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, October 12, 2025
Understanding Dementia: What You Need to Know and Where to Go
Dante Tipiani, Senior Navigator and Community Builder at CaringKind, provides information on Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias and offers an overview of available programs and services.
Upcoming Speakers at The Forum
October 19 Money with Meaning: Money with Meaning: How to Create Joy and Impact Through Philanthropy
Alex Johnston, Founding Partner of Building Impact Partners, reflects on how, by giving our money away, we can benefit both ourselves and the wider world.
Watch or listen to The Forum from previous weeks below.
The Forum: Leading with Empathy: Living Together Well During Shelter-in-PlaceJulie Ross, Executive Director of Parenting Horizons, discusses how parents, children, and others who share the same space can navigate the constraints of the COVID-19...
As the COVID-19 crisis continues, The Reverend Curtis Hart, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Religion and Health, draws on his years of experience as Director of Pastoral Care at New York Presbyterian hospital and as a lecturer at Weill Cornell...
Yale professor Teresa Berger, already a leading expert on virtual worship before COVID-19, talks with the Reverend Peter Thompson about how technology and circumstance are together changing the ways in which we gather and pray. Teresa's latest...
A New Normal: Being the Church in the Present MomentThe Right Reverend Andrew M. L. Dietsche, Bishop of New York, shares his thoughts on how the Church is responding to the global pandemic of COVID-19 and how it will change forever as a...
"Social Justice and COVID-19: Caring for All in a Time of Pandemic," with the Reverend Susan Anderson-Smith
Click the filmstrip image to view the video.
Finding God’s Hope in the Midst of Fear, Loss, and COVID-19, with Jan Holton, Associate Professor of the Practice of Pastoral Theology and Care, Duke University. Click the filmstrip image to view the recorded Forum.
“Anxiety and Isolation in the Age of COVID-19: What can we do?” Mary Ragan, PhD, LCSW, Executive Director of the Psychotherapy and Spirituality Institute, discusses how to navigate daily life in this strange, new time in which we find...
Matters of Life and Death: Religion, Politics and the Contentious Moral Debates of Our TimeAt the intersection of religion and politics, few topics are as contentious as those that bookend a life—from abortion and stem cells to the death...
Christianity, the Color Line, and Contemporary AmericaAmerican Christians are as cognizant as ever of the pervasiveness of racial injustice, yet racial divisions persist, both within and outside of the Church. How do race, religion and politics...