Capturing the Beauty of Friendship

A Review of Fierce Tenderness by Mary E Hunt

There is a lot of discussion of friendship right now. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General published an over 80 page report on what was labeled “the loneliness epidemic”.¹ The central argument was that Americans lack of community and connections was leading to negative health outcomes. With the publication of the report, there have been many articles written, podcasts produced, and general discussion on why many of us don’t have the friends and connections that we need. 

The discussion of friendship might be even more alive in queer Christian and Side B spaces in particular. Many of us are relationship pioneers. We know where we want to be but we are without a map of how to get there. The desire for intimate and close companionship is real but this important question remains. How do you find that in a way that doesn’t compromise your convictions? 

Fierce Tenderness: A Feminist Theology of Friendship by Mary E Hunt offers some guideposts for this uncharted relational journey. Hunt’s book was published over 30 years ago in 1991. I find that there is something helpful about reading authors who think slightly outside of my framework. Hunt is not writing about our current moment but can offer insights into current debates. She describes herself as “a white, Catholic, U.S based, middle class, upper educated lesbian feminist woman with access to travel, study, and meaningful work.”² She doesn’t have a “side” in the current debates - What is romance? Can non-sexual relationships too closely mirror marriage? What does it mean to be gay and Chrisitian? - but her thoughts have been helpful in shaping my own. 

Hunt enters the discussion of friendship in a similar place as many of us. The 1960s had revolutionized and broken the old pathways of relationship building. There were new relational opportunities but unclear guidelines of how to love well.³  Her aim is to convince readers to try out new social norms that have their foundation in friendship and not coupling.⁴ Fierce Tenderness is unique because Hunt focuses on the relationships of women with other women. A lot of discussion of friendship, especially in Christian theology, starts with men and their experiences. 

Even a lot of Side B writing starts here. Discussions of same sex friendships have their starting point in men’s relationships with other men. Even Wesley Hill’s thoughtful book on friendship- Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian - takes its cues from Christian thinkers like Aelred of Rievaulx who are grounded in the experiences of men. Importantly philosophers of friendship - like St. Augustine - didn’t even believe women had the capacity for true spiritual friendship. One reason they speak with such eloquence about men-men friendship is because they didn’t believe men could be a true friend with a woman.

Hunt doesn’t intend to write something to complement men’s experiences of friendship but “refresh friendship in general by starting with women’s lives.”⁵ She argues that “women’s friendships contain previously unexplored and unappreciated elements that reveal something about the human condition.”⁶ She writes that her work is not for lesbian women only but it is important to note that it is written by a lesbian woman.⁷ I would note here that Hunt’s gender politics is not within our current debates and she speaks often of binary gender. This is not to say that she cannot provide insights into relationships between women-men and men-men or any other gender configuration. But, it is special and important that she takes women’s friendships with other women as her building blocks. 

Hunt’s friendship ethic is wrapped up in the phrase “fierce tenderness.” Attention is a key word when attempting to grasp the idea of fierce tenderness. Attention is the idea of seeing and being seen. Hunt describes how we all want attention though we can fear what it will reveal. I can truly want to be known while also “shy[ing] away, uncomfortable with the intensity” of another person truly seeing me.⁸ 

[Hunt] call[s] friendships "fierce" because of the intensity of attention. It

can be hard to be known so well, to be understood and transparent to friends who pay attention. Likewise, we all crave the tenderness that only those who love us can offer. Tenderness does not affect the ferocity, but it is the quality of care and nurture that only friends share. Of course a care giver can be tender in touch, but only friends are tender in feeling.⁹

Hunt offers a new model for understanding friendship based on interviews with women, literature, art, music, and her own life experience. The goal of the model is to provide a framework for evaluating friendships and understanding your own experience in relationships. She makes clear that:

it is not a magic formula for making things so. Nor is it a way to confine or limit experiences. It simply helps out in the search for ways to live in right relation by clarifying and pulling together various elements¹⁰  

She argues that a new framework is needed because almost all Western Christian ethical reflections on friendship are based on the insights of Aristotle.¹¹ Aristotle’s model of friendship is that there are three levels of friendship: utility-based, pleasure-based, and character-based. The first level consists of acquaintances that are useful to you. The second level are companions who we enjoy being with and know us well, but who are few and far between. The third level, the highest level, are friendships based on mutual goodness. You may only have one or two in a lifetime.¹²

According to Hunt, the hierarchical nature of the model doesn’t fully reflect the experiences of women. Yes women often have “best friends” that are more intimate than others, but women’s survival often requires a wide circle of close friends.¹³ Her research suggests that women focus their concern on the quality of each relationship and how they fit in the larger picture of their life rather than focusing on number, duration, and level of their friends. 

