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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
A unique and incisive exploration of the place and nature of friendship in both its personal and civic dimensions In Towards Friendship-Shaped Communities: A Practical Theology of Friendship, distinguished theological researcher Anne-Marie Ellithorpe delivers a constructive and insightful exploration of the place and nature of friendship as innate to being human, to the human vocation, and to life within the broader community. Of particular interest to members and leaders of faith communities, this book responds to contemporary concerns regarding relationality and offers a comprehensive theology of friendship. The author provides an inclusive and interdisciplinary study that brings previous traditions and texts into dialogue with contemporary contexts and concerns, including examples from Indigenous and Euro-Western cultures. Readers will reflect on the theology of friendship and the interrelationship between friendship and community, think critically about their own social and theological imagination, and develop an integrative approach to theological reflection that draws on Don Browning's Fundamental Practical Theology. Integrating philosophical, anthropological, and theological perspectives on the study of friendship, this book presents: * A thorough introduction to contemporary questions on friendship and discussions of co-existing friendship worlds * Comprehensive explorations of friendship in first and second testament writings, as well as friendship within classical and Christian traditions * Practical discussions of theology, friendship, and the social imagination, including explorations of mutuality and spirit-shaped friendships * Considerations for outworking friendship ideals within communities of practice, from the perspective of strategic (or fully) practical theology Perfect for graduate and advanced undergraduate students taking courses on friendship or practical theology, Towards Friendship-Shaped Communities: A Practical Theology of Friendship will also earn a place in the libraries of scholars of practical theology and community practitioners, including ministers, priests, pastors, spiritual advisors, and counselors.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Towards Friendship-Shaped Communities
A Practical Theology of Friendship
Anne-Marie Ellithorpe
This edition first published 2022
© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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The right of Anne-Marie Ellithorpe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with law.
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Paperback ISBN: 9781119756941;
epub ISBN: 9781119756965;
ePDF ISBN: 9781119756958
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Hei koha iti nā te arohaki te tangata whenua me te tangata Tiritio Aotearoa Niu Tīreni
A small gift given in loveto the people of the land and the people of the Treatyin Aotearoa New Zealand
Contents
Cover
Title page
Copyright
Dedication
Illustrations
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I The Current Reality
1 The Place of Friendship
2 Coexisting Friendship Worlds
Part II A Deep Remembering – Friendship, Community, Resistance
3 Friendship and First Testament Writings
4 Friendship and Second Testament Writings
5 Friendship in Classical and Christian Traditions
Bridge: Shifts in Vision
Part III Theology, Friendship, and the Social Imagination
6 Mutuality: God, Creation and Community
7 Open Friendship, Becoming Kin, and the Human Vocation
8 Love, Spirit-Shaped Friendships, and Friendship-Shaped Communities
Part IV Practicing Friendship
9 Friendship and Community: Ideals and Implementation
Conclusion
Appendix: A Correlational Approach to Theological Reflection
Glossary
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Map 1 Māui and Aotearoa New Zealand
Aotearoa New Zealand
Part I
I.1 A Cornflower in the Wheatfield
I.2 Social Glue
Chapter 2
2.1 “The Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi,” Ōriwa Haddon
2.2 Parihaka, Te Whiti, and Te Whiti addressing a crowd
Part II
II.1 Aspects of Community Life in a Joint Family Compound in Iron Age II Israel
Part III
III.1 Three Sets of Relationships.
Part IV
IV.1 Communities of Practice and the Issue of Land.
Chapter 9
9.1 Lyall Te Ohu and his 10-month-old son TūmoanaAbbreviations General
Guide
Cover
Title page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Illustrations
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Begin Reading
Conclusion
Appendix: A Correlational Approach to Theological Reflection
Glossary
Index
End User License Agreement
Pages
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Illustrations
Map 1 Māui and Aotearoa New Zealand
Map 2 Aotearoa New Zealand
I.1 A Cornflower in the Wheatfield
I.2 Social Glue
2.1 “The Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi,” Ōriwa Haddon
2.2 Parihaka, Te Whiti, and Te Whiti addressing a crowd
II.1 Aspects of Community Life in a Joint Family Compound in Iron Age II IsraelIII.1 Three Sets of Relationships
IV.1 Communities of Practice and the Issue of Land
9.1 Lyall Te Ohu and his 10-month-old son Tūmoana
Abbreviations
General
CE
Common Era
c.
circa
ch.
chapter
bce
before the Common Era
diss.
dissertation
ed.
editor
or
edition
eds.
editors
et al.
and others/another
LXX
Septuagint
n.
note
n.d.
no date
no.
number
NIV
New International Version
NT
New Testament
NZ
New Zealand
repr.
reprint
rev. ed
.
revised edition
trans.
translator
vol.
volume
vv.
verses
Unless otherwise specified, scriptural quotes are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).
Select Dictionaries, Lexicons, Journals, Books
ABD
The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary
AMITY
AMITY: The Journal of Friendship Studies
ASR
American Sociological Review
BDAG
Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature
HALOT
The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament
SEP
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
TDNT
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament
TDOT
Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament
Greek, Latin, and Spanish Texts
Aristotle
NE
Nicomachean Ethics
Pol
Politica (Politics)
Rhet
Rhetorica (Rhetoric)
Cicero
Amic
De amicitia
Epicurus
VS
Vatican Sayings
Augustine
Conf
Confessionum libri XIII (Confessions)
Dei
De civitate Dei (City of God)
LSM
The Lord’s Sermon on the Mount (ca. 394) ACW 5
Aelred of Rievaulx
Spir amic
De spiritali amicitia (Spiritual Friendship)
Thomas Aquinas
SCG
Summa Contra Gentiles
ST
Summa
Theologiae
Teresa of Avila
Life
Book of Her Life
Way
The Way of Perfection
Acknowledgments
At the beginning of a book that seeks to articulate a practical theology of friendship, I firstly acknowledge God, people, and land as sustaining me throughout this writing project. I express my gratitude first and foremost to the Creator, the ultimate source and sustainer of all life, love, and friendship.
