Every Sunday at 10 am
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, December 28, 2025
Ring Out the Old, Ring in the New: Conversation with Clergy
The Forum will not meet on Sunday, December 28. Instead, please join Peter and Meredith for an informal conversation about the year that is past and the year that is coming. An in-person only conversation will be held at 10 am in the Great Hall and then a Zoom conversation will be held at 1 pm. Registration for the Zoom conversation is available at stbarts.org/conversation.
Upcoming Speakers at The Forum
January 4: The Reverend Dr. Ayla Lepine, Associate Rector, St. James’s Piccadilly
January 11: The Reverend Dr. Chuck Robertson, Canon & Senior Advisor to the Presiding Bishop
January 18: The Reverend Dr. Andrew Wilkes, Co-Lead Pastor, Double Love Experience Church
January 25: James L. Ferrara, M.D., Ward-Coleman Chair in Cancer Medicine, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine
February 1: Edward Button, Countertenor, The King’s Singers
February 8: Annual Meeting of the Parish
February 15: Melanie Holcomb, Ph.D., Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Nancy Thebaut, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the History of Art, University of Oxford
February 22: Michael Zuch, LCSW, Clinical Social Worker and Ph.D. student at Rutgers University School of Social Work
Watch or listen to The Forum from previous weeks below.
Featured
12.21.25 | Articles | The Forum |
The Reverend Molly F. James, Ph. D., Interim Executive Officer of The General Convention of The Episcopal Church, speaks about the work of her office and shares data-based insights about the present and future of the Church.

Elaine Pagels, a leading scholar of early Christianity and the Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion at Princeton University, outlines the most enigmatic book in the New Testament and the lasting impact it made on politics and...
Heidi Allen, Associate Professor at Columbia School of Social Work, offers insight on how future healthcare policy could better protect the most vulnerable.
Michael Duffy, who as President of the Great Oaks Foundation oversees five public charter schools, explores how an emphasis on tutoring could transform our approach to education.
Bart Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, chronicles the historical development of Christian ideas about the afterlife.
The Reverend Keith Anderson, author of The Digital Cathedral: Networked Ministry in a Wireless World, talks with Professor J. Patrick Hornbeck II of Fordham University about the future of the Church beyond 2020.
Indigenous People, The Doctrine of Discovery, and the Episcopal Church: On the eve of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, The Episcopal Church’s Indigenous Missioner, The Reverend Dr. Bradley Hauff, examines the Church’s problematic...
David Clough, Professor of Theological Ethics at the University of Chester (UK) and the co-founder of https://www.becreaturekind.org/, outlines the responsibilities Christians have to protect and care for non-human animals.
Cole Arthur Riley, the creator of the Instagram account @blackliturgies, shares some of her beautiful prayers and speaks to the importance of amplifying Black voices in the liturgical life of the Church. https://www.instagram.com/blackliturgies/