Harvard Divinity School: Recent Episodes
Harvard Divinity School
Expand your understanding of the ways religion shapes the world with lectures, interviews, and reflections from Harvard Divinity School.
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; Publishers: Aurora; Universal Production MusicSign up for the HDS Current newsletter:www.hds.harvard.edu/news/connectFollow HDS on social media: IG, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn (@HarvardDivinity)
In this episode, Hiatt and Jordan celebrate the end of their tenure as Hope Podcast hosts by interviewing each other about poetry, ministry, and how the two together make a kind of life.
In this episode, Hiatt and Jordan celebrate the end of their tenure as Hope Podcast hosts by interviewing each other about poetry, ministry, and how the two together make a kind of life.
; Publishers: Aurora; Universal Production MusicSign up for the HDS Current newsletter:https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/connectHarvard Divinity Bulletin: https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/Follow HDS on social media: IG, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn (@HarvardDivinity)
In episodes 21 and 22 of the Pop Apocalypse, host Matt Dillon welcomes musician and mathematician Robert Schneider. Schneider is the lead singer of the psychedelic pop band The Apples in Stereo, a producer for bands including Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control, and currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Michigan Technological University. In part one, we discuss Robert’s religious upbringing in the American South before exploring the mystical dimensions of The Elephant 6 Recording Co. We touch on the Church of the Subgenius, meditative practices, Krishna Consciousness, church camps, Surrealism, and Sun Ra’s Arkestra, then take a deep dive into how the Beach Boys served as the spiritual and artistic north star for Elephant 6. Robert Schneider bioRobert Schneider is a musician, producer, and mathematician. He co-founded The Elephant 6 Recording Co. in the early 1990s, a collective of independent musicians and artists. Schneider is the lead singer and songwriter for The Apples in Stereo, a psychedelic pop band that has recorded seven studio albums. As a producer, Robert recorded and mixed some of the most celebrated albums of the 1990s, including Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and Olivia Tremor Control’s Dusk at Cubist Castle. He completed his PhD in Mathematics at Emory University in 2018, specializing in number theory and combinatorics. Robert is now Assistant Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Michigan Technological University, where he helps run the Mathematics and Music Lab.
Full transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2026/03/18/role-faith-social-movements-kelly-brown-douglas
This week we sat down with MRPL candidate Amy Brenneman to talk about her coming back to Harvard, writing the unknowns in a creative life, and hope in action.
This week we spoke with MDiv candidate Leah Gawel about the intersections of the arts, religious trauma, and the healing and empowering transformations we can bear witness to.
For Pop Apocalypse Episode 20, Host Matthew Dillon welcomes actress, writer, producer, and activist Amy Brenneman. After earning her BA in the Comparative Study of Religion at Harvard, Amy went on to a successful acting career, with star turns in the film Heat and in television shows including The Leftovers, The Old Man, and Judging Amy (which she also wrote and produced). In this wide-ranging conversation, Amy and Matthew explore how the craft of acting, the study of religion, the practice of Jungian dreamwork, and decades of practicing active imagination have enriched one another throughout her career. They discuss the similarities between ritual and acting and how a background in comparative religion helped Amy write, build, and inhabit characters. Amy also shares what helped bring a mythic and numinous dimension to roles like Laurie Garvey in The Leftovers. They conclude by discussing Amy’s current experience as a master’s student at Harvard Divinity School and her research into the politics and possibilities of the Trickster. BIO: Amy Brenneman is an American actress, producer, writer, and political activist. She is known for multiple award-winning television roles, including Judging Amy (which she wrote and produced), NYPD Blue, Frasier, Heartbeat (executive producer), VEEP, and The Leftovers, as well as movie roles in Heat, Casper, Friends and Neighbors, and The Jane Austen Book Club. She was a founding member of the social justice-focused Cornerstone Theater Company and has performed in many notable theaters around the country. She starred in the world premieres of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Rapture Blister Burn and Fake It Until You Make It, and starred in The Sound Inside, which the Los Angeles Times named one of the year’s best performances. Amy has been honored by multiple activist organizations and currently serves on the Creative Council for the Center for Reproductive Rights. Amy earned a BA in the Comparative Study of Religion at Harvard University and is currently pursuing an MDiv at Harvard, researching the role of the Trickster archetype in ritual and activism.
This week we're joined by Jamie Feinberg, MDiv candidate, for a conversation about surrendering to the pursuit of our passions, finding systems of faith that work for and challenge us, and the continual process of becoming our most authentic selves.
This week we sat down with fellow second year MDiv candidate Julia Jackson to talk about the ways hope and mortality are tied together, about the power of reading, and about the promise of otherwise.
is narrated by Sarabinh Levy-Brightman and appears in the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of Harvard Divinity Bulletin.Read or follow along on the Harvard Divinity Bulletin website: https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/sacred-sleep-of-the-wandering-fool/
In Pop Apocalypse, Ep. 19, we welcome author and musician, Gary Lachman, to the show. Lachman was the original bassist for the seminal new wave band, Blondie. He later became an intellectual historian; to date, Lachman has published twenty-six books, most recently a memoir, Touched by the Presence: From Blondie’s Bowery and Rock and Roll to Magic and the Occult (Inner Traditions, 2025). In this wide-ranging chat, we discuss how Lachman’s reading of comics and Lovecraft inspired a lifelong interest in the occult, his early days in Blondie, and how he came to Crowleyan magick. Then we turn to Lachman’s time practicing “The Work” of Gurdjieff, his relationship with the author Colin Wilson, and how keeping a dream journal can change our view of the nature of time.Gary Lachman BioGary Lachman is an author and lecturer on consciousness, counterculture, and the Western esoteric tradition. His works include Dark Star Rising (Tarcher, 2018), Beyond the Robot (Tarcher Perigee, 2016), and The Secret Teachers of the Western World (Tarcher, 2015). A founding member of the rock band Blondie, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. He lives in London.
This week we're joined by Hannah Snyder (MTS 1). We discuss the sense of imposter syndrome she felt within her own religious community, the complications and pressures she felt as a religious community leader, and about the sense of fulfillment she eventually found as a participating member of religious community life, and more!Transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/12/11/hope-podcast-featuring-hannah-snyder-mts-candidate
This week we're joined by Austin Ball (MDiv 1). We talk about the difficulty learning and growing that comes with leaving home, about navigating multiple religious belongings, about the unexpected intersections of intellectual and spiritual life, and more.Transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/12/11/hope-podcast-featuring-austin-ball-mdiv-candidate.
For episode 18 of the Pop Apocalypse, we welcome theologian, author, and Episcopal priest, Cynthia Bourgeault. Cynthia is the author of numerous books, including Eye of the Heart: A Spiritual Journey into the Imaginal Realm and The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice. Her work brings the Christian contemplative and wisdom traditions, ‘The Work’ of GI Gurdjieff, and the philosophy of Henry Corbin into a lived mystical theology. Over the course of the episode, we discuss Cynthia’s religious upbringing and early mystical awakening, her academic training in Medieval sacred drama, and how she came to the priesthood. Then we do a deep dive into Bourgeault’s relationship to the practice and theory of The Work and how she came to integrate them with the Christian wisdom tradition. As the interview comes to a close, we discuss the benefits of life as a hermit, the impact of the Gospel of Thomas, and how contemplative Christianity speaks to the spiritual concerns of so many in the early 21st century. BIOCynthia Bourgeault is a modern-day mystic, Episcopal priest, writer, and internationally known retreat leader. She divides her time between solitude and sailing the waters around her seaside hermitage in Maine and a demanding schedule traveling globally to teach and spread the recovery of the Christian contemplative and Wisdom paths.
