Task: Sentiment Analysis
Input (English): THE Book on Christian Ethics . This book is, I am convinced the best overall introduction to Christian ethics and the thought of Stanley Hauerwas.  Hauerwas has certainly written many wonderful books, but this one stands out in that it encapsulates a fairly coherent and articulate manner, his conception of what Christian ethics is and how they are lived out in the life of the church.    Hauerwas first offers a critique of ethics that would have pretentions to a universal status.  The way he states this is that all ethics require a qualifier ('Christian', 'Jewish', 'Hindu', etc.).  Every concievable ethic is grounded in a tradition and a narrative that gives substance to the ethical claims.  Thus, even though Christians believe that Christianity is true and Christian ethics are the right way for all people to live, this reality cannot be known without becoming a Christian, thereby making the stories of Israel and Jesus your story.  Thus, Christian ethics are not universal in the sense that they can be percieved as correct by anybody.  Rather to understand Christian ethics as true, one must be transformed through participation in Christ through the church.  This, of course grounds Hauerwas's claim that the church as a concrete community is the locus of Christian ethical reflection.    Obviously, the major theme of this book is nonviolence.  Hauerwas grounds this approach solidly on the narrative of the cross and resurrection of Christ which he holds to be decisive for the content of Christian claims about the world and life in it.  Over-against those who advocate an ethic of justifiable violence, Hauerwas contends that Christian ethics must be informed by the Biblical narrative of Christ, who won God's victory precisly through rejecting violence and inaugurating God's kingdom of justice and peace which the church is called to embody.  Hauerwas's ethic, contra Ramsey, Gustafson, Niebhur, Neuhaus, Stackhouse, Novak and others argues that Christ's teaching, life, death and resurrection should be decisive for our ethics, rather than dismissed as irrelevant.  In much of this Hauerwas draws on the excellent work of John Howard Yoder in "The Politics of Jesus" and "The Original Revolution."    This is a vitally important book, even for those who disagree with Hauerwas's Christ-centered, ecclesial ethic.  He very clearly shows in this book how his ethic takes into account the importance of deicisions and cooperating with non-Christians in the interest of social justice, issues that his critics often ignore in their overblown critques of his work.  This is a vital book for Christian theologians, ethicists and the all Christians who desire to take the gospel seriously.  Highly recommended
Output (English): POS