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.
Karuna Mantena, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, discusses Mahatma Gandhi's influence on the thinking of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the connection they both perceived between social change and nonviolence. Please post your questions in the comments section on Facebook or YouTube, or email the Reverend Zack Nyein at
January 26
Parishioner Clay Williams on the emerging challenges posed by artificial intelligence
February 2
Yale Divinity School and Institute of Sacred Music Professor Melanie Ross on the connection between liturgy and everyday life
February 9
Author and academic Isaac Sharp on the changing landscape of American evangelicalism
Watch or listen to The Forum from previous weeks below.
Listen in as members of our Centennial Celebration Committee share everything you’d want to know, but are afraid to ask, about our observance of the first hundred years of worshiping on Park Avenue. Discover all of the fellowship, service...
St. Bart’s Rector, Bishop Dean Wolfe, discussed our upcoming pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 2019. Listen in and learn about the wonder and spirituality of a pilgrimage to the land where so much sacred history took place.
The Treasures of St. Bart’s: Matthew Moretz completes his introduction to the spectacular sequence of sixteen capitals carved by the Piccirilli Brothers in our church. See these works of art in close-up detail, each their own dramatic...
“Faith and Science”Today we welcomed Dr. Jamie Ferrara, professor of Pediatrics and Oncological Sciences at Mt. Sinai Hospital, and Dr. Peter deMenocal, Dean of Science at Columbia University, who explored the living link between the...
“Welcoming the Stranger” Dr. Larry Welborn, Professor of the New Testament at Fordham University, guided us on a lively survey through the Gospels and their teaching on hospitality and welcome to all people, providing his expert...
Celebrating Difference: Beyond the Melting Pot Our Minister for Children, Youth, and Family Formation, Lucy Breidenthal Bernardin, led us in conversation around matters of diversity and our common life as a parish. What does it mean to celebrate...
Today we welcomed author Rick Hamlin, who spoke about his newly published work, Pray for Me: Finding Faith in a Crisis.
“Blue Christmas”—The clergy of St. Bart’s in the Great Hall discussed the shadow side of the cheerful season. As nostalgia reminds us of how things used to be, the clergy shared thoughts on how to guard and nourish our...
At today’s Forum, Dr. Patrick Hornbeck, a St. Bart’s member and Chair of the Theology department at Fordham University, built on and expanded from our most recent evening adult class, “The End of White Christian...
Today we welcomed J. Chester Johnson, author of Auden, the Psalms, and Me, and learned about his work with the great poet W. H. Auden, as well as his story of their committee's re-translation of the Psalms contained in the current Book of...
