Читать книгу Towards Friendship-Shaped Communities: A Practical Theology of Friendship - Anne-Marie Ellithorpe - Страница 12

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.