Friendship

Two new books explore the intertwined scholarship and friendship of Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, and Mary Midgley.

I was a United Methodist pastor. He was a campus minister with Cru.

Why does this sound strange to people?

What use are boundaries when you’re sitting with a friend who is about to die?

Briallen Hopper develops an alternative to the twin American creeds of self-reliance and marriage.

Facebook tells me I have 633 friends. Sirach tells me how few of those are faithful friends.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie captures the complexity of gender—and suggests simple ways to negotiate it.

Sarah Arthur and Erin Wasinger write about their experiment in radical faith, one small step at a time.

What counts as truth in a post-truth world? Run the Jewels 3 makes the case that truth sounds like rap music.

How can we live well after 40? asks Barbara Bradley Hagerty. She could have consulted the wisdom traditions.

A friend from seminary visited a couple of weeks ago. Her father-in-law was a pastor in the South, and she had been on a church staff for years before she became a pastor. She talked about how the male pastors of former generations would say that they were going to make visits, and they would spend the afternoon at the golf course.

Jack served the church in countless ways. There's only one thing he wanted in return.

As pastors, we spend a great deal of time sharing in the
ongoing lives and adventures of our congregants and community members. We are
also called, literally, to come to love and suffer with them when
disappointments, disasters or deaths occur.

Christians think differently about friendship. Our understanding is rooted in a God who never writes us out of the story of divine love—whatever our failings.

The deep attention and reverence that Thomas Merton and Abdul Aziz brought to each other's books, traditions and lives undergirded their friendship, and the frank way they explored their similarities and differences enlivened it.