Amar Peterman on Becoming Neighbors – The Common Good, Made Local

In this conversation, we sit down with Amar D. Peterman to talk about his new book, Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local. Amar reflects on his experience as an Indian American adoptee formed across Catholic, evangelical, and interfaith spaces, and how those tensions shaped his understanding of belonging, faith, and the common good.

We explore why “neighbor” is an active practice rather than a passive label, how shared tables create space for real relationship across difference, and why listening, lament, and accompaniment matter more than efficiency or winning arguments. The conversation moves from theology to lived practice, grounding big ideas like evangelism, interfaith dialogue, and Christian witness in everyday, local relationships.

Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local -https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9780802884121

Guest Bio
Amar D. Peterman is a writer and theologian focused on religion, civic life, and community formation. He is the founder of Scholarship for Religion and Society, LLC, a former Assistant Director of Civic Networks at Interfaith America, and a PhD student at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Amar holds an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary and has written for outlets including Sojourners, Christianity Today, The Christian Century, The Future Institute, The Berkeley Forum, and The Anxious Bench. He also publishes regularly on Substack at The Common Life.

Transcript

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Hey, wait, hold on. Let me just make sure that there's this live stream theme that popped up. I'm like, this isn't live. not doing this live. was that a, was that your best goat impression? Cause you basically said, you hear that too? Amar, Amar, Amar, right? Not Amar, Amar. Yeah, both. I Amar, I say Amar is what I say when I'm north of the Wisconsin border and Amar is what I say when I'm south of it. So both, yeah, both are great, but Amar is the more traditional way to say it. Yeah. We will edit. I thought it was live. of course, if it was live, then people get to see my good impression on repeat. anyways. like, I knew they were devil worshipers, those faithful politics people. we'll just go and start again. Hey, welcome back to Faithful Politics podcast. I am your political host, Will Wright. And joining me as always is your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. What's going on, Josh? Hey Will, it's good to see you man. Yeah, good to see you. And joining us this week, have Omar Peterman. He is a writer, theologian. Hold on. I was looking for my notes. And founder of, man, you'd think I'd be way, way uh more prepared. Oh, scholarship for religion and society, LLC. He's also the former assistant director of civic networks at Interfaith America and holds an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary and a PhD student at the University of Chicago's Divinity School. He has been writing and found at all kinds of places like the Sojourners, Christianity Today, the Christian Century, the Furture Institute, the Berkeley Forum, and the Anxious Bench, and also publishes regularly on a sub stack, The Common Life. But that's not why he's here today. Today we're here to talk to him about a new book he's got called Becoming Neighbors, The Common Good Made Local, and I'll show it to the camera for those that can see it. There it is. And we're just so glad to have you on the show, Amar. Thanks for being on Faith in Politics. Yeah, thanks for having me and thanks for taking the time to read the book and put together some really great questions. Yeah, so I always ask, people that do theology, people that start foundations, all of this comes from some place or some experience in your life. I mean, you wrote a book called Becoming Neighbors. uh So what's the origin story of Umber and what brought you to a place where you wanted to write a book about becoming neighbors? Yeah, I mean, you're exactly right. uh The book and this vision are really born out of my experience as an Indian American adoptee who was raised uh in a Polish Catholic neighborhood, but spiritually formed in the white evangelical mega church space. um You get that in my name. Amr's a South Asian name. It has ties to um Islam and also Hinduism. And then Peterman is this white Germanic name. ah And so how do those two things go together? It's by way of adoption. And I carry both of those things with me. But as you can imagine, um growing up in these spaces, there was a deep sense of unbelonging where I grew up. That's not to say it was bad by all means. um But many of the existential questions I was asking about faith and life and my place in it um concerned where I belonged in the world and... um perhaps more specifically, if there was a place in the Christian tradition for me. ah I ended up going to Bible college to try to answer these questions. uh But given the places that I come from and that I was formed, I ended up at Moody Bible Institute, which is in downtown Chicago. uh Moody is a very white evangelical college that has its historic roots going back to the 1880s uh in American fundamentalism. and still holds on to many of its trappings. um There's a lot I could say about that, and perhaps we'll dip into some of it. um But the short of it is that in all of these spaces, from a Polish Catholic neighborhood to white evangelicalism to Moody, um they all offered some version, or some Christian version, of the common good that didn't include me. ah And I didn't know how to make sense of that. um When I got to Chicago, I also couldn't place how the South Asians that I met, who are mostly Hindu and Muslim, I felt a deep connection and belonging with them, despite our different faith traditions. But when I hung out with Christians, that's when I felt a deep sense of unbelonging and had pastors and professors tell me to leave my Indian-ness behind and to embrace my identity in Christ. I don't know how to do that. or if that's even possible. um And so I explained a bit in the book, there's kind of three major ways that this vision of neighbor love and a shared table kind of began to kindle in my mind. The first was thanks to really brave and courageous professors at Moody who were willing to go kind of against the flow of things. um They shared, ah not on syllabi, but in, you know, office hours. um liberation theologies ah and feminist theologies and theologians from the Eastern Church and broadly folks who shared an experience