320).

Long's reading points toward Hauerwas's emphasis on the necessity for Christians to look primarily toward the public affirmation of the “truth” of Christianity rather than a kind of commonly-agreed-upon, or contractual, truth. Indeed, Hauerwas's suggestion that the subjects of a modern state are only “strangers to one another” in their effort to fulfill their needs and assert their rights (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 32, 77, 109) becomes essential in his evaluation of the nation state's role to ensure the coherence of its people as a community of liberal values (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1997a, 7, 127, 229). By pushing the belief in God out of the center of political and social debates, the post-Enlightenment state tried to cultivate a language of nationalism as an “effective ideology” which would have the double effect of solving religious disputes and ensuring the loyalty of the subjects (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 34). Hauerwas credits MacIntyre in advancing this view (35). MacIntyre reiterated this perspective by characterizing it as an “implicit contract” between the rulers and the ruled, where the ruled agree to obey and contribute to reinforcing state's laws in return for “benefits” provided by the state (MacIntyre Reference MacIntyre2016, 126). In the same vein, Hauerwas emphasizes that the nation state requests a price for this internal order, a price that is too high to pay: “to preserve themselves, all states, even democracies, must ask their citizens to die for them” (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 35).

This is the consequence of Christians’ trading of their truth in exchange for contractual truths that facilitate social and economic wellbeing, but which are infused with secular political ideology, which gives way to imposition of contractual relationships by violent means. Violence thus infects the Christian discourse about politics to such a degree that the limits between the politics of the modern state and the politics of the Church become blurred. The nation state exposes its subjects to violent treatment, since law itself is downplayed to the level of a mere instrument for punishment: “exactly because liberal societies have tended to undercut the moral aspirations of the law in the name of individual freedom, the law has become increasingly coercive in the interest of maintaining order” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2001a, 104). The unilateral emphasis of individualism, individual rights, freedom, or peace will only lead to punitive approaches to the law between citizens of the same state (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 47; Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2012a, 239), or clashes between states in the international sphere (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 35; Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas, Berkman and Cartwright2001d, 393).

The functioning of the very idea of people promoted by the post-Enlightenment state is based on the state's capacity to handle legitimate violence expediently, either at home or abroad. Hauerwas refuses to include the necessity to revert to violence in his definition of the kind of political community compatible with the idea of the Church “as polis” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1997b). His opinion is that the nationalism sought by the United States of America, which is based on nothing but “artificial boundaries” goes against the idea of unity of the kind of political community promoted by the Church. In his view, those artificial boundaries are defended in an inhumane way, with “murderous intensity” (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 43).

But how would the renouncement to the violent affirmation of the universal Church's political project, which dominated most of its (post-Constantinian) history contribute to a sustainable autonomous Church politics? What guarantees that the local Churches themselves will overlook the temptation of “identity politics” that Mathewes claims to find even in Hauerwas's version of alternative Church politics? (Mathewes Reference Mathewes2007, 162). Throughout the history of inter-confessional Christian relations, the existence of a “surface grammar” has been more apparent than in the Church's interfaith relations with non-Christian communities. Nevertheless, the mere existence of such a common grammar, without a common willingness to share insights of the lived truth, has done little to favor an effective openness of local communities. It is here that Stout's perspective becomes relevant, as it advocates for a communal conversational space made possible by a democratic politics that would invite local communities to come together and open themselves to sharing their vision on secular politics and pressing social issues (Stout Reference Stout2004, 302).

It seems that Hauerwas is aware of this difficulty in his argument, since he suggests that, because of the distortion that Constantinianism generated in the political project of the early Church, the fulfillment of the Gospel's political call has only been fragmentary and still remains a desideratum. The Church's efforts to secure its own domination over the earthly kingdoms turned against itself, since it became in time the ambition of some local Churches to impose their domination on other local Churches. Thus, the body of the Church was shattered in multiple pieces, each piece of the Church eventually attempting to impose on other local Churches its own interpretation of the Church's Catholicity. Drawing on Kaye's perspective on Anglicanism (Kaye Reference Kaye2009, 41), Hauerwas presents the Anglican Church as a political community struggling to protect its own way of “being the Church of Jesus Christ” and as an “attempt to maintain Catholicity without Leviathan” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2011a).

A “distinctive way” of interpreting the Catholicity of the Church had prevailed within the English Church, according to Kaye and Hauerwas, even before Henry VIII's reign, and had emphasized “a resilient call to personal discipleship to Jesus” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2011a). In fact, before Roman Catholicism developed its imperial ambitions, even the medieval Church succeeded in securing a stable and peaceful universality, as it “remained largely pacifist” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2011a). Unfortunately, the efforts of Anglicanism were interrupted under the temptation of the Anglican leaders to appeal to the power of the Leviathan to deal expediently with the landscape of diversity within the Anglican Church itself. That is why Hauerwas, like Kaye, considers that the Act of Uniformity politically imposed in England in 1662 created an “ambiguity” among the members of the Anglican Church. In his view, the Act put an end to the “diversity of gifts” manifested in England's parishes by establishing the criteria of state-imposed order and uniformity in place of the parishes’ willingness to understand diversity and the “love of one another” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2011a).

