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.
St. Bart’s parishioner Vivian Roston reflects on her work as both an OBGYN and end-of-life doula during the Advent season of beginnings and endings.
Parishioner Ann Votaw talks about claiming the role of Mrs. Claus as a single woman in New York. She invites us to consider how feminist imagination, humor, and Christian community can reshape traditional narratives in this cultural moment.
Watch or listen to The Forum from previous weeks below.
The Social Dilemma: Confronting the Perils of Social Media Vickie Curtis, a screenwriter for the acclaimed Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, looks at the terrifying ways in which social media has impacted our lives.
Decolonizing Christianity The Reverend Dr. Miguel de la Torre, Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, explains why it is important to de-couple Christianity and whiteness. Professor de la...
The Reverend Canon Stephanie Spellers, Canon to the Presiding Bishop for Evangelism, Reconciliation, and Creation, and a frequent guest of St. Bart’s, reflects on the COVID-19 pandemic, a racial reckoning, and the immense transformations...
What can recent scientific thinking about space and time teach us about what we commonly call “the afterlife”? Popular writer, retreat leader, and Episcopal priest Barbara Cawthorne Crafton offers a timely meditation for the Second...
The Clergy of St. Bart’s reflect on what it means to say, “Alleluia! Christ is risen!” after a year of COVID-1
As we mark Palm Sunday, Yale faculty member Felicity Harley-McGowan looks at artistic depictions of Jesus’ crucifixion in early Christianity.
Author and scholar Diana Butler Bass discusses her new book Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way and Presence about the many dimensions of Jesus.
Duke professor Norman Wirzba examines the relationship between what we eat and what we believe. Norman Wirzba is Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology and Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute of Ethics at Duke...
Lauren R. Kerby, who has studied white evangelicals’ relationship with Washington, DC, sheds light on the capitol insurrection we witnessed in January. Dr. Kerby is a lecturer at Harvard Divinity School and the author of Saving History: How...
The Reverend Peter Thompson and Dr. Paolo Bordignon talk with Dr. David Hurd, one of the leading musicians in the Episcopal Church, about his career and compositional work. Dr. Hurd is Organist and Music Director at The Church of St. Mary the...
