Contemporary challenges to community formation include social isolation and social violence. Presenters within this session address relational and community issues from diverse religious and philosophical perspectives. Christopher Morales argues that loneliness, the common root of contemporary forms of violence, whether social, political, or environmental, must be addressed through a politics of friendship, foundational to a just society. John M. Thompson presents a tale in which the Buddha—as friend— brings an end to violence while violating social norms and expectations, thereby circumventing the so-called demands of justice. Thompson proposes that “good friendship” as “good violence” may hold promise as a creative but unconventional response to contemporary social violence. Recognizing that spiritual and religious traditions offer culturally diverse ways of facilitating friendships, Laura Duhan-Kaplan and Anne-Marie Ellithorpe discuss friendship’s role in community formation within global religious traditions, as evidenced in Multireligious Reflections on Friendship.
In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General, issued an advisory, “Our Epidemic of Loneliness,” which detailed a decline in social connection in U.S. society over the past 30 years, correlating this to rising rates of depression, anxiety, violence, and self-harm. Western culture is on a historical trajectory towards loneliness, supported by technologies that provide a simulacrum of sociality, political ideologies that divorce us from a common experience of reality, and a capitalism that breeds rapacious competitiveness. This paper explores the sources and consequences of existential loneliness in contemporary society, showing loneliness as the common root of contemporary social, political, and environmental violence. It addresses loneliness from the perspectives of philosophy and theology to show that a politics of friendship is a foundation for a just society. This research intervenes in the fields of social ethics and political theory by articulating paths of renewed encounter founded in agonistic pluralism and radical hospitality.
This paper explores the Aṅgulimāla sutta in terms of the Buddhist ideal of the kalyāṇa-mitra (“good friend”). In this tale, the Buddha subdues the killer Aṅgulimāla by befriending him and bringing him into the sangha while using his friendship with King Pasenadi to demonstrate the superiority of rehabilitation over punishment. The Buddha handles the situation as a matter between friends, yet as a “good friend” to both Aṅgulimāla and Pasenadi, he circumvents the demands of justice, and overrides the king’s authority. This violates social norms and expectations, yet it stops the violence in the region (both illegal and legitimate). Moreover, Buddha’s friendship doesn’t spare Aṅgulimāla the karmic effects of his past, but it allows Buddha to guide him safely through it. I thus maintain that this tale presents “good friendship” as a “good violence,” a creative but unconventional response to social violence that holds promise for us today.
Spiritual and religious traditions offer culturally diverse ways of facilitating friendships. This theme emerges in our recent co-edited volume, Multireligious Reflections on Friendship. Examples include the emphasis Indigenous communities place on reciprocity and the land, ways in which Jewish traditions encourage respect for study partners, Buddhist advocacy for discernment in befriending, and Christian texts that speak of fostering divine love within community. We will discuss these examples against the backdrop of the volume’s larger goal: to explore the place of friendship in six global religious traditions, and understand the positive effects of friendship, including coexistence, sustainable living, healing, social action, and connection with the divine.