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, August 24, 2025 Gendered Islamophobia: Deconstructing 30 Rights of Muslim Women
Dr. Daisy Khan, Founder and Executive Director of Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality & Equality (WISE), discusses how Muslim women’s lives can be improved by connecting them to beliefs that affirm human dignity and gender equality at the core of the Islamic faith.Please post your questions in the comments section on Facebook or YouTube, or email the Reverend Meredith Ward at
Upcoming Speakers at The Forum
August 31 Conversation with Clergy: What Did You Do This Summer?
The Forum is on hiatus for Labor Day weekend. In its place, join the clergy for an in person conversation about summer vacations and the fall season ahead.
September 7 Forum with Former Rector Buddy Stallings
The Reverend Buddy Stallings reflects on the decade since he retired as Rector of St. Bart’s and the state of the world today.
Watch or listen to The Forum from previous weeks below.
In an age of information overload and political polarization, how do we discern what truly serves the common good? CUNY Law professor and St. Bart’s parishioner Ally Coll explores the promises and pitfalls of both evidence-based and...
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...
May 26—The Global Effects of Climate Change: A Perspective from Honduras Marcia Biggs, Special Correspondent, PBS NewsHour
In Honduras, warmer temperatures and reduced rainfall are already drastically altering the agricultural landscape...
Keep it Local: Addressing Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities in Climate JusticeClimate change does not impact all communities equally; often it has a particularly devastating effect on those communities already experiencing disproportionate...
Earth as Sanctuary: An Interfaith Approach to Creation CareThe world’s major religious traditions, each in their own way, view the earth as sacred, and faithful people of all creeds see their efforts to protect Creation as holy work. The...
Let All Who Are Thirsty Come: Water Access as Religious ImperativeWater is one of the basic necessities of life, yet, as agricultural development progresses and climate change continues to spiral out of control, fresh, clean water has become...
To kick off our Resurrecting Earth series, 13-year-old climate justice activist and organizer Alexandria Villaseñor and Peter DeMenocal, Dean of Science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University and founding Director of the...
Artist Noah Buchanan shares with us the creative process that resulted in his Crucifixion painting, currently on display in the North Transept Chapel, and contemplates how art can help us better understand and appreciate the love Jesus...
Meet our newest clergyperson, the Reverend Peter Thompson, Associate Rector for Formation and Liturgy. Bishop Dean Wolfe, Rector of St. Bart’s, talked with Peter about his call to ministry, his experience as a young priest in the Church...
Ahead of the St. Bart’s trip to the Holy Land, seminarian Jennifer Allen presented a virtual tour using Ignatian Imagination. Take a walk on the Galilee with Peter and Jesus.
After completing the remarkable feat of reciting the entire Gospel of Mark from memory on Friday evening, actor Tom Bair talked with Bishop Dean Wolfe, the Rector of St. Bart’s, about his approach to telling the story of Jesus’ life...