On this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from MTS candidate Michelle Millben about family, spiritual math, and the substance of things hoped for.Transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/12/01/hope-podcast-featuring-michelle-millben-mts-candidate.
What does it really mean to “love your enemies”? In this episode of the Harvard Religion Beat, host Jonathan Beasley talks with Rev. Matthew Potts—Professor of Religion and Literature at Harvard Divinity School and Pusey Minister at Harvard’s Memorial Church—about forgiveness, anger, and living with harm without letting it define us.Edited by Eden Olayiwole.Sermon audio courtesy of the Memorial Church of Harvard University.Intro and outro music: “How Did This Happen,” courtesy of Extreme Music (Art House 3).Full episode transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/11/25/learning-love-your-enemies-matthew-potts
On this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from Rob Anderson, a first-year MDiv candidate, about falling apart and coming back together again, about a multitude of ways to offer ministry, and about trying to be curious before we get furious.Transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/11/06/hope-podcast-featuring-rob-anderson-mdiv-candidate
On this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from first year MDiv student Audrey Zhou on open question of home, the clarity of coming to a resolution, different ways of asking why, and many, many other things.Transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/10/22/hope-podcast-featuring-audrey-zhou-mdiv-candidate
On this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from first year MTS student Mishka Banuri about home, spiritual autobiographies, and connecting hope and action.Transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/10/21/hope-podcast-featuring-mishka-banuri-mts-candidate.
Do we live inside a Matrix-like simulation? For Episode 17 of Pop Apocalypse, we welcome one of the leading theorists behind the simulation hypothesis, Rizwan Virk, to discuss that question. Virk is an entrepreneur, videogame pioneer, and academic author of two major works on simulation theory: The Simulation Hypothesis (Tarcher, 2025) and The Simulated Multiverse (Bayview Books, 2021). In the interview, we discuss the technologies necessary to make a Matrix-like simulation possible and how close we are to achieving them. Then we turn to the religious and mystical dimensions of simulation theory, exploring reincarnation, out-of-body experiences, UAPs, angels, and the anthropocentrism and ethical pitfalls of simulation theory. Rizwan Virk bio A graduate of MIT and Stanford University, Rizwan Virk, PhD, is a successful entrepreneur, video game pioneer, film producer, venture capitalist, professor, and bestselling author of The Simulation Hypothesis (Tarcher, 2025), Wisdom of a Yogi (Bayview Books, 2023), and The Simulated Multiverse (Bayview Books, 2021). Virk’s video games, including Tap Fish and Penny Dreadful: Demimonde, have been played by millions. He is the founder and executive director of Play Labs @ MIT, a video game accelerator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and currently teaches at Arizona State University.
On this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from second year MDiv student Lexi Potter about Lexi's journey to HDS, community, and the "tradition of friendship."Transcript forthcoming.
For Episode 16 of Pop Apocalypse, we welcome composer, artist, and media theorist Paul Miller. Miller is best known for his music as DJ Spooky, the avant-garde turntableist who has collaborated with artists ranging from Chuck D to Yoko Ono. He has also re-scored classic films, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and his art has been showcased in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In this wide-ranging conversation, we asked Paul to explore the eeriness of life in the digital age. We touch on the perils and possibilities of artificial intelligence, the role of the DJ, Japanese Butoh as a response to nuclear tragedy, re-scoring D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, and how Einstein, science fiction, and Sun Ra have shaped Miller’s work.
For episode 15 of Pop Apocalypse, we welcome Fryderyk Kwiatkowski, Assistant Professor at the University of Krakow, on to discuss the relationship between ancient Gnostic myth and modern cinema. Fryderyk takes us through the impact European intellectuals Carl Jung, Hans Jonas, and Eric Voegelin on popular conceptions of Gnosticism. Then we dive into analyses of the Gnostic elements in films like the Matrix, Dark City, Truman Show, and more recent cinema like Free Guy, Chappie, and the television series Silo.
For episode 14 of Pop Apocalypse, we welcome the linguist and philosopher Wouter Kusters. Kusters is the author of Pure Madness (2004) and A Philosophy of Madness (2014), both of which won the Dutch Socrates Award for best philosophy book of the year. We discuss how the experience of psychotic thinking challenges and illuminates our notions of language, philosophy, and mysticism. Along the way, we touch on the similarities between mystical and mad experiences, apophatic and psychotic uses of language, the phenomenology of time, and the impact of Kusters’ books on mental health specialists.
David Holden, MDiv '24, came to HDS after a career in politics in search of ways to help others heal as a hospital chaplain. Transcript forthcoming.
On this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from second year MTS students Becca Leviss and Rucha Modi sharing the story of their early HDS friendship as a source for inspiration.Transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/04/30hope-podcast-featuring-becca-leviss-and-rucha-modi-mts-candidates
On this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from third year MDiv candidate Matta Zheng who teaches us about the interconnections between justice, the mundane, and hope.Transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/04/29/hope-podcast-featuring-matta-zheng-mdiv-candidate
For Episode 13 of Pop Apocalypse, we welcome Shannon Taggart, an American photographer, writer, researcher, and curator known for exploring how photography can navigate boundaries between the seen and unseen. Her book, Séance (Fulger Press, 2019), offers hundreds of photographs documenting contemporary Spiritualism across the U.S. and Britain. We discuss what sparked Shannon’s interests in Spiritualism, the intersecting histories of photography and Spiritualism, ectoplasm, what inspires people to become mediums, and the techniques she developed for photographing the invisible.