I am deeply grateful for the friends, communities, traditions, and resources that have provided various forms of inspiration, sustenance, and support in the crafting of this book. This project builds upon my doctoral journey and thus I express my heartfelt thanks to my supervisors, Dr. Neil Pembroke, Dr. Charles Ringma, and Dr. Irene Alexander for their mentoring, insight, and friendship. I also wish to express my gratitude for the support provided by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship and an Australian Postgraduate Award as I pursued this research through the University of Queensland’s School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry. This project goes beyond my doctoral work with a more explicit focus on Indigenous values, understandings, and experiences. I am particularly thankful to Rev. Dr. Rangi Nicholson for his encouragement and mentoring in this regard. He has been an invaluable Māori language adviser and cultural consultant.
Others who have encouraged me with the importance and contemporary relevance of this work include Dr. Susan Phillips, Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls, Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan-Kaplan, and Dr. Paul Wadell. Several anonymous reviewers of my book manuscript have also emphasized its timeliness; I am grateful for their positive and constructive feedback. I have discovered various conversation partners through the libraries I have had access to throughout my research and am particularly thankful for access to the library resources of the Vancouver School of Theology and the University of British Columbia.
I thank Matua Rangi Nicholson for his encouragement that this work is relevant to the future of Aotearoa New Zealand, and for his constructive feedback on my chapter exploring coexisting friendship worlds in Aotearoa, Hannah Chapman and Sina Asomua Bishop for their encouraging feedback on the same chapter, and Sister Josephine Gorman and Joanne White for supporting my exploration of the life and work of Suzanne Aubert. I am grateful to Paul and Kathleen Wagler for friendship-focused conversations and their ongoing generous hospitality, Jonathan Wilson and Soohwan Park for making possible a writing retreat, Janet Eastwood for generously giving her time to assist me in sharpening my writing, and my mother, Glenis Maindonald, for the provision of several illustrations. My family have been invaluable sources of encouragement, support, and inspiration throughout this project; I am especially indebted to James Ellithorpe for the many ways in which he has supported me in this work. I deeply appreciate all the conversation partners and friends, past and present, in book form or in person, who have formed me, informed this writing, and provoked a vision of communal nurture of friendship-shaped communities.
I am grateful to all those at Wiley who worked to bring this book to print. I extend particular thanks to Catriona King for sharing my vision for this work and to Clelia Petracca for bringing it to completion.
I acknowledge with gratitude the beauty and sustenance of the unceded Coast Salish territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, where much of my writing has taken place, as well as that of my homeland, Aotearoa New Zealand. This work has been deeply shaped by aspects of the story of Aotearoa, and thus I provide here two maps for the benefit of the reader who is less familiar with this country and its stories. Prior to colonization, the map of Aotearoa was oral and told through narratives. In one such narrative, Māui is credited with fishing up Te Ika-a-Māui (the North Island) from his canoe Te Waka-a-Māui (the South Island). Map 1 depicts place names related to this account and is oriented with Māui’s canoe above the fish. Map 2 features place names mentioned in my Introduction and in Chapter 2 and is oriented north to south.
Map 1 Māui and Aotearoa New Zealand. Source: Te Ara The Encyclopedia of New Zealand.
Map 2 Aotearoa New Zealand. Source: map template from Antigoni, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, annotated by the author.
Introduction
This book investigates questions of friendship from the perspective of practical theology, with specific consideration given to practices of friendship and to the social and theological imagination. Through this research I argue that friendship is essential for flourishing and for an ideal of multidimensional private-public friendship that overflows into social friendship, civic friendship, and reform. I advocate for the nurture of Spirit-shaped friendships and friendship-shaped communities, that is, of friendships that are shaped by the Spirit and of communities that are shaped by attitudes and actions of friendship. Such friendships include extended family and family-like relationships. Our actions and attitudes affect a broader community than our immediate circle. Relational practices and the creative, proactive nurturing of various dimensions of friendship have a multigenerational effect. Friendship is precious not only for its own sake but for the sake of further generations and ought to be intentionally built up between persons, communities, and people-groups.
Rather than being in opposition to God or love of neighbor, friendship provides an alternative way of understanding relationship with God and neighbor and has a long and rich history in and beyond Western Christianity. Moreover, in explicitly Christian contexts, an overarching theological narrative of friendship may serve to shape and ground all else.
Contemporary communities stand to gain immensely from reincorporating understandings and practices of earlier times and, no less, from Indigenous understandings of kinship and friendship. Indigenous perspectives remind us that relationality is inherent to the fabric of the universe.1 Friendship is a practice through and by which we may build genuinely mutual relationships with people who are other, unlearn internalized colonial patterns, and decolonize founding and formative stories.
I begin by introducing myself and acknowledging my social context. Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, traditionally introduce themselves with a greeting that links them to their ancestors and to the land by identifying their tribal mountain and waters, by naming the canoe on which their ancestors came to Aotearoa, and by acknowledging their extended family, clan, and tribe.2 My knowledge of my own heritage is poor by comparison.
My ancestors immigrated to Aotearoa primarily from England, including Guernsey, as well as from Scotland, Ireland, France, Denmark, the United States, and the Reunion Islands. They arrived from 1842 onwards, settling in a variety of locations including Motueka, Blenheim, and the lower North Island. The earliest arrivals I know of are the Newport family from Buckinghamshire on The Sir Charles Forbes and the Kinzett family from Warwickshire, on The Thomas Harrison, both into Nelson, and the Dodge family from Wiltshire into Wellington on The Clifton, all in 1842.3
I do not know specific ways in which my primarily working-class ancestors contributed to the oppressive colonization of Aotearoa. I do know that at the turn of the century my mother’s great-grandparents, John Marple and Evangeline Tindill, lived amongst Māori in ‘Rūātoki, a community with a long history of resistance to colonization in the Bay of Plenty. Their granddaughter, Nellie Hunter, my Nana, spoke Māori fluently as a child growing up in this region. Sadly, she lost this knowledge once her family moved to the city.
Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) is where my early formation took place. The landscape of Te Upoko o Te Ika a Māui (the head of the fish of Māui, the Wellington region), most specifically Te Awa Kairangi (the Hutt Valley), contributed to my formation as a young adult.
As a descendant of settlers, I bring cultural blind spots to this work. I come to this research having experienced the joys and challenges of friendships in four different countries. I have experienced cross-cultural friendships in contexts where I am a visible minority and an invisible minority. I have also experienced such friendships as part of the majority culture. Despite these diverse experiences, I have not been part of a people group that has been radically discriminated against, enslaved, or colonized. While I have experienced some forms of discrimination, I have not experienced friendship that has endangered my life, nor have I been deprived of friendship (personal or civic) or of land stewardship on the basis of my skin color or ethnic background.
As further outlined in Chapter 2, the colonial legacy in Aotearoa, including the dishonoring of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi), has negatively impacted friendship possibilities. Nevertheless, I have been privileged to learn from the wisdom, hospitality, and spirituality of Māori and Polynesian friends, and to develop an awareness of Māori, bicultural, and Treaty issues. Learning has taken place through conversations, course work, reading, participation in a variety of noho marae (overnight marae stays) and hui (gatherings),4 and through conversations and collaboration with Māori friends.5 While in my previous roles as a teacher and educational consultant I sought to honor Māori and Te Tiriti through supporting teachers of full immersion Māori language classes, learning and using basic conversational Māori, and developing bicultural teaching practices, there are gaps in my knowledge and practice. Conversations associated with this research have provoked a determination to address these gaps, and to work towards becoming increasingly bilingual and bicultural as I seek to live out a practical theology of friendship.
At the time of writing, I live with my immediate family on unceded Coast Salish territory by the Salish Sea, on the colonized continent known to many Indigenous people as Turtle Island. Here it has been a privilege to learn from Indigenous people, including Cheryl Bear (Nadleh Whut’en), Raymond Aldred (Cree), and Graydon Nicholas (Maliseet), and to learn from and with the NAIITS Indigenous Learning Community. Yet another invaluable learning experience relevant to this work was participation in the 2019 International Academy of Practical Theology conference in São Leopoldo, Brazil, with its theme of (De)coloniality and Religious Practices: Liberating Hope.
I am aware that any proposed practical theology of friendship must reckon with the social imagination(s) operative in its contexts that perpetuate fear of and discrimination against the other and that hinder the cultivation of personal and civic friendship within communities of practice. My focus within this work is primarily on developing a transformative ideal to be worked towards. I acknowledge there are very real challenges in pursuing personal and public ideals.
I engage diverse voices as I seek to develop a rich and thick theological understanding of friendship. At times breadth is privileged over depth. This breadth is not inappropriate, given that the social imagination is formed and informed by diverse voices and sources. In fact, a more thorough practical theology of friendship would include even greater diversity. While my research predominantly draws on Western sources, traditions, disciplines, and epistemologies, I also seek to weave in Indigenous perspectives.
This introductory chapter outlines the context for this research by providing an overview of practical theology, discussing understandings of the word practice, identifying the importance of the social and theological imagination, and outlining the methodology and structure of this research. But firstly, why would I want to study friendship? Why develop a practical theology of friendship?
Why Friendship?
As I write, with minimized social contact and physical distancing requirements in place throughout much of the world as we collaboratively seek to protect our communities during a pandemic, our human need for connectivity and friendship has become all too evident. In early April 2020, after our first few weeks of “lockdown,” my ten-year-old son, an avid reader, protested to me that “books and videos are poor substitutes for friends.” I agreed with him. While adults have been able to maintain relationships and even forge new friendships through online forms of connectivity, some relationships have become stressed or neglected due to dependence on technology. Younger and older generations are discovering anew a need for the physical presence of others. Despite the emotional cost of isolation, friendship as a basic human need is not consistently recognized. For example, during the second lockdown in Victoria, Australia, an exemption to lockdown could be made for an “intimate relationship,” but for those who lived alone without such a relationship, no similar exemption was allowed for friendship.6 This restriction was subsequently modified to allow for visits with one “bubble” friend, though not without controversy. In Canada also, friendships have been vulnerable to “the divisive vagueness of provincial guidelines,” with some health messaging suggesting that, at least as far as the state is concerned, friendships are not important.7
The widespread need for social and civic friendship has also become all too evident as the pandemic has disproportionally impacted People of Color and been further highlighted by the violent deaths of People of Color due to the discrimination of police officers and other citizens in the United States and Canada. Ongoing deaths and injuries have highlighted systemic racism and provoked widespread protests. Long-standing systemic and social inequities have put many people from marginalized groups at increased risk of contracting and dying from Covid-19.8
Covid-19 has highlighted the interdependence of human beings. While an initial sense of solidarity has, in some contexts, been challenged by political polarization and conspiracy theories, numerous memes and posts on social media express a need and desire to create a truly new normal after Covid-19, rather than to return to the way things were. Collectively, we are faced with both the opportunity and the need to rethink our ways of life. It is into this context that I advocate the metaphor of friendship and the concept of civic friendship to shape our social imagination and the new normal that many of us long for.
My interest in the formal study of friendship began over a decade ago, through an interest in the relationships of spiritual friendship and spiritual direction, with their focus on attentiveness to God, self, and other. I wondered about the possibility of bringing that same level of attentiveness to our everyday friendships, as I recognized the potential for these friendships also to be shaped by the Spirit. I subsequently became intrigued by the Māori concept of whanaungatanga (kin and kin-like relationships), the classical notion of civic friendship, and the potential for both concepts to contribute to fostering a pervasive culture of friendship. Admittedly, I initially skimmed over Aristotle’s terminology of political friendship, incorrectly assuming such a relationship was about using people. On further reading I became captivated by a broader understanding of friendship. As I dug deeper into biblical texts, I was intrigued by the manifest desire for communities to be shaped by friendship-like relationships expressed in texts more ancient than Aristotle’s. The need for communities to be shaped by care and concern for all is increasingly evident as we collaboratively seek to survive a pandemic. A concern for communities to be shaped by social friendship has been affirmed by Pope Francis in his encyclical Fratelli tutti, released in October 2020.
