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, July 20, 2025 Fake News: The Most Famous Quotes the Saints Never Said
The Reverend Peter Thompson fact checks quotations purported to derive from famous Christian figures, including St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa of Avila, Martin Luther, and John Wesley. Please post your questions in the comments section on Facebook or YouTube, or email the Reverend Peter Thompson at
pthompson@stbarts.org
Upcoming Speakers at The Forum
July 27 Mama: A Queer Black Woman’s Story of a Family Lost and Found
Author Nikkya Hargrove discusses her memoir about her unconventional journey to motherhood.
August 3 Expunge: Restoration after a Criminal Record
Attorney Jeffrey Grant, founder of White Collar Support Group, explains how expunging criminal records can benefit those who have already served their sentences and the society-at-large.
Watch or listen to The Forum from previous weeks below.
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...
The Reverend Dr. Chloe Breyer, Executive Director of the Interfaith Center of New York, speaks about the work ICNY is doing, particularly relating to the migrant crisis.