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Living Out Loud – Conversations about virtue, ethics & evangelicalism

Reviewed by Chris Skilton.

This is a fascinating and engaging read. The meat of the book is a series of six essays (four by Hauerwas and two by Wells) on what it means to ‘live well’ as Christians. To live well, they argue, is also to act well, not by following rules, but by living in such a way as shows how God has acted upon us and changed us. I was particularly struck by each author’s emphasis on the corporate endeavour that sustains and shapes ‘living well’. Hauerwas describes discipleship as “not a matter of new or changed self-understanding, but rather becoming part of a different community with a different set of practices” (p.51).  Wells, in a memorable chapter (7), explores how engagement in an act of corporate worship (which he describes from the gathering through to the sending out) shapes and forms peoples’ lives, not because that’s what it sets out to do, but because that’s what it does for those who enter into it.

The book is framed by two conversations between the two authors and others (Jo Bailey Wells, Luke Bretherton, Russell Rook and Steve Chalke among them), exploring ways in which this ethic can be applied practically to the examples of crime and punishment and war and peace.

The book ends with a chapter by Hauerwas on sexual ethics which ought to be compulsory reading for all who engage in and reflect on our contemporary debates for its clarity about living well, married, committed or single. There is a final transcript of an excellent sermon by Sam Wells based on the end of Romans 8 on ‘how to die well’.

There is a slight sense of a bringing together between two covers a disparate set of material albeit loosely connected around a particular view of ethics. Once that’s accepted, this is a stimulating book that would make an excellent focus for a personal or corporate study day for ministers which would help to provide much food for thought for taking a fresh look at aspects of our church life and practice.