Hauerwas's use of Kaye to find historical examples of a “Catholicity without Leviathan” in the post-Constantinian era of the Church reveals a willingness to do more than simply combining Yoder's “church-world distinction” with “Maclntyre's antiliberalism” (Stout Reference Stout2004, 148). Stout believes that Hauerwas's “amalgam of themes from Yoder and MacIntyre” ends up, “regardless of Hauerwas's intentions” in “an especially rigid form of church-world dualism” (148–149). In Stout's view, it is precisely the gap between the space of religious discourse and the space of public conversation that his own proposal bridges. The Liberal democracy benefitted Hauerwas's public in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, when the American citizens “were anxious to hear the arguments of a highly influential pacifist” (77). This would have been less likely to happen if Hauerwas's arguments “had been circulated only behind the closed doors of Churches and religiously affiliated schools, where they would be somewhat less likely to face skeptical objections” (77). While for Hauerwas and Long, one of the primary concerns is the way the peculiar Christian narrative is shared within the Church and between Christians and non-Christians, Stout focuses instead on the conditions for such a sharing to be effective.

The problematic issue with Stout's optimistic reading of the merits of the liberal democracy is that it presupposes that a public conversation between diverse confessions and religions without a liberal framework would be extremely hard, if not impossible, to attain (Cavanaugh, Reference Cavanaugh, Milbank, Pickstock and Ward1999, 188;  Reference Cavanaugh2009, 3, 12): “The underlying assumption is that it is not the Church but the nation state that is ‘catholic’” (Cavanaugh Reference Cavanaugh, Scott and Cavanaugh2004, 404). Hauerwas makes clear that he is not advocating a movement promoting “sectarianism:” it is the state promoting sectarianism. The state encourages its subjects to behave individualistically (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2016a, 252; 1994, 184) and to use violently imposed legal relations among themselves, and wars with other peoples. It is only as a response to the “tribalism” of the modern state (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 42, 156) that Christians should embrace the call to live in the Church as “a colony, an island of one culture in the middle of another” (12). By being embedded in the body of the Church, which is “the one political entity in our culture that is global, transnational, transcultural” (42), every individual conversion thus brings the community of the Church closer together in what Hauerwas calls “a new people, an alternative polis, a countercultural social structure” (46). By realizing their status as “resident aliens” within the colony of the Church, Christians should follow the Gospel's call to become members of an “alternative polis” (46), a “place” where the “new people (…) are given the means to live without the fear that inevitably leads us to violence” (157).

From this perspective, if Stout focused on Hauerwas's combination of ideas from Yoder and MacIntyre, the additional attention given to Kaye by Hauerwas indicates more than a mere concern for a state–Church dualism. Hauerwas is rather preoccupied with solving the problem caused by the myth of the liberal savior state thought to discourage the violent affirmations of religious communities’ sectarian attitudes. Hauerwas does not dismiss the possibility of the Church's autonomous opening to a public conversation on confessional, interfaith, or political matters. However, his project is to propose an alternative kind of political thinking that is theologically thin enough, but also thick enough, to encourage communities animated by the faith in a “living” truth to come together without any need to subsume their effort to a liberal discourse.

The example Hauerwas gives of the twenty-first century approach inaugurated by the Anglican Church is meant to function as an encouragement that indeed the time may be ripe for pacifist religious conversations unmediated by liberal discourse and dedicated to finding an alternative Church politics. The original Anglican perspective on Catholicity, Hauerwas argues, has known an important renewal in the twenty-first century with Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury. This time, he argues, the kind of Catholicity that reemerged in the Anglican Church has an outreach beyond its own spatial and confessional limits, as it depicts the local understanding of Catholicity as an openness to embracing other perspectives in a peaceful conversation (Williams Reference Williams2008; Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2011a). Hauerwas appreciates that, in the new context determined by the forces of globalization, the call for the reinstatement of the Church's universality is no longer a matter of choice, but a necessity if the Church wants to survive and strengthen itself as a political community: “We are in danger of confusing the universality of the cross with the allegedly inevitable process of globalization. We are in the odd situation of needing one another in our diverse localities in order not to be subject to the power of false universals” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2011a). Hauerwas thus admits that it is “odd” to think that the scattered pieces of the universal Church would come closer together mainly because of the need to defend themselves in front of the “false universals.”

Instead of reciprocal love and love for Christ, the “false universals” promote a kind of politics that estrange human beings from the morality of the law and from the presence of God among his people. Hauerwas emphasizes that globalization, as understood by liberalism, does indeed share important aspects with the kind of Catholicity sought by the Church in pre-Constantinian times, in pre-modern times and, more recently, in the twenty-first century with the renewal initiated by Williams. If there is an apparent “overlap between democratic and Christian virtues,” it is not enough to embrace Stout's optimistic approach to liberal democracy, or Niebuhr's public-Church approach (Niebuhr Reference Niebuhr1967, 57). For instance, the liberal value of “tolerance” implies the existence of some individuals in “positions of power that would make it necessary for them to be tolerant.” That is why “humility, not tolerance, is a Christian virtue” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2012a, 249). Instead of yielding to such a conception of universality brought about by globalization, Hauerwas emphasizes the rich heritage of the Church that can be foregrounded so as to build up an “alternative political community” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas, Berkman and Cartwright2001a, 102). The Church's Catholicity would place a great deal of importance on the “interconnectedness” between local and global (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2011a), and fruitfully invest the particularity of each individual and community into the single political body of Christians worldwide.

Although interconnected in a transnational and transcultural body, Christians continue to be subject to the legal and political jurisdiction of the nation state. Nevertheless, at times some individuals or communities may choose not to appeal to the legal institutions of the secular state whenever they perceive a conflict with their pledge of non-violence. From this point of view, the political body of the Church indeed counts as a “colony” or an “island of one culture in the middle of another” (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 12), or as he would later say, as a “sanctuary” (Hauerwas and Tran Reference Hauerwas and Tran2017). If there is indeed a movement of withdrawal from secular politics, the space of withdrawal remains in plain sight. The withdrawal itself is a public claim that reminds the world about the specific pacifist path that Christians cannot abandon for the sake of serving the liberal democratic agenda.

