Each week, guest speakers from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines join the Reverend Peter Thompson and other St. Bart's clergy for deep and insightful conversations about topics that matter to our lives as responsible citizens and people of faith. Speakers in recent years have included winners of the Tony Award, the Emmy Award, the MacArthur Fellowship, and the Pulitzer Prize, professors from prominent universities like Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, and journalists from New York, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic.
Sunday, November 2, 2025
Running and Faith
The Reverend Canon Andrew Mullins and the Reverend Peter Thompson talk about the connections they see between their experiences as runners and their lives as people of faith.
Upcoming Speakers at The Forum
November 9 Pure Unlimited Love: Science and the Seven Paths to Inner Peace
Stephen G. Post, Director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, melds science and spirituality in a meditation on how practicing love can lead to peace.
Watch or listen to The Forum from previous weeks below.
The Right Reverend Mark M. Beckwith and the Reverend Hope A.J. Christensen, co-founders of Faith Leaders for Ending Gun Violence, discuss a faith-based approach to ending the epidemic of gun violence in the United States.
Luke-Acts as Sweeping Epic: Jesus’ Ministry and the Early Church
Many churchgoers are not aware that both the Gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were written by the same author, who likely intended them to be read...
Blessed Are You: The Ethics of the Sermon on the Mount
In the Gospel of Matthew, most of Jesus’ ethical teaching is concentrated in chapters 5 through 7, which compromise what is often called the “Sermon on the Mount.” The...
The Sacrifice of Isaac: Reading the Same Story Two WaysThe sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22:1–19) is one of the most striking stories in all of Scripture and has inspired a great deal of theological and philosophical thinking, including Soren...
How can an ancient library of books speak to modern challenges and concerns? Is the Bible still relevant in a twenty-first century world? Join Associate Rector for Formation & Liturgy Peter Thompson for a viewing of a talk by Yale Divinity...
Ordained by Angels: The Life and Ministry of an AIDS ChaplainThe Reverend Canon Jerry Anderson was an openly gay Episcopal priest serving in Washington, DC when the AIDS crisis struck in the early 1980s. As his partner and countless friends died...
Beyond the Binary: Understanding Trans and Gender Nonconforming Identities There have been dramatic advances in LGBTQ+ equality over the past few decades, but not all LGBTQ+ people have experienced that progress to the same extent. Trans and...
Love and Resistance—Stonewall After 50 YearsThe 2019 World Pride celebration in New York City marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the demonstrations in Greenwich Village that paved the way for more recent advances in...
On the final day of the Wellspring installation at St. Bart’s, its creator, Sukey Bryan, discusses the origins of the water-focused work, her continued commitment to artistically exploring the natural world, and the role art can play in the...
St. Bart’s and the Rooftop of the Waldorf-Astoria: Leslie Day
Before it closed for renovations in March 2017, the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel boasted an impressive rooftop garden that provided food for the hotel’s daily culinary offerings...