Unlikely Friends
How God Uses Boundary-Crossing Friendships to Transform the World
Edited by David W. Scott, Daryl R. Ireland, Grace Y. May and Casely B. Essamuah
Imprint: Pickwick Publications
Can something as simple as friendship have a transformative impact in a divided world? Through a series of richly textured historical portraits and reflections on personal experience, this book shows that boundary-crossing friendships in Christian mission have shaped theologies, built organizations and partnerships, facilitated mission work, and changed attitudes and ways of thinking. This is true in settings as varied as eighteenth-century French women's work, twentieth-century urban Boston, colonial India, the Jim Crow South, and twentieth-century rural Congo. In all these settings and more, friendship has mattered.
Boundary-crossing friendships are, however, not easy. Despite their power, such friendships are complicated by race, gender, ability, class, nationality, and other elements of identity, as this book also demonstrates. Friendships are not immune from the divisions in the world, nor a simple cure-all for them.
Still, friendship stands as a powerful testimony to the gospel. Therefore, the book calls for more attention to friendship in the study of mission history and more living out of friendship as a practice of mission. In this way, this book pays honor to Dr. Dana L. Robert as a pre-eminent mission scholar and exemplary friend and mentor to others in the fields of missiology and world Christianity.
David W. Scott is a mission theologian working for Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church.
Daryl R. Ireland is Research Assistant Professor of Mission and Associate Director of the Center for Global Christianity & Mission at Boston University.
Grace Y. May is Director of the Women’s Institute and Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at William Carey International University.
Casely B. Essamuah is Secretary of the Global Christian Forum.
Collectively, they have written and edited numerous books and articles on mission. All are former students of Dr. Dana L. Robert.
“At its core missiology is the study of transformation; its roots in the preaching of the gospel, its effects in history, and the means by which it occurs. Unlikely Friends honors Dana Robert by following a course she plotted in examining how friendship plays a role in transformation beyond personal relationships. It is a welcome addition and enlargement of the tools available to missiologists. And a fulsome relief from decades of focusing on ideological analysis that often loses sight of the human dimension of mission. At the least it should send us all back to the archives to re-examine friendships forgotten or ignored and quite possibly discover where transformation really begins.”
—Robert Hunt, Director of Global Theological Education, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University
“As one of Dana Robert’s early doctoral students, I have been blessed directly by her scholarship and intellect, care and companionship, for close to four decades. The authors’ contributions in this festschrift reflect the breadth and depth of her mentorship and faithfulness to companions on the way. Unlikely Friends is a fitting tribute to Dana Robert whose friendship has significantly advanced God’s mission of restoration and reconciliation in the academy and the global church.”
—Ian T. Douglas, Bishop, The Episcopal Church in Connecticut
“This remarkable collection honors and extends Dana Robert’s work on friendships in world Christianity—friendships that embrace diversity and transform societies. The authors present luminous narratives based in detailed research and vivifying the many faces of friendship. They reveal hidden histories as well as surprising transformations in widely different contexts, times of conflict and crisis, interfaith communities, culturally conflicted contexts, the transnational deaf community, and so much more. This book will inspire and transform you.”
—Mary Elizabeth Moore, Dean Emeritus and Professor of Theology and Education, Boston University School of Theology
“Sometimes simple truths have profound implications. That is the testimony of the essays in Unlikely Friends. Human friendships, which cross boundaries, are the crucible for understanding the practice of world mission. With skilled academic insight, these essays testify to the incarnational power of human relationships. These well-researched stories of friendship not only illumine the past, but also point the way forward, given the polarizing nature of modern cultures. Further, the wisdom found here suggests pathways for our ecumenical calling within world Christianity and beyond.”
—Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, member of the international committee for the Global Christian Forum
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