The way some particular communities, like the Mennonites (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2001a, 104), choose to behave in their relationship with secular power represents a local example of practical attitudes against the violence of the law, which has been designed primarily as an instrument of punishment rather than as a means to heal. The local traditions or customs have indeed an important role, as they contribute to an instant recognition of what is “different,” that is, sacred and worthy of communal respect (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2016a, 85). Nevertheless, it happens that these traditions assert themselves as exclusive of other forms of worship. Especially when the temptation to appeal to the power of the Leviathan to impose order and uniformity appears within a local Church, the correct attitude of the members of the Church as the universal living body of Christ is to be “countercultural.”

Besides the danger posed by the calcification of the initially living local traditions and customs, another main concern of the people of the universal Church would be to deal with the democratic set of perspectives, which in time may appear as traditional and unchallenged as the ecclesiastical ones. The people of the Church should continuously reassert the social danger assimilated to theories of society or of legitimate government which, as human creations, will always lack the status of “Gospel truth” and will always be prone to make way for “manipulative social relations” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2001a, 102).

Hauerwas's view of a countercultural approach of Church politics does not go so far as to deny the legitimacy of a liberal space open to challenging critiques from non-Christian and Christian individuals or organizations. As Cavanaugh emphasizes, Hauerwas's view cannot be assimilated with that of O'Donovan, which transforms the state into “the police department of the church” (Cavanaugh Reference Cavanaugh, Scott and Cavanaugh2004, 403). Likewise, it may be considered that Hauerwas's perspective is not incompatible with that of Stout, since Hauerwas allows that democratic practices may consolidate themselves in the Christian perception as a tradition. Nonetheless, while manifesting themselves as participants in such a tradition, Christians should also retain their countercultural approach that would prevent their own language and narrative from being absorbed and deprived of their living content. The political vocation of the Church is countercultural to the extent that it precludes the ossification of any tradition, in either the sanctuary space of the Church, or in the liberal public square.

Hauerwas's position can be reconciled with the existence of a political liberal space as long as Christians succeed in making a positive contribution to secular politics by speaking their own truth. Theirs is a truth which can be applied to everyone, and where the liberal public space is dilated in such a way as to permit the existence of sanctuary spaces of withdrawal in plain sight. By virtue of the pre-Constantinian political and countercultural vocation of the Church, Christians are indeed “not x, not y, or not z” (Mathewes Reference Mathewes2000), because they assert themselves as practicing members of a living Church.

FROM THE CHAINS OF THE LEVIATHAN TO THE TIES OF MORAL OBLIGATIONS

By setting itself apart as an “alternative political community,” Christian universal polity must also offer a renewed view on the legal system, so as to generate an alternative means of binding Christian consciences worldwide. Although subjected to and defending the rule of law in their respective democracies (or promoting it in non-democratic states), Christians should also be aware of the limitations of the law, which, by virtue of the violence associated with it, will sometimes bring about social injustice. Inazu observes that Hauerwas does not advocate the withdrawal of Christians from society, as “he has written appreciatively of lawyers and the possibility of legal practice” and has emphasized the ideal of practicing law “humanly” (Hauerwas and Powell Reference Hauerwas, Powell and McThenia1995, 35; Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas, Berkman and Cartwright2001a, 105; Inazu Reference Inazu2012, vii).

The “task” of the Church of finding alternative paths to applying legal commitments without violence would be “to understand the many roots and functions of punishment in the hope of finding less painful and lethal ways to punish” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2012a, 239). Without the punishing aspect, the law will not give the ruler or those charged with its application the “desire to be in control of the world” (239). In this aspect, Hauerwas initiates a departure from the perspective, emphasized in the contractarian political theory, of the violent aspect of the law as substantive for the formation of a political community. Hobbes, for instance, talks about laws as “artificial chains” instituted by the individuals themselves, “by mutual covenants,” having been “fastened at one end, to the lips of that man, or assembly, to whom they have given the sovereign power; and at the other end to their own ears.” Hobbes also adds that “these bonds, in their own nature but weak, may nevertheless be made to hold, by the danger, though not by the difficulty of breaking them” (Hobbes Reference Hobbes and Tuck1996, Ch. XXI, 109).

It is this view, which presents the fear involved in the observance of the law as constitutive of the political body, which Hauerwas criticizes. Hauerwas's project remains compatible with recent developments in the work of Milbank, who observes that the Hobbesian influence on contemporary liberal politics is visible in the problematic relationship between the ever-growing power of the rulers to legislate and the perpetual quest of the ruled to find breaches in the laws (Milbank Reference Milbank2006, 14). According to Hobbes, the sovereign cannot be “bound to himself” by the laws of his own making (Hobbes Reference Hobbes and Tuck1996, Ch. XXVI, 138), while at the same time the “liberties” of the subjects “depend on the silence of the law” (Ch XXI, 113). Hauerwas believes that, in spite of the popularity of the authoritarian aspect of the law, in reality “few are less in control than those who think the power to rule puts them in control of the world” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2012a, 239). Fear of transgressing the law may have the perverse effect of encouraging people to exploit the limits of the laws to dominate others, rather than being themselves dominated. Moreover, the rulers’ impression that power itself legitimates an unbridled right to operate the order that is required by the so-called reasons of state means that even leaders will need to reinforce and maintain their power unchallenged for as long as possible. This is a self-defeating phenomenon of liberal democracy, which can still be identified in the internal and international politics of the contemporary nation states.

