Nancy Vedder-Shults

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Born on International Women’s Day (March 8), Nancy jokes that she was “predestined” to become a feminist. For her, the women’s movement has always involved empowering women as a means of offsetting the discrimination and denigration inherent in patriarchy, an intrinsically “thealogical” task (the word “thealogy” is derived from thea, the Greek for Goddess). Beginning in the mid-1970s, Nancy’s sense of empowerment broadened to include the spiritual. Since then she has practiced Wicca, a mystical spiritual path for which God/desses represent the central symbol of Nature and all of Life. In 1988, she also joined a Unitarian Universalist congregation, adding this creedless religion of progressive seekers to her religious affiliation.

Since 1987, Nancy has been offering ecofeminist and spiritual growth keynotes, workshops, and classes across North America. Her work is rooted in ritual, story, and song, as well as in feminist thealogy. As a Ph.D., she honed her skills in the emerging field of Women’s Studies in the 1970s and 1980s, but left academia to become a full-time singer, storyteller, educator, and ritualist. For Nancy, music and spirit are intimately intertwined. In 1993 she received a Feminist Theology Award from the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Federation to record Chants for the Queen of Heaven, a CD of Goddess chants from around the world. She has since recorded Singing the Promise with three other UU pagans. She is currently finishing a book entitled The World is Your Oracle. Visit her website at www.mamasminstrel.net.

Nancy lives in Madison, WI, with a feminist spouse who is also a tolerant atheist. Their self-empowered, twenty-something daughter lives in Brooklyn, NY.