Stanley Hauerwas was the guest speaker at Saint Louis University’s Bellarmine Lecture on Tuesday, Feb. 21. The Theology Department invites a prominent theologian to speak at the lecture each year.

Hauerwas, famous Christian theologian and ethicist, returned to give the lecture for his second time. Hauerwas has taught at University of Notre Dame and now teaches as the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School as well as the Duke University School of Law.

Time Magazine named him “America’s Best Theologian” in 2001, and he has published well over thirty books in his career. Students, faculty and staff, and members of the public alike filled the St. Louis Room in the BSC to listen to Hauerwas’s lecture, entitled “War and Peace.”

This topic resonated with Freshman Michael Baris, who said that “[Hauerwas] was so intelligent; he brought up issues I had never thought about before.”

Hauerwas’s most recent book, “War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity,” inspired his talk at SLU. He began his talk by reflecting on the vague and inevitably subjective definition of the word “war” — what, he asks, is the difference between “war” and “murder”? The fundamental characteristic of war, he says, is killing and being killed. Hauerwas addressed and evaluated several different theories on war, focusing on what he says are the three main Christian perspectives on war: pacifism, just war, and crusades.

Hauerwas challenges what he calls the “Myth of Religious Violence” as well as the idea of a just war; he is a pacifist and pushes that all Christians should be as well. “I just want Christians to rediscover that we have a problem with war,” he says. As followers of Christ, we are “called to be nonviolent in a world of war” because we cannot imagine being anything else.

After his lecture, the floor was opened for a question and answer session. Hauerwas addressed questions from the audience about a variety of topics, including current event issues such as terrorism and the “Arab Spring,” the recent wave of revolutions and protests in the Arab world. He also came out against Christians being in the military, calling up once again our need to be nonviolent in our pursuit to follow Jesus’ example. Students enjoyed being able to hear from such a prestigious scholar. Freshman Emelia Gleber, who was in the audience that night, appreciated Hauerwas’s insights on the topic. “I thought he was extremely knowledgeable of conflict and how it has developed into what it is in our society,” she said. “I was also very impressed at how he handled the audience’s questions, especially about the Middle East, and I liked hearing his thoughts on the War on Terror.”

The Bellarmine Lecture is an annual event sponsored by the Jesuit Marchetti Endowment.