Thandeka received her name from Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1984; it means “beloved” or more broadly “one who is loved by God” in Xhosa. Thandeka is a Unitarian Universalist minister, congregation consultant and small group organizer, American liberal theologian, and the creator of a contemporary form of affect theology called Love Beyond Belief™. Her books and essays have helped secure her place as a “major figure in American liberal theology”, as Gary Dorrien notes in The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony, and Postmodernity.  Before receiving her doctorate in philosophy of religion and theology from Claremont Graduate University, she was a television producer for 16 years and is an Emmy award winner. Thandeka has taught at San Francisco State University, Meadville Lombard Theological School, Williams College, Harvard Divinity School, and Brandeis University, and has been a Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center at Stanford University and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology in Claremont California and Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Thandeka learned how to track down her own suffering to a place so vast and majestic within her that it could hold her pain, acknowledge her despair, and never mistake her sorrow for who she truly is: a movement, a concert of creation, an orchestration of resounding life. In her presence, others find their own way to this place within themselves as the resonant presence of their own abounding life. Thandeka radiates in others what she teaches: love.

Why is Thandeka’s work so powerful and effective?

Thandeka teaches people how to tune themselves into their own higher level of consciousness by showing them how they have already done so. The process doesn’t feel mysterious.  It’s curious.

Thandeka feels your wondrous presence, your hailing grace. She hears you and chimes with your resonant soul as you abound with grace enough to heal and become more and more of your true self.