Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Thealogy" in English language version.
...C. Taliesin Edwards (the leading thealogian in the Neopagan movements) has called "The Da Mind" (in his Essays Towards a Metathealogy of the Goddess), and that others have called by a variety of names.[permanent dead link]
The word theology has also come to be used almost exclusively in regard to Christian god-talk. The advent of witchcraft, with its colorful goddess-talk, requires a new term. I hope witches and scholars of feminist religion will adopt my suggestion and name themselves thealogians.
So, I think my problem and 'our' problem is how to have simultaneously an account of radical historical contingency for all knowledge claims and knowing subjects, a critical practice for recognizing our own 'semiotic technologies' for making meanings, and a no-nonsense commitment to faithful accounts of a 'real' world
The deployment of such textual imagery in the service of a woman-centered environmentalism that strongly suggested—at times even explicitly asserted and celebrated—that women have an inherent, likely biological connection with nature that men do not generated the typical criticisms of ecofeminism already noted.
Although the boundary between feminist theology and thealogy can be a permeable one, the basic division between radical/Pagan and reformist/biblical feminism is a historical product and a microcosm of this internal dissension in the feminist community.
According to my research Thealogy or Thealogian was first used in publications by both Isaac Bonewits ("The Druid Chronicles (Evolved)") and Valerie Saiving ("Androcentrism in Religious Studies") in 1976. Naomi Goldenberg continued this new thread by using the term in The Changing of the Gods (Goldenberg 1979b, 96). Since then, many have attempted to define "thealogy".
86. In 1974 I wrote, and in 1976 published, the word thealogian in The Druid Chronicles (Evolved), a book about the Reformed Druids of North America and their offshoots.
The common thread in all of these examples is that feminist spiritual practice raises philosophical questions about the nature of divine power and its relation to our lives. Feminist theology and thealogy began as radical challenges to traditional ways of thinking about God and the world.
Goddess thealogy affirms that we all come from one course while stating that diversity is the great principle of the earth body.... We are both different and related in the web of life.
"Believing" in goddess is more a matter of adopting a new term for an old experience to call attention to its sacredness and its femininity. This is the closest thing one gets to a consensus thealogy in feminist spirituality, but it does not truly do justice to the thealogies that grow up all around it.
The postmodern theological/thealogical shift from a God of law presiding over a cosmic machine to a divinity holding creation in a nexus of complex relations has -- like one of its forerunners, process theology -- brought the divine into the very heart of change: the Goddess does not sit and watch the cosmos but is dancing at its very centre.
[T]his book is not an empirical study of the feminist wing of the Goddess movement. Rather, it is an exposition of a body of thought—thealogy—that derives from Goddess women's experience and from a broader history of emancipatory ideas and which can be defined as feminist reflection on the femaleness of the divine and the divinity of femaleness, and, more generally, spiritual, eithical and political reflection on the meaning(s) of both.
First, there are those feminist thealogical claims that suggest that women are essentially caring, nurturing and biophilic, while men are essential violent, destructive and necrophilic.... Second, there are those claims that suggest that women are somehow closer to the Goddess and/or nature than men.
While this valorization of experience and suspicion of reason is a valuable corrective, the danger comes when as a result women deny themselves a stake in rational thought. Critics of thealogy have pointed out its lack of rigour, as for example over the issue of valid historical evidence.
One the one hand, there are social constructivists, postmodernists and relativists for whom there are no facts, only rhetoric and power, and on the other, there are positivists and empiricists for whom facts are value-free and given directly to experience, waiting patiently to be discovered.
A feminist standpoint epistemology requires strengthened standards of objectivity.... They call for the acknowledgement that all human beliefs – including our best scientific beliefs - are socially situated, but they also require a critical evaluation to determine which social situations tend to generate the most objective knowledge claims.
Finally, we point out the antichristian character that animates the construction of this new deity, created "after the image and likeness of man".
While seemingly inclusive in scope, theology often has a focal handicap – it is monotheistic in its thinking, examining God from a narrow and often monocular lens often concretised by its own dogma, and often exclusivist and hampered by truth claims. Thealogy, on the other hand, is pluralistic, syncretistic and inclusive. It is fluid and comprehensive, able to contain many different belief systems and ways of being. Thealogy does not stand in opposition to, but as a complement to, Theology as a branch of religious study.
So, I think my problem and 'our' problem is how to have simultaneously an account of radical historical contingency for all knowledge claims and knowing subjects, a critical practice for recognizing our own 'semiotic technologies' for making meanings, and a no-nonsense commitment to faithful accounts of a 'real' world
The deployment of such textual imagery in the service of a woman-centered environmentalism that strongly suggested—at times even explicitly asserted and celebrated—that women have an inherent, likely biological connection with nature that men do not generated the typical criticisms of ecofeminism already noted.
The deployment of such textual imagery in the service of a woman-centered environmentalism that strongly suggested—at times even explicitly asserted and celebrated—that women have an inherent, likely biological connection with nature that men do not generated the typical criticisms of ecofeminism already noted.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)Goddess thealogy and deasophy are reflections on both past and contemporary Goddess communities' beliefs, wisdom, embodied practices, questions, and values.
While seemingly inclusive in scope, theology often has a focal handicap – it is monotheistic in its thinking, examining God from a narrow and often monocular lens often concretised by its own dogma, and often exclusivist and hampered by truth claims. Thealogy, on the other hand, is pluralistic, syncretistic and inclusive. It is fluid and comprehensive, able to contain many different belief systems and ways of being. Thealogy does not stand in opposition to, but as a complement to, Theology as a branch of religious study.
Goddess thealogy and deasophy are reflections on both past and contemporary Goddess communities' beliefs, wisdom, embodied practices, questions, and values.
The deployment of such textual imagery in the service of a woman-centered environmentalism that strongly suggested—at times even explicitly asserted and celebrated—that women have an inherent, likely biological connection with nature that men do not generated the typical criticisms of ecofeminism already noted.