that resembled mine and then reflected theologically about it. um And they didn't do so in a way that they were trying to diminish or negate that experience, but instead they saw those very places as the site of God's good work in our lives. And that was revolutionary for me. to see my Indian-ness not as something that I needed to rid myself of, but actually the place where God ah meets me. And ah one of my mentors, one who the book is dedicated to, Ashish, would say that ah his Indian-ness made him a better Christian, and his Christian faith made him a better Indian. And I'd never heard someone say something like that before. And so that was the first. ah The second was an invitation to join Tables. ah where constructive dialogue was happening across religious lines. I mentioned an anecdote in the book and you mentioned my work with Interfaith America. ah That was the first space where I saw people across different faith traditions coming together not to debate who was right or who had the best interpretation of what and who God is, but instead were asking really curious and fascinating questions about faith to one another. And often it was the questions that they didn't feel like were appropriate or allowed to be asked in different spaces. And so I saw there the beginnings of what a literal shared table with food spread across it could do um in fostering meaningful belonging and constructive conversation. And then last, scattered throughout the book, ah our references to broad-based community organizing and the work of community organizers who do the good work of gathering people together across lines of difference towards a shared goal um in some way that benefits or works towards the flourishing of their community. And I think in doing that, folks work towards this goal and then meet one another and then find that they have more in common than they think. It doesn't negate the differences, uh often really stark, meaningful differences, but it... provides a new context in which those differences are now couched in relationship and in some amount of knowing one another and having a shared value of whatever that organizer is mobilizing people towards. And so those three things together have helped shape my own experience and helped me make sense of it. And that's something I continue to do. ah I'm back in school. I keep doing that. It can't keep me out. And so, yeah, those are some of the major influences that led up to the book and why I wanted to write about what it would mean for us to become neighbors to one another. I think that's really beautiful. I love that the work you're doing there. So thank you for writing this book and doing this, this gift to us and to the church. It's pretty cool. When you're talking and mentioning things like your professors who are willing to give you books on liberation theology or books on feminist theology, or any number I know of other sub-disciplines that are either ethnically focused or maybe on some kind of way of viewing the world or something like that to look through and give a different lens to the Bible. And one of the things that I can imagine my conservative friends, including myself, to every time I hear liberation theology, I get a little scared. was like, and I don't mean to, right? It's not like I want to feel that. It's just automatic. And it's like my amygdala is giving me a negative feeling about it. it's like, what would you say to a conservative, to me, to other conservatives about like liberation theology, even for like I dig, because I love what you're doing in the book, but knowing how much it's inspired even by some uh of these liberation ideals and things like that. How would you respond in the sense like, this within, to maybe the, not the accusation, that's not the right word, but is this within orthodoxy? Is this? Like are we losing something essential to Christianity? And what I'm hearing and what I love about your book is you know, we're actually gaining something essential to Christianity. But I would love for you to kind of make that argument um for us. Does that make sense, the question? can rephrase it if I need. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. And ah I'm thinking of a good friend of mine, Matt Kaming, who's a Dutch Reformed scholar who teaches or taught for a long time at Fuller Seminary. And we'd have conversations about liberation theology. And I think he'd be comfortable with me saying, I don't really like it. So it doesn't make sense to me. I don't like the paradigm that seems exclusive of oppressed and oppressor. I think those lines are a lot more blurred. um Then they often appear and then you have someone like Joe Ash Thomas who's like no, think the lines are pretty clear um and I think the What we can take is liberation theology as a school of thought that's couched in its own context These are folks often writing from the margins of society who are trying to make sense of their own position um In the world and how their faith relates to it and so I don't think I think it's a disservice to each of these camps of theology, whatever they may be, to take them wholesale as if they have ah all of the answers or the entire perfect picture. I think liberation theology clues us into some really wonderful things. And then it gets picked up by folks like Paul Farmer, who talks with Gustavo Gutierrez and sees that God has a preferential option for the poor. um He doesn't use a oppressor or oppressed paradigm to do that. He just looks at scripture and says, It seems like God, seems like Jesus ah is spending a lot of time with these folks and is prioritizing them in his ministry. This is where the message ah of Christ's kingdom goes first. So I think there is a healthy skepticism to treating any single theological school or camp as having the whole of theology. think that's the, you know, again, Joe, I should say that's the colonizing project is to say we have we get to own the whole thing. I think the benefit is in reading liberation theologians, going where you can with them and saying, ah, there's parts of this I'm not going to take. And so, yeah, that's what I would say to you, to folks who are concerned about that space or concerned about what they know or what folks have done with liberation theology. I'd say it's a school of thought that is imperfect and has a lot of different bends and conclusions. I think it's worthwhile to engage with, but that doesn't mean we look at it uncritically. You know, I want to want to talk about your title. So neighbors and apologies if you didn't choose your title, because I know how