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Thandeka (minister)

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Rev. Dr. Thandeka
Born
Sue Booker

March 25, 1946
New Jersey
EducationClaremont Graduate University (Ph.D.)

UCLA (M.A.)

Columbia University, School of Journalism (M.A.)

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (B.A.)
Occupation(s)Theologian and activist
Known forContemporary affect theory, critical vision theory, theology, philosophy
Websitehttps://revthandeka.org/

Thandeka [1][2] is a Unitarian Universalist minister, an American liberal theologian,[3] and the creator of a contemporary affect theology.

Thandeka's affect theology grounds religious knowing in human feeling,[4] combining concepts from nineteenth-century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher with insights from affective neuroscience.[5] Thandeka is the founder and CEO of Love Beyond Belief, a non-profit organization.

Biography

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Thandeka was born Sue Booker to Emma (Barbour) Booker, an artist and teacher, and Merrel D. Booker, a Baptist minister and seminary professor who had studied with Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich at Union Theological School in New York City.[2] She was drawn to the Unitarian church in the 1960s,[3] and was ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister in 2001.[2] She received her name from Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1984; it means "beloved" or "one who is loved by God" in Xhosa.[3][6]

She studied journalism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, and went on to earn an M.A. in history of religions at University of California, Los Angeles.[2] She earned a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University in 1988, where she studied with John B. Cobb and Jack C. Verheyden.[3]

Career

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Thandeka has taught at San Francisco State University, Williams College, Meadville Lombard Theological School, Harvard Divinity School, Lancaster Seminary, and Brandeis University.[2]

Theology

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Thandeka's theological work considers the role of feeling or emotion in human religious and spiritual experiences. Her book The Embodied Self is based on a close reading of Schleiermacher's Dialektik, focusing on his idea that feeling is primary in human experience, and exploring how feeling enables people to connect mind and body,[3] or thinking and organic being.[7] Her work considers the religious significance of neuroscientific understandings of emotions,[3] such as those of Jaak Panksepp.[8] Thandeka's affect theology centers affective consciousness, as opposed to belief, in religious experience.[9]

White racial identity

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Thandeka also critiques some popular approaches to anti-racism work, and takes a different approach to understanding white racial identity. She considers the concepts of racism and white privilege to be terms needing further exploration.[10] She affirms explorations begun by James Baldwin, using insights from neuroscience and complex post-traumatic stress disorders. Thandeka analyzes the psychology of white identities that were constructed in America to hide a profound sense of betrayal by one's own white kith and kin, white community, and white government.[11] This sense of betrayal injures persons' ability to be "relational beings."[12] While Thandeka is hopeful that her insights into this will help white Americans discover their common ground with other groups who are suffering so that mutual advance are made, others disagree.[13][10]

Publications

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Thandeka's book The Embodied Self: Friedrich Schleiermacher's Solution to Kant's Problem of the Empirical Self (1995), undertakes a major re-reading of the philosophical analysis of F. D. E. Schleiermacher's theological claims, namely, his Dialektik.[7]

References

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  1. ^ James, Jacqui, ed. (1998). Between the Lines: Sources for Singing the Living Tradition (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Skinner House Books. p. 131. ISBN 9781558963313.
  2. ^ a b c d e Harris, Mark W. (2018). Historical Dictionary of Unitarian Universalism (2nd. ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 537–538. ISBN 9781538115909.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Dorrien, Gary. The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony, and Postmodernity, 1950-2005. John Knox Press, 2006.
  4. ^ "Thandeka", Harvard Square Library. Retrieved 2020.01.01.
  5. ^ "Contemporary Affect Theology". RevThandeka.org. Retrieved 2020.01.01
  6. ^ "Thandeka". Westar Institute. Retrieved 2020.01.01
  7. ^ a b Lamm, Julia A. Book review. The Journal of Religion Vol. 77, No. 3 (Jul., 1997), pp. 482-483
  8. ^ Vial, Theodore (December 30, 2019). "Love Beyond Belief: Review". Reading Religion. Retrieved April 16, 2020.
  9. ^ McDaniel, Jay. "On Music and Being Alive". Open Horizons. Retrieved April 16, 2020.
  10. ^ a b V. Denise James. "Playing the Race Game: A Response to Thandeka's "Whites: Made in America"". The Pluralist. Vol. 13, No. 1, SAAP 2017 Conference Proceedings (Spring 2018), pp. 51. Retrieved 2020.01.05
  11. ^ Stecopoulos, Harry (April 1, 2002). "Book Reviews (Learning to be White and Producing American Races)". The Mississippi Quarterly. 55 (2): 271–76. JSTOR 26476593.
  12. ^ Sturm, Douglas. Book review. The Journal of Religion Vol. 80, No. 2 (Apr., 2000), pp. 371-372
  13. ^ Pappas, Gregory Fernando. "What Is Going On? Where Do We Go from Here? Should the Souls of White Folks Be Saved?". The Pluralist Vol. 13, No. 1, SAAP 2017 Conference Proceedings (Spring 2018), pp. 67. Retrieved 2020.01.05
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