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Ecologies of Space in the 
Paradoxes of Technology and 
Community
Adaptability and Resilience in Libraries, 
Churches, and Theological Schools in a 
COVID-19 World
Anthony J. Elia, Southern Methodist University

ABSTR AC T: 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 circum-
stances of church, seminary, and library, especially under stressful 
conditions, and provide a framework for individual and commu-
nity 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 theologi-
cal 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.

A POST-COVID PREFACE

The idea for this paper came well before the onslaught of the COVID-
19 pandemic. The entire idea of technology and community as it 
relates to churches and theological education and librarianship was 
of interest for some time and the concerns for discussion and consid-
eration were relevant for some time. With the rise of a new working 



Papers and Presentations  19

environment in a COVID and post-COVID world, we are pressed with 
a new framework within which to consider and think critically. The 
demand for work and study and communications to be done almost 
strictly through online platforms, especially videoconferencing like 
Zoom, and to some extent so-called hybrid environments, has made 
it imperative for us to consider these issues immediately and, in fact, 
with a greater sense of urgency. What many of us may have only felt 
fleetingly in the past has been put forcefully in front of us by the pres-
ent world of Zoom meetings: it has forced us to recognize both the 
positives and negatives of telecommuting—the isolation, quarantine, 
and the virtual world of representation online, something that both 
humanizes and de-humanizes all at once the interpersonal spatial 
experience of education and theological experience.

INTRODUCTION: A MEMORY OF LIFE WITHOUT TECHNOLOGY

A few years ago, I drove through southern Indiana, deep into the 
Hoosier National Forest, and made my way to a secluded hilltop 
hamlet, not that far from the meandering Ohio River. The isolated 
spot was its own cloistered oasis in the rugged and wooded coun-
tryside called Saint Meinrad Archabbey. By the time I’d arrived at 
the guesthouse, checked in, and had a modest lunch, I found that my 
cellphone reception was failing and that my room had no modern 
technological amenities—no television, no radio, no phone. I was in 
a simple room, quiet, with two single beds, a reading chair, lamp, and 
a desk. There were ornaments of the cross on the wall. I had a couple 
books with me and a simple window looked out onto a modestly slop-
ing hill spotted with tall white pines. As I settled in, I was ever more 
keenly aware of the quietude of the space and place as a whole. I 
ventured into the halls, which were also quiet, and went outside to 
walk around the grounds, which were lush green with gardens and 
full of majestic trees of all sorts. I went to the chapel and the abbey 
church itself. It was quiet everywhere, save for an occasional echo of 
a few people chatting in the distance—over on a bench, there on an 
outdoor patio, inside on some steps. I recall this time because of the 
distinct separation from technology in my life at that moment—the 
amenities, which we take so much for granted and which seem to be 
almost at the core of our modern existence. It was in this moment no 
more than a handful of years ago that I began to think about the real 
relationships between technology and the fundamental aspects of 



20  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

our life—how we perceive and understand the world; how we inter-
act and communicate with other people; how we engage or disengage 
with our surroundings; how we are imprinted by the technologi-
cal and digital social media that not only influence our quotidian 
thinking, but compel us into distinct and often Pavlovian behaviors 
to which we seldom admit. Additionally, the role that technology 
plays is not singular: it may enhance many things, like connectivity, 
speed, and communications, but it also has a side that, intentionally 
or not, moves us as members of multiple and diverse communities 
into mental, physical, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional spaces 
for which many of us are unprepared.

WHY IS THE HUMAN SO IMPORTANT?

The problems and paradox of technology and community are rooted 
in the nature of what it means to be human. We as people demand 
experience and interaction with other human beings in order to 
exist.  The role of technology is that which mediates—it mediates the 
self, the human with the world around and outside us. It separates 
and extends the world away from us, while at the same time draw-
ing it closer, through replication or alteration of physical space (e.g., 
how does a video call on Skype or Zoom bring a person in a Beijing 
cafe into my living room in Dallas?). And the paradox is that it both 
creates a barrier to reality and invents the illusion of reducing physi-
cal space. Our ability to speak over telephones or internet connec-
tions, hearing the voices or seeing faces of our friends and loved 
ones is just that: an illusion of space. And even though it creates this 
connective presence, that presence is only so real—not wholly, physi-
cally real, but an experience of presence without presence. Because 
we are tactile, visceral, and physical beings, the embodiment of our 
essences without actual embodiment is the crux of this paradox. 
Even when we attempt to use such things as artificial intelligence (AI) 
or virtual reality (VR), they may enhance these experiences, fooling 
our brains into considering something truly present and real, but 
they are not. They are doppelgängers and effigies, figments of a sort. 
When a colleague recently spoke of all the new (VR) equipment avail-
able to create virtual classrooms where it felt like you were “in the 
room” with other students, I first thought that would be a fascinat-
ing exercise; but I also thought “why are we trying to replicate the 
real with the unreal?”



