"When Character and the Christian Life first appeared in 1975, it was the most important theological contribution to moral debate to appear for many years. Hauerwas followed Catholic moral theology in making the theory of the virtues a topic for argument between secular and Christian moralities; but he linked that theory to a distinctively Protestant view of God's relationship to human beings. And he did this in a way that might have been thought to challenge equally Catholic and Calvinist views of morality, let alone the impoverished and narcissistic perspectives of theological liberalism." -Alasdair MacIntyre, author of Whose Justice? Which Rationality?

Stanley M. Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at the Divinity School of Duke University.