Towards Friendship-Shaped Communities: A Practical Theology of Friendship

9 Friendship and Community Ideals and Implementation

This strategic chapter firstly articulates ideals of friendship that have emerged throughout this research, then considers communities of practice as contexts in which these ideals are to be lived out. Western norms reflect sentimentalized, trivialized perspectives on friendship and disconnect friendship from community. Public dimensions of friendship are not widely encouraged. The ideal of holistic private-public friendship articulated within this chapter is multidimensional, intertwining friendships with others, God, the environment, and self; it overflows into solidarity, communal responsibility, reform, and civic friendship. This chapter identifies specific ways in which friends, families, faith communities, and others can contribute towards the implementation of this ideal. Inspired and informed by a theology of friendship, communities of practice have the potential to become intentional, transformative communities of reform that promote friendship, justice, hospitality, and compassion.

Having considered ways in which theology may inform the imagination when it comes to friendship, this chapter focuses on the fully practical stage. How are the understandings and practices this research identifies as vitally important to be encouraged and nurtured in contemporary contexts? What possibilities exist for fostering a social and theological imagination that values practices of mutuality, equal regard, and open friendship? ...