W. Clark Gilpin, Margaret E. Burton Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Christianity and Theology

“Anthropomorphism: Human Connection to a Universal Society”

Time: 12:30pm, Monday, February 22nd, 2010
Place: Swift Hall, Room 400
Food: Snacks provided, feel free to bring your lunch
Paper: Copies available by emailing kwagner@uchicago.edu

Abstract:  The human motivation for social connection extends beyond the boundary of the human in the (often misunderstood) religious language of anthropomorphism.  In this chapter, an infamous sermon from colonial America—“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”—is used to illustrate the way anthropomorphic language works to incorporate human society in a web of ethical obligations that connect to the natural environment and, by imaginative extension, to the universe as a whole.