It may be inappropriate to refer to a Unitarian-Universalist minister as having been around the block, but here’s one who has. Her name is Thandeka.
In 1979, after spending 16 years in Los Angeles as a talk show host and Emmy Award-winning television producer, Thandeka, seeking answers she couldn’t find in journalism, went back to school and earned a PhD in philosophy of religion and theology. She already held a master’s degree in journalism from New York’s Columbia University. While in graduate school in California, she met South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who gave her the name Thandeka, an African word meaning “one who is loved by God.”
In 1998, she returned to her native Chicago. The next year, she founded the non-profit Center for Community Values in Hyde Park. The center conducts regular “covenant groups” in which people learn the power of intimacy, work toward self-realization and perform community service.
Thandeka is also the author of “Learning to Be White: Money, Race and God in America” (Continuum, 1999), which explores how differences among people are perpetuated by society’s value system. She also teaches at Chicago’s Meadville/Lombard Theological School and is an affiliated minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Rockford in addition to working on her third book.
The journalism years: In the ’60s we believed that the world was going to be a much better place; we believed that we could make it better.
Back to school: When I was doing my talk show, I became aware of how much of the news is controlled by publicists. I decided that one group that didn’t have adequate flack was South Central Los Angeles. So whenever I came across something interesting in that community, I would call the Los Angeles Times and do a story.
I discovered through the process of doing an investigation that even though people were trying very hard–systematically–to get service to South Central Los Angeles, often they weren’t really helping the community. And I was astonished. How could even good people do so wrong? And I had no clue as a journalist how to answer that question.
You train as a journalist to ask who, what, where, why and how–you’re a student of humanity. Thus I went back to school so I could learn to be a better journalist. I was going to take a few courses. But the deeper I went into the question of how is it that good people do harm, the deeper I entered the conversation of race relations. And so I took three-and-a-half years off to work on my doctorate.
The origin of her name: Desmond Tutu had given the presidential address at the Claremont Graduate School in California, where I was studying. At a dinner in his honor, we were introduced. I said my name was Sue Booker, but that I had never really related to that name. Then he said, `Oh, I know your name: Thandeka. It means lovable, one who is loved by God.’ At that moment I felt as if I were given my calling.
On the books: My first book, “The Embodied Self” (State University of New York Press, 1995), established a theological and philosophical principle of the self, which is that we’re not isolated individuals. Our very internal identities are formed by our relationships. The second book, “Learning to be White,” is an application of this perspective in a social context. The third book is systematic theology, wherein we learn to find our relational selves.
Ultimate goal: It’s the redefinition of the self that I’m so interested in. The ability to reclaim our whole humanity. I teach, and the goal is to help us heal ourselves, to rediscover and confirm our humanity, to help ourselves and others be decent human beings.