publishing companies work. But um but but neighbors seems like a very, very specific type of category category uh becoming neighbors like it's not becoming roommates. Right. So like so, number one, like who who are the neighbors and and why not roommates? Yeah, we had an interesting process with picking a title. um The working title was uh This Common Life, which is the name of my substack. um And it was a working title and it's what was initially approved. ah And then when it came to the publishing and marketing and all of that, they're like, how about ah Neighborly? And I'm like, huh, that's interesting. um I spent one of my first jobs was at uh organization called Neighborly Faith. I'm like, I wonder what they would think of this. ah I'm sure they wouldn't have any problems with it, but they'd also be like, oh, maybe we should, you know, get a cut of something here. But I went back to them and said, I want something more active um and rather than descriptive. And so I asked if becoming neighbors could work. And I had in mind Eugene Peterson's translation. of the good Samaritan or the compassionate Samaritan narrative. And Peterson ah translates Jesus' question ah towards the end of the parable as who became a neighbor to the one in need. um And that, I think, encompasses a way in which we see neighborliness, not in terms of proximity, but in terms of how we show up for others, um in that anyone can be our neighbor. ah Yes, it is the people who live directly next door. And as the book is arguing for a deeply local vision of the common good, uh I want you to talk to the people next door to you. And also, neighbor is an expansive category in that who we consider those we are tasked with caring for um includes more than the people we are in proximity with, um but with a broader community than that. And so becoming neighbors Innocence is, think, in a... I don't want to mirror it exactly against the way that we at once ah are unified with Christ and at the same time live into that unity. um But in a way, we are neighbors um with others and yet we have to live into that spiritual and at time physical reality. um It's not something that's given, it's something that we have to practice, that we have to become. I think that's, again, really well said. love the idea of becoming that you represent because it shows a process. This isn't something that happens easily, right? And it's a process, but it's also an intentional process, right? Because if I want to love my physical neighbor, that means I have to talk to them. That means I have to figure out my fence that I have with them. Like if there's an issue, you know, like maybe we can work together, you know, to figure out that, that means I have to talk to them and know them and like, you know, be a part of their lives. And then, you know, they know when they hear me yell at my kids or my wife and we get in a fight and I like walk out and get in the car and I'm leaving or, know, and I've heard them fight. So it's like, we, we see these things about each other. Right. And yet. Like there's an intentionality and. and a slowness and a process. I don't know if you found this, but there's a lot of distrust that I sense in almost awkwardness about becoming neighbors, even like we don't really even think about the people next to us as neighbors. I know that's kind of what you're trying to uh address at some level in your book. I'd love to focus in on your idea of a shared table and why is that significant? Why do we need a shared table metaphorically, practically? Why is it essential for Christian life? Kind of alluding back to the kind of what we were talking about at the beginning of our conversation. Yeah, I use this illustration of a shared table to imagine more broadly the spaces in which we might gather across lines of difference. Again, not to debate or to convert one another, but to seek the good of our entire community. um An emphasis on a shared table is that ah no one owns it. um It's collectively shared. And in that, there's a commitment that ah no single group uh or tradition gets to claim an entire neighborhood or an entire community uh or an entire country. And so the shared element is that we collectively come to this together. um I name an introduction of the book that the problem for many Christians is that either we are absent from the table altogether, um where other people are doing this good work, or we show up late. ah We walk past our seat, we grab the microphone and pretend that we're running the meeting as if that was the default. And so the invitation of the book is to say, just grab a seat um and join with your neighbors in pursuing and seeking a common good. um I think it's essential for Christians today, first and foremost, because I believe that God is present at the table with us. I think God's goodness is far too great to be contained or locked ah behind the gates of the Christian church or even more the American church. I God's goodness is expansive and it permeates in and through the world. I see this in the work I do across lines of different faith traditions that I see echoes of God's goodness and God's work in the way that other people are serving and loving their communities through their own traditions. Again, it doesn't mean we agree. It doesn't mean that there aren't stark differences between ah how we see and understand God and God's nature. ah But I've seen too much goodness in other spaces to conclude that goodness is reserved only for me, as if Christians are the ones who get to dole it out and determine that is good and that is bad and this is God and this is not God. ah I think it's fitting to that, you know, we're recording this during Advent and a huge part of the book is an emphasis on the incarnation that God chooses to come to us in flesh. And I ask in the book, why would God do this? uh Why does God enter the waves of causality that God has set in motion uh into the thrown possibilities of what it would mean to be a human? And the conclusion that I draw is that God does this to give everything away. uh There, especially within the reformed tradition, is this belief that Christ has nothing to merit in and for himself in the incarnation, but instead Christ chooses to come to us so that everything gained in his life, his death, his resurrection, and his ascension, anything that's merited to him is for the sake of the world. um And I think that's how we're called to approach the table in a way that we join with others so that anything gained um might be given away towards others, ah might participate in the collective flourishing