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.
Critical Dialogue between Diverse Sources
Practical theologians make use of various methods of theological reflection. In my development of a practical theology of friendship I draw on the mutually critical correlation approach developed by philosophical theologian David Tracy and introduced into practical theology by Don Browning. This methodology facilitates a critical dialogue between diverse sources, with difference affirmed as a source for further development and dialogue.53
In Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? James K.A. Smith, a Canadian-American philosopher, advocates resistance to, and rejection of, the correlational model. Smith’s key concern seems to be the relative status of the conversation partners. It is possible that, at the time of writing, Smith was not aware of mutually critical correlation. Initial approaches to correlation focused on contemporary culture supplying the questions and theology supplying the answers.54 Seward Hiltner argued that correlation should be more of a two-way street, and David Tracy advocated for correlation to be a mutually critical and corrective process.55
Smith uses the example of the 2002 movie Whale Rider to depict the way in which the privileging of contemporary culture over tradition, through a community capitulating to modernism, spells disaster.56 The film, like the book by Māori author Witi Ihimaera on which it is based, links Māori relational values and specific Māori mythology, as it portrays aspects of the contrast between contemporary and traditional life for Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand. Smith presents the tradition of Māori culture as an analogy for the Christian tradition. It follows that modernity is represented by the now dominant Pākehā or settler culture. (Pākehā is a Māori word, originally used to refer to early settlers from Europe, but currently used to describe people of non-Māori or non-Polynesian heritage.) This is not a particularly satisfying analogy, given the complicity of Christian traditions in colonization.
If we step away from the analogy and consider the actual intertwined history of these peoples, we see potential for dialogue and true partnership, characterized by authenticity and genuine reciprocity. Indeed, in Witi Ihimaera’s subsequent work, The Parihaka Woman, his storyteller laments the lack of vision leading to authentic dialogue and partnership between Māori and Pākehā. “If only they [those first Pākehā leaders of ours] had come not to conquer but to partner Maori in some bold and innovative experiment… here, on the other side of the world. Might not fabled Erewhon, a country created out of the legacies of two proud and fierce peoples – one Pakeha and the other Polynesian – have arisen to challenge Europa’s supremacy?”57
The reality of the intertwined cultures of Māori and Pākehā in Aotearoa depicts the need for mutually critical correlation between Māori, secular Pākehā, and theological understandings and practices.