Papers and Presentations  21

The questions of the Church, then, are those that ask about theo-
logical anthropology: what is the person? What is the human? The 
questions of the ancient church were ones of presence, constitution, 
and nature of the human being. What was Jesus Christ, God, or the 
Holy Spirit after all? It depends on which church or theologian you 
speak to—from which denomination or tradition. What, then, might 
this carry over into the modern and post-modern world? What, for 
instance, might presence mean, especially in such things as commu-
nion, if it is done online, virtually? Is it bona fide or permissible? Is 
it real? Indeed, as COVID-19 spread around the globe, Christianity 
Today was already diving into the touchy subject in an article titled 

“Online Communion Can Still be Sacramental: The Bread and the 
Cup Zoomed for You” (Chris Ridgeway, March 27, 2020). The article 
notes some interesting statistics, including a PEW research study 
that was cross-denominational. Among American Protestant minis-
ters, 83% “agree that viewing a livestream is an acceptable option 
for the sick.” But why stop there? Everyone else seems to be going to 

“online” worship in this new age of COVID-driven liturgy. Of course, 
the problems arise around communion and the ideas of presence in 
the host. What is interesting in this piece is that the author discusses 
the issues and concerns of presence specifically, noting that “a daily 
digital culture has shaped our interactions to the point that human 
presence is not synonymous to physicality.”

Many people already recognized this before the COVID pandemic 
struck and had a plethora of opinions about what this meant. In fact, 
many writers on the subject found technology a complicated agent 
of change that could both help and hinder our own social develop-
ment—which we could extend to theological, ethical, and emotional 
development (see, for example, Combi 2016, who looks at “past and 
present” issues of digital technology and later the “problematic 
features” of digital natives, as well as Putnam 2000, Diamond 2019, 
Brownstein 2015, Antonucci 2017, and Boyle 2016). With the onset 
of the pandemic and the rapid need for a radical reworking of our 
educational, liturgical, and work environments, we have been forced 
to reconsider not simply the role of technology in our lives, but the 
question of its adaptability and how true or not our predictions were 
about digital and online environments. One of the primary outcomes 
of being forced into Zoom rooms for hours of disembodied meetings 
and classes is what is being called “Zoom Fatigue”—Julia Sklar at the 
National Geographic Magazine Online wrote an article titled “Zoom 

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/march-web-only/online-communion-can-still-be-sacramental.html
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/march-web-only/online-communion-can-still-be-sacramental.html
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/coronavirus-zoom-fatigue-is-taxing-the-brain-here-is-why-that-happens/


22  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

Fatigue is Taxing the Brain: Here’s Why That Happens,” in April 2020, 
which goes into the science of human cognition and adaptability to 
technological interfaces.

How, though, does this relate to the church, theological education, 
and theological libraries? And what are the intersecting points that 
are part of the larger questions at hand? Regardless of basic denomi-
national factors, churches, seminaries (or theological schools), and 
theological libraries are each interconnected to one another for 
the purpose of serving communities of faith. Prior to the COVID 
pandemic, many colleagues in the ministry and theology fields would 
have discussions about how technology would best serve the church 
and congregations. Every theological school that I have ever worked 
at or been a part of has had extensive conversations about the role 
that technology should play in teaching, learning, and the forma-
tion of clergy, and theological libraries have sought in many cases 
to be ahead of the curve on technological advances over the years—
whether document delivery, demand-driven acquisition, or even 
virtual reality tools, among others. Part of the question, though, is 
that many of these institutions—churches, seminaries, and librar-
ies—may be ahead of the game, while others are dreadfully far 
behind. Sometimes the church may have advances that outpace the 
seminary, or vice versa; or sometimes the library has advances that 
are more in line with the seminary, while the churches lag behind. 
In some cases, the issues in theological education are a result of a 
monoculture of tradition and content-driven focus that often shirks 
the advantages, advances, and dynamics of technological structures. 
In two decades of engaging with this topic, the theme has almost 
always been the same: technology is a “structure” that is a tertiary 
component subjugated by “content”—technology in itself is not seen 
as content. Yet, I would argue that if we were to look at technology as 
theology and theology as technology, each category would become 
both content and structure, and be more highly valued.