So, Hunt offers a model that takes into account these different experiences. Here is what it looks like. ¹⁴

There are four different elements: love, power, embodiment, and spirituality. Each of these elements are present in every friendship and “when all are present in harmony we see a friendship that works well.”¹⁵  If there is stress, tension, or a threat of a friendship breaking off, it is because one of these elements are off in some way. 

Hunt describes love as 

“an orientation toward the world as if my friend and I were more united than separated, more at one among the many than separate and alone. Love is the intention to recognize this drive toward unity and to make it increasingly so over time. Love is the commitment to deepen in unity without losing the uniqueness of the individuals at hand. It is the force of attraction that generates something new out of a unity that is somehow separate from and beyond the two.” ¹⁶

She describes power as “the ability to make choices for ourselves, for our dependent children, and with our community.”¹⁷ Even if we deny power dynamics they are always present in relationships. Both social/structural power and personal/individual power come into play. Social/structural power relates to the racism, classism, ageism, sexism, and heterosexism that we all participate in because of our culture. Personal/individual power takes into account personal charisma and people with strong personalities. It also accounts for self confidence.¹⁸ Personal power when placed within a social structure is what Hunt simply calls power.  

Embodiment refers to the fact that “virtually everything we do and who we are is mediated by our bodies.”¹⁹ Hunt offers sex as a form embodiment but also points to other forms like eating together, cuddling, exercise, watching movies, praying, sleeping, and many more. She makes clear that “one does not check one’s body at the door when one enters into friendship. And what are friends for if not to delight and be delights for the senses?”²⁰  

Finally, spirituality in the model refers to “making choices about the quality of life for oneself and one’s community”. ²¹It is attending to the things that matter in concrete ways like faith and religiously based social change.  

Hunt argues that this new model better maps onto the friendships women have with each other and also could be a better model to understand friendship in general. One reason is because it makes clear that friendship is available to everyone.²² It doesn’t assume a priority of one relationship over the other. You can be a friend to your wife, your group of college friends, your child, your mother, and even a whole community. Some friendships will have a greater intensity of the four elements but they aren’t by design in a separate friendship category.  It allows for more than two people to be engaged in friendship and takes into account celibate commitments lived out in community.²³ So, neither the heterosexual marriage nor the homosexual couple are the pinnacle type of relationship.²⁴

Another positive of the model is that it makes clear that friendships are dynamic. Each element adds to the simplicity and messiness of them.²⁵ It allows for friendships to change without them being less real. The elements in a friendship can become less intense without the friendship being less important. At different points in your life you have different capacities for love, power, embodiment and spirituality but that doesn’t change the importance of your relationship. The best friend you had as a kid can be just as important to your friendship history as the partner you currently have even if the intensity of the relationship is different.

Finally, the model shows that “friendships are qualitative experiences, not quantitative ones.”²⁶ The model importantly doesn’t measure anything but draws attention to what already exists so that friends can intensify the experience.²⁷ It rejects longevity as a mark of a real friendship. Hunt maintains that time can intensify a friendship but time itself doesn’t make a relationship more or less significant. 

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I truly appreciate this friendship model from Hunt. I hope that this review of Fierce Tenderness offers you some thoughts to consider as you travel your own journey of cultivating fierce tenderness in your friendships. Is focusing on the elements of love, power, embodiment, and spirituality helpful in understanding your friendships?

Because of the length of the book and Hunt’s complex ideas, I’ve broken up this review into two parts. In my next piece, I will use Hunt’s model to reflect on why some of my current friendships work and why a significant friendship in my life dissolved. I’ll also use Hunt’s thoughts to delve into some of the questions currently being asked about friendship in Side B spaces. 

1. https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/05/03/new-surgeon-general-advisory-raises-alarm-about-devastating-impact-epidemic-loneliness-isolation-united-states.html

2. Mary Hunt, Fierce Tenderness: A Feminist Theology of Friendship (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991), 11.

3. Ibid, 2

4. Ibid, 22

5. Ibid, 11

6. Ibid, 17

7. Ibid, 3

8. Ibid, 22

9. Ibid

10. Ibid, 90

11. Ibid, 93

12. Ibid, 95

13. Ibid

14. Ibid, 99

15. Ibid, 100

16. Ibid

17. Ibid

18. Ibid, 102

19. Ibid

20. Ibid, 104

21. Ibid, 107

22. Ibid, 106

23. Ibid

24. Ibid

25. Ibid, 108

26. Ibid

27. Ibid, 109