The leaders, according to Hauerwas, are not really in control of the world, but only temporarily manifest their control on the world's fear. Even Hobbes was aware of the potentially damaging long-term effects of fear on both the ruled and the rulers, as he alluded to the importance of the sovereign to be not only “reverenced” but also “beloved of his people” (Ch. XXX, 185). Hauerwas suggests that, by renouncing the invocation of the punitive aspect of the law, Christians will establish an example of moral and legal behavior that would have in time a positive contagious effect on those who are mainly attracted to the authoritarian and manipulative aspect of the law. In this case, Christians will “have a better chance of being of service to our neighbor who would like to be in control” (Hauerwas, Reference Hauerwas2012a, 239). Thus, instead of a unilateral emphasis on the punitive aspect of the law, Hauerwas proposes a kind of fraternal authority, where the law is instead conceived not only as a means of serving one's needs, but also as a means of servicing those mistreated either by other people or by the punitive applications of the law.

Hauerwas is aware that the Christian realist perspective, such as that of Niebuhr, which depicts the “sinful character” of the “human condition” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1994, 23), remains compatible with the application of the law by violent means. Since “our lives are constituted by violence” (120), in this realist perspective, the authoritarian aspect of the law may indeed seem necessary, at least for the goal of every Christian being protected from the manipulative ambitions of their “neighbor” (Hobbes Reference Hobbes and Tuck1996, Ch. XX, 107; Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2012a, 239). In order to advance his pacifist position in terms that do not remain “utopian” (Macedo Reference Macedo2012, 171), and to distance himself from the “optimistic and naive account of nonviolence” criticized by Niebuhr, Hauerwas appeals to Yoder's realist perspective (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1994, 118). Although sharing with Niebuhr “a profound realism about the character of human existence” (120), Yoder does not separate Jesus or the text of the Bible from the Church and from its “rightly reading, for example, Romans 13” (118, 121). This helps Hauerwas conclude, in contrast with Niebuhr's Christian realism, that “a society exists that is more moral than the individual” (121). This society is the Church and its advantage in advancing a pacifist perspective on politics that is not detached from the political realities lies in the fact that it features “Christian practice” at its core (118).

One argument that the establishment of such a political community might be possible consists in the fact that there has been a historical precedent of a religious community as polis: “it is the Jews who have always had to learn how to live out of control,” that is from the dependence upon a political authority (121). The “Jewish legal tradition” managed to operate within the Jewish community “for 1900 years without a state and with little coercive powers” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2012a, 239). This precedent should be encouraging for Christians. The more Christian practice becomes concretized around the political ideal of interacting, initiating contracts, or even castigating the neighbor by a renewed legal system that does not appeal to the violence of the law, the more the Church makes decisive steps toward the affirmation of a kind of politics that would not depend heavily on violent means of deterrence. From this perspective, the “police” officers are rather understood as “peace” officers (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2012b, 229), while the legal corpus that the Church as an alternative political community should cultivate would be based on multiple sources.

One of these sources is “the common law tradition,” which focuses on the “kind of practical reason” that is “necessary for the discovery of the goods a people have in common” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2012a, 247) and which invites perpetual moral debate and reinterpretation of the law, since “there is no bottom to it” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2012b, 226). Another “great resource for how to think about a community who finds ways to order its life across time” is the “canon law,” as it illustrates the “cooperative way of life” (230) that Christians are called to cultivate within their polis. Another guiding source of the interpretation and application of the law is seen in the acknowledgment by local communities of the ways and strategies of other denominational understandings of the law (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2001a, 104).

In an argument that echoes Stout, Gregory points at what seems to be a contradictory approach: on one hand, Hauerwas “suggests that any search for alternative social and political practices within liberal democracy is doomed to remain a ‘Constantinian’ search”; on the other, he “seems to endorse a project that exploits the best of liberalism” like “liberalism's defense of respect for persons” (Gregory Reference Gregory2008, 116n.78). The examination of Hauerwas's critique of the contractarian roots of the liberal democracy demonstrates why this approach is not incoherent. While the respect for persons as cultivated by the Church alternative politics may coincide with the respect for persons cultivated by the liberal project, the Church's communal reasons for endorsing respect for the other may differ widely from those offered by liberal cultures of democracy.

If Hauerwas rejects the contractarian approach to law as a setback for contemporary liberal cultures, it does not mean that he rejects the idea of communal contracts altogether (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2012b, 229). An essential part of contractarianism is seen in the inclusion of the appeal to the state's violence as a guarantor that the contracts will be honored by the parties involved. If this is the case, then there is little space left for the participants’ mutual respect to represent the dynamic aspect of the contract. Hauerwas proposes an alternative approach where respect itself remains at the center of the contractual relationship and is sustained by a communal practice dedicated to orienting relationships according to a living truth. Thanks to a “surface grammar” (Long Reference Long2009, 320) that is made available to non-Christians by the legal language of contracts, the Church as a political community has the opportunity of presenting publicly its own approach to law that is disconnected from the mediating punitive power of the state. It may be understood that human beings become so accustomed with the “chains” of the laws imposed by the state that they take for granted the belief that without the punitive aspect of the law, no other practice of engaging in contractual relationships is possible. This does not eliminate, but rather encourages the tendencies of the parties involved to search for the blind spots in the contracts that would allow their breach without punishment.