of our communities, not to ah advance you know, some sort of way in making Christianity look better, not in some way that, I secretly just like, I want to convert all of these people and so I'm going to join the table. um But to in humility, ah sit down, listen to others and take the resources and the wisdom and the history of the Christian church and the good things Christians have done and offer that alongside what other traditions and folks have no tradition at all. and what they bring to the table as well. So, and I think when we're there, we will find that God is already at work. That, again, God doesn't show up when we show up um to the table, but that ah good, wonderful, sacred things are already taking place there. I really love that because I remember when when I first got saved um under the tradition that um for the church I attended, it was like every experience felt. um What's the word I'm looking for? Like like I was ready to sell my friend something like like like, there's will, you know, like he's he's converted, you know, drink the Kool-Aid. um But here he comes, you know, and and it just felt like it didn't feel authentic. It just felt like. You know, the ultimate goal is to be nice to them so that way I can invite them to church, you know, and then like everything like that goes along with that. So it it it is refreshing to just be able to have authentic conversations with people under no, you know, sort of guys that they're trying to convert me. It's like like that's why whenever Josh invites me to coffee, I'm like, I know this trick, you know, pastors inviting people to coffee. I know that one. Like, tell me what I did wrong now. They all do it. Every one of them does it well. But I am curious though, I'm like, so with your experience with interfaith uh groups, I mean, if I tried hard enough, I could probably find the scriptures that talk about why I need to be nice to people. um But like other faith traditions, like what do they draw upon to sort of like help them come to the table? Yeah, that's a good question. um I think there's a commonality, especially you see in the Abrahamic traditions, that's share so much overlap, if not in text, at least in uh story or mythology, and the wisdom that's being drawn from ah that brings people to the table. So there's an emphasis on caring for one another, on hospitality, on love, um and compassion. And different traditions claim different people. to do that. ah any tradition, I think, has exemplars of this. And they have, like Christianity, ah examples of folks taking this in really terrible ways. I think uh there's a temptation in the West to see Christianity because it's so closely tied with Christian imperialism and colonization. To see that as the only example of how could, you know... anyone be a Christian. um But there are examples, there's negative examples in other traditions as well. There's also really wonderful positive examples. um I think in especially in Islam, there's a lot of inter-religious dialogue where Muhammad is engaging with rabbis and Christians and showing hospitality. You know, my Muslim friends will talk about how ah Medina and Mecca are these deeply ah pluralistic spaces. in part because Mohammed is a political leader. And so, again, you see different expressions of that depending on when Islam is used as a political ideology versus when it's used as a religion. My expertise isn't in their traditions. But what I see is there is something distinct about a Christian call to evangelism, especially in the prevalence of American evangelicalism. um being kind of a dominant form of how people understand Christianity that's not quite present in other traditions where there isn't such a thrust on you need to convert other people to believe what you believe. But it's still present. I'm sure that my Muslim colleagues would love ah if I was like, I think, you know, I'm going to become Muslim or Hindu or Jain or, you know, or Buddhist or whatever else. And I would equally be just as happy if they're like, I want to know more about Christianity. um And we have those conversations, ah but the thrust of it, at least in the context of our work, is like, we all recognize that there are good and beautiful things that we bring to this work that in our position of being here brings others into the work as well. And so our focus is to find ways to engage together rather than to spend our time ah debating the nuances of our beliefs or who's right and who's wrong and... who's gonna convert to another person's tradition and all of that. ah That's a bit outside the purview of what the organization's work is. Yeah, you know, as you're talking, um so many thoughts come to my mind, you know, like thinking about the evangelism piece. Like what do we do with the call Jesus says to make disciples, right, or the kind of evangelistic fervor you might see. And yet even thinking like in the scriptures and yet even seeing, you know, the early church and the way in the first 300 years that Christianity grew is through people essentially loving their neighbors. um In a lot of ways like you're saying, like the typical ways we might think of evangelism, I've been very challenged by this. And this has been studied by very, very devout Christians who are looking at and faithful followers, Orthodox followers of the Bible, right? I'm not going to put an evangelical claim or anything on anyone right now, but um because that means so many different things right now, I feel like in our culture. Anyway, that's another separate question that maybe you can comment on if you want to. But what I'm saying is that they basically in their studies, they're like, the early church, they prayed for people. They saw miracles happen. They cared for the sick. They cared for people. They showed extraordinary acts of kindness, radical acceptance, and inclusion into their ranks. You know, there was a very strict process of catechizing and then being baptized. I don't want to say they treated theology like it was um nothing or not important or trivial, you know, but um but there wasn't they didn't have the kind of open, you know, crusades or hey, you got to invite your neighbor to church or, you know, in any of these things. And again, I'm not saying there's a one to one mapping. think evangelism is very contextual. It has to me. uh But it is a struggle for me because the way I grew up was the way you evangelize is you ask people, hey, do know where you'd go tonight if you died? And then once you ask them that or if you want to get really extreme, you can take one of those, you know, revolvers