In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from 2nd year MDiv candidate Paula Ortiz. Together we discuss the Andes mountains, being awestruck, and seeing hope in the present.Transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/03/26/hope-podcast-featuring-paula-ortiz-mdiv-candidate
You’re listening to Harvard Divinity School's Praxis Podcast, where I, Maddison Tenney, interview HDS students about what brought them here, what they study, and where they hope to go next. This week's guest, Kristen Maples, MDiv '24, explores end of life care and the sacred practice of watching horror films.Full transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/03/25/end-life-care-and-horror-scholarship-praxis-podcast-featuring-kristen-maples-mdiv-24
When is peace not peace? When does pluralism only seem like pluralism from the perspective of the people in power? Christianity famously took form during the Pax Romana—an era of celebrated stability in the Roman empire—even as its message about the dawn of the messianic age and the coming of the kingdom of God resonated among those who saw the same age, instead, as a time of political oppression, cosmic upheaval, and eschatological unraveling. Likewise, to the degree that the Roman empire can be characterized by terms like ethnic “diversity” and religious “tolerance,” it was in a manner marked by massive erasures—both of knowledge and ways of knowing, pertaining to whole peoples. Arguably, a parallel dynamic marks Christian approaches to Jews and so-called “heretics” and “pagans,” with consequences for memory, forgetting, and archival amnesias especially with the empire’s Christianization—and with rippling effects that continue to shape our present. In this session of "Religion and Just Peace | A Series of Public Online Conversations," Annette Yoshiko Reed, Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity and Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, reflected upon the perennial questions above using examples from these ancient religions and empires. This is the second event of a five-part series of online public conversations with members of the HDS faculty to explore what an expansive understanding of religion can provide to the work of just peacebuilding.This event took place on February 3, 2025.Full transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/02/03/video-empire-and-epistemicide-historical-perspectives-rhetoric-peace-and-its-erasures
"Christian Nationalism in Global Perspective," a conversation with David Hempton and one of the 2024-25 Yang Visiting Scholars, Nilay Saiya.This event took place on February 27, 2025. Full transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/03/05/video-yang-scholars-2025-christian-nationalism-global-perspective
Although the sectarian labels of Sunni and Shi’a are widely used today to cover a range of identities and beliefs held by Muslims across the Islamic World, there are many foundational questions remaining over the origins of sectarian identity in Islam as well as its implications across time. The field has largely understudied theories of sectarianism and the precise applications of Sunni and Shi’a labels, including the content of their beliefs and the boundaries between them, largely remain an open debate to historians, political scientists, and others alike.This discussion covered some of the main theoretical, methodological, and thematic issues relating to the study of sectarianism, Shi’a and Sunni identities, and the challenges in understanding what these labels mean over time and in the larger field of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies.Speakers: Dr. Ahmed El Shamsy, Professor of Islamic Thought, University of Chicago Dr. Mohammad Sagha, Lecturer in the Modern Middle East, Harvard University. Moderator: Dr. Mohsen Goudarzi, Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies, Harvard Divinity School.This event took place on November 14, 2024.Full transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/11/14/exploring-sectarian-identity-islam
In this episode of the Hope Podcast, first-year Marty Martinage explains how storytelling, representation, and even silly stickers can help guide us to hope.Transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/03/03/hope-podcast-featuring-marty-matinage-mdiv-candidate
For the 12th episode of Pop Apocalypse, Matt Dillon welcomes the philosopher, artist, and musician Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix. Haela is best known as the songwriter and singer for the black metal band, Liturgy, which has released six full albums and one EP. We discuss Haela’s early relationships to Christianity and metal music, her philosophical training, and her recent conversion to Orthodox Christianity. Along the way, we explore her philosophical system of Transcendental Qabalah and how it informs records such as H.A.Q.Q., Origin of the Alimonies, and 93696.
In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we sit down with second year MDiv candidate Ivy Wang. Together we talk about her journey through different Harvard schools and what it may feel like to find a new home in beauty and mystery.Transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/02/20/hope-podcast-featuring-ivy-wang-mdiv-candidate
In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from Joyce Cheng, a first year MTS student. This in episode we discuss Joyce's idea of hope, her faith, and what brings her to HDS.Transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/02/20/hope-podcast-featuring-joyce-cheng-mts-candidate
Creative practice and religious experience overlap in this week’s Praxis podcast with Jack Tripp, MTS’ 25. In sharing about his artistic practice, Jack offers his perspective on the surrender required for his ceramics and his spiritual life. Full transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/03/03/ceramics-and-surrender-praxis-podcast-featuring-jack-tripp-mts-25
In this long read from Harvard Divinity Bulletin, a 'Divine Comedy' reading group with two artist friends deepens the author’s understanding of Dante’s transcendent friendship with Virgil.This is a special audio version of "On Assignment, Virgil Rescues Dante from the Wilderness," a feature written and read by Diane Mehta and appearing in the Autumn/Winter 2024 issue of Harvard Divinity Bulletin. Read or follow along on the Harvard Divinity Bulletin website: https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/on-assignment-virgil-rescues-dante-from-the-wilderness/
This week’s Praxis episode features Rebecca Oreskes, who recently graduated HDS with her Master of Theological Studies degree. After a 25 year career in the forest service, she decided to return to school to become a chaplain, focusing on end of life care.Full transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/10/24/intersection-of-healing-veteran-service-and-motherhood-a-praxis-podcast-with-Amy-Sexauer.
For Episode 11 of Pop Apocalypse, we welcome Jennifer Higgie. Jennifer is the author of several books, including Bedlam, a novel about the artist Richard Dadd; The Mirror and the Palette, a history of women’s self-portraits; and The Other Side: A Story of Women in Art and the Spirit World, a beautiful and personal study of the relationship between spiritual experience and art in the lives of modern women. In this career-spanning chat, Jennifer and I discuss her early career in painting, what inspired her to write Bedlam, and how the art world changed during her time at Frieze magazine. Then we dive into Jennifer’s latest book, The Other Side: A Story of Women in Art and the Spirit World. We discuss the spiritual and artistic lives of women like Georgiana Houghton, Hilma af Klint, Ithell Colquhoun, and Hildegard of Bingen. Along the way, we touch on topics like fairies, Spiritualism, gardening, Carl Jung, spiritual ecology, Theosophy, ascended masters, angels, and much else.
“Reproductive Healthcare Access and White Nationalism,” featured founder of Funky Brown Chick, Twanna Hines, and Melissa Deckman, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Assistant Dean for Religion and Public Life, Hussein Rashid, served as moderator.Access to reproductive healthcare engages with explicitly religious language. This session positioned that language in the broader framework of white nationalism, which is often undergirded by Christian nationalism. The session tied together structures of patriarchy and race, and offered ways of possible solidarity to create a more just future.This was the third of four sessions in the Religion and Democratic Ideals series. This series focused on where religion intersects with democratic ideals and institutions. Sponsored by Religion and Public LifeFull transcript: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/11/14/video-religion-and-democratic-ideals-reproductive-healthcare-access-and-white-nationalism.
The Women's Studies in Religion Program (WSRP) at Harvard Divinity School was delighted to host Erminia Ardissino as she presented on biblical exegesis in Renaissance Venice aimed at rehabilitating the image of Eve. Ann D. Braude, Director of WSRP and Senior Lecturer on American Religious History at Harvard Divinity School, introduced Ardissino. Erminia Ardissino is Professor Emerita of Italian Literature at the Università di Torino. She received her MA in romance languages at the University of Georgia in Athens, a PhD at Yale University, and a doctorate at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. She has also taught as visiting professor in several universities across Europe and North and South America.Full transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/10/10/video-eves-innocence-womens-biblical-exegesis-renaissance-venice.
At Harvard Divinity School's 209th Convocation ceremony, HDS Dean Marla F. Frederick delivered the address "And, Yet...We Hope" to the HDS and Harvard community, friends, alumni, and distinguished guests.This event took place on September 26, 2024.Full transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/09/30/harvard-divinity-school-2024-convocation.
On October 1, 2024, HDS hosted a celebration of "Hindu and Catholic, Priest and Scholar: A Love Story," the new memoir from HDS Professor Francis X. Clooney, S.J. Joining Prof. Clooney on a panel of respondents were: Rajeev Persaud, MTS ’24, Andrea Bischoff, MTS ’24, and Jonathan Makransky, multireligious ministry initiatives coordinator at HDS. The event was introduced by Kerry Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life. Sponsored by the Office of the Chaplain and Religious and Spiritual Life and by the Office of Ministry Studies. Full transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/10/01/video-hindu-and-catholic-priest-and-scholar-love-story.
