Benjamin Van Dyne

Systematic Theology

Education

B.A. Philosophy - University of Virginia, 2007

M.Div. Social Ethics - Union Theological Seminary, 2017

Biography

Benjamin Van Dyne is a doctoral student in systematic theology at Fordham University, where his dissertation explores the usage of concepts of agency and biology in the work of James Cone, Delores Williams and M. Shawn Copeland. Noting the limits of these categories in making theological sense of human life, and making use of the work of the Black Studies thinkers Sylvia Wynter and and Alexander Weheliye, his dissertation builds a constructive theological anthropology that accounts for the relationship between death and forms of social markedness such as race and sex.

Before coming to Fordham, Benjamin worked as a community organizer in Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia, New York City and Long Island. He studied philosophy at the University of Virginia and received a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary. His research at Union focused on theological meaning of the ways that white bodies are inevitably implicated in racialized violence. 

A former Unitarian Universalist turned Episcopalian, he is active in local church communities and is a frequent guest preacher at churches of various denominations in the New York area. He lives in the Bronx with his two children. You can find him on Twitter at @benjaminvandyne.