and say, would you play Russian roulette? Because you're doing that with your soul right now. OK, so um we get it. We've maybe we've seen that. uh It's a struggle for me though to think evangelism. have to talk about Jesus at some point, right? I had to talk about my relationship with Jesus and the things I do in the way or do I. And you know, it's like this, this idea that you bring out that we come to public spaces ready to speak rather than listen. And I can be a good listener. can also be a very bad listener. and I would just love, uh, for you to kind of help me understand from your work, like why is it so important to come with a posture of listening? And why do we get so bad at it in our culture? Yeah, yeah, you're giving me youth group flashbacks ah with the apologetics. I'll share. hell's flames. you ever, I mean, did you see that growing up, Omar? Oh, some guy's just hanging out. We've talked about this. Well, he's just hanging out. Good dude, like hanging with his family. And all of a sudden, like a brick falls on him. Someone had tried to tell him the gospel right there on the construction site. Then a brick falls on him. Homeboy's dead. And then demons come out and drag him to hell. And he had the opportunity. Now again, I'm not trying to argue. It's just like, scared me. Anyway, go ahead. this is a video both of you have seen, like, grown up? This is a production. It's not a video. It is a full production with someone on stage being dragged into a trap door in the stage with flames coming up and red like lights and they're screaming like they're being tortured and murdered. Am I exaggerating? Am I? No, this is, this is youth group. ah We're from the 90s, man. Early 2000s, man. It was crazy. it was. Uh, yeah, I think for apologetics, you know, I remember doing that. And because I grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, um, where most, most folks are Catholic, the one thing, the one response my youth group didn't prepare me for, but should have was the answer. Uh, you know, are you a Christian? Do you accept, you know, have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and savior? And they'd go, uh, I'm Catholic. And I'd go, uh, I don't know. Good, I think. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, sir. uh Yeah, and so there's a couple interactions. was like, all right, cool. I just had to walk away and find someone else who was in a, you know, some sort of heartfelt conversation in the mall. But I think in terms of apologetics and the ties into listening versus speaking, um know, Kierkegaard has this really interesting, he talks a bit about apologetics, but in a way that I've kind of understood him is that Jesus in his life and ministry doesn't walk around trying to convince people that he is God. ah He lives out of the reality that he is God. And that informs the way that he speaks and moves and cares and acts in the world. And if folks want to accept that and follow him, the invitation is wide open. And for all the folks that we see in the scriptures who do, there are countless who don't. To meet or interact or hear Jesus, and choose to move on with their day. uh I think that's a vision of apologetics, to live out of the reality that Jesus is Lord, especially in these interfaith spaces where it's like, it is not the task or the purpose of these spaces to try to convert one another. It is to work towards a shared goal, a shared good. um My hope is that as a Christian leading in the space, as the one who is in planning conferences and events, setting the metaphorical table, that there is something deeply compelling about how I show up in the space as a Christian that intrigues others to want to know more. I one of the greatest and sad things I hear from my writing or my work is folks who have left the tradition and say, if I knew Christianity could have looked like that, I might have stayed. And I always say, Come back, you know? ah You know, there are vibrant, beautiful ways, yeah. And so, yeah, I think to your point of, you know, speaking versus listening, there's a part of me that wants to have the positive read of Christians are really eager to share what they believe is good and true and beneficial to others. They believe we have something that you need and I wanna share it with you. ah It's like, meeting someone who's passionate about a sport or a musician Or a hobby and they just like want to tell everyone about it The very evangelical way is like when you fall in love with someone you can't stop talking about them ah You just have to tell the whole world About about the thing or the person that you love um What's I think? ignored or Overlooked in that is that the other side of this enthusiasm ah as you mentioned is that uh Christians fervently believe that they have a single, salvific truth. And so to claim, love this thing, is also to claim, but if you don't love it as well, then you might be eternally damned. And that's a very different kind of way of talking about loving something. um And so I think sadly, today we see Christians who are rightly so secure and confident in their belief that it negatively manifests as, don't have to listen to anyone else. What is the purpose of listening to people who disagree with me or people who don't have access to this exclusive, salvific truth because if everything revolves around this and they don't have it, then what's the point? What benefit do they offer? um I think also, sadly, that's ah combined with a political, cultural hostility towards difference. um that folks who are trying to speak up for their communities and drawing from different faith traditions to do that are then seen ah incredibly negatively or even in a hostile way. think there's a, the irony of this is that in that confidence that we proclaim, there's this fear of like, well, if someone else tells me about their faith, then ah they might convince me. And then what am I gonna do? What am I going to do? ah And I think, you know, our faith shouldn't be so caught in the whims ah of argumentation that it would sway the confidence and even more the sense of the divine or the experience, the relationship we have ah with God, that we should be able to, in confidence, engage with other folks in a way that we can even just listen. um and listen to others and not have this presumption of I'm the only one with the wisdom, the eternal truth, and so I'm going to speak and speak and speak until you accept it or you believe it and instead say I'm gonna take a seat, I'm going to listen to the wisdom and the perspective and the imagination of the world that