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.
Grouped by: Announcements
Let my People Go: Liberation in the Bible
The Israelites escape from Egypt; the sick are healed; Jesus triumphs over death and sin: throughout the Bible, people experience liberation -- freedom from all that oppresses them and holds them back...
There's Something About John: What's Different in the Fourth Gospel?
The Reverend John Wirenius, Deacon, discusses the unique way in which John tells the story of Jesus' life and outlines the main differences between John's outlook and the...
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...
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...