Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
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.
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- Explores how the common good can be cultivated through the Christian practice of neighbor love
- Encourages Christians to engage in mutual listening and learning with their neighbors at a “shared table”
- Offers tangible practices of neighbor love, such as compassion and accompaniment
Table of Contents
Foreword by James K. A. Smith
Introduction
1. Coming to the Table
2. Joining God in the Neighborhood
3. The Practices of Neighbor Love
4. A Community of Builders
5. We Live as Neighbors
Acknowledgments
Works Cited
Index of Subjects
Index of Scripture
Rooted in the conviction that God’s purposes unfold in our neighborhoods, Amar Peterman calls readers to focus close to home, reminding us that faithful citizenship begins with knowing and serving our neighbors, especially across lines of difference, and that the common good is cultivated through incarnate engagement that reflects God’s care for the world.
——Stephanie Summers, CEO of The Center for Public Justice
- Title: Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local
- Authors: Amar D. Peterman, James K. A. Smith
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Print Publication Date: 2026
- Logos Release Date: 2025
- Pages: 144
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- ISBNs: 9781467468244, 9780802884121, 0802884121, 146746824X
- Resource ID: LLS:9781467468244
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-08-21T01:05:13Z