these other traditions have and see how it maps on to my own um and see where there are spaces. that can work together. I think those spaces are abundant. uh If we're willing to stop and listen and ah genuinely try to understand what another person fervently believes in their own tradition. Yeah, that's so powerful and so true. I am kind of curious though, like the majority of your book and the majority of our discussion we've been talking about, the importance of expanding the table, really trying to reach across theological, maybe traditional lines. But it's like, and I think you touched a little bit on this, like we live in a society now where we have people that have a hard time just viewing others as human. So it's like, what has worked for you to kind of help navigate conversations to help bring people to the table? Yeah, I say a lot in the book that what will bring people to the table um is a shared desire to know one another. There are folks inevitably in every community who will not want to join the table and who ah it is not, I suppose it is not my task to drag people to the table kicking and screaming ah so they can see, you know, the good thing that's at work. Instead, it's to find the folks who are looking for a table, so to speak. um and saying there's one present, we just have to sit down and join. um Especially in Christianity, I think there's, because Christianity is so well resourced, because it's a dominant tradition in the United States, we can do basically whatever we'd like to do to help others without having to extend beyond our own tradition. um Churches are well equipped, or they can find other churches or other believers. There's foundations that support and fund Christian organizations. um A lot of smaller traditions don't have that benefit. They have historically had to work across lines of religious difference to cultivate a common good in their community. And so for Christians, I think we only have to look for the table and we will find it abundantly. um But the only way that we will look is if we desire the table, that we actually want to show up and be alongside others in the world um and to work together towards a shared flourishing. So I think the key to the table is cultivating a desire um to love our neighbors, which I believe should be rooted in the Christian tradition. It should be rooted in our faith that this is what God calls us to. um And now of all times is a incredible moment to do that um and to join with others in a time of deep anxiety and despair and frustration to find other folks who have deep hope and who want to seek the good of the whole. Yeah, my encouragement is always just to look and to try to find the table in your community. I really, really, really appreciate that. So the thesis in your book and what you're doing is presenting this vision of a uh hyper-localized, almost um application of neighbor love. And I really like that. So it means that the people within proximity of me, we're bringing it local, like we are going to be intentional about or care for them and even inviting them to the shared table. So let's say like, and you had me convinced of this importance. And so now how do we, for the person listening, they're wondering, well, this is awesome. How do we do this? Like, as I go and invite my neighbor and they don't, they have a no soliciting sign on their, you know, on their door and they don't like when people ring their doorbell and there's a ring camera there that's gonna tell me to go away or whatever. No, I'm just gonna. But it's hard to break cross boundaries. The guy on my neighbor on my left, I guess I'm looking at my left and I'm looking at my house, it's my right, whatever, but he's Sikh. And then I have other people in the neighborhood who are atheists. In my cul-de-sac, atheist or even some Christians, nothing, right? They don't really... have any kind of uh tradition. And all of this is going on around me and I need to cross these boundaries. Sometimes they're literally language and cultural boundaries, right? That's going to be hard. Like I've been invited to house blessings. I've never seen something like that before and it was unbelievable. It was awesome. I've gone to mosque em with my friend. And that was crazy because it was so close to me in proximity and yet it was so foreign to me, so different to me. This massive boundary that's not that far away from me physically but almost light years away from me, that's hyperbole, but socially and culturally. How do we... This is maybe easier said than done, maybe that's what I'm getting at. How do we do this for the persons listening and they're like, I like it, but I don't see how I can. Yeah, I mean, I think as you're pointing out, like it's slow work. There's, you know, I wish as someone who was introverted, who was, you know, my wife laughs, she laughs at this book in the best way of like, you need to do a better job of being, becoming a neighbor to our neighbors. ah Cause I'm the guy who, you know, walks down the street and keeps my head down with, you know, walking my dog and, you know, your neighborhood sounds a lot more. ah diverse than mine. have, ah I know of my neighbors, I have a police officer who lives across the street, which has its own complications and the neighbors to the right of me. think we likely politically very much disagree based on our interactions. And on the left is ah a widow who the community, the neighborhood works to help. ah It'd be really great if it was this efficient, like, let me put a fire in your mailbox. You know, we're all just gonna find this table, we're gonna sit at it and find something good for our community. And instead, I think it's what you're mentioning, which is like, it's the slow work of, all right, there's a house blessing. I don't know these people and I don't know what this all entails, but I'm just gonna show up and I'm gonna, at best I'm gonna, yeah. if they're inviting me, they must want me to be there or feel like it's, yeah, so yeah, go ahead. Yeah, and that there's, at the very least, there's something to learn about how a different community or even a different family ah treats, you know, what it means to have a home and what role the home plays in their life. um I also, you know, in the book, I mention often the potluck, like I'm a sucker for a good potluck. I think there's something incredibly ah symbolically powerful, but also just physically powerful. um The table I talk about in the book is a neutral ground often in that we show up with a shared need and that's we're all hungry. And so we start with that. And from