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.
The Forum Series for Lent
Transition is a familiar theme for people of faith. As St. Bart’s embarks on a leadership transition, speakers from our community explore the ways in which transition can stimulate self-reflection, improve one’s relationship with God, and foster growth.
Sunday, March 30, at 10 am
Retirement: Transition and Purpose
Bob Kiely, Ray Vandenberg, and the Reverend Meredith Ward, co-leaders of the St. Bart’s retirement group, discuss retirement as a major life transition.
Upcoming
March 30:Retirement: Transition and Purpose
Bob Kiely, Ray Vandenberg, and The Reverend Meredith Ward, co-leaders of the St. Bart’s retirement group, discuss retirement as a major life transition.
Watch or listen to The Forum from previous weeks below.
Julie Ross, Executive Director of Parenting Horizons and author of How to Hug a Porcupine: Negotiating the Prickly Points of the Tween Years, draws on over three decades of experience working with children and families to offer insights about the...
Despite the perceived secularization of society during the twentieth century, it was actually an age of extraordinary revival for religiously based music. The New Yorker’s music critic Alex Ross shares thoughts on some favorite sacred works...
Writer Rainesford Stauffer reflects on the experience of young adults in contemporary society. How can they find satisfaction in the ordinary when they are constantly pressured to strive for something more?
Frank Collerius and Crystal Chen, co-hosts of the New York Public Library’s podcast The Librarian Is In, offer summer reading recommendations and address questions about reading, libraries, and books.
Rami Ehlhanan, who lost a daughter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, shares his story and reflects on the importance of dialogue, reconciliation, and peace. Rami is a member of The Parents Circle-Families Forum, a joint Israeli-Palestinian...
Our newest clergyperson, the Reverend Meredith Ward, Interim Associate Rector, explores the story of Mary Magdalene through art and scripture and examines how early interpretations of her have shaped our current understanding of this first...
The Very Reverend Nathan LeRud and the Very Reverend Peter Elliott, cathedral deans and hosts of the podcast The Gospel of Musical Theatre, preview the upcoming Broadway season, focusing particularly on revivals of West Side Story, The Music Man...
This is a replay of a popular installment of The Forum from July 5, 2020. David Blight, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and...
The Reverend Dr. Patrick Cheng, Theologian in Residence of our neighboring parish, St. Thomas Fifth Avenue, examines important issues at the intersection of race, sexuality, and religion. Please note: Because of Father Cheng’s...
Author Austen Hartke returns to St. Bart’s to explore stories of biblical characters who didn't fit the mold when it came to gender roles and expression and talk about how these stories can call us to welcome our gender-expansive siblings...
Anthony Pinn, the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities at Rice University, reflects on the legacy of The Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray, a civil rights activist, lawyer, Episcopal priest, and trailblazer in the LGBTQ+ Community.