Anastasia E. B. Kidd

Rev. Dr. Anastasia Kidd serves as Director of Contextual Education at the Boston University School of Theology, a role that centers her commitments to holistic student formation and to theological education that forwards the cause of communal liberation. Anastasia began her leadership of Contextual Ed in the fall of 2021, having previously served as the School’s Director of Enrollment for 17 years.

Anastasia’s doctoral studies focused on transforming seminary students’ existential crises of faith into generative opportunities for personal learning and spiritual development. Her work can be found in the Transforming Service anthology on student services recently published by the Association of Theological Schools. Since then, Anastasia has shifted her research toward body theology and critical fat studies, a subject matter she has anecdotally studied her whole life as a self-proclaimed unrepentant fatty. Her forthcoming publication by Pilgrim Press is entitled Fat Church: Claiming a Gospel of Fat Liberation. It explores the ways white American Christians have historically participated in anti-fat bias, healthism, and body policing, to the detriment of God’s gospel of freedom – and invites the adoption of a fat-positive Christian spirituality rooted in values like abundance, pleasure, and the dignity of all bodies.

Anastasia is ordained clergy in the United Church of Christ tradition. She and her husband co-pastor a small church in Truro, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, and otherwise hang out with their fur babies: two cats, Simon and Jake, and Henry the dog.