Part of the "Symposium on Religion and American Democracy," held September 27, 2024. The Importance of HBCUs in the Making of American DemocracySpeakers:-Jelani M. Favors, Henry E. Frye Distinguished Professor of History, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University -Tony Frazier, Assistant Professor of History, The Pennsylvania State University -Crystal R. Sanders, Associate Professor of African American Studies, Emory University -John Silvanus Wilson, Jr., MTS ’81, EdM ’82, EdD ’85, Managing Director, Open Leadership Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -Moderated by Dean Marla F. FrederickFull transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/09/27/importance-hbcus-making-american-democracy.
“Media, Religion, and the Nation,” featured Zeba Khan, San Fransisco Chronicle, Jesse Holland, George Washington University, and Syreeta McFadden, Borough of Manhattan Community College. Assistant Dean for Religion and Public Life, Hussein Rashid, served as moderator.For decades, news media in the U.S. has been critiqued as reproducing structures of power and exclusion, including those in religions. While entertainment media has worked towards more inclusive storytelling recently, historically all media has been inconsistent in representing and engaging marginalized communities. This panel examined how media framing creates our understanding of what the United States is and how we can be more literate media consumers.This was the second of four sessions in the Religion and Democratic Ideals series. This series focused on where religion intersects with democratic ideals and institutions. Sponsored by Religion and Public LifeFull transcript: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/11/14/video-religion-and-democratic-ideals-media-religion-and-nation.
In Zionism: An Emotional State, author Derek J. Penslar demonstrated how the energy propelling the Zionist project originates from bundles of feeling whose elements have varied in volume, intensity, and durability across space and time. Penslar examined the emotions that have shaped Zionist sensibilities and practices throughout the movement’s history.Featuring Derek J. Penslar, William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard UniversityModerated by Shaul Magid, HDS Visiting Professor of Modern Jewish StudiesFull transcript: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/12/3/video-zionism-emotional-state.
“Political Futures,” featured RPL Organizing Fellow, Josh Wolfsun, and RPL Arts and Popular Culture Fellow, Angélique Roché. Assistant Dean for Religion and Public Life, Hussein Rashid, served as moderator.Moving from the exigencies of the moment, this conversation focused on creating new communities, generating solidarity, imagining different economies, and asked how we can make the politics of the possible a reality.This was the first of four sessions in the Religion and Democratic Ideals series. This series focused on where religion intersects with democratic ideals and institutions. Sponsored by Religion and Public LifeFull transcript: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/11/14/video-religion-and-democratic-ideals-political-futures
Each year the HDS Women's Studies in Religion Program brings scholars in gender from around the country to enrich the experience of HDS students. 2024 Orientation offered students the opportunity to hear from the 2024–25 WSRP visiting faculty, who shared their thoughts on the ethical responsibility of scholars to be engaged in the study of gender.Speakers:S. Zahra Moballegh, Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and IslamWendy Mallette, Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and TheologyAshley L. Bacchi, Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Jewish HistoryGhazal Asif Farrukhi, Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and AnthropologyErminia Ardissino, Visiting Associate Professor Emerita of Women’s Studies and LiteratureModerated by Ann Braude, Director of the Women's Studies in Religion Program Full transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/08/29/video-ethical-scholarship-gender-religion-and-difference.
In their book, “Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism,” Shane Burley and Ben Lorber, two activist journalists, present a progressive, intersectional approach to the vital question: What can we do about antisemitism? Using personal stories, historical deep-dives, front-line reporting, and interviews with leading change-makers, Burley and Lorber help us break the current impasse to understand how antisemitism works, what’s missing in contemporary debates, and how to build true safety through solidarity, for Jews and all people.Featuring co-authors Ben Lorder and Shane BurleyModerated by Shaul Magid, HDS Visiting Professor of Modern Jewish StudiesThis is the first event in RPL's Religion, Conflict, and Peace 2024-25 Book Series.Full transcript: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/10/01/video-safety-through-solidarity-radical-guide-fighting-antisemitism.
This special HDS Buddhist Ministry Initiative event commemorated Dhamma Chakra Day, the anniversary of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism along with 500,000 of his followers. Dr. Ambedkar’s peaceful, egalitarian, and grassroots movement of social liberation left an indelible mark on Indian society, embracing Buddhism as a powerful method for marginalized people to denounce the caste system and to gain true equality and dignity.Moderated by Buddhist Ministry Initiative Post-Doctoral Fellow Dr. Santosh Raut, this program included a presentation by Professor Charles Hallisey and a panel discussion on Dr. Ambedkar’s legacy as it resonates with Isabel Wilkerson’s "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents," featuring Dean Melissa Bartholomew and Professor Stephanie Sears.Full transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/11/07/video-celebrating-dhamma-chakra-day-buddhism-emancipation.
There was a presentation and brief film screening with Eileen Moncoeur, Executive Director of HRDC Sabal Foundation in Nepal, which harnesses global support so that the poorest children with disabilities in Nepal can access surgery, rehabilitation, and loving care. Eileen guided us through an exploration of the ways in which global principles of compassion can be put into action on the ground in community settings, using the Sabal Foundation’s work as a case study. HDS Buddhist Ministry Initiative instructors Chris Berlin and Dr. Santoshkumar Raut offered a response and commentary.Full transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/10/24/video-what-it-takes-manifest-compassion-talk-sabal-foundation.
"Rematriation, Land, and Healing," featured co-founder of Women of Bears Ears, Cynthia Wilson, and board member of Women of Bears Ears, Doreen Bird. Assistant Dean for Religion and Public Life, Hussein Rashid, served as moderator.How we steward our land—and the lands of others—brings up essential questions of belonging, indigeneity, and spiritual and political governance. How do different types of stewardship impact how we enact democracy in and with the land we occupy? This session examined how we relate to the natural world around us and the possibilities—and obstacles—for strengthening those relationships through our democratic institutions.This was the fourth of four sessions in the Religion and Democratic Ideals series. This series focused on where religion intersects with democratic ideals and institutions. Sponsored by Religion and Public LifeFull transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/10/22/video-religion-and-democratic-ideals-rematriation-land-and-healing
For episode 10 of Pop Apocalypse, we welcome the musician, composer, and producer Trey Spruance. We discuss Trey’s early musical and occult explorations and how reading the philosopher Henry Corbin changed the course of his life. Trey then takes us through the esoteric dimensions of Secret Chiefs 3 and how albums like Book M and Book of Horizons are filled with correspondences to Kabbalah, astrology, Hermetic magic, and Pythagorean musicology. Along the way, we touch on Trey’s work with Jim Zorn and Kronos Quartet, his conversion to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and the afterlives of Saint Cyprian the Mage.
Stephanie Paulsell delivered a moving lecture about her life in scholarship before her retirement in December 2024. Paulsell has been a member of the HDS faculty since 2001. She is the author of "Religion Around Virginia Woolf" (2019), co-editor (with Davíd Carrasco and Mara Willard) of "Goodness and the Literary Imagination" (2019), and has served as a regular columnist for The Christian Century since 2007.Full transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/10/22/video-lost-mystery-god-remembered-wisdom-retirement.
Naomi Saks, MDiv ’10, Chaplain at University of California, San Francisco Medical Center offered remarks via Zoom about her new book, "Intentionally Interprofessional Palliative Care." Naomi was joined by one of her co-authors Chaplain Paul Galchutt. Sponsored by the Office is Religious and Spiritual LifeFull transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/10/30/video-interprofessional-palliative-care.
