Stanley Hauerwas (July 24, 1940- ) is a United Methodist theologian and ethicist who is currently the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School in Durham, NC.

In his career, he has attempted to emphasize the importance of virtue and character within the Church. He has been an outspoken Christian pacifist and has promoted nonviolence, having been mentored by Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder. Hauerwas has also been an opponent of nationalism, particularly American patriotism, arguing that it has no place in the Church. His writings occasionally veer into the area of paleo-orthodoxy, though Hauerwas himself might refute this claim. He has also been associated with the narrative theology movement.

TIME Magazine in 2001 named him "America's Best Theologian". He responded by saying "Best is not a theological category." That same year, he was invited to give the prestigious Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews in Scotland, which were published as With the Grain of the Universe, a text in which Karl Barth's interpretation of St. Anselm's analogy of faith was featured.

Hauerwas is a prominent and influential theological ethicist in the United States. As John Howard Yoder had attempted to demonstrate what he felt were problems with Reinhold Niebuhr's ethics in his 1972 book The Politics of Jesus (ISBN 0802807348), Hauerwas attempted the same with the positions of both H.

As a teacher and lecturer, Hauerwas is well known for his wit, not-suffering-fools-gladly criticisms of positions he disagrees with, breadth of reading, and occasional use of profanity which he explains as being the result of having a brick-layer father.

While Hauerwas has been self-identified with the United Methodist Church for the bulk of his career, as of his latest work, he has begun to identify himself as an Anglican and attends an Episcopal Church in Chapel Hill, NC.

Many of his books are collections of essays; some are structured monographs. Among his more commonly known works are:

• A Community of Character ISBN 0268007357
• The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics ISBN 0268015546
• With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology ISBN 1587430169
• Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society ISBN 0866839577
• After Christendom: How the Church Is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas ISBN 0687009294
• Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America ISBN 0687316782
• Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (with William Willimon) ISBN 0687361591