What this all means, then, is that in this triangulation of church/
school/library, the approaches and outcomes pre-COVID were in a 
holding pattern of complacency. Wherever we found the weakest 
points of this triadic structure, we would find the need to enhance 
technologies, communications, and outcomes—almost to a point 
where we were forever talking about “technology” and “change” 
without being bold innovators and implementors of that change. But 
since March 2020 and the rise of the global pandemic, our challenge 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/coronavirus-zoom-fatigue-is-taxing-the-brain-here-is-why-that-happens/


Papers and Presentations  23

has become slightly different—the fact that nearly every church, 
theological school, and library has had to close temporarily or have 
reduced hours or go to flex schedules, and in some cases had to lay 
off staff. This has required everyone to take technology seriously. 
This does not just mean “pay attention” to something a bit more—it 
means that it is integral to the way we operate, the way we perform, 
and the way we live. We also have begun to realize that technology 
is neither as easy or as demonstrably curative of our human ills as 
we may have thought. There are things, including the “Zoom fatigue,” 
that we were unaware of for the most part. We have come to recog-
nize the physical, physiological, psychological, and even emotional 
and spiritual pitfalls of being forced into these new spaces of digital 
human interaction.

Like many things in life, though, there are positives and nega-
tives to all of this, and we make our way forward while negotiating 
these spaces and concerns. Pre-COVID, almost no one would have 
considered having “online church” with elderly relatives, who had 
suppressed vision or hearing loss—it was impractical, if not incon-
ceivable. Yet, now not only is this becoming commonplace, there is 
anecdotal evidence that some church attendance has gone up—for 
there is no excuse for “not leaving your house” now. Though, of 
course, there are those who don’t have internet at home, which is 
another issue altogether. For some, there is safety in home-based 
digital worship. For many introverts, the idea of distanced partici-
pation is attractive—a way to be amid the blessed community but 
remaining in the comfort zone of one’s controlled home environ-
ment. A few months ago, I was set to give a few lectures in Dallas to 
a retirement group at a religious institution—I would have never 
imagined thinking it could work on Zoom, and yet that is what we 
had to do, and it had more participants and more questions than 
usual, many of them “Zooming” in from both the east and west coasts.

There are indeed many surprises to what has happened in 2020—
many are, in fact, positive. But there are the unforeseeable aspects 
of online theological encounters, the manipulation of digital space, 
and the psychological warping of our senses that come from our 
extended engagement with other people in virtual spaces. One aspect 
of our work in theological schools and libraries, which many people 
working in offices, higher education, finance, law, and other similar 
fields today may likely be experiencing, is this very issue of space—or, 
how this continuation of human presence in virtual form is holisti-



24  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

cally affecting the human mind and body. Believe it or not, there is a 
long theological tradition that has dealt with this topic.

WHAT IS SPACE AFTER ALL?

In 1977, the philosopher Yi-Fu Tuan published a groundbreaking 
work on the themes of spatial embodiment titled Space and Place: The 
Perspective of Experience. In it, he covers areas including the role of 
space and place in the mind of children, the concept of crowds and 
crowding, our spatial abilities and how that relates to human knowl-
edge, awareness of architecture and its impression upon our cogni-
tion, time and intimacy in spaces, our attachment to homelands, and 
how the visibility of spaces creates distinctions of place.  What should 
not be surprising, then, is that the author begins this work with an 
introduction on Paul Tillich’s theological roots and how they were 
informed by his childhood attachments to open visions of the Baltic 
Sea. We may not readily say that the Baltic Sea formed one of the 
most highly regarded works of 20th-century Protestant constructive 
thought—Tillich’s Systematic Theology—but we cannot ignore that 
we are all informed by both space and place in the way that we think, 
read, write, and act in our lives. We are forged in experience, as Yi-Fu 
Tuan’s work expresses, and, as most experiences are in the world (in 
contrast to dreams, for example), we are formed by that existence. 
Yet, since the emergence of the internet, the ideas of virtual spaces 
in relation to experiences and realities have long been considered, 
questioned, and debated. What, for example, does it mean “to expe-
rience” something virtually, digitally, or in an online environment? 
What is the difference between physical space and cyber-space? This 
is rhetorical, to some degree, so readers can answer in any number of 
ways. But this is to say that the elements of experience have taken on 
new turns and meanings in the last quarter-century or so. And now, 
because of a pandemic, we are forced to confront many of the ques-
tions like these that we hadn’t thought really necessary to wrestle 
with—especially in religious and theological communities.