While Western paradigms of relationality have occupied recent scholarship regarding friendship, contemporary Euro-Western culture is largely indifferent to the formative potential of friendship, and has much to learn from Indigenous, classical, biblical, and historical understandings of friendship, kinship, and right-relatedness. Friendship has been devalued, sidelined, trivialized, sentimentalized, and sometimes eroticized within contemporary Euro-Western culture. Currently, friendships tend to be perceived as recreational relationships.
In classical times, however, friendship was considered a school of virtue and regarded as integral to living the best life possible. Friendly civic relations were recognized as necessary for the good and just society. Friendship was so central to moral philosophy that Aristotle devoted two books of his Nicomachean Ethics to this topic. In the ancient Hebrew texts relationships of mutuality and friendship are also an important concern. The language of reciprocity in the writings of prophets and reformers, including the condemnation of distorted reciprocity, indicates concern for what has elsewhere been described as civic friendship. Friendship was celebrated at diverse tables in the Jesus movement, leading to the accusation by outsiders that Jesus was a friend of disreputable groups.9
Subsequently, a body of writing developed that interpreted Christian love as the love of friendship. This literature flourished in Western Europe between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Friendship lost its prominence within spiritual writings after about 1180.10 It is likely that the twelfth century synthesis of classical and Christian perspectives contributed to monastic communities becoming a “garden of friends” whose existence transformed the world beyond their walls.11 This season of synthesis was followed by a flight from friendship and its celebration.
In recent years there has been a modest renewal of scholarly attention to friendship among anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, philosophers, and theologians. Various scholars have revisited and sought to recover the classical concept of “friends as fellow-citizens,” and of “fellow-citizens as friends.”12 In theological spheres, new insights into friendship have emerged through the experience of solidarity in liberation struggles, from a variety of feminist theological writings, and from Trinitarian theologians. However, a comprehensive theology of friendship has not yet been developed and Christian communities have not responded adequately to contemporary cultural concerns regarding relationality.
As a parent, teacher, pastor, and theologian I consider friendship important for all parents, teachers, pastors, and theologians to pay attention to and to cultivate. I have come to recognize friendship as an important formative relationship that, along with being a source of joy and delight, nurtures skills for living in community with others and provides an analogy for citizenship.
Building on this revived interest in friendship, and with a strong conviction of its significance and potential, I seek to develop a practical theology of friendship that draws on contemporary, Indigenous, biblical, classical, patristic, and medieval sources in identifying practices and understandings that contribute to personal and civic dimensions of friendship. A practical theology of friendship has the potential to shape the social and theological imagination in positive and constructive ways, thus contributing to authentic friendship in contemporary communities.
Practical Theology
Theology has never been a solely academic pursuit. Rather, it has always involved “the work of the people” turning to, responding to, and even arguing with God in various contexts for diverse purposes.13 Recognizing theology as an embodied practice, practical theology in its broadest sense seeks to facilitate the goal of living faithfully in the present “on behalf of God’s future.”14
Practical theology also refers to a method of understanding or analyzing theology in practice and to a curricular area in theological education. Finally, practical theology refers to an academic discipline pursued by scholars to sustain and support the first three understandings.15 These four facets, identified by practical theologian Bonnie Miller-McLemore, are of course interdependent, as exemplified by this research. My research takes place within the academic discipline of practical theology, makes use of practical theology methodology, and seeks to contribute to the lived expression of faith in the present and on behalf of God’s future, in and through authentic friendship.
The term practical theology has been used interchangeably with pastoral theology. Practical theology is generally understood to have a broader focus, which includes matters of importance both in and beyond the church. The scope of this field includes shaping social transformation and public policy, along with other aspects of the church’s engagement with the world.16 Pastoral theology, with its focus on care, is best seen as a valued sub-discipline of practical theology. The embrace of a broader paradigm of practical theology does not diminish concern for personal and communal spirituality.
Ultimately, practical theology is both normatively and eschatologically oriented.17 As well as describing how people live within communities and society, practical theology considers how people may do so “more fully.”18 Moreover, practical theology seeks to reintegrate theology into “the weave and fabric” of life, in such a way that theology becomes a way of life.19 Practical theology is a theological theory of action that emerged as a theory of crisis, contributing to restoration and renewal.20 It considers the reciprocal relationship between theology and everyday life, including how everyday life influences theology and how knowledge of love and love for the divine shape everyday life. The wider aim of practical theology is to “enrich the life of faith for the sake of the world.”21 This research seeks to reflect these understandings of practical theology, as it advocates for the fostering of holistic private-public friendships that contribute to restoration, renewal, and reform.
Practical Wisdom, Practices, and the Social Imagination
Practical theology draws on the academic turn to practical philosophy and the importance of phronesis (practical wisdom), based on the conviction that critical reflection about the goals of human actions is both possible and necessary. The rebirth of practical philosophy is designed to demonstrate this conviction, to question the dominance of the more theoretical forms of reason, and to secure a stronger place for practical reason within the academy.22 While practical theology may draw on Aristotelian philosophy, it must not be limited by exclusive Aristotelian understandings of the greater good, but rather be enriched by the compassionate, redemptive, and liberating themes of biblical, Black, and Indigenous phronesis.23
Hans-Georg Gadamer depicts a strong relationship between understanding and phronesis.24 The application of knowledge and wisdom is a primary concern in both hermeneutical conversation and moral judgment. Understanding may be construed as a “moral conversation” with a text or historic witness that is shaped by practical concerns emerging from current situations.25 Understanding and practical wisdom are intertwined; they interpenetrate and overlap. One way in which this focus on practical wisdom is evident within this research is in the focus on practices.
The concept of practices provides a way of thinking about the close relationship between thinking and doing. However, scholars from various academic backgrounds use the word practice in diverse ways. For some, any socially meaningful action such as sharing an idea is a practice. For others, only complex social activities, such as playing chess, practicing medicine, or pursuing politics, are practices.
