THEALOGY. In 1979 Naomi Goldenberg first used the word thealogy to denote feminist discourse on the Goddess (thea) rather than God (theo), proclaiming in her book Changing of the Gods (1979) that "we are about to learn what happens when father-gods die for a whole generation" (p. 37). Although father-gods are, in fact, alive and well in the world's religions, thealogy has become widely known to scholars of religion and gender and of emergent religion as a provocation to a spiritual and political shift away from the androcentric (male-centered) theological paradigm. Instead, thealogy offers a group of largely participant, experientially grounded texts that explore the many dimensions of female becoming: that of the Goddess, of women, and of nature as encompassing both of these.

Although thealogy is a product, at least in part, of the neo-romantic hippie movement of the 1960s and 1970s, it is also and more immediately a feminist...