there, we move into conversation and dialogue and start to address some of our differences. But first we find that we have a, we find what we have in common, even if it's a simple thing like, I really like mac and cheese. It's like, I do too. We're both gonna, know. Tick some mac and cheese and we're going to eat it together and make some small talk. And then, what's your name and what's your name? And then all of a sudden, you know something about someone that you wouldn't have known otherwise. But again, it's slow work. That conversation may never amount to anything of deep social significance, but maybe it cultivates the beginnings of a relationship or a smile the next time you see each other. I think there's a demand for efficiency. And the work of neighbor love, the work of cultivating a common good is slow and tedious work because people are complicated and relationships are not linear. let alone, you know, the reason that my vision of the common good is so local is that these universalized appeals to the common good don't mean anything. They're the appeals that I heard that didn't include me. And yet they were supposed to be like the common good for all of us. ah And so that's why I really want to dig into loving and knowing your neighbors in such a way that you can begin to imagine what is a shared good between us across our differences, across, you know, the things that would otherwise keep us apart. What is something that we share? And often it's, I want my community to be safe. I want there to be a stop sign on a busy road. ah I want my kids to be able to, you know, have a free space to. run around and play and to have other kids to play with, or maybe even a playground within walking distance. These are all local common goods that our communities can work towards. And so it's slow work, it's tedious work, but I think it's the work that God is calling us to. Is there uh a case study or real life scenario you could use to kind of illustrate that this vision you have, the vision that you put into writing the book is actually workable, like in the real world? um like, just give us the case study of how you know that everything you wrote here is actually doable. Yeah, I think it plays out. I think that the benefit and the negative of it playing out on a local level is that a lot of the case studies are couched in sociological research and graphs and statistics. um I've seen this play out in my own life as I've moved to Milwaukee three years ago. um Just last night, I was at a dinner church with the church community that I'm a part of called the Kairos Collective. ah The pastor of it is Mark, who I mentioned in the first chapter. a long time community organizer in Milwaukee who later in life went ah to seminary, got ordained in the PC USA and started this church community that is ah trying to do church differently ah than the typical Sunday morning fashion. instead, the first Wednesday of every month, we have a dinner together. it's very, you know, in the uh imagination of the book, like it's a potluck, you know, folks are bringing different food and joining together. um And it's available to the community and folks show up across lines of difference and there is a message preached and there's food eaten together and small group conversation. um Last night we partnered with ah a church called Zao MKE, which is a predominantly LGBTQ church that is going through a really difficult time in this past year, um feeling a deep sense of unsafety, ah a threat to what it would mean to have. all of these folks gathering together in a shared space, um folks who have different statuses of documentation ah and gathering in this very public way and what that might mean. And so they joined us last night for dinner and we had an incredible turnout of folks. We meet in the back room of a diner that's close by to my house. And um certainly all the folks there did not. agree on matters of sexuality and inclusion, um or theologically, I'm sure, ran the gamut of progressivism to conservatism and everything in between. ah And yet, task as a church was to come alongside these folks and say, let's create a space for us to talk about this and to work together to build um the beginnings of a strong relationship. as as Zao MKE moves into a new season of figuring out what church means for their congregation. um And so that even last night was a, you know, the book manuscript I wrapped up, you know, a while ago, and now we're on our way to publication. But time and time again, these examples across the city of local gatherings where folks are coming together across lines of difference in ways that you would think this is going to be something of a train wreck. You know, how could these people ah stand to have a meal together despite their disagreements. And instead you just find that when folks are confronted with the reality of another person and not a digital avatar or social media handle, and when people become human, that this work of neighbor love starts to become apparent of. see, when you see someone in the fullness of their humanity, um which I think so much of our politics on all sides is trying to do less and less of. um we're confronted with the opportunity to love others. And my hope is that for Christians, um that command to love becomes apparent in these spaces. But the task is to get everyone together in these ways. Man, I love that example, truly, because I was even thinking I was the reason I had a little bit of delay there as I was like even daydreaming about how something like that could happen at my church. Like some like going out and inviting, like we have a community dinner, like River City Underground is my church and we have, we meet in Richmond, Virginia. We have a dinner, a community dinner every first Saturday of the month. And it's amazing to see people come there, the differences of people that are there, including people from the LGBTQ community that I know and some I'm related to, others are friends of those I'm related to, and they all attend the church, especially on these community dinners. They don't like maybe the preaching as much, although they will come for that sometimes. And I'm not offended. I get it. But then they will a lot of times come to this community dinner. And that sense of community is so huge. I I absolutely love it. And I wanted to touch on something. This is basically my second to last question, because we're going to give you a chance to sell what you're doing and everything, right? Tell them where they can get all the stuff. But when you talk about these four