What do we mean by space and place in our lives and world? 
What value do they hold for us and what meanings do they convey? 
And how might they play into the roles of theology, theological educa-
tion, and theological libraries? This is a salient point, because the 
question of space and place have deep theological importance to how 
we understand human connectivity to what we constitute as having 



Papers and Presentations  25

meaning. Human beings associate with space and place, giving these 
physical locales meaning—sometimes elevating the “three-dimen-
sionality” of our world to the sacred, creating sacred spaces. Houses 
of worship, chapels, tombs, sacred ground, memorials, monuments, 
and the earth itself constitute the array of the human attachments to 
the divine. So, our projections about space and place are not merely 
descriptions but transcendent environments that are informed by 
our very real human interactions in those dimensions. When we 
take real space and place away, when we “virtualize” spaces, some-
thing is lost.

The question of the sacred has been debated since time imme-
morial, and in the last few centuries by scholars of religion. In some 
cases, we can describe sacred space as a location that mediates 
between the profane, the living, and the sanctified, divine. But one 
might also argue that “sacred space” is the place on earth where we 
encounter one another and find in that encounter the physical pres-
ence of our breathing, pulsing, living humanity—in some ways like 
the approach Martin Buber took in his works, most notably Ich und 
Du (I and Thou; 1923), where divinity and sacredness was in other 
people and the encounters we had with them. Our essences of being 
human are tied up in the physical—being is what it means to be us, to 
be human. When the craft of the ancient Greek techne, made famous 
by Heidegger, extends our humanity to a place that is both us and 
not us at the same time (as in a video-chat), we are creating distinc-
tions that echo the curious oddity of how the ancient Greeks played 
around with the origins of our souls and bodies (as Plato suggested). 
These philosophies influenced the dynamic and often confusing 
jumble of early Church debates about essence, being, and double-
nature. Our existence in Zoom (or “Zoomtopias” as I like to call them) 
is two-dimensional disembodied embodiment—which is to say, we 
are given the appearance of ourselves and our nature, but without 
actually being of anything. What would the Greeks or Patristic writ-
ers have said about all this today?

ECOLOGIES OF SPACE: REAL AND VIRTUAL 
What, then, are the ways forward for churches, theological schools, 
and libraries in the current environment? What are the trends, prac-
tices, and tips for consideration while we live through the uncer-
tainty of COVID-19? And how might we best negotiate this new 
world that requires us to work in this paradox of technology and 



26  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

community—where we are brought closer together but, at the same 
time, distanced from the real embodiment of our colleagues, friends, 
and families? What does it mean to have church, but not the usual 
church functions and fellowship in person? What does it mean to 
have semesters of classes and seminars and chapel online, but not 
take communion in person or share in the community meals and 
events that remind us of our humanness? What does it mean to 
have services of reference, circulation, and research in a theological 
library, but done completely through technological means, where 
patrons cannot do their work in the physical library?

When first approaching this topic, the suggestions I had 
included the development of better and more sophisticated prac-
tices of communication and community-building that interwove 
the networks of church to seminary to library. This meant that we 
should do what some colleagues have called “technology evange-
lism.” But, since the pandemic, some things have changed. I still 
believe that these considerations of technological evangelism ought 
to be pushed—bluntly, we need to talk about and do better at incor-
porating technology into every aspect of these communities. The 
difference, though, is that, since the spring of this year, we have been 
forced to think very differently about technology, about presence, 
and about what it means to live and interact in not just hybrid work 
and research environments but in all of our environments.

The questions that we now must progress toward are questions 
of balance. As we have moved into the technological, we recognize 
that our spaces and places require us to navigate and determine 
how well we can function as human actors in these very spaces and 
places. We are adapting to new environments in ways that we either 
thought were not previously possible or not desirable. But because 
the pandemic has demanded our behaviors change, we have come to 
a point where we are looking at ecologies of space. Ecology is gener-
ally defined as “the relationships between organisms (e.g. people) 
with one another and their physical surroundings.” As we have seen 
in this discussion, the world heretofore has considered its surround-
ings as “physical” until recent times, with the advent of “virtual” 
spaces. But we can extend the definition of ecology to include new 
surroundings, just as we have experienced this new idea of the non-
physical world of the internet.  

