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, November 24, at 10 am
Trans Justice, the Church, and Rising Authoritarianism
Aaron Scott, the Episcopal Church’s Staff Officer for Gender Justice, draws connections between escalating social and policy violence toward transgender and non-binary people and the ascendancy of White Christian Nationalism and discusses the critical role trans-affirming churches can play in the months and years to come.
Upcoming Sundays
Sunday, December 1
Communion
Matthew LaBanca discusses his autobiographical playCommunionabout a Roman Catholic school teacher who is fired for marrying someone of the same gender. Communion is currently playing Off-Broadway at the cell theatre (338 W 23rd Street).
Watch or listen to The Forum from previous weeks below.
On the occasion of our annual bishop’s visitation, the Right Reverend Allen Shin reflects on the mission of the Church as it faces the challenges and opportunities of the present moment.
Candida Moss, the Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham (UK), discusses her new book about the role of enslaved people in the making of Christianity and its scriptures.
Yale choral conducting professors Jeffrey Douma and Felicia Barber provide an overview of Benjamin Britten’s highly acclaimed War Requiem, written as a response to World War II. The Yale Camerata, Yale Glee Club, and Yale...
Many Episcopalians are surprised to learn that their Church offers personal confession. The Rt. Rev. Andrew St. John, Bishop-in-Residence at St. Thomas Fifth Avenue, provides an overview of the rite as it is used within our own tradition.
Catherine Conybeare, Leslie Clark Professor in the Humanities at Bryn Mawr College, reviews the Confessions of St. Augustine of Hippo, exploring the importance of questions for Augustine's thought.
As we begin our Lenten series, “I’m the problem. It’s me: Reflections on Self-Reflection,” Kevin Christopher Robles of America Media reviews the many ways in which Taylor Swift has reinvented herself many times throughout...
The Reverend Dr. Timothy Peoples, Senior Pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, explores how worshipers’ perceptions of those who preach to them impacts the messages they hear.
What did it mean for early Christians to center their communal gatherings on "the breaking of the bread"? The Very Reverend Andrew McGowan, Dean and President of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, draws on recent archaeological and other evidence...