Narrative war and narrative peace: A theological, ethical, and historicist vision for multicultural America

Historicist narrative theology in twentieth-century American thought provides a unique and effective answer to the problems of multiculturalism. H. Richard Niebuhr, the first major figure of this tradition, sought to provide a balance between historicist and theological concerns so that neither would collapse into the other. Stanley Hauerwas, despite efforts to distance himself from Niebuhr, does largely continue Niebuhr's project, advancing the category of "narrative" as the way to hold historicist and theological claims together. Despite their insights, though, neither theologian realizes the potential of "narrative." Literary theory, primarily the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, reveals the dialogical character of narratives, the system of relationships, positive and negative, that create meaning. Such a web of relations exists in the linguistic world of textual and conceptual narratives, yet another web of relations, as drama theory exposes, exists in the embodied world of human interaction, that resembles, but does not exactly minor, the linguistic web. Multiculturalism is an issue of drawing interpretive lines in the midst of these webs, setting up linguistic and embodied boundaries among cultural groups. Responses to multiculturalism rooted in liberal political theory can effectively illuminate these relationships; however, such theories offer no challenge to the assumption that human life plays out in social Darwinist terms. Theology instead portrays relations as opportunities for communion, not exploitation. The kenotic example of Christ becomes the model for Christian interaction across cultural differences. Theology also shows that multiculturalism cannot be solved with a theory, but demands a transformed life that values relationships. Such a life, Christians argue, comes only when one joins God's salvific movement within history.