Towards Friendship-Shaped Communities: A Practical Theology of Friendship. Anne-Marie Ellithorpe

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СКАЧАТЬ in our social world, the impact of technology on contemporary friendships and communities, theological, ethical, or spiritual dimensions to friendship, and whether friendship is a private, public, or political relationship.

      Theological writings that have influenced the theological and social imagination of pastors and lay people over recent decades are included alongside broader cultural trends, works from the social sciences, and ethical, historical, and spiritual perspectives. This chapter focuses on the more recent past, while acknowledging that ancient understandings and ideals continue to influence contemporary understandings and ideals. Throughout the twentieth century, friendship has been variously regarded as a model for other relationships, disdained, valued from a primarily utilitarian perspective, and recognized as transformative. Controversy continues over the status of friendship in the early twenty-first century, and over the impact of new technologies on friendship.

I invite you, my readers, to consider the place of friendship in your own life and communities of practice. How would you define friendship? How has friendship been formative in your life, and contributed to the shaping of your identity and your life paths? Has friendship also been a source of pain, tension, or conflict? Is it messier and more lopsided than often portrayed? What impact have various forms of technology had on your friendships? Where have you experienced friendship contributing to community, and where has it detracted from community? What practices support the sustenance and growth of friendships? What questions do you have about friendship? The research presented in this chapter is primarily located within Western thought and culture, as is typical thus far for friendship studies. Are you immersed in non-Euro-Western understandings of friendship that may further challenge and enrich understandings and practices of friendship?

      What Is Friendship?

      Friendship is used to describe a wide range of informal relationships, varying in levels of commitment and emotional attachment. The meanings attributed to friendship vary according to different historical and cultural contexts, making a consistent definition notoriously difficult to pin down. Nevertheless, friendships are consistently identified as chosen or voluntary relationships.

      Current use of the word friendship in the Euro-Western world is challenged by a myriad of experiences and uses. Our lives and friendships tend to be segmented and compartmentalized: we may have leisure friends, business friends, and church friends. We can boast of how many friends we have on a social networking site yet have minimal contact with most of these people. Moreover, certain characteristics of friendship may vary through life stages. Childhood, teenage years, college, work, singleness, marriage, parenting, and retirement all provide diverse opportunities for and challenges to friendship. Currently many diverse interpersonal relationships go by the name of friendship, including easy friendships, not-so-easy friendships, increasingly difficult friendships, toxic friendships, aspirational friendships, ambivalent friendships, and unrequited friendship. Some would question the appropriateness of calling all these relationships friendship.

      A variety of definitions of friendship have been proposed over the centuries. In antiquity, the Greek word philia, typically translated as friendship, included a range of relationships characterized by reciprocity in both willing and doing good for the other. Aristotle depicted philia as a symmetrical bond amongst equals, and philein as being characterized by reciprocity in wishing for another “what you believe to be good things, not for your own sake but for [the friend], and being inclined, so far as you can, to bring these things about” (Rhetorica 1380b36–1381a2). Such relationships could include family and business associates (Nicomachean Ethics 1156a7).

Subsequently, in the early Middle Ages, Isidore of Seville identified a friend (amicus) as a guardian of the spirit/soul (animi custos).² Commenting on this more open-ended definition, attributed to Gregory the Great, 540–604 ce, historian Brian McGuire identifies a sense of responsibility for another’s well-being, and knowledge of this person’s inner life, as elements implied by a custos animas relationship.³ This sense of guardianship may or may not be reciprocal. Equality and mutuality are not essential, nor are they ruled out. Aelred of Rievaulx also focused on guardianship, alongside an emphasis on the ability to maintain confidences, exhibit patience and share all things. “A friend is called the guardian of love, or… the guardian of the soul itself” (De spiritali amicitia 1.20).

More recently, sociologists Liz Spencer and Ray Pahl have identified a variety of types of friendship, ranging from simple friendship, including associates and fun friends, to complex friendships, including helpmates, comforters, confidants, and soulmates.⁴ According to Charlie Brown, an icon of contemporary popular culture from the Peanuts comic strip created by Charles M. Schulz, a friend is someone who loves you despite your faults. A similar sentiment is expressed in the title of a mid-twentieth-century book for children: A Friend is Someone Who Likes You.⁵

These definitions focus predominantly on personal relationships. Friendship has also been recognized as relevant to how we live together in community, and as providing a model for civic relationships. This is evident in the writings of Pope Francis and contemporary political philosophers, as well as philosophers of antiquity. In Fratelli tutti, Francis advocates for social friendship, the love capable of transcending borders.⁶ Social friendship calls for the recognition of the worth of every person, regardless of time or context, and makes possible true universal openness.⁷ Social friendship is also called for by Southern Africa’s concept of ubuntu, with its acknowledgement that “a person is a person through other persons” or “I am because we are.”⁸

Aristotle and others speak of civic or political friendship (politikē philia). Some contemporary writers use this term narrowly, focusing predominantly on politics in the context of government. Others use it more broadly. For political philosopher Sibyl Schwarzenbach, civic friendship is “that form of friendship whose traits operate via a society’s constitution, its public set of laws, its major institutions and social customs.”⁹ My understanding of civic friendship reflects this broader, systems-level use and is influenced by Danielle Allen’s encouragement for us all to recognize ourselves as implicitly “founders of institutions,” as we affect the shape of life in our communities.¹⁰ Whereas personal friendship is characterized by affection and by both willing good and doing good for the friend, civic friendship is characterized by affection and by both willing good and doing good for the broader community.

      In short, friendship has been understood in a variety of ways over the centuries. Variations tend to reflect some of the key changes and challenges of particular times and places. They also reflect diverse approaches to friendship. Anthropological, sociological, philosophical, and theological approaches will be further considered in this and subsequent chapters.

      Is Friendship Essential or Peripheral to Being Human?

Currently, friendship is treated as essential for children and optimal for the aged but given relatively little attention in the in-between years. It attracts minimal consideration within the church, academy, and workplace, or within the provision of social services. In religious contexts, friendship is rarely recognized as a virtue or personal discipline, integral to human flourishing. In the academy, friendship has been ignored or disdained as a focus СКАЧАТЬ