In our second episode of Praxis, we meet Marisol Andrade Muñoz, a Master of Theological Studies student, graphic designer, and historian, whose archival research looks at the relationship between time and people in Central Mexico.Join us as we look deeper into the student experience at Harvard Divinity School.Full transcript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/11/20/from-visual-storytelling-to-historical-imagination-featuring-marisol-andrade-munoz
In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from Taylon E. Lancaster, a third-year MDiv candidate at HDS and pastor at Third Baptist Church in Springfield, MA. We discuss his pursuits as a drum major for justice, the role of rest, and what hope looks like in community.Learn more about religion and spiritual life at Harvard Divinity School here: https://hds.harvard.edu/community-life/religious-and-spiritual-lifeTranscript: https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/11/19/hope-podcast-featuring-taylon-e-lancaster-mdiv-candidate
In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from Eve Schwartz, a third-year MDiv candidate at HDS. We discuss blending the personal and the academic, building community, and the power of ritual.Learn more about religion and spiritual life at Harvard Divinity School here: https://hds.harvard.edu/community-life/religious-and-spiritual-lifeTranscript forthcoming.
For episode nine, we welcome to the show Diana Pasulka, professor of Religious Studies at UNC – Wilmington. Her books American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology and Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences are both classics in the field of Religion and Technology studies. We discuss how Pasulka’s early work on Catholic purgatory led her to the study of UFOs, the spiritual practices of experiencers, and the role of government (dis)information and popular culture in the rise of UFO religion. On the way, we touch on A.I., revelations, St. Teresa of Avila, sleep paralysis, and the perils and possibilities of new technologies.Full transcript forthcoming.
In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from Hiatt O'Connor, a second-year MDiv student at HDS. He discusses his journey from a Christian upbringing to Zen Buddhist practices, reading the Tao Te Ching, and his relationship with Quakerism. Learn more about religion and spiritual life at Harvard Divinity School here: https://hds.harvard.edu/community-life/religious-and-spiritual-lifeTranscript forthcoming.
Terrence Johnson, Charles G. Adams Professor of African American Religious Studies at HDS, interviews Corey Brettschneider about his new book, "The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought To Defend It." Brettschneider is professor of political science at Brown University, where he teaches constitutional law and politics, as well as a visiting professor at Fordham Law School. Editor's note: We experienced a microphone issue during the interview recording, so our apologies for the inconsistent audio quality from 4:34 to 9:10. Full transcript forthcoming.
We are excited to launch our new podcast Praxis, which looks deeper into the student experience at Harvard Divinity School. This episode featuring Amy Sexauer, MDiv ‘26, explores being a veteran and mother while attending HDS. More episodes are coming!
In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from Jordan Ahmed, a first-year MDiv student at HDS. We discuss his relationship to Islam, community organizing, and the joy of embodied practice.
In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from Nicole Marie, a third-year MDiv student at HDS. We discuss her relationship to hope, imagination, and mystery.
For our eighth episode, CSWR Research Associate and Pop Apocalypse host Matthew J. Dillon welcomes author Eric Wargo to the show. Eric is perhaps the world’s foremost expert on precognition. His most recent book, "From Nowhere," examines precognition in its relationship to creativity in the lives of major authors and artists. They discuss the nature of time, dreamwork, memories from the future, and the four-dimensional brain. Along the way, they discuss figures like Virginia Woolf, Philip K. Dick, Andrei Tarkovsky, Sigmund Freud, and the sculptor, Michael Richards. Eric Wargo has a PhD in anthropology from Emory University and worksas a professional science writer and editor in Washington, D.C. He isthe author of three books on precognition: "From Nowhere," "PrecognitiveDreamwork and the Long Self," and the acclaimed "Time Loops." In hisspare time, Wargo writes about science fiction, consciousness, andparapsychology at his popular blog, "The Nightshirt."Full transcript forthcoming.
This year, HDS is hosting two Hindu Swamis, Swami Chidekananda of the Ramakrishna Order, and Swami Sachidananda of the Arsha Vidya Gurukul. Both Swamis quickly became cherished members of our community, in the classroom, in community activities, and at religious services.During this event, participants heard the two swamis talk personally about their choice for monastic life, sharing with us insights into their personal journeys as swamis, and reflecting on what it means to be a monastic in the twenty first century.This event took place March 20, 2024.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/03/20/video-being-hindu-monastic-personal-journeys
Dr. Charmain Jackman (she/her), founder and CEO of InnoPsych, delivered the closing keynote at the Black Religion and Mental Health Symposium.Professor Ahmad Greene-Hayes (Harvard Divinity School) and Professor George Aumoithe (FAS, History and African and African American Studies) proposed this two-day interdisciplinary symposium, integrating mind, brain, and behavior insights into the exploration of Black religious practices and their impact on mental health. They questioned how Black religious spaces can enhance mental health outcomes, considering their dual role as sanctuaries and potential impediments to open discourse.The symposium brought together experts from history, public health, psychiatry, African American studies, religious studies, and civic society, focusing on understanding the neurobiological and socio-behavioral dynamics contributing to mental health stigmatization within Black communities. The symposium aimed to illuminate how societal stressors, such as racism, influence brain function and behavior, thereby affecting mental health, while also exploring resilience mechanisms among Black religious communities. This project aligns with the Harvard Mind Brain Behavior Interfaculty Initiative’s mission of facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration to address complex issues, contributing to a broader understanding of the interplay between mind, brain, and behavior in the context of Black mental health. This event took place on March 1, 2024.For more information: https://hds.harvard.eduFull transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/video/2024/03/01/black-religion-and-mental-health-symposium-closing-keynote-dr-charmain-jackman
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient and legendary gospel artist Twinkie Clark talked about her musical journey and performed music from her catalog of over 350 songs. Scholars Charrise Barron, Assistant Professor of Music at Harvard University, and Damien Sneed, Associate Professor in the Department of Music at Howard University, facilitated the conversation with Twinkie Clark which illuminated the motivations and milestones of her music career and explored key elements of her signature sound. The evening culminated in a recital in which Twinkie Clark, a Hammond Organ Hall of Fame member, performed on the Hammond B-3 organ.This event took place April 10, 2024.Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/04/22/video-evening-twinkie-clark
Each spring, the Office of Ministry Studies organizes the Billings Preaching Prize Finals, an annual preaching competition open to all HDS students who have not previously won. Congratulations to MDiv candidate Auds Jenkins, the 2024 Billings Preaching Prize Competition winner, and to finalists Nicole Marie and Eve Woldemikael for their incredible talents. The event also featured readings from Solomon Kwaghko, the Massachusetts Bible Society scripture reading winner, and Ivy Wang, the OMS reading prize winner.This event took place April 17, 2024.Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/04/17/video-2024-billings-preaching-prize-competition
Full title: Battle of Siffin: The Intrigues Against Imam Ali's Statebuilding Project & Its Legacy in the Modern Middle EastThis talk explores the politics and legacy of the Battle of Siffin — a foundational moment in the early political memory and history of Islam that pitted Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib against a rebellion in Syria led by Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan. As the first Shi'a Imam and fourth Sunni Caliph, the figure of Ali looms large in the consciousness of Muslims from the very early Islamic period until today. The talk is divided into two sections. The first explores the dialogue and politics between Ali and the diverse battle factions in his army at the Battle of Siffin. It analyzes Imam Ali's state building project, the interests of various elite generals and divisions within Imam Ali’s army, the context behind internal Muslim conflict and the political order of the early Islamic state, and the distinctions made by Ali regarding the roots and reasons behind internal civil conflict within the Muslim body politic. The second section analyzes how contemporary thinkers and scholars in the modern Middle East have interpreted the legacy of Imam Ali, the Battle of Siffin, and the "First Muslim Civil War” as a lens through which to understand the intersection between early Islamic history and modern political theology as well as debates over governance and statecraft in contemporary Islamic intellectual thought.Speaker: Dr. Mohammad Sagha, Lecturer in the Modern Middle East, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC), Harvard UniversityThis event took place on April 29, 2024.For more information: https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming.