For the Hobbesian view of the political body, the Leviathan had two ways of attracting the cooperation and submission of the subjects. The first consisted in the Leviathan's emphasis on the fear of transgressing the boundaries established by the mutual contracts, an aspect which Hauerwas dismisses; the second, although still based on fear, leads to a positive understanding of the connection between law and individual behavior: in order for the sovereign to be able to “tie them by fear of punishment to the performance of their covenants” the prerequisite consisted in the leader's capacity “to keep them in awe” (Hobbes Reference Hobbes and Tuck1996, Ch. XVII, 85). Hauerwas cannot simply dismiss this aspect, by virtue of its religious roots and its positive effect of making people willingly accept coming together and, in the case of the Hobbesian politics, to be tied to the chains of the laws in order to give contours to the unity of the political body. He acknowledges that there is a dimension of irrational participation in communal actions that gives people “a sense of worth,” like enrolling in the army to fight a war (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 35). This kind of communal awe is equaled in liberal societies by the communal participation in national sports, but also within the Church by the “joy” emanating from communal worship (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1997b).

Hauerwas's theoretical challenge thus consists of advancing a new type of communal awe that initiates the movement of individuals toward incorporation into a political body. The awe needed by the Leviathan encourages and capitalizes on the excitement of the subjects to renounce their own freedom and, potentially, their personal safety, in favor of an ideal of a communal salvation. The Leviathan makes use of this kind of awe not only for internal stabilization and for keeping in check internal conflict between citizens, but also in international action against external enemies. Coupled with awe, war thus becomes a tool not only for imposing the Leviathan's interests abroad, but also for nourishing moral ideals necessary for social cohesion in an individualistic society: “We are quite literally a people that morally live off our wars because they give us the necessary basis for self-sacrifice so that a people who have been taught to pursue only their own interest can at times be mobilized to die for one another” (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 35).

There are contemporary readings of Hobbes in the context of the American politics, like that of Lilla, which do not pay enough attention to the awe for the role of war in the American society (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2011b, 9–10). Hauerwas believes that Lilla's advocacy of an approach to politics “exclusively in human terms without appeals to divine revelation or cosmological speculation” (Lilla Reference Lilla2007, 5; Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2011b, 7) does not reflect the American fascination with applying religious dimensions to “a Hobbesian world” (11). Hauerwas understands the “Hobbesian world” as “a death-determined world committed to the defeat of death.” (11). The kind of awe pursued by Hauerwas would not emulate the Leviathan's control over people's “fear” and “envy” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1997b) that would encourage them to fight against external enemies rather than hurting each other; Hauerwas supports the awe that attracts people to surrender themselves, this time to the risk of being hurt without retaliating.

The specific Christian awe is “witness” of Jesus’ life, example and divinity (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2001c). “Witness” crystallizes the communal life within the Church as polis and manifests itself in the exposing of oneself, defenseless against expressions of either love or hate. There are several ways of denouncing the impoverishing effects of the fear and envy-inflicted awe promoted by the Leviathan. One way would be the awe of potentially sharing the same fate as the crucified Jesus (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2013, 117). Another way would be the awe of doing the work of a “prophet” in a “participatory engagement” by pointing toward the evils of society (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2012a, 245). Yet another would consist in the perspective of helping the Church produce “heroic souls” (Willimon and Hauerwas Reference Willimon and Hauerwas1996, 84) by starting to forgive where the common culture would require one to seek justice (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2013, 117). By asserting this positive approach to taking the risk of being hurt, Hauerwas talks about “a cruciform-shaped love, a love capable of patience” (117) which can contribute to the coming together of local Churches in generating “the reality of the interdependence that gives visibility to our Catholicity” (117).

The embracing by Christians of an alternative awe would infuse more dynamics into politics, since the pacifism advocated by the Gospel “demands strenuous political engagement” and “forces us to expand our social and political imaginations” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas, Berkman and Cartwright2001a, 105). The Church treasures the “command” addressed to each of its members to “be a witness” because the command does not come from the Church's institutions, but from Christ himself in concrete life situations (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1981, 105). It is by virtue of this awe for being a witness of the life and suffering of Jesus in the life and suffering of fellow human beings that a Christian commits himself to the moral ties of the laws, without having to be chained to their accomplishment.

The specific point of departure by which the individual inner awe for the “narrative” of the Gospel (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2016a, 110) is translated and stabilized into effective action through “strenuous political engagement” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas, Berkman and Cartwright2001a, 105) is worship: “whatever we mean by politics, justice, or democracy will be determined by how we have learned to celebrate, that is, to worship” (Hauerwas and Coles Reference Hauerwas and Coles2008, 105). Hauerwas is not arguing in favor of a domination of the members through rituals, but rather about gaining from rituals that positive attitude of feeling the pulsating rhythm of the Church's life and its connection to the moral roots of the law: “rather Christianity is to have one's body shaped, one's habits determined, in a manner that the worship of God is unavoidable” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2016a, 85). Commenting on Hauerwas's arguments on the centrality of the practical worship in defining the political message of the Church, Northcott gives an example that he feels might well illustrate how communal participation in worship positively impacts on political discourse: the gradual disappearance of slavery in medieval Europe “was not achieved by laws ascribing rights to peasants or servants” but rather by “the gradual infection of the social arrangements of the Holy Roman Empire by the Catholic Mass at which all Christians—slave or free—participated as full baptized members” (Northcott Reference Northcott2012, 275). Northcott thus characterizes Hauerwas's perspective as “liturgical politics” (275–276).

The practical way of understanding Catholicity is an attempt by Hauerwas to liberate the political body of the Church from ideological constraints. It is the “practices,” Hauerwas believes, that unite God's people across time, not the intellectual ideas about the Church (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2016a, 157). It is thus through the Church's practice that its people discover the “skills” and “gifts” necessary for a moral political life (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2010). One of Hauerwas's concrete examples of how local practice influences the universal narrative is the way African American Christians initiated the “reconciliation” with white Christians, in spite of being told “that Christianity justified slavery” (Willimon and Hauerwas Reference Willimon and Hauerwas1996, 82). The roots of the Church's narrative are thus not ideological, but the narrative maintains its lively aspect from the way participatory joy emerges in worship and service.

