VIRTUOUS LIVING - Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

manifestations of Christian truth and virtuous living. This is what makes a Christian arole model - “salt” and “light” - in the community (Matt. 5:13-16).Hauerwas has offered theses, some of which I would like to reiterate for a Christian’scritical consideration in the adoption of virtue ethics. The fact that Hauerwas’ thesesare geared toward inculcating a Christian character through narrative, some of hisideas are directly attuned to the oral context of many African churches where the onlyaccess to the gospel is via oral narrative and a mnemonic recalling of biblicalnarratives that are contextually integrated with personal and communal narratives. Ishall highlight some important aspects relevant to moral character formation, whileintegrating and affirming these theses using African proverbs in the line of Africanmoral thought.Firstly, the Christian community - a community of the wise (cf Wall 1997) is thecustodian of the story of the gospel embedded in a people’s community. The gospelintroduces the triune God to the African community, giving us the importance andlocatedness of the Christian character. This is the “freedom-space” whereaccountability, moral reference, and support are sought and given as boundaries thatdefine the identity of such a community. A community is given its significance as thetransforming structure in which the purpose and holiness of the triune God define thecommunity’s wisdom and character.Secondly, the community of character bears the story of the individuals’ lives, wheretheir social and politico-economic contributions are constructed, lived, told, corrected,and transformed. In this community the individual contends with forces of “freedomversus equality, the interrelation of love and justice” (Hauerwas 1981:10). Thesestruggles form part of the correlative substance in individuals’ narratives in thecontext of a larger one – the narrative of the community of character. Each individualshares his/her narrative, as contributory to the overall story of the community.This conception of the influence of the community and the individuals on each otheris illustrated in a Kyinyarwanda proverb:Umuryambwa ab’ umwe, agatugish’ umryango (Kinyarwanda)317