The Biggest Table

Host Andrew Camp welcomes Amar Peterman, a constructive/public theologian, to discuss Peterman’s forthcoming book, "Becoming Neighbors: the Common Good Made Local" (Eerdmans), releasing March 12. Amar argues the common good must be built locally by actually knowing and loving the people across the street, rather than assuming a universal or national common good. Using the potluck table as the book’s guiding metaphor, Peterman contrasts potluck with the “melting pot,” emphasizing that people bring distinct “dishes” (stories, beliefs, traditions) that can be appreciated alongside one another in a shared, community-owned space where everyone is both host and guest. They address why interfaith engagement matters, warning that a “common good” good only for one group becomes tyranny, Christian nationalism, or authoritarianism. Drawing on Augustine’s “use and enjoyment,” Peterman cautions against using neighbors or the table instrumentally and argues neighbors are to be enjoyed as ends in themselves in God; he critiques control and domination as things wrongly treated as ends. Peterman outlines practices of neighbor love—compassion, humility, translation, resonance (via Hartmut Rosa), lament, and accompaniment (via Paul Farmer, Partners in Health, and Gustavo Gutiérrez), presenting accompaniment as long-term, dignifying companionship rather than short-term charity. They discuss joy as intertwined with hope and resurrection while rejecting shallow “happy” platitudes that avoid lament, and they reflect on compost and gardening as slow, local work that can yield surprising “new life” beyond one’s control. 

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. He is the author of Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local (published by Eerdmans). His writing and research have been featured in Sojourners, Christianity Today, The Christian Century, The Fetzer Institute, The Berkley Forum, and The Anxious Bench. He also publishes regularly on his Substack, This Common Life.

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