Explore the ideas and practices behind Love Beyond Belief, Inc. through books, essays, videos, educational resources, and historical program materials.
The work of Rev. Dr. Thandeka brings theology, embodied feeling, identity, and community life into conversation. This library offers several ways into that work, from accessible introductions to advanced scholarship.
Some resources are freely available. Books and journal articles may require purchase or library access. Historical materials reflect the programs and public circumstances of their time; they are not announcements of current dates, prices, or enrollment opportunities.
Contemporary Affect Theology
Rev. Dr. Thandeka introduces her theological framework, informed by affective neuroscience, and explains how feeling contributes to spiritual experience and religious community. This is a useful starting point for readers who want to understand the intellectual foundation of Love Beyond Belief.
An introduction to Universal Connections workshops and their practice of insight, reflection, and action guided by compassion. The page describes how experiences of care, support, and connection can deepen a person’s sense of self and relationship with others.
Also presented online as “Small group ministry creates sacred time,” this essay explores what happens when people give their full attention to one another’s stories. It connects attentive presence, embodied feeling, spiritual practice, and the formation of small relational communities.
Originally published in UU World, January/February 2005; the current online record is dated March 17, 2015.
Watch Rev. Dr. Thandeka’s introductory video to Universal Connections, published by the Universal Connections channel. It offers another way to encounter the small-group work before exploring participation or hosting.
Nothingness, Trauma, and the Self with Rev. Thandeka
A conversation with Rev. Dr. Thandeka, hosted by Jay McDaniel and Jared Morningstar through the Center for Process Studies. It provides a further listening path into questions of selfhood and emotionally significant experience.
Love Beyond Belief: Finding the Access Point to Spiritual Awareness
Rev. Dr. Thandeka. Polebridge Press, 2018.
This book traces the relationship between feeling, spiritual awareness, and experiences of connection. It brings historical and contemporary perspectives into a discussion of how spiritual communities can become emotionally meaningful and life-affirming.
Learning to Be White: Money, Race and God in America
Rev. Dr. Thandeka. Continuum.
A study of white racial identity in the United States and its relationships with religion, class, shame, and belonging. The book offers background for understanding Rev. Dr. Thandeka’s work on the emotional demands of identity formation.
The book appeared in 1999, with later editions also available. Check the edition when citing or purchasing it.
The Embodied Self: Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Solution to Kant’s Problem of the Empirical Self
Rev. Dr. Thandeka. State University of New York Press, 1995.
A scholarly examination of self-consciousness, thinking, feeling, and embodied life through Schleiermacher’s engagement with Kant and other German philosophers. This book provides a deeper philosophical foundation for readers interested in the intellectual development of affect theology.
An adult curriculum by Rev. Dr. Thandeka. Unitarian Universalist Association, 2013.
This educational program approaches theological reflection through personal experience and the lives of historic and contemporary Unitarian Universalist thinkers. It provides workshops, reflection activities, and resources for developing a personal theology in conversation with others.
Affect Theology: A Road Map for the Continental Gathering of Unitarian Universalist Seminarians
An introduction to affect theology as an academic and ministerial field. Rev. Dr. Thandeka examines its historical foundations and the significance of feeling for liberal religious life and community formation.
American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, Volume 30, Number 1, January 2009.
This essay considers how affective neuroscience may inform theological engagement with Schleiermacher’s account of feeling. It offers a substantial reading path for those interested in the relationship between liberal theology, emotional experience, and contemporary intellectual inquiry.
Neurobiology, Emotions and Faith: From White Self-Destruction to Healing through Contemporary Affect Theology
Rev. Dr. Thandeka and Darcia Narvaez, in Ethics and Religion: In Public and Political Life, edited by Daniel J. Fleming, 2017.
A coauthored chapter connecting neurobiology, emotional experience, and Contemporary Affect Theology. It is a further resource for readers interested in the relationship between scientific perspectives and theological interpretation.
Creating a Spiritual Practice to Heal and Transform the World: An Invitation
Tikkun, Winter/Spring 2018.
An essay on spiritual practice and transformation, included in Rev. Dr. Thandeka’s publication archive. It extends the library’s practical reading path beyond the introductory program material.
The essays in this section reflect particular historical moments and arguments. They offer context for Rev. Dr. Thandeka’s work; they should not be treated as a single summary of LBB’s current programs or as proof of outcomes from its new initiatives.
Whites: Made In America, Advancing American Philosophers’ Discourse on Race
The Pluralist, Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2018.
A philosophical contribution to the study of racial identity and its formation in the United States. It is relevant to readers exploring the relationship among social identity, belonging, and emotional experience.
