Theological Anthropologies of Connectivity: Spirit, Context and Toxic Whiteness in 21st Century North America

“…such an anthropological framework help us to identify the operation of toxic whiteness in our lives, and help us to discern possible roads to healing? ”

Team Members/Contributors

Elena Lloyd-Sidle University of Chicago Divinity School Contact Me

About this dissertation fellowship

Adopting the premise that the roots of racism within us are a spiritual problem which we must address if we are to live holistic lives, this project explores how a robust theological anthropology might help us to see the deep connections between spirituality and social justice work in our own highly particular paths of healing and transformation. I begin with the methodological assertion that, in tending to our contemporary justice-related concerns — borne as they are out of the reductionisms of modern Western anthropology and its concomitant dehumanizations — we would do well to consider the resources of premodern theological anthropology. John Scotus Eriugena’s magnum opus Periphyseon (On Natures) articulates one of the more robust and systematic theological anthropologies of premodern period. This expansive, systematic early-medieval treatise is a source that can expand both our anthropological framework and our understanding of the connections between spirit and context. By bringing Eriugena’s panoramic vision in conversation with contemporary norms and sources, this project aims to develop a multi-dimensional theological anthropology able to speak to our spiritual needs and resources as well as to the demands of our context, and explores the connectivity between the two. As this framework upholds the necessary place of particularity in both our anthropology and the practice of our faith lives, we then turn to the North American context and a particular, pernicious anthropological problem that has long haunted us, namely toxic whiteness. We examine toxic whiteness through the lens of this theological anthropology in the hope of illuminating in-roads to healing and transformation.