Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local

The work of cultivating the common good starts in your own neighborhood.

In Becoming Neighbors, Amar D. Peterman explores how the common good can be cultivated through the practice of neighbor love. And he encourages Christians to join their neighbors at what he calls “the shared table”―a space where communities gather across differences to work towards the flourishing of the whole.

Within every neighborhood, people have daily opportunities to show up for each other and share the best of their traditions, cultures, and beliefs. But too often, Christians keep to themselves―and when they do show up, many spend more time talking than listening. Peterman encourages Christians to adopt a different posture: to sit side by side with their neighbors at the community table, share a meal, engage in mutual listening and learning, and actively commit to each other’s flourishing.

Peterman illuminates the faith-based insights that Christians can bring to the table, such as the biblical call to love others, to seek goodness, and to build communities of belonging. And he offers tangible practices of neighbor love―including compassion, resonance, lamentation, and accompaniment―that translate across diverse populations. Peterman also demonstrates how Christ’s example as prophet, priest, and king serves as a guide for how Christians might live faithfully in their communities today.

At the heart of this book is a simple but critical question: How will we live? Amid our differences and disagreements, through the strife and terror of our world, through the reality of death and the hope of resurrection, the answer for Christians is clear: We live as neighbors.

Amar D. Peterman is a constructive theologian working at the intersection of faith and public life. He is the founder of Scholarship for Religion and Society LLC and the former assistant director of civic networks at Interfaith America. Peterman holds an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary and is currently a PhD student at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. His writing and research have been featured in Sojourners, Christianity Today, The Christian Century,The Fetzer Institute, TheBerkley Forum, and The Anxious Bench. He also publishes regularly on his Substack, This Common Life. Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local is his first book.

 

James K. A. Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin University, where he also holds the Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview. His previous books include How (Not) to Be Secular and You Are What You Love.