Human Being and Becoming

Much theology ignores anthropological studies and the centrality of evolutionary perspectives. Human beings' evolutionary changes are envisaged as bound up with interspecies relationships and theological discourse cannot afford to be narrowly anthropocentric. An analysis of both the differences and the common ground between humans and other animals in their intertwined and entangled evolutionary histories provides a provocative arena for a theological anthropology that is cognizant of such relationships rather than isolated from them. Here, we suggest recent anthropological research in ethnoprimatology and human-other animal studies combined with theoretical advances in thinking about human evolution opens up new ways of appreciating the deeper history of human becoming in the context of affiliation and interactions between human beings and other creaturely kinds.