Within the social sciences, practice refers to any socially meaningful action.26 Etienne Wenger, an educational theorist, defines practice as action or doing “that gives structure and meaning to what we do” within specific historical and social contexts.27 This concept of practice includes that which is implicit and unspoken as well as that which is explicit and spoken. Wenger asserts that the process of engaging in practice always involves the whole person. His use of practice integrates practical and theoretical, ideal and reality, talking and doing. From this perspective, each friendship can be viewed as a community of practice. Friendships are typically formed within broader communities of practice, including educational, workplace, religious, and special interest communities. Pursuing friendship, as with other relationships and enterprises, includes an active, embodied, social, negotiated, and at times somewhat delicate process of participation. This use of practice includes the small yet significant actions that contribute towards friendship, such as welcoming, listening, storytelling, and confiding, as well as more complex activities, including discerning, forgiving, and receiving and offering hospitality.
Moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre uses the term social practice to refer to “complex social activities that pursue certain goods internal to the practices” themselves.28 By his definition, friendship itself is a social practice, with the goals of authentic friendship being internal to friendship. Yet, as not all actions are considered practices, other activities contributing to friendship are regarded as practices only if there are goals or aims that can be accomplished only by engaging in that form of activity. A person is not regarded as an authentic practitioner if they “instrumentalize” a practice for some other external end.29 To be a practitioner of chess, for example, is to seek those “goods” that are specific to the game, including analytic skill, strategic imagination, and the joy of competition. If one’s key goal in playing chess is to become famous, then one has instrumentalized this practice, as such a goal can be pursued by other means.30
MacIntyre’s influence is reflected in the understanding of Christian practices developed by Dorothy Bass and Craig Dykstra. These writers define Christian practices as “things Christian people do together over time to address fundamental human needs in response to and in the light of God’s active presence for the life of the world.”31 Their approach presumes that these practices take place within a world sustained by God.32 The emphasis on receptivity and responsiveness to others through practices is in keeping with the nature of friendship. On the other hand, it is recognized that any given practice can be in disrepair and thus become distorted, even destructive.33 Such deformity can become evident within so-called friendships.
For the purposes of this research, I draw primarily on Wenger’s use of practice. This definition’s integration of practical and theoretical, reality and ideal, gives it the versatility to capture nuances that may otherwise be missed, and lessens the need to continually specify that I am seeking out understandings as well as actions that contribute towards friendship. MacIntyre’s more specific definition and Dykstra and Bass’s theological nuancing of this definition in discussing practices also provide guidance. The criticism, retrieval, and strengthening of authentic friendship benefits from seeing things whole at several levels and from the integration of various practices with one another.
Another way in which a focus on practical wisdom is evident within this research is in the focus on understandings, and specifically on the social imaginary. Social imaginary is a term referring to the ways in which people envision their social existence. This includes how they relate with others, the expectations that are typically met, and the deeper normative images and ideas underlying these expectations.34 The ways in which we imagine our social surroundings are often carried in stories, legends, and images, rather than in theoretical terms.35 The imaginary is transmitted socially. It is also a vision “of and for social life,” in that it draws on and creates a tacit understanding of what counts as human flourishing and as meaningful relationships.36
For Charles Taylor, the term social imaginary includes a sense of the typical expectations people have of one another and the sort of common understandings that enable participants within a community to carry out the collective practices that make up their social life.37 Within a specific social imaginary, certain practices make sense, while others do not and are excluded. Variations in the practice of friendship in various cultures may be attributed towards variations in the social imaginaries of these cultures, as well as to the inter-related dynamics of geographic and social mobility.38
It is also possible that the social imaginary may be, or become, diseased. Indeed, as theologian Willie Jennings laments, although Christianity offers “a breathtakingly powerful way to imagine and act the social, to imagine and enact connection and belonging,”39 much of Western Christianity “lives and moves within a diseased social imagination.”40 A diseased social imaginary contributes to the perpetuation of imperialism, colonialism, racism, and sexism, and allows injustice to be perpetuated rather than addressed. While Jennings does not define social imagination, his use of this term is consistent with that of the social imaginary. Both terms point to the ways in which people envision their social existence.
The social imaginary draws on metaphors. New metaphors can reorganize our perceptions of the world and may implicitly call for transformation.41 Further, the social imaginary may incorporate unrealized or partially realized ideals. For example, Taylor describes the Christian gospel as generating, during the Middle Ages, the idea of a community so inspired by love for God, others, and humankind that participants were “devoid of rivalry, mutual resentment, love of gain, ambition to rule, and the like.”42 The expectation was that such a moral order was in the process of realization and would surely be fulfilled in the fullness of time.43
While the term imaginary inherits a tendency towards“cultural abstraction,”44 one may also speak of a social imaginary on a smaller scale, for example, a Benedictine, Presbyterian, or Pentecostal social imaginary. This term may also be used in a more person-centered manner, recognizing that learned cultural understandings are not necessarily a fixed entity fully held in common by a group. Rather, while groups may share some understandings, they may be fractured regarding other understandings.45 Further, some understandings may be shared among those who have experienced similar “formative experiences despite living in different parts of the world” and lacking a common cultural identity. Thus, for example, a Chinese Australian Christian living in North America may share some cultural understandings with other Australian citizens, and some cultural understandings with other Asians, while being part of a Christian faith community will shape yet other understandings or imaginaries. The experience of living internationally is also likely over time to contribute to the reshaping of certain understandings.
The relationship between background understandings (imaginaries) and practices is reciprocal. While practices shape the imagination, the imagination also shapes practices. As Taylor notes, “a transformative understanding might enter a social imagination to unsettle and shift its ‘seeing’ of the way things are.”46 Alternatively, changes to the imagination may be attributed to changes in practices. Indeed, Taylor notes that these may be inseparable.47 With certain ideas being internal to specific practices, one cannot distinguish “Which causes which?” Shared imagination both sustains the meaning of practices and is sustained by practices.48 Thus, the social imagination leads to specific practices of friendship, while simultaneously relational practices of friendship contribute towards the formation of the imagination.
