Hauerwas or Kuyper?

Ever since reading The Politics of Jesus and Resident Aliens in college I have felt somewhat intuitively aligned with Stanley Hauerwas. Now my training has been philosophical and rhetorical rather than theological and so that is why I say intuitive. On the other hand, my faith community has convinced me of basic Reformed theology in terms of theological basic of sovereignty and salvation (New City is solidly in the PCA). I've never really been forced to sit down and assess my contradictory intuitive thinking positions or reflect theologically in community about the implications and issues associated with these positions. (This not only speaks to my education - but my poverty in community - but that is another story). In the past several months, as I have been reading the Canadian Neo-Calvinists. I have begun to struggle with the points of difference between these two theological and ethical / political positions. The struggle takes two dimensions: 1. How different is Anabaptist pacifism as practiced by Hauerwas from Neo Calvinist cultural engagement as promoted by Kuyper? Then 2. Where do I find myself landing on those issues? I don't have time for either assessment in much detail, but here are some broad brush approaches: 1. My impression is that Hauerwas is seen as making a radical critique of society from a perspective of separation. Kuyper, on the other hand, declares "?There is not a square inch that is not under the sovereignty of God and should not be redeemed."? Kuyper and the Neo-Calvinists take a more hopeful, optimistic view of cultural engagement while Hauerwas and the Anabaptists take a more pessimistic view. Was Kuyper?'s Netherlands an accident of history ? ir-repeatable in contemporary cultures ? or was it a model, to be hoped for and worked towards? Is Hauerwas right in his notion of remnant theology, being comfortable with a limited church that stands outside the culturally engaged world? 2. It is a commonplace to see Calvinists as conservative politically ? and Anabaptists as radically liberal in matters of justice, ethics and economics. A very caricatured reflection would show Calvinists taking cultural influence and engagement to mean economic, expressed in neoliberal market / trickle down theory supported by the conservative politics that work on removing the societal or governmental barriers to wealth creation. On the other hand, Anabaptists are usually on the front lines of social action and cultural engagement around justice and peace issues. Now to be fair, the neo-Calvinists I am reading these days (Borger, Strauss, etc) present a firmly different perspective on social action. They do not seem captive by involvement in the market and by right wing or libertarian politics. But I wonder if that is the exception or the rule. What is so attractive about their work is that it is refreshingly different than typical evangelical worldview thinking (see the new pantagruel). 3. The possibility of natural law. Hauerwas definitively rejects natural law as a possibility and I intuitively follow that construction - as he follows Barth. I agree with Newbigin about the socially constructed nature of discourses of rationality - this impacts the possibility of using natural law as a point of common origin in ethical and theological discussion. I need to review the Neo-Calvinist proposal in relation to natural law. I very much like this statement "?Ethics for Hauerwas stands exclusively on the basis of the story about God that Christians learn from the Bible within the context of a covenant community".? I think that Gideon Strauss would agree with this, but I don?t know. 4. Church as polis in a non polis world. The Sphere sovereignty notions of Kuyper very much informs Max Stackhouse'?s critique of Hauerwas. We cannot let the church become only a political entity that is held separate from the broader culture ? especially in an age when non political (non state) entities are having more and more impact over the cultural objects of our day. Since Stackhouse is the chair of the Kuyper institute at Princeton - I'd expect the influence. (Note to self - explore Stackhouse's ideas about technology and culture exposing a positive postmodernism) 5. A rejection of the ?here there? dualism concerning heaven. NT Wright ? in re-appropriating a Hebrew world view in his interpretation of Jesus and Paul convinces me again of the inappropriate nature of setting aside the present looking toward the future. Again Hauerwas would probably disagree with a characterization of his theology in this vein, but I am more and more strongly convinced by Kuyper?s "?every inch"? model of comprehensive interaction with culture. There is more but this is what time allows.