Thandeka (minister)

Thandeka (born Sue Booker on March 25, 1946)[1][2] is a Unitarian Universalist minister, American liberal theologian,[3] and the creator of a contemporary form of 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 contributes to anti-racism work by theorizing that shame plays a central role in the construction of white racial identity.

Thandeka
Born
Sue Booker

(1946-03-25) March 25, 1946
United States
OccupationMinister, producer

Work

Theology

Thandeka’s theological work considers the role of feeling or emotion in human religious experience. Her book The Embodied Self is based on a close reading of Schleiermacher’s Dialectic, 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.[6] Thandeka has gone on to consider the religious significance of neuroscientific understandings of emotions,[3] especially those of Jaak Panksepp.[7] Thandeka’s affect theology centers affective consciousness, as opposed to belief, in religious experience.[8] She is critical of contemporary Protestantism that does not focus on creating an experience of love for people.[7]

White racial identity

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 no longer useful.[9] Instead, she analyzes the psychology of white identity, showing how shame and shaming are central to its construction.[10] This shame is damaging to white people, resulting in the suppression of self and negative effects on whites’ abilities to be “relational beings.”[11] While Thandeka is hopeful that insights into this will help white people heal and change, others disagree.[12][9] In 1999, Thandeka criticized the anti-racism program adopted by the Unitarian Universalist Association for its reliance on ideas of original sin and human helplessness, which are rejected by Unitarian Universalism.[13] Her program for congregational spiritual revitalization includes efforts to address racial and economic injustice in other ways.[14]

Writings

Thandeka's books include Love Beyond Belief: Finding the Access Point to Spiritual Awareness (2018), which relates affect theology and a critique of contemporary Protestantism;[7] Learning to be White: Money, Race, and God in America (1999), which historian David Roediger characterized as "indispensable";[15] and The Embodied Self: Friedrich Schleiermacher's Solution to Kant's Problem of the Empirical Self (1995), which takes a fresh look at F. D. E. Schleiermacher's difficult Dialektik.[6] Her essays have appeared in The Oxford University Handbook on Feminist Theology and Globalization (2011) and The Cambridge Companion to Schleiermacher (2005).[16]

Biography

Thandeka is a former television producer and an Emmy award winner.[17] She studied journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Columbia University, and went on to earn an M.A. in history of religions at UCLA.[2] She earned a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University in 1988, where she studied with John Cobb and Jack C. Verheyden.[3] She has taught at San Francisco State University, Williams College, Meadville Lombard Theological School, Harvard Divinity School, Lancaster Seminary, and Brandeis University.[2]

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 Niebhur and Paul Tillich.[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][16]

References
  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. Harris, Mark W. (2018). Historical Dictionary of Unitarian Universalism (2nd. ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 537–538. ISBN 9781538115909.
  3. 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. Lamm, Julia A. Book review. The Journal of Religion Vol. 77, No. 3 (Jul., 1997), pp. 482-483
  7. Vial, Theodore (December 30, 2019). "Love Beyond Belief: Review". Reading Religion. Retrieved April 16, 2020.
  8. McDaniel, Jay. "On Music and Being Alive". Open Horizons. Retrieved April 16, 2020.
  9. 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
  10. Stecopoulos, Harry (April 1, 2002). "Book Reviews (Learning to be White and Producing American Races)". The Mississippi Quarterly. 55 (2): 271–76. JSTOR 26476593.
  11. Sturm, Douglas. Book review. The Journal of Religion Vol. 80, No. 2 (Apr., 2000), pp. 371-372
  12. 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
  13. Thandeka (Fall 1999). "Why Anti-Racism will Fail" (PDF). Journal of Liberal Religion. 1 (1).
  14. "Love Beyond Belief". Rev. Thandeka. Retrieved April 16, 2020.
  15. Roediger, David (6 September 2018). "On the Defensive: Navigating White Advantage and White Fragility". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 2020.01.05
  16. "Thandeka". Westar Institute. Retrieved 2020.01.01
  17. "Thandeka". Unitarian Universalist Association. Retrieved 2020.01.01
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