Wenger likewise acknowledges the interplay between practices and imagination. While “the practices in which a group participates” form the collective imagination, the reverse also occurs, with the imagination giving meaning and telos to a community’s repertoire of actions, stories, and concepts.49 Thus, over the course of time, imagination becomes embodied in a repertoire of practices, while these practices simultaneously shape the imagination. Repertoire is a way of “naming the patterns inscribed” in collaborative practices, thus defining the boundaries that form between the different communities of practice of which any given person is a part.50
The use of social media provides a relevant example of the interplay between practice and imagination, with its implicit social imaginary fostering a self-focused configuration of one’s social world. As we uncritically inhabit such virtual worlds, there is a danger of being slowly and covertly drawn into “a body politic” which promotes shallow connections focused on self-gratification.51
The relationship between social understandings and practices highlights the potential for a practical theology of friendship to inform the shared social and theological imaginary of Christian communities of faith, and the practices of friendship encouraged and nurtured therein. Tension arises between culturally informed and theologically informed social imaginaries when it comes to Christians and friendship. Contemporary Western cultures tend to value individualism, capitalism, consumerism, and mobility, and thus nurture contractual or competitive relationships, superficial attachments, and instrumental “friendships.” Friends are people we retreat to in our private relations; friendships tend to be private matters rather than being based in community. The sacramental and mystical dimensions of relationship are rarely recognized.
Christian leaders are aware of tensions as they seek to articulate, for example, the gospel’s call to simple living in contrast to the extremely strong pull of materialist ideology. Or they may preach about the body of Christ as they attempt to contend with the rampant individualism of the broader community that pervades the church community also. However, it seems that the tension between culturally informed and theologically informed social constructions regarding friendship may be particularly challenging to navigate. While the wider cultural milieu does not foster a deep understanding of friendship, neither does a great deal of theological education.
Whatever effort communities of faith expend to recover relational practices of friendship should be matched by sustained attentiveness to the cultivation of a theological imagination supporting such practices. The practices of friendship will carry meaning(s) provided by a community’s theological and social imagination. Attention to those practices makes a way of life more visible and more open to critique and transformation.
While some social commentators are pessimistic about the future of friendship in the face of current social and cultural trends, I am convinced that change is possible. New and renewed gardens of friends and schools of love have the potential to provoke and transform the communities within which they form an integral part. As Stephen Pattison argues, one of the main functions of practical theology is to enrich and nurture the imagination. It is imagination that enables perception of theological possibility.52 A renewed theological and social vision of what is possible is necessary to inspire and catalyze change. Such a vision must also be accompanied by practices that can endure (without “settling” for) the messiness of current realities.
Critical Dialogue between Diverse Sources
Practical theologians make use of various methods of theological reflection. In my development of a practical theology of friendship I draw on the mutually critical correlation approach developed by philosophical theologian David Tracy and introduced into practical theology by Don Browning. This methodology facilitates a critical dialogue between diverse sources, with difference affirmed as a source for further development and dialogue.53
In Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? James K.A. Smith, a Canadian-American philosopher, advocates resistance to, and rejection of, the correlational model. Smith’s key concern seems to be the relative status of the conversation partners. It is possible that, at the time of writing, Smith was not aware of mutually critical correlation. Initial approaches to correlation focused on contemporary culture supplying the questions and theology supplying the answers.54 Seward Hiltner argued that correlation should be more of a two-way street, and David Tracy advocated for correlation to be a mutually critical and corrective process.55
Smith uses the example of the 2002 movie Whale Rider to depict the way in which the privileging of contemporary culture over tradition, through a community capitulating to modernism, spells disaster.56 The film, like the book by Māori author Witi Ihimaera on which it is based, links Māori relational values and specific Māori mythology, as it portrays aspects of the contrast between contemporary and traditional life for Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand. Smith presents the tradition of Māori culture as an analogy for the Christian tradition. It follows that modernity is represented by the now dominant Pākehā or settler culture. (Pākehā is a Māori word, originally used to refer to early settlers from Europe, but currently used to describe people of non-Māori or non-Polynesian heritage.) This is not a particularly satisfying analogy, given the complicity of Christian traditions in colonization.
If we step away from the analogy and consider the actual intertwined history of these peoples, we see potential for dialogue and true partnership, characterized by authenticity and genuine reciprocity. Indeed, in Witi Ihimaera’s subsequent work, The Parihaka Woman, his storyteller laments the lack of vision leading to authentic dialogue and partnership between Māori and Pākehā. “If only they [those first Pākehā leaders of ours] had come not to conquer but to partner Maori in some bold and innovative experiment… here, on the other side of the world. Might not fabled Erewhon, a country created out of the legacies of two proud and fierce peoples – one Pakeha and the other Polynesian – have arisen to challenge Europa’s supremacy?”57
The reality of the intertwined cultures of Māori and Pākehā in Aotearoa depicts the need for mutually critical correlation between Māori, secular Pākehā, and theological understandings and practices. More specifically, there is a need for correlation between dominant culture understandings of the Christian tradition, and Indigenous insights into this tradition. Christianity has been used to oppress but has also been used by Indigenous people to dismantle Western interpretations of Christianity and to critique practices of their own culture. As Māori historian Hirini Kaa asserts, Christianity enabled a space where tribal experts renegotiated mātauranga (knowledge, and ways of knowing) on behalf of their people, influenced by “internal tribal factors and the external intellectual environment.”58 Cultural persistence and cultural change co-existed. The relationship between tribal knowledge and tribal ways of knowing and the core ideals of Christianity was such that the sharing of ideas led to both experiencing change.59 Kaa speaks of reciprocity, implying “a sense of willingness on behalf of both parties to give and take, a sense of agency.”60
Through the reciprocal processes of mutually critical correlation, I am convinced that both Māori and Pākehā cultural understandings can continue to provide enriching insights into the Christian tradition, and in turn be challenged and enriched by Christian understandings. Through processes of mutually critical correlation, consideration can be given to ways in which Māori understandings, biblical texts, and various forms of Christian theology and spirituality mutually inform, enrich, and challenge one another.61 Leadership practices and church structures that embody just relationships among Māori, Pākehā, Pacific Islanders, and other, more recent immigrants from around the globe can be explored. Traditional spiritualities can be sources of as yet unrealized resources, when confronted with new cultural or global issues.62
Returning to Smith’s analogy, I am convinced that the story of, and the story behind, Whale Rider do not negate but rather demonstrate the need for dialogue between diverse sources and for mutually critical correlation. The dominant modern culture is not likely to disappear any time soon, although it could be transformed. The challenge for the tradition, whether Māori and/or Christian, is not merely to resist assimilation but to live in an integrated transformative manner within the context in which it currently exists. Smith speaks of the tradition being retrieved for a postmodern context.63 Māori may well respond that their tradition does not need retrieving. While oppressed or damaged in various ways, their tradition has not been lost. A mutually critical correlation process provides opportunity for dialogue between Māori, biblical, classical, and contemporary understandings of relationality, reciprocity, and resistance to oppression. Smith argues for the (non-identical) repetition of tradition within postmodern contexts.64 As far as Māori are concerned, such repetition is already taking place. The dialogue inherent within mutually critical correlation provides an approach to further facilitating this process.
