Ecologies of Space in the Paradoxes of Technology and Community

Abstract

Technology has afforded both opportunities and threats that contrast the paradoxes of our world and impact our communities in ways that are often unintended. By considering the meanings and understandings of technology in the circumstances of church, seminary, and library, especially under stressful conditions, and providing a framework for individual and community adaptability and resilience, we allow for a hopeful, curative, and constructive way forward in our present world—to a place of meaningful belonging and participative community. The roles that theological libraries and churches play in adapting will reinforce the needs of the present and the strategies for the future of theological education itself—especially as we identify specific ecologies of space—those places that afford us the opportunity to restore and develop who we are as human beings and faith communities. Finally, we will look at all of this through the most unexpected lens of change and challenge confronting our world in the last six months—the lens of a world ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic and how this has altered our conversation.