Religious Reflections on Friendship Seminar
The Religious Reflections on Friendship seminar unit invites proposals for papers that challenge, enrich, or broaden dominant perceptions of friendship, whether in relation to a specific religious tradition, or to various forms of interreligious engagement. Papers presented at the seminar will be considered for publication in an edited volume engaging with these themes.
Given the location of the 2025 in-person annual meetings, we welcome papers that acknowledge, honor and promote relational learning from the first peoples of Massachusetts and beyond, and that promote the honoring of covenantal friendship treaties. Additionally, we welcome papers highlighting local initiatives that seek to promote interreligious understanding, engagement, social justice, and friendship.
Considering 2025’s presidential theme of freedom, we specifically invite papers that consider ways in which friendship—personal, and/or civic—can foster non-violent resistance to oppression, peace-making, healing from trauma, and community building, in the pursuit of freedom. Possible themes include:
- Friendship, Freedom, and Nonviolent Resistance to Oppression
- Friendship Treaties & Ecological Guardianship
- Friendship-Informed Activism
- Grassroot Freedom Movements
- Friendship, Peacebuilding, and Politics
Additionally, we welcome papers that:
- demonstrate ways in which willing good for one’s friend(s), and being active on their behalf— despite division, conflict, and polarization—spills over into public, political, and ecological action, seeking good not only for the friend, but for their broader community.
- explore the notion of friendship across various types of boundaries and power differentials
- address the intersection of friendship studies, religious studies, and/or peace studies from any scholarly perspective and religious tradition(s).
The purpose of this Seminar is to provide a broad forum in which the important but under-researched relationship of friendship can be studied, discussed, challenged, and ultimately enriched from a variety of religious perspectives. Friendship has personal, public, and political dimensions, and—from an Indigenous perspective— extends to ecological interconnectedness and is not exclusive of kinship relationships. In times characterized by division, conflict, and various forms of othering, we assert that friendship studies contribute towards furthering intercultural and religious understanding and dialogue. Friendship as a religious topic, broadly and creatively defined, touches on matters of faith, ecclesiology, anthropology, history, politics, philosophy, ethics, race, gender, sex, class, and economics, among others. We welcome papers that explore friendship from diverse disciplines and theological/religious perspectives and are open to a variety of methodological approaches.
Multireligious Perspectives on Friendship: Becoming Ourselves in Community— the first volume emerging from this seminar—was published in 2023, in Lexington Books Religion and Borders Series. Seminar papers are eligible to be considered for inclusion in a subsequent published volume focused on interreligious perspectives.
| Chair | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Anne-Marie Ellithorpe | aellithorpe@vst.edu | - | View |
| Hussam S. Timani | hussam.timani@cnu.edu | - | View |