An essay examining how racial belonging can be learned through pressures to suppress feeling and conform to a community’s racial expectations. It offers a shorter reading path into themes developed in Learning to Be White.
A 1999 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly presentation.
Rev. Dr. Thandeka critiques particular anti-racist theological and organizational approaches within the UUA at that time. Read the presentation in its original institutional context rather than treating its title as a general rejection of racial justice or a current LBB program statement.
America’s New Spiritual Pioneers: An Unfolding Political Story About Emotions Lost and Found
Tikkun, October 2014.
An essay connecting emotional experience, spiritual community, and public life. It is relevant to the background of LBB’s interest in communities that can carry shared responsibility into civic settings.
A historically specific essay addressing racial narratives, aggrieved feeling, and public violence in the aftermath of events in Ferguson and related incidents. The subject matter is sensitive and should be approached with attention to its original circumstances and the distinction between understanding conduct and excusing it.
Ministering to Anxiety: Take Abortion, for Example . . .
Tikkun, Volume 20, Number 3, 2005, pages 19–21.
A historical essay on the relationship between emotionally charged experience, public messaging, and moral judgment. Its original subject is abortion; readers should consider that context when using it in a group discussion.
A historical analysis of the role of emotion in electoral communication and political judgment. It provides background for readers interested in Rev. Dr. Thandeka’s longstanding attention to the emotional dimensions of public life.
Middle-Class Poverty: Race- and Class-Passing Within White America
UU World, September/October 1999.
An essay on economic insecurity, social appearance, class identity, and their connections with race. It offers a historical perspective on the pressures people face when maintaining belonging requires them to hide the realities of their lives.
An essay on Barack Obama’s family background and encounters with Unitarian Universalism. It provides additional historical context for questions of religious identity, community, and the emotional significance of belonging.
Congregational practice and historical program materials
Love Beyond Belief: spiritual practice and congregational renewal
An overview of Love Beyond Belief as a practice of insight, reflection, and compassionate action, together with earlier congregational-program ideas. It offers background on the spiritual and organizational work that preceded LBB’s newer civic initiative.
The Spiritual Vitality Program for Mainline Protestant Congregations
A historical proposal describing a congregational-renewal approach, its strategies, and practical arrangements. Use it to understand earlier program design, not as a statement of current availability, fees, staffing, or promised results.
The Spiritual Vitality Program for Unitarian Universalist Congregations
A corresponding historical proposal for Unitarian Universalist congregations. It provides background on the relationship among spiritual vitality, small-group ministry, and congregational life.
A one-act play by Rev. Dr. Thandeka, copyright 1999.
A dramatic resource concerning job loss and community response. The publication archive presents it as an invitation for congregations to consider and dramatize what happens next when a person brings that experience into a religious community.
A brief creative reimagining of renewal that connects personal recognition, collective action, and responsibility for social and environmental conditions. It offers another form of engagement with Rev. Dr. Thandeka’s public and theological concerns.
Schleiermacher’s Brain Science: A Translation Project
A contribution to Interpreting Religion: The Significance of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Reden über die Religion for Religious Studies and Theology, edited by Dietrich Korsch and Amber L. Griffioen, 2011.
This contribution belongs to Rev. Dr. Thandeka’s scholarly engagement with Schleiermacher and feeling. The available linked PDF provides information about the containing volume; it is not the full chapter.
Schleiermacher, Feminism, and Liberation Theologies: A Key
In The Cambridge Companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher, edited by Jacqueline Marina, 2005.
A scholarly chapter concerning interpretations of Schleiermacher in relation to feminism and liberation theology. It is intended for readers seeking a deeper academic path beyond LBB’s introductory resources.
Feminism, Inc.: North American Feminist Theologies and Globalization
A contribution to The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theology, 2011.
A wider scholarly reading path into theology, gender, economic systems, and globalization. A related Harvard Divinity School lecture provides another way to encounter the subject.
In For Our Common Home: Process-Relational Responses to Laudato Si’, edited by John B. Cobb, Jr. and Ignacio Castuera, Process Century Press, 2015.
A contribution to a collection addressing shared responsibility for the world through process-relational perspectives. It offers a wider connection to ecological and common-good themes.
Rich Man’s War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley
A review by Rev. Dr. Thandeka of David Williams’s book. UU World, November/December 1999.
This review connects historical analysis of class and the Civil War with questions of racial grievance and public narratives. The book itself is by David Williams; the linked review is by Rev. Dr. Thandeka.