My intention here is to affirm the value of mutually critical correlation for practical theological reflection on relationships within Aotearoa New Zealand, as elsewhere. No way of being or knowing is perfect and all can learn from others. It is not too late for bold and innovative experiments of authentic partnership and friendship on behalf of the generations to come.
However, given the power imbalances perpetuated by colonization, it is most appropriate that any critique of Māori understandings and practices come from Māori.65 Many Māori communities have been damaged by research that has taken, given little in return, and focused on negative aspects of being Māori.66 The historical power imbalance and resultant injustice in Aotearoa underpins the need to proceed cautiously to ensure just outcomes. Thus, when it comes to Indigenous sources and traditions within this project, my focus will be on learning from, rather than critiquing, Indigenous wisdom.
Mutually critical correlation concerning relationality within Aotearoa will require a collaborative effort. Although clearly beyond the scope of this project, such a project is certainly possible. As Aotearoa approaches the bicentenary of the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 2040, there will be opportunities for tangata whenua (people of the land) and tangata Tiriti (people of the Treaty) to engage in transparent re-visioning of Aotearoa’s future, including imagining decolonization. Such revisioning will need to acknowledge multiple ways of being Māori, including differing practices and perspectives between iwi, hapū, and whānau (tribes, clans, and extended families), as well as differences between more traditional rural upbringings centered around a marae (meeting house), “pan-tribal urban” realities, and “international diaspora” perspectives developed through being Māori elsewhere.67 More specifically, as part of such a process, the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia may seek to contribute to a national vision and set of core values. In such a context, Tikanga Māori (the Māori Anglican Church) could both draw on a mātauranga Māori (Māōri knowledge) research paradigm and contribute to a mutually critical correlation approach, engaging in both affirmation and critique of their own ways of knowing and relational practices.
The correlation within this project is more nuanced than may be suggested by the conversation above. I identify and explore practices of authentic friendship with writers who have contributed to our understandings of this relationship, including Indigenous writers. An analogy for the correlation that takes place within this research is that of the reciprocity, give-and-take, and frankness of speech that characterizes communication among a community of friends and potential friends. Questions arising from various disciplines and sub-disciplines contribute to this conversation. Likewise, answers to questions raised emerge from various conversation partners.
Practical theology has tended to consider interdisciplinarity primarily in terms of conversation with non-theological disciplines. However, this methodology allows for both congruence and conflict between theological sub-disciplines as well as between theological and non-theological perspectives. In recent years, greater consideration has been given to the need for practical theologians to include dialogue between theological sub-disciplines, and to tackle the complexity of conversation between theological fields as they seek to make constructive normative proposals.68 Theologian Richard Osmer advocates an understanding of interdisciplinarity that includes practical theology’s dialogue with “biblical studies, philosophical ethics, Christian ethics, church history, and systematic theology.”69 Tracy encourages an “aesthetic-ethical correlation” that facilitates the further development of mystical-prophetic practical theologies.70 This broader understanding of interdisciplinarity is evident throughout the various stages of theological reflection in this research. Sometimes conversation takes place between theological and philosophical sources; at other times it takes place between theological sub-disciplines, between various Christian traditions, or between Indigenous and non-Indigenous theologians.
Looking Backward and Forward
This introduction has identified the importance of friendship, considered definitions of friendship, and explored the terminology of practical theology. I have highlighted the potential for a practical theology of friendship to inform the shared social and theological imaginations of Christian communities of faith and the practices of friendship encouraged and nurtured within and by these communities. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of critical dialogue between diverse sources to this endeavor. The structure of the remainder of the book is based on the practical theological approach to correlation advocated by Don Browning. In A Fundamental Practical Theology Browning identifies descriptive theology, historical theology, systematic theology, and strategic practical theology as the four sub-movements of theology.71 The interdisciplinary theoretical research presented in this book is based primarily on these sub-movements, as outlined below.
Part I: The Current Reality
Descriptive theology considers underlying norms and metaphors and seeks to capture and clarify practical questions. This phase is not simply the realm of the social sciences. Rather, questions emerging from the descriptive task are drawn from a variety of disciplines, including theology. While various disciplines help develop a thick description of an issue, each carries its own implicit and explicit norms and must be incorporated critically.72 Browning suggests that questions such as the following guide this movement of theological reflection: “What, within a particular area of practice, are we actually doing? What reasons, ideals, and symbols do we use to interpret what we are doing? What do we consider to be the sources of authority and legitimation for what we do?”73 Reflection on these questions encourages us to in turn consider what we really should be doing, reflect on the accuracy and legitimacy of our sources, and consider why dominant understandings prevail.