In these ecologies of space, we must continue to be active as indi-
viduals in the assessment and evaluation of what all spaces mean: 



Papers and Presentations  27

the physical church and the virtual church, the physical seminary 
and the virtual seminary, the physical library and the virtual library. 
These ecologies demand that we better understand the relation-
ships among communities and their environments—whatever those 
environments may be. If we consider how ecology proper has been 
studied and detailed, there are multiple levels of design: organismal 
ecology, population ecology, community ecology, and global ecology, 
for example. Applying the principles of such a design might help 
us, as individuals and communities, function better in our current 
circumstances. Furthermore, a consideration of what some scholars 
have considered a most important trait—resilience—may be what 
we must strive for most in this time of great stress and turmoil.  As it 
relates to global ecologies and ecosystems, the work of Brian Walker 
and David Salt (2006), titled Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosys-
tems and People in a Changing World, is one of the most prescient and 
relevant pieces of scholarship that may guide us in our present time. 

The principles for resilience are central to how we navigate 
through the COVID-19 pandemic and adapt accordingly, health-
fully, and holistically. Being resilient is absolutely necessary in a 
time when our worlds of the physical and virtual are colliding and 
uncertainty is prevalent in office spaces, meetings, and planning 
strategies. These principles from Walker and Salt include the follow-
ing: 1) maintain diversity and redundancy, 2) manage connectivity, 
3) manage slow variables and feedbacks, 4) foster complex adap-
tive systems thinking, 5) encourage learning, 6) broaden participa-
tion, and 7) promote polycentric governance systems.  How we may 
adapt to these principles for our communities will vary, but we can 
be creative and collaborative in finding the best approaches. The 
descriptions provided come from the aforementioned work and a 
review from the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

1) Maintain diversity and redundancy: “In a social-ecological 
system, components such as species, landscape types, knowledge 
systems, actors, cultural groups or institutions all provide differ-
ent options for responding to change and dealing with uncer-
tainty and surprise.” 

2) Manage connectivity: “Connectivity can be both a good and 
a bad thing. High levels of connectivity can facilitate recovery 

https://applyingresilience.org/en/the-7-principles/


28  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

after a disturbance but highly connected systems can also spread 
disturbances faster.”

3) Manage slow variables and feedbacks: “In a rapidly changing 
world, managing slow variables and feedbacks is often crucial 
to keep social-ecological systems ‘configured’ and functioning in 
ways that produce essential ecosystem services. If these systems 
shift into a different configuration or regime, it can be extremely 
difficult to reverse.”

4) Foster complex adaptive systems (CAS) thinking: “Although CAS 
thinking does not directly enhance the resilience of a system, 
acknowledging that social-ecological systems are based on a 
complex and unpredictable web of connections and interdepen-
dencies is the first step towards management actions that can 
foster resilience.”

5) Encourage learning: “Learning and experimentation through 
adaptive and collaborative management is an important mech-
anism for building resilience in social-ecological systems. It 
ensures that different types and sources of knowledge are valued 
and considered when developing solutions and leads to greater 
willingness to experiment and take risks.”

6) Broaden participation: “Participation through active engage-
ment of all relevant stakeholders is considered fundamental to 
building social-ecological resilience. It helps build the trust and 
relationships needed to improve legitimacy of knowledge and 
authority during decision making processes.”

7) Promote polycentric governance systems: “Polycentricity, a 
governance system in which multiple governing bodies interact 
to make and enforce rules within a specific policy arena or loca-
tion, is considered to be one of the best ways to achieve collective 
action in the face of disturbance change.”

Some of these principles may not be easily enacted. In fact, their 
presentation may require a fair amount of thought and prepara-
tion, but they are designed both to foster resilience and enhance the 
strength of community. The question for us today and in the coming 
years is, how might these principles provide us with a framework 



Papers and Presentations  29

that helps us in this COVID and post-COVID world? How might we 
best negotiate the relationships between church, theological school, 
and library, especially where technology has roles in the way it forms 
or inhibits community? And how do we foster the best practice of life 
balance within a new world that hybridizes life, work, and school?

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Buber, Martin. 1923. Ich und du. Leipzig: Inselverlag.
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Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of 
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