Overview

Multireligious Reflections on Friendship: Becoming Ourselves in Community presents a multi-religious discussion of spiritual and ethical formation through friendship. Contributors discuss the positive effects of friendship and some of the culturally diverse ways that friendships develop. Friends help us co-exist in diverse societies, live sustainably in our ecosystems, heal from trauma, develop inner virtues, engage wisely in social action, and connect with the divine. While friendship is a core human value, cultural traditions have used different tools to build friendships. For example, Indigenous communities emphasize reciprocity on the land; Jewish traditions encourage respect for study partners; Buddhist teachers suggest discernment in befriending; Christian texts speak of bringing God’s love into community. The fifteen scholars contributing to this book draw on the teachings of six different global traditions: Indigenous, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic, and Christian. Each scholar applies the tools of their tradition—reciprocity, respect, discernment, love, and more—to discuss how we might become our best selves in community.

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9781666917352

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Multireligious Reflections on Friendship paints a rich and multifaceted portrait of friendship as essential to human, religious, and multireligious communities. Its thirteen essays, attentive to history, theology, and the dynamics of lived religion everywhere, show us how even in the most difficult of circumstances friendship has always helped people to faith to survive and flourish. In today's broken world, friendships across religious borders remain a life-saving grace for us all, and this book helps us to appreciate this basic natural and supernatural truth.--Francis X. Clooney, SJ, Parkman Professor of Divinity, Harvard University Multireligious Reflections on Friendship: Becoming Ourselves in Community is a unique collection of essays that deepens our understanding of friendship in the world's religions, while also offering friendship as a deep and authentic way of relating in communities of diversity. This book is a significant contribution to friendship and interfaith studies.--Anantanand Rambachan, St. Olaf College

Author Information

Anne-Marie Ellithorpe is research associate at the Vancouver School of Theology. Laura Duhan-Kaplan is Director of inter-religious studies and professor of Jewish Studies at the Vancouver School of Theology, and Rabbi Emerita of Or Shalom Synagogue. Hussam S. Timani is professor of philosophy and religion and Co-Director of the Middle East and North Africa Studies Program at Christopher Newport University.

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