practices, compassion, resonance, lamentation, accompaniment, I want to think about lamentation for a moment with you because it just makes me think of this idea of grieving with those who grieve. And I had a good friend, a Muslim friend. um who lost uh a child and uh I attended the funeral. And um it was probably top five most profound experiences of my life. um And I just was thinking about like, man, if I didn't have like that sense of I'm going to cross this boundary and share this very universal human experience of grief, you know? Like there's no, like that crosses every boundary. When you see someone in the grief of losing their child, there is no human boundary in culture that that doesn't affect and that that doesn't cross. And it was like, I felt so close. Maybe I was affected by the profound sense of humanity. In that moment that we truly share humanity. Like this guy, I, I, I can sit in the trenches with him. It doesn't matter that he's has a different view of the world than I do. And so I would love for you to speak on like, this let us know lamentation. And I know that that's not exactly the same thing as grieving, but it is a part of it. em Yeah, let us know why that's so important. Yeah, I mean, think you've expressed it better than I do in that the... The work of lamentation is deeply human. ah I think it's deeply Christ-like. You know, I think this gets into like, in Christ's incarnation, he laments. ah If anyone, we could say like, has a view of the future or no, Christ knows Lazarus is going to rise again, and yet he weeps. And he sits in the lamentation of his friend's passing. um I think we're so quick to jump over lament because it's inefficient, ah because it's messy. And yet that... m I don't like that I'm, I have tears and it's embarrassing. feels awkward, you know? Yeah, and yet this is like where, this is the deep humanity that neighbor love is supposed to meet. It is more than fine to have the surface level, you know, loving our neighbors in joyful times and finding kind of superficial ways to be with one another. But the true, I think, being with one another is in lament. It is in tears, it's in hardship. ah Yeah, sitting with people in their grief. As you mentioned too, even the idea of neighborliness and there's a vulnerability to it and an uncomfortability ah when your neighbors can overhear the fights you're having with your family and this and that and when something goes wrong. um hard to put on a mask when they're that close in proximity. Yeah, and it's deeply vulnerable to do that. And yet that's where the common good finds its roots. ah And that's where it's lasting. um And that's where I think, I think that's where God wants us to be. And yet so much of our society, so much of our world and the demand to continue moving and going at a pace that's inhuman um doesn't want us to do. And yet when we stop and slow down and take a minute for that, ah in lament, as the scriptures do. mean, we the book of Lamentations as a pause to lament the destruction of a city and what that means. ah I think that is the truly slow, I mean, as you mentioned, the slow work of building a common good ah is not the efficiency of jumping straight into what do we do, but first figuring out who we are ah to one another. uh I think lamentation and grief are a huge part of that. Yeah, I really, really, really love that. um What's your hope for the book? Obviously, you wanted it to have an impact and make a difference. So what's that difference? then maybe you can, after you've answered that, just let people know where they can get it and how they can follow you. Yeah, absolutely. ah I mean, my hope for the book is that people will take a second, a minute, a day to, and I'm speaking to myself, come out of their shell and see the people around them as people. think there's a way in which we get caught up in the going on of the world, that people become something of a shadow that we pass by and we don't recognize. um And there's something beautiful when we're arrested out of that. um And that's what the hope of this book is, um is to say that the common good begins in your neighborhood. um So take a walk and smile at your neighbors. ah Join a meal train at your church and serve someone who just had a kid or maybe who is in a stage of grief. ah Volunteer at a food pantry and decenter your own, you know. uh self-narrative and just serve others in a small way. um You know, go to your local uh goudwara and go have langar. It's a free meal, ah you know, that your local uh Sikh temple will put on and it's delicious and it's wonderful and people are kind. um I think the hope is that this book in a beautiful, hopefully beautiful way, can encourage folks to come out of their shell to see others as truly human and to develop a holy and sacred curiosity to how we might live together in a community and a neighborhood that wants to see everyone flourish and everyone feel loved and feel a sense of belonging and care with one another. um I think if we do that, we will soon find that God is already at work in that. That's the hope of the book. You can get it wherever books are sold. um Erdmann's has it up on their website, on Amazon, on Bookstore, on Barnes and Noble, all of those things. You can request it at your local library. I found out just this week that an audiobook will be on the way to you. so hopefully that makes it more accessible to folks. And so I'm really excited for that. ah And there's only there's as we started the conversation with, ah there's not many Elmer Petermans in the world. And so ah I'm on. all the social medias, ah especially on Instagram, and trying to get, know, whatever TikTok is, ah trying to figure that out as well. And we'll love to engage and follow folks there. Well, thanks so much, Amar. This was like a great conversation and it's really awesome to have this time with you. Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate you both making the time for it. Absolutely. It was our pleasure. And to our viewers and our listeners, guys, thanks for joining us for another episode of Faithful Politics Podcast. Make sure that you subscribe, make sure you like, make sure you do the things that hack the algorithm. Also, we have a sub stack and a Patreon. We're going to try to put links in there. I need to send you the link, by the way, well, of the Patreon. And we need to put it in the description notes, but you guys check that out. We'll also have a Mars book. in there as well as his other information. So check that out, guys. And until next time, keep your conversations not right or left but up. See you then.