Make a Joyful Noise: The Power of Music in Difficult Times
07.13.25 | Articles | The Forum
Ethnomusicologist and St. Bart's parishioner Margaret Farrell reflects on how music can lift spirits in difficult times.

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.
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.
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.
Ethnomusicologist and St. Bart's parishioner Margaret Farrell reflects on how music can lift spirits in difficult times.
The Reverend Dr. Mihee Kim-Kort, co-pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Annapolis, Maryland and author of Outside the Lines: How Embracing Queerness will Transform Your Faith, reflects on how practices of reading and listening might open us up...
William Stell, Faculty Fellow at New York University and author of the upcoming book Born Again Queer, uncovers the hidden history of gay evangelicals and the opposition they faced within the evangelical movement.
Acclaimed designer and artist Jon Key, author of Black, Queer & Untold, brings to light the lives and legacies of Black and Queer creatives from the 1800s to the present.
The Reverend Canon Leyla King, a Palestinian American priest and the author of the forthcoming memoir Daughters of Palestine, provides a way in to the conversation about the current realities in the Holy Land through the lens of her...
The Right Reverend Matthew F. Heyd, Bishop of New York, offers his thoughts on the renewal that is already happening within the Church.
The Reverend Canon Stephanie Spellers, Assisting Priest, draws on the experiences of those at the Church’s periphery in her effort to chart a future for faith itself.
David Blankenhorn, co-founder of Braver Angels, discusses the problem of political polarization
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, author of The Undocumented Americans, reads from her new novel Catalina and reflects on what immigrants are experiencing in the present American moment.
The Reverend Lucy Winkett, Rector of St. James’s Piccadilly in London, reflects on the ongoing relevance of the Bible in modern times.