HAUERWAS'S APPLICATION OF HIS THEORETICAL IDEAS IN HIS CRITIQUE OF THE POLITICS INAUGURATED BY TRUMP

Hauerwas's prompt reaction to the result of the 2016 American presidential election was manifested by his writing and publishing on the ABC Religion and Ethics website (November 8, 2016) of a “sermon” preached to all Christians in America. He reminded Christians of their vocation for both an alternative politics and an alternative way of doing secular politics. The text illustrates the connection between his theoretical ideas and practical search for solutions that would allow both the advancement of the Church toward its autonomous political vocation and at the same time the Church's involvement in the politics of the nation.

As in his theoretical writings, he contrasts between secular politics, particularly liberal democracy, and the political vocation of the Church. However, since he is addressing people that may not be familiar with his work, Hauerwas proceeds with his argument by only suggesting to the reader “that there may be some tension between the political order that is the Church and that form of social and political organization called democracy” (author's emphasis, Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2016b). In the sermon, Hauerwas adopts a moderate tone—which seems rather different from the scholarly tone by which Hauerwas “likes,” as Stout observes, “to shock first and qualify later” (Stout Reference Stout2004, 149). The two essential keywords of the sentence are “order” associated with the kind of Church politics and “organization” that is characteristic of democratic politics. This choice of terms suggests an idea, which he reiterates throughout the essay, that the role of democracy is to organize the complex social world, while the role of Church politics is to make manifest in the world the political order prophesized in the Gospel. These vocations are not mutually exclusive. However, they “may” sometimes seem hard to reconcile. This happens because Christians, as “a people that believe what we believe is true,” as part of the politics of the Church, “cannot help from time to time coming into conflict with those regimes organized on the assumption that there is no truth other than what ‘the people’ say is the truth” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2016b). In the face of a political culture that, on the surface, seems to cultivate values compatible with those of Christianity, it is the linking of the contractual dimension with truth that should make Christians suspicious.

The positive side of democratic politics is that it is indeed an important factor in organizing social life, via elections for instance, “for the articulation of the goods we have in common.” Nonetheless, Christians should be aware of the “coercive aspect” inherent in election practices, since elections perpetuate a “coercive” dimension, as “50.1% get to tell 49.9% what to do.” Moreover, even “in classical democratic theory” elections are presented as “only the means” toward the communal articulation of the public goods. Instead, Hauerwas suggests that “the campaign climaxing in election today” becomes a race, where winning is all that matters, above concerns for the effects of the campaign truths and lies that would become policy and affect the lives of millions. There has been a confusion, Hauerwas observes, in the Christian perception of Trump's campaign. Christians aimed at electing a political leader that speaks a different language, one closer to social realities rather than “bureaucratic” language. However, they ended up electing a leader who certainly uses unconventional language, but one which further alienates political discourse from reality: “you know you are in trouble when the kind of speech that is the speech of television sitcoms is identified as plain speech” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2016b). He ends his essay by encouraging Christians to orient their political aspirations toward a kind of politics where “truth matters” and where it is cultivated by “the opportunity to testify” about the truth rather than casting an impersonal vote. It is this opportunity of being witness, or testifying, that may represent the important contribution of Christians to secular politics, since the world “often does not believe it possible to say what is true.” Hauerwas sees the twofold task ahead in the construction of the Church's alternative politics and the manifestation of a communal voice of Christians to tell the truth within the context of secular politics as an embracing of the politics of Jesus. After all, it is Jesus who “assures us that we will be given the words and the wisdom to say at the appropriate time what is true” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2016b).

In the aftermath of the presidential inauguration of Trump as the 45th President of the United States, Hauerwas wrote another opinion essay published by the Washington Post on January 27, 2017. Several elements that distinguish Hauerwas's political perspective on the Church contrast with the ideals offered by the newly sworn president to the American people in his inaugural speech. The first words of the title, “Christians, Don't Be Fooled…,” function as a warning which is connected throughout the essay with several aspects of Trump's discourse: the “piety” that the new president displays, the “devotion” that the people owe to the country, the “total allegiance” necessary to “make America great again,” or the “unity” of “living together” as a people.

Although Trump's “religious convictions run dangerously deep,” his piety is “not a reflection of a Christian faith,” but rather “formed by his understanding of what makes America a country like no other” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2017). Hauerwas opens the essay with the description of Trump's pious attitude and closes it with the description of the pious attitude of many Christian Americans, “who have long lived as if God and country are joined at the hip.” From this point of view, Trump is rather sincere in his religious convictions, as are many other Americans who are not aware that their faith is trumped by nationalistic ideals: “I do not doubt Trump thinks of himself as a Christian, but America is his Church.” The ambiguity in the Christian attitude toward the engagement with the American nation appears when Christian faith is translated into practice in such a way that devotion to God is understood through devotion to the nation. Through this national devotion, “there is nothing, in Trump's view, the American people cannot accomplish.” The state apparatus thus receives the necessary religious impulse to initiate the dynamics of the state agency, which ends up, as Hauerwas points out, as the “idolatry” that substitutes God with “ourselves and our country” and leads Christians into the temptation of “killing someone for calling into question their ‘god’” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2017).

