Pilgrim Friending and the Place of Peace

Abstract

William Clough and Mark Ellingsen both explore the goods, harms, and challenges brought by a new powerful digital social media. Clough uses perspectives from social sciences, ethics, and Biblical theology--self and society in reciprocal relation through language, art, institution, and God’s friending Word. He urges caution, applying universal ethics centered in love of God and neighbor, and respect for facts and science. Ellingsen applies brain sciences to explain social media downsides and encourage a balance of good habits and activities. This essay relates their contributions to human subjective, moral, interpersonal, communal, and religious experience and traditions. Protection in a place of peace amid social media may be fostered by realizing aspects of human life and nature unseen through the optics of modern sciences, in “pilgrim friending” toward virtues such as forgiveness, chastity, humility, and diligence, trusting and following God’s Holy friending received through nature, solitude, prayer, Scripture, and a covenant community.