Attached Paper Annual Meeting 2024

The Politics of Interreligious Friendship: Remembering The Peaceable Witness of Charles Andrews Freer and Mahatma Gandhi's Friendship

Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

Interreligious friendships are important not simply for how they enrich the spiritual, affective, and moral lives of the friends, but just as crucially for the way that they participate in important political work in the world. Through attending to the story of the remarkable friendship between British Anglican priest Charles Freer Andrews and Mahatma Gandhi, this paper illustrates how friendship across religious differences can energize peacebuilding and justice projects in the world. Drawing from the autobiographies of both men, I recount the political nature of this friendship. I draw on this story to make a wider theological case for how interreligious friendships serve as forms of Christian political witness in the world.