Moreover, like the Leviathan's goal of restituting the freedom of individuals through their submission, the goal of the kind of politics inaugurated by Trump, and which the American president calls “our politics,” is to strengthen “a total allegiance to the United States of America.” According to Trump, only “through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other” (Trump Reference Trump2017). Hauerwas characterizes this assertion as “clearly a theological claim that offers a kind of salvation” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2017). The salvation is accomplished through the agency of a “savior,” who is “not just the president of the United States” but will “make America great again.” The kind of communal unity proposed by the president, if seen from a historical perspective, Hauerwas indicates, has instead generated a “repressive politics” by trying to establish a local conception of unity (that of the community of white Americans) with consequences like “slavery and genocide.” It is odd, Hauerwas suggests, that, although he “identifies as a Presbyterian,” Trump asserted that “he does not need prayer,” nor has he done anything that “requires forgiveness” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2017). It may thus be inferred that, as the president of the United States, Trump cannot encourage an attitude that goes in the direction outlined by Hauerwas, which treasures the translation of the “discipline of the body” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2016a, 86) gained during the communal prayer and forgiveness, into everyday life service to the one in need.

Hauerwas's conclusion is that in fact, in spite of all the claims and aspirations, “at the very least, Christians in the United States have little to lose by beginning to reject our long love affair with American pretension” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2017). The alternative would be to abandon local “pretension” in favor of a universal unity: “Christians have a Church made up of people from around the globe.” It is rather through “global interconnectedness” that Christians can harmoniously contribute to the universal Christian narrative of peace and love of neighbor. By investing the Church's practice of “global interconnectedness” into the concrete living, Christians have an ideal opportunity: they “might just produce a people” that can convincingly display “the resources,” that is the non-violent means and pacific understanding of the Church's internal and international politics, “to tell Trump ‘no’”.

A third essay was co-authored with Tran and published by ABC Religion and Ethics in late March 2017, 2 months into Trump's presidency. The essay reflects one of Hauerwas's clearest arguments that, far from advocating a withdrawal of Christians, he encourages a cohesion between genuine Christian politics and the “different approach to politics” that Christians should take within the boundaries of the American nation (Hauerwas and Tran Reference Hauerwas and Tran2017). At the same time, he acknowledges that it was “the fault of theologians like us” to have generated the impression of advocating such a withdrawal. He understands that this perception by the American public of the work of theologians like him has been interpreted as a “seeming disregard for good Christian participation in politics,” and thus as a contribution to the opening of a “vacuum for bad Christian participation in politics.” Rather than producing arguments destined to show why his theoretical position should not be taken as advocating sectarianism, the goal of the essay is to emphasize something that might not have been clearly perceived by his readers: understanding in what way an alternative politics of the Church still implies Christian involvement in national politics.

Right from the beginning of the essay, the necessity of the intersection between the two kinds of politics is made manifest by the contrasting of “Christian complicity” in bringing about “perilous moments” in the secular politics with “the recurring opportunity for the church to correct itself and be the church.” In other words, there is a contrast between complicity and Catholicity. There is a contrast between the way individuals and entire congregations prefer the expedient collaboration with the Leviathan at the expense of a politically concerted action of Christians throughout America to have a say in the way the politics of their country are being conducted. Giving in to this “complicity” has been possible among Christians in America for several reasons. For instance, they have “grown accustomed” to the “rationale” of “war and state-sponsored violence,” or “maybe they think that Christians need to grow up and be realistic (thinking indebted to Reinhold Niebuhr's Christian realism, yet shorn of its most robust elements).” Moreover, the way election campaigns have been conducted has generated the public impression of a lack of “good options.”

In this point, Hauerwas expresses a view compatible with MacIntyre's argument that practical public debates in liberal democracies do not necessarily correspond with “the alternatives that should be debated.” MacIntyre holds that these public debates are artificially “determined by groups within the major political parties, those coalitions of interest groups who set the agendas for national politics” (MacIntyre Reference MacIntyre2016, 126). Hauerwas argues that there are always options for Christians willing to guide their involvement in secular politics by the alternative Church politics: “Christians never needed to feel caught between Trump's obviously problematic candidacy and some imagined worse evil. (…) [T]hey had other options, if only they had the faith to believe they did” (Hauerwas and Tran Reference Hauerwas and Tran2017). For instance, they may have expressed the option for independent candidate McMullin, “who espoused an eminently reasonable conservative agenda,” or may have taken the option to “register” one's protest by “actively abstaining.”

To the potentially discouraging replies that such a strategy is not compatible with people's wish for their “vote to count,” Hauerwas gives an answer that reemphasizes what Christian politics and democracy have in common: “Christianity and democracy share the view that the possibility of losing is no reason to give up one's commitments.” Despite his suspicions about the potentially misleading directions of liberal democracy, democracy may actually offer a “broad horizon of democratic possibility.” As long as Christians do not become accomplices to the agendas shared by groups of interests that do not reflect the Christian truth, but let Church politics guide their political choices, they may find “myriad other ways” to participate in secular politics. The “myriad ways” is not a metaphorical phrase, but rests upon Hauerwas's call for Christians to advance toward “a more imaginative and less circumscribed manner” of participating in secular politics. Another option, for instance, would be that of “praying for empty abortion clinics.” This may seem an unrealistic option for many, but at the same time it reveals the Church's inability to have a concerted politics stemming from the practice of praying rather than from expedient collaboration with the potentially violent power of the state. Specifically, this case shows that the clergy “ask the state to do what they believe they cannot ask members of their congregations to do.” It is thus the dysfunctionality of Church politics that gives way to Christians’ higher degrees of expectation and willingness to collaborate with the expedient power of the state, thus renouncing the commitment to a “great patience” necessary for promoting justice in the democratic landscape.