Sahar Shahid, MDiv ’17, and the members of the HDS Alumni/Alumnae Council are pleased to invite fellow graduates and the School community to celebrate Peter J Gomes STB ’68 Distinguished Alumni Honors and our theme of Journeys of the Soul. This year, we seek to honor those who, across various systems of belief, delve into the soul's journey in this life and beyond and are committed to practices that foster connection with the transcendent. Read about this year's honorees here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/04/22/journeys-soul-hds-recognizes-awe-inspiring-alumni-2024-gomes-distinguished-honorsThis event took place on May 9, 2024.For more information, visit https://hds.harvard.edu/A transcript is forthcoming.
Listen to Tibetan Buddhist master H.E. Ling Rinpoche's teachings on embodying the power of compassion and wisdom to uproot discrimination and bigotry. HDS was so honored to extend this rare opportunity to the community to experience the teachings of Buddhism from a representative of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. BioHis Eminence the 7th Kyabjé Yongzin Ling Rinpoche is the reincarnation of the senior tutor of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He entered Drepung Monastery in India in 1990 and completed all of his Buddhist studies and training by 2017. He is one of the few religious figures in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition who represents His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and he travels widely around the globe giving teachings.This event took place on April 23, 2023.For more information, see https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming.
A yearly tradition at HDS, the Stendahl Symposium honors the memory of former professor Krister Stendahl, who tirelessly sought to repair fractions between Jews and Christians, supported the ordination of women, and pushed for the full inclusion and participation of women and minority voices in academia and interfaith work.Opening Remarks: Given by Samirah Jaigirdar, HDSSA Academics ChairPanel 1: Conversations Across Religious Boundaries "Christian Zen: Innovative Syncretism or Cultural Appropriation?" by Jeffrey Ng"Are You My Mother: Redefining Adoptive Relationships Through a Comparative Study of Western-Christian and Neo-Confucian Ethics" by Grace Sill"They said that he was the image of Tezcatlipoca: Dress and iconography in technologies of ritual remembrance in 1500s Texcoco" by Marisol Andrade Muñoz"Humanism in the Eastern and Western Philosophy and Religion: Concerning Confucius/Mencius and Kant" by Juye HanPanel 2: Religion and the Digital Age "Meme-ing Making: Our Newest Testament" by Maddison Tenney"Religion’s On Her Lips: Exploring the “Good Girl Faith” of Taylor Swift’s Lyricism" by Olivia Hastie and Anna Guterman"New Media, New Narratives, New Nuns: Catholic Nuns Making a Habit of Social Media" by Lauren Tassone"The Spiritual Value of Slasher Films: Watching Horror Movies as a Sacred Practice" by Kristen MaplesPanel 3: Religion and Current Affairs "From Haven to Hazard: Examining the Role of Family as Sanctuary in Mormon Discourse" by Perlei Toor""We Are Both First Responders and Vulnerable": Religious Actors as Implementing Partners for Climate Adaptation in Kenya" by Miriam Israel"Vacation to Auschwitzland: The Commodification of Grief and Fear in Auschwitz Dark Tourism and its Implications for the Divine" by Hannah Eliason"Is QAnon a Cult? An Analysis of Religious Rhetoric in Q Drops" by Brady W Schuh"The Transformative Power of Humility: The Irony of American History and a Reorientation of American Foreign Policy in the 21st Century" by Ailih WeeldreyerPanel 4: Studying Religion"“Christian Writers on Judaism” at Harvard: Who Studies Whom in the Academic Study of Religion?" by Rachel Florman"Rassenfrage, Judenfrage, Schwarzen-frage: Liminal Identities in W.E.B. Du Bois’s Prayers for Dark People" by Becca Leviss"Reimagining Religious Studies: Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s Revolutionary Legacy" by Yanchen LiuPanel 5: Religion and Identity"Thus Spoke the Child " by Micah Rensunberg"Coming Out as Evangelical, Converting to Queerness" by Karina Yum"Heritage Judaism, Race Science, and the Embodied Past: Searching for the Anti-Zionist Jewish Body" by Shir Lovett-Graff"Building a Theological Home for Korean Queers: The Possibilities for Korean Queer Theology through the Eyes of Korean Christian Queers" by Jihyun SonThis event took place on April 19, 2024.For more information: https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming.
Students enrolled in HDS 3326 "Africana Religions and Healing in the American South," co-facilitated by Dr. Tracey E. Hucks and Dr. Melissa Wood Bartholomew, shared their experiences and takeaways from a study tour/pilgrimage the class took over Spring Break. The class traveled to the Gullah/Geechee heritage communities in the Lowcountry Sea Islands and to the historic slave sites, monuments, and former slave plantations in South Carolina and Georgia. The trip was designed to immerse students in the physical contexts they have been learning about to enhance their understanding of the spiritual technologies of practitioners and specialists and the material culture that accompanies alternative modes of spiritual healing and religious meaning for people in the African diaspora. This event took place on April 16, 2024. For more information: https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming.
Full title: RCPI Spring 2024 Book Series: Stranger in My Own Land: Palestine, Israel and One Family's Story of HomeThis book talk featured “Stranger in My Own Land: Palestine, Israel and One Family's Story of Home,” a memoir by Palestinian writer Fida Jiryis.“Stranger in My Own Land” chronicles a desperate, at times surreal, search for a homeland between the Galilee, the West Bank and the diaspora. The book is a tale of conflict, exodus, occupation, return, and search for belonging, narrated through Jiryis’s personal experience with displacement. In the book, Jiryis asks difficult questions about what the right of return would mean for the millions of Palestinians waiting to come ‘home’.Featuring Fida Jiryis, Palestinian writer and editorModerated by Sara Roy, Associate of the Center for Middle Eastern StudiesCo-sponsored by the Middle East Forum at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at HarvardThis event took on April 8, 2024.For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu/A full transcript is forthcoming.
This lecture was given by visiting Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Islam, Z. Fareen Parvez (University of Massachusetts, Amherst). This event took place on April 4, 2024. For more information: https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming
Full title: "Public Courage and the Academy: Beyond the Binaries: Depolarizing our Politics and Bridging Our World"The Rev. Dr. Deborah Johnson explored the theme of depolarizing our politics and bridging our world. She invited us to move beyond societal binaries and to embrace a more inclusive and compassionate future.Rev. Dr. Deborah Johnson (she/her) is a renowned spiritual leader and social justice activist known for her significant contributions to promoting universal spiritual principles and cultural diversity. As the founding minister of Inner Light Ministries, she has dedicated her life to teaching the practical application of Universal Spiritual Principles to all aspects of life. Additionally, she is the founder and president of The Motivational Institute, a consulting firm specializing in cultural diversity, serving a wide range of clients from Fortune 500 companies to community-based organizations. Dr. Johnson is recognized for her exceptional public speaking skills and her ability to bring clarity to complex and emotionally charged issues.Throughout her career, Dr. Johnson has been a prominent figure in the fight for social justice and equality. She played a pivotal role as a co-litigant in two landmark cases in California that set precedents for the inclusion of sexual orientation in the state’s Civil Rights Bill and defeated the challenge to legalize domestic partnerships. Her focus on coalition building, conflict resolution, public policy development, and cultural sensitivity awareness has made her a powerful voice for compassion, equality, and reconciliation. Dr. Johnson holds a visionary perspective of Oneness, transcending creed and doctrine, and is particularly dedicated to bridging the gap between individuals with conservative and progressive ideologies.Public Courage and the Academy is a speaker series that explores the power religion plays in advancing social change. The series will feature nationally recognized leaders whose creative approaches toward a just world at peace have had national and global impact. This series is hosted by the Office of Ministry Studies at Harvard Divinity School in collaboration with Just Us, A Unity Campus Justice Ministry for change agents and peacemakers. Facilitated by Rev. Dr. Kevin Ross, MRPL ‘23, Senior Minister and CEO of Unity Sacramento.This event took place on February 29, 2024.For more information, see https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming.
Full title: "Public Courage and the Academy: The Future of the Church and the Cosmopolitan Leaders It's Calling For"Join this online conversation featuring Bishop Yvette Flunder and the Rev. Eric Ovid Donaldson.Bishop Yvette Flunder (she/her) is an American womanist, preacher, pastor, activist, and singer from San Francisco, California. She is the senior pastor of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in Oakland, California, and the Presiding Bishop of the Fellowships of Affirming Ministries.Public Courage and the Academy is a speaker series that explores the power religion plays in advancing social change. The series featured nationally recognized leaders whose creative approaches toward a just world at peace have had national and global impact. This series was hosted by the Office of Ministry Studies at Harvard Divinity School in collaboration with Just Us, A Unity Campus Justice Ministry for change agents and peacemakers. Facilitated by Rev. Dr. Kevin Ross, MRPL ‘23, Senior Minister and CEO of Unity Sacramento.This event took place on March 28, 2024.For more information, see: https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming
This is the sixth event is a six-part series.This session was a discussion among presenters reflecting upon the insights shared throughout the series. In addition to identifying themes and throughlines among sessions, they returned to the overarching questions that framed this collaboration: What can an expansive understanding of religion provide in these times of Earth crisis? What is the role of the study of religion in times of catastrophe?Panelists: Mayra Rivera, Dan McKanan, Teren Sevea, Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Terry Tempest WilliamsModerator: Diane L. Moore, Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean of Religion and Public LifeMayra Rivera, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx StudiesDan McKanan, Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer in DivinityTeren Sevea, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Assistant Professor of Islamic StudiesMatthew Ichihashi Potts, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial ChurchTerry Tempest Williams, HDS Writer-in-ResidenceFor more information on the full series, "Religion in Times of Earth Crisis: A Series of Public Online Conversations," visit https://hds.harvard.edu/news/religion-times-earth-crisisThis event took place on March 18, 2024.For more information on HDS, visit https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming.
This book talk featured “Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible” by Mitri Raheb.“Decolonizing Palestine” challenges the weaponization of biblical texts to support the current settler-colonial state of Israel. Raheb argues that some of the most important theological concepts–Israel, the land, election, and chosen people–must be decolonized in a paradigm shift in Christian theological thinking about Palestine.“Decolonizing Palestine” is a timely book that builds on the latest research in settler-colonialism and human rights to place traditional theological themes within the wider socio-political context of settler colonialism as it is practiced by the modern nation-state of Israel. Written by a native Palestinian Christian theologian who continues to live in the region, “Decolonizing Palestine” provides an insider’s perspective that disrupts hegemonic and imperialist narratives about the region.Featuring Rev. Prof. Mitri Raheb, Founder and President of Dar al-Kalima University in BethlehemModerated by Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean of Religion and Public LifeThis event took place on April 16, 2024.For more information: https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming.
The Yang Visiting Scholars in World Christianity program brings distinguished senior and junior scholars of world Christianity to Harvard Divinity School each year, opening up fresh perspectives, particularly from the global south. This discussion was led by David N. Hempton, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, and Alonzo L. McDonald, Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School. Professor Hempton led a conversation with this year’s Yang Visiting Scholars, Nathanael Homewood, Tom Santa Maria, and Gina A. Zurlo. Each scholar gave a brief presentation of their work and how it contributes to the study of World Christianity, followed by a group discussion. This event took place on April 11, 2024.For more information, see https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming.
Organized by the HDS student group, HDS Muslims, this event began after breaking fast; guests enjoyed an hour-long performance by a group of musicians who performed examples of traditional music from Ottoman Sufi Istanbul lodges. This event featured the Istanbul Meshk Ensemble, directed by A. Eylül Valçunkaya, Ph.D., a visiting researcher at CMES. This event took place on March 26, 2024.For more information, see https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming.
The vast range of meditation practices in Buddhist traditions has stood the test of time. Still, we live in a culture that differs radically from Buddhist cultures of the past. Our minds and lives are fragmented, and people find even basic concentration challenging. In such circumstances, an approach grounded in inquiry at a deep level, together with non-dual acceptance, may be of special value. Tibetan teacher Tarthang Tulku, active in the West for more than five decades, has developed such an approach: the Time, Space, Knowledge Vision. Jack Petranker, one of his senior students, introduced the inquiry-based Vision and present practices that derive from it.Jack Petranker is the Director of the Mangalam Research Center for Buddhist Languages and the Founder and Senior Teacher of the Center for Creative Inquiry. Editor and author of numerous books on contemplative inquiry, Jack is a senior student of Tibetan Buddhist teacher Tarthang Tulku, an innovative, traditionally trained lama resident in America for fifty-five years.This event took place on March 7, 2024.For more information, see https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming.
Saints, spiritual warriors, bodhisattvas, zaddikim—no matter how they are named in a given tradition, all share a profound altruistic wish to free others from suffering. Saints are not beings of stained glass or carved stone. “Each of us can be a new saint,” says Lama Rod Owens. “In our pain, our trauma, and all our complexity, we all can—and must—awaken the virtue of our compassion for the benefit of our communities, our planet, and our own souls.”Watch Lama Rod as he shares personal stories, spiritual teachings, and instructions for contemplative and somatic practices from his newest book, The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors. This work reinforces the truth of our interdependency—allowing us to be of service to the collective well-being, and to call on the support and strength of the countless beings who share our struggles and hopes.BioLama Rod Owens is a Black Buddhist Southern Queen. An international influencer with a Master of Divinity degree in Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School. Author of The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors and Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger and co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation, his teachings center on freedom, self-expression, and radical self-care.A leading voice in a new generation of Buddhist teachers with over 11 years of experience, Lama Rod activates the intersections of his identity to create a platform that’s very natural, engaging, and inclusive. Applauded for his mastery in balancing weighty topics with a sense of lightness, the Queen has been featured by various national and international news outlets.Highly sought after for talks, retreats, and workshops, his mission is to show you how to heal and free yourself. This event took place on March 19, 2024.For more information: https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming.
In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we sit down with Keisha Bush, a second-year MTS student. We discuss the importance of intention and the value of community.Learn more about religion and spiritual life at Harvard Divinity School here: hds.harvard.edu/community-life/re…nd-spiritual-lifeTranscript forthcoming.
In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we sit down with Swami Sachidananda, a student fellow at HDS. We discuss his monastic journey and the power of a smile.Learn more about religion and spiritual life at Harvard Divinity School here: hds.harvard.edu/community-life/re…nd-spiritual-lifeTranscript forthcoming.
In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from Jamail Khan, a second-year MTS student at HDS. We discuss the importance of religious community for spiritual growth and the power of love and beauty in the face of hopelessness.Learn more about religion and spiritual life at Harvard Divinity School here: hds.harvard.edu/community-life/re…nd-spiritual-lifeTranscript forthcoming.
Pop Apocalypse, hosted by Matthew J. Dillon, postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, explores the mystical and the mythic, the paranormal and the psychedelic in popular culture.For episode 7, we welcome the writer and scholar Erik Davis to reflect on the journey that led to his new book, BLOTTER: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium. We discuss Erik’s writing for the Village Voice in the early 90s, his breakthrough monograph Techgnosis, and how his home state of California informs his oeuvre. In the second half of the interview, we discuss the academic study of “the weird,” perils and possibilities for the psychedelic renaissance, and how BLOTTER is a love letter to LSD.A full transcript is forthcoming.Learn more: cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from Michael Fuhrman, a second-year MDiv student at HDS. This conversation includes his religious position of non-position, religious sympathy, and the importance of writing for its own sake.Learn more about religion and spiritual life at Harvard Divinity School here: hds.harvard.edu/community-life/re…nd-spiritual-lifeTranscript forthcoming.
In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from Ahmaad Edmund, a third-year MDiv student at HDS. He discusses his long-time commitment to the Baptist tradition, starting a basement church as a youngster, and finding hope in transit.Learn more about religion and spiritual life at Harvard Divinity School here: https://hds.harvard.edu/community-life/religious-and-spiritual-lifeTranscript forthcoming.
This alumni webinar explored the role of chaplaincy in fostering resilience and navigating complex challenges. Representing different religious traditions and fields, HDS alumni—Celene Ibrahim, MDiv '11, Faculty and Muslim Chaplain at the Groton School; Naomi Tzril Saks, MDiv '10, Palliative Care Chaplain at University of California, San Francisco; and The Venerable Priya Rakkhit Sraman, MDiv '17, Buddhist Chaplain at Emory University—shared their insights and experiences on providing spiritual care in diverse settings. The conversation was moderated by Kerry Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life at Harvard Divinity School.The global impact of Harvard Divinity School is realized through generations of remarkable alumni like Celene, Naomi, and Priya. You can help HDS continue to educate leaders who serve with empathy and care by making a gift this year: www.hds.harvard.edu/give.This event took place March 19, 2024.A full transcript can be found online: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/04/16/video-chaplaincy-across-fields-resilience-compassion
This was the fifth event is a six-part series, Religion in Times of Earth Crisis.Can personhood be granted to mountains, lakes, and rivers? What does it mean to be met by another species? How do we extend our notion of power to include all life forms? And what does a different kind of power look like and feel like? Wild Mercy is in our hands. Practices of attention in the field with compassion and grace deepen our kinship with life, allowing us to touch something deeper than hope. Great Salt Lake offers us a reflection into our own nature: Are we shrinking or expanding?Speaker: Terry Tempest Williams, HDS Writer-in-ResidenceModerator: Diane L. Moore, Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean of Religion and Public LifeTerry Tempest Williams joined HDS as a writer-in-residence in 2017. She is the author of numerous books, including the environmental literature classic "Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place." Her most recent book is "The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks," which was published in June 2016 to coincide with and honor the centennial of the National Park Service. Her writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Orion Magazine, and numerous anthologies worldwide as a crucial voice for ecological consciousness and social change. While at HDS, Williams has taught seminars on the spiritual implications of climate change, apocalyptic grief, and centering the wild and non-human voices, among others.For more information on the full series, "Religion in Times of Earth Crisis: A Series of Public Online Conversations," visit https://hds.harvard.edu/news/religion-times-earth-crisisThis event took place on March 4, 2024.For more information: https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming.
Plenary II: Plenary Chair: Dr. Melissa Wood Bartholomew, Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, Lecturer on Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, Harvard Divinity SchoolPanelists: Sevonna Brown, National Director of Black Women’s Blueprint, Safer Childbirth Cities Initiative, Merck for Mothers, Dr. Henry Love, inaugural Obama Foundation U.S. Leaders Fellow, Vice President of Public Policy and Strategy at Women in Need, Dr. Joshua Louis Gills, Rutgers Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at the Aging and Brain Health Alliance, Yolo Akili Robinson (he/him/his) is a non-binary award-winning writer, healing justice worker, yogi and the founder and Executive Director of BEAM (Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective)Professor Ahmad Greene-Hayes (Harvard Divinity School) and Professor George Aumoithe (FAS, History and African and African American Studies) proposed this two-day interdisciplinary symposium, integrating mind, brain, and behavior insights into the exploration of Black religious practices and their impact on mental health. They questioned how Black religious spaces can enhance mental health outcomes, considering their dual role as sanctuaries and potential impediments to open discourse.The symposium brought together experts from history, public health, psychiatry, African American studies, religious studies, and civic society, focusing on understanding the neurobiological and socio-behavioral dynamics contributing to mental health stigmatization within Black communities. The symposium aimed to illuminate how societal stressors, such as racism, influence brain function and behavior, thereby affecting mental health, while also exploring resilience mechanisms among Black religious communities. This project aligns with the Harvard Mind Brain Behavior Interfaculty Initiative’s mission of facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration to address complex issues, contributing to a broader understanding of the interplay between mind, brain, and behavior in the context of Black mental health. This event took place on March 1, 2024.For more information: https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming.
Plenary I: Plenary Chair: Dr. Tracey E. Hucks, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies, Harvard Divinity SchoolPanelists: Rev. Dr. Monica A. Coleman, John and Patricia Cochran Scholar for Inclusive Excellence and Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Delaware, Dr. Martin Summers, Professor of History and African and African Diaspora Studies at Boston College, Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans, Professor of Black Women's Studies (WGSS & AAS) at Georgia State UniversityProfessor Ahmad Greene-Hayes (Harvard Divinity School) and Professor George Aumoithe (FAS, History and African and African American Studies) proposed this two-day interdisciplinary symposium, integrating mind, brain, and behavior insights into the exploration of Black religious practices and their impact on mental health. They questioned how Black religious spaces can enhance mental health outcomes, considering their dual role as sanctuaries and potential impediments to open discourse.The symposium brought together experts from history, public health, psychiatry, African American studies, religious studies, and civic society, focusing on understanding the neurobiological and socio-behavioral dynamics contributing to mental health stigmatization within Black communities. The symposium aimed to illuminate how societal stressors, such as racism, influence brain function and behavior, thereby affecting mental health, while