Thus, I seek to name the way things are with two descriptive chapters. Many of the conversation partners within this stage will be re-engaged with in subsequent stages of this research. Chapter 1 considers ways in which friendship is defined, understood, and lived out, drawing on writings from the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and identifies key questions concerning the nature and status of friendship. Chapter 2 considers various forms of relationality and friendship within Aotearoa New Zealand, paying particular attention to Māori expressions of relatedness, power dynamics in Aotearoa, and the impact of both on the possibility of friendships between Māori and settlers. This chapter also examines the contemporary coexistence of varying friendship worlds and considers various forms of relationality and friendship within, as well as beyond, one colonized country. Key to this consideration are holistic multidimensional Indigenous understandings of relationality, the signing and subsequent dishonoring of a treaty during the nineteenth century, resistance to colonization and the loss of land, and various forms of friendship throughout. This includes a certain amount of storytelling.
Why prioritize identifying the relational perspectives of an Indigenous minority in a far-flung part of the globe? I am convinced that a practical theology of friendship must include Indigenous perspectives and grapple with issues of power and colonization. Indigenous traditions are wisdom traditions. Indigenous peoples recognize the cosmic dimensions of relationality and are committed to right-relatedness and harmony. Westerners have much to learn about relationality and right-relatedness from a breadth of Indigenous perspectives, given the value that Indigenous peoples place on relationships.
Why focus most specifically on Māori perspectives? I have been privileged to learn from the wisdom of Māori leaders, authors, and friends, and am convinced that Māori theology and practice has much to offer as a conversation partner within practical theology. I lament the distorted social imagination that led to the dishonoring of the 1840 Te Tiriti o Waitangi between Māori and the British Crown and the subsequent oppression of te tangata whenua (the people of the land). I am grateful for the gifts of wisdom, hospitality, friendship, and mentoring I have received from Māori, and for the encouragement that this work is relevant to church and nation(s).
Part II: A Deep Remembering
The normative task, based on Browning’s historical theology sub-movement, involves confronting the scene set in the previous section with the central normative texts of Christianity. The goal is to consider the implications of honest confrontation with normative texts of the faith, including whether theology has understood its ideals appropriately.74 The tasks of interpretation and retrieval of normative texts is not only integral to, but also at the very heart of the hermeneutical process.75 This normative work is not a distanced study of ideas of the past. The past is not disconnected from present events.76 Rather it is the past from which the present emerges and takes its shape.
A note of caution: if interpretive work focuses primarily on understanding contemporary praxis rather than on understanding texts within their historical contexts, then the work fails to respect history as a separate dialogue partner. Biblical and historical texts stripped of their initial context and meanings are “partially silenced.”77 There is a danger of focusing on the way texts are used and understood within current contexts, rather than on the context within which they originated. Consideration of both contexts is important: context matters in relation to both current practice and the interpretation of historical documents. I acknowledge, however, that it is impossible to do justice to all contributing disciplines within this wide-ranging research. It is not possible to provide equally thorough descriptions of current practice and historical-contextual analysis of normative texts.
These chapters consider what a variety of normative texts have to say about friendship and seek to identify the understandings and practices of friendship that these texts encourage. I seek to assist communities to draw upon the richness of ancient texts and traditions, in their responses to contemporary relational needs. Christian practical theology gives special weight to classic Christian texts, while also considering classic texts within inter-related traditions, including the Greek classics “that influenced the Israel of Jesus’ day,” as well as the writings of the Second Testament.78
Listening to texts to which Christianity has itself listened includes attentiveness to the Hebrew scriptures. These scriptures are the focus of Chapter 3. I focus particularly on the possibility of friendship being inherent within the creation accounts, and the role of friendship within the prophetic tradition, within covenantal relationships, and within the wisdom tradition. Chapter 4 turns to Matthean, Lukan, Johannine, and Pauline depictions of friendship and community.79
The philosophers of antiquity influenced early Christian writings and practices and continue to inform conversations regarding friendship. Within Chapter 5 I intertwine the insights of the classical philosophers, particularly Aristotle and Cicero, with themes emerging from the lives and writings of four conversation partners within subsequent Christian traditions, focusing on the essentialness of friendship, characteristics and practices of friendship, the question of friendship with the divine, and the relevance of friendship to communities.
A transitional bridging chapter notes pivotal shifts in vision in the Western world that took place in the late medieval and early modern period, their negative impact on personal and civic expressions of friendship in and beyond that world, and the potential for a cosmic vision of friendship to reveal the broader reality in which we are immersed.
Part III: Friendship, Theology, and the Social Imagination
The third phase of this research explores the relevance of the normative work (Part II) to the descriptive work (Part I) and further develops core normative ideals. This is not a simple application of the past to the present, but rather involves the examination of large encompassing themes and trends. The systematic stage includes gaining a comprehensive understanding of ideals that have emerged from the normative task, ideals that are typically conveyed in narratives and metaphors.80 Consideration is given to revisions in practice and understanding that may be provoked through the fusion of horizons.
While we may never entirely understand our own situation, that part of our situation of which we do have awareness may be described as a horizon. Systematic theology, according to Browning, is the fusion of horizons between the vision of reality implicit within contemporary practices and the vision of reality inherent within normative Christian texts.81 Browning’s contrast between two visions is helpful yet oversimplified. The horizon of the past has already impacted the present and thus impacted us. Texts of the past are already assimilated in various ways into contemporary understandings and practices; they have already had some impact on us as interpreters. We cannot understand the horizon of the past on its own terms, because we cannot leave ourselves behind.82
Further, the fusion of horizons is an ongoing process. Our horizons are never static, but rather move due to changing conditions and provoke new questions to be asked.83 Nor are present or historical horizons ever isolated. Old and new are continually “combining into something of living value”84 in an ongoing process of fusion. Our present horizon is where understanding begins. In the to and fro of dialogical interactions between texts throughout this research, the fusion of horizons does not imply the giving up of one horizon for the sake of another.85 Rather, horizons are brought together in a dialogical relationship through a dialectical process of give and take, question and answer, and seeking to understand the perspectives of others.86 Within this research, the fusion of horizons through mutually critical dialogue takes place between theological sub-disciplines (including biblical, historical, and spiritual theology), as well as with non-theological disciplines.
Chapter 6 explores themes of relationality, mutuality, and friendship in relation to doctrines of God and creation, and draws on functional and relational understandings of the imago Dei motif. Chapter 7