One of the major factors which propelled the election of Trump and which had already “intensified” in the first months of his presidency is “fear”: both the fear of those casting a vote in his favor as the only choice left among the available ones, and the fear of those that voted otherwise. Fear remains a constant factor in strengthening Trump's presidency, as it plays the “disenfranchised,” who are “pushed to the underside of the American Dream” against each other through “differences” that are “exaggerated” for the “strategic benefit of those who profit off both their disenfranchisement and its perceived oppositions.” Hauerwas also echoes in this context his earlier view that it is the state's “tribalism” (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 42, 156) that promotes a so-called nationalism which is instead based on a “nationalist-because-anti-globalist agenda” and on “a pseudo-intellectual endorsement of white supremacist activity” (Hauerwas and Tran Reference Hauerwas and Tran2017).

Against this sectarianism encouraged by “Trump's fortress mentality vision of America,” “in these fear-inducing times,” the Church can find the opportunity of reasserting its own politics, dedicated to opening up a “sanctuary for the oppressed wherever and however they are oppressed.” The vocation of the Church to be a sanctuary for all those in need is not to be interpreted as a political task for Christians only toward Christians. In fact, contemplating Trump's early measures to ban immigration from Muslim-majority countries, Hauerwas exhorts Christians to “identify as Muslims” as a practical political manifestation of the Church destined to counter discriminatory policies of the American Leviathan. The reorienting of Christians toward specific Church politics appears to be even more urgent, as it appears that the kind of politics imposed on the Church by the state may rather “enfeeble democratic life,” as it uses “identity politics in a junk populism that further robs the poor,” or puts “safety before all other considerations.” Hauerwas closes the article by reiterating the call that “sanctuary” is not the result, but the beginning of Christian politics. “Sanctuary politics” is a space which allows Christians to withdraw their support for violent and separatist policies of the state, and at the same time to contribute to democratic conversation by infusing enough “imagination” into the democratic debates to give Christians the actual initiative to speak “truth to power.”

CLOSING REMARKS

This article has attempted to connect Hauerwas's theoretical position about the Church's vocation for an alternative politics with the mirroring of his theoretical ideas in his critique of Trump's election and early presidency. I opened the article with Stout's critique that Hauerwas gives too much importance to the contractarian aspect of liberal democracy. Stout is indeed right that there is much more to democracy, to the extent that democracy itself can be constituted as a tradition. I have shown that Hauerwas's own view on a Catholicity without Leviathan does not contradict, but is rather compatible with the idea of a tradition of democratic participation by the Church in the political life of the nation.

For instance, Hauerwas appeals to the source of the Common Law tradition as essential for backing the current contractual relations through moral practice, at all levels of society, including leadership level. The relevance of this approach can be seen in the Trump administration aspiring to strengthen presidential power of decision-making at the expense of moral interpretations of the law. From the inauguration discourse onwards, Trump has used theological claims aiming at downgrading the Church's narrative on salvation in favor of a politics of an earthly salvation that depend on a capricious Leviathan-like state requiring total submission from his subjects. About a year and a half later, the attempt at making the Church an accessory to the discriminatory policies of the Trump administration was confirmed by the appeals by Sessions and Sanders to a kind of exegesis of the biblical text of Romans 13 taken out of the context of the non-violent practice of the Church (McFarlan Miller and Shimron Reference McFarlan Miller and Shimron2018). Moreover, several claims made by Trump and his lawyers may have a profound impact on the tradition of democracy. For instance, during his campaign, Trump argued that he did not pay taxes because he was “smart” (Diaz Reference Diaz2016), an assertion potentially encouraging citizens to find weaknesses in the texts of contracts. Another example is that of Trump's conviction that an American president has an “absolute right” to “pardon himself” (Kenny Reference Kenny2018), which confirms a Hobbesian-like individualist behavior of a sovereign who cannot be “bound to himself” by his own laws. This individualism of the ruler negatively impacts on a democracy as a tradition by encouraging the subjects toward a contractarian approach to laws, by searching for weaknesses in the texts of the contracts and in the communal practices centered on the moral values manifested in everyday social relationships.

Moreover, the relativization of all truth by the label “fake news” contributes to Trump's interest in eliciting the awe of his nation. As Hauerwas suggests, Trump's deliberate ignorance of truth in his use of political power makes him successful in playing “disenfranchised” groups against each other and in feeding “nostalgic” nationalism, from “make America great again” to “make America white again” (Hauerwas and Tran Reference Hauerwas and Tran2017). These alterations impact upon the Church's positive awe, that Hauerwas discussed when evoking the example of the joy in communal participation in national games, and transforms it into an awe for membership. It is in this aspect that Hauerwas's discussion about the relation between locality and Catholicity becomes relevant, since awe for membership destroys the experience of witness in the encounter with the other. It is thus no surprise that Hauerwas adopts such a worrisome perspective on the Church's future, since in the “very transitional time” initiated by the Trump administration “no one is sure what Christianity is going to look like” (Hartropp Reference Hartropp2017). In the light of Hauerwas's theoretical arguments in favor of a “politics as defined by the Gospel” (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 30) and by the Church's practice (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1994, 118), this attitude of uncertainty may rather be read as an encouragement. On one hand, the Church's long experience with failed attempts to be the Church may lay it open to public scrutiny; the Church's experience of longtime complicity with the heavily armed hand of the Leviathan may thus contribute to the strengthening of the democratic practice of both Christians and non-Christians engaged in a public conversation on secular political matters. On the other hand, although the Church's Catholicity is still a project in the making, the Church actually has the resources to convert the skills of its members and the practices of its local communities into a coherent, and universally accepted Church politics. The “Church as polis” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1997b), manifesting itself through a “sanctuary politics” (Hauerwas and Tran Reference Hauerwas and Tran2017) would then give all those oppressed by the discriminatory policies of the state the opportunity to contribute to the Church's Catholicity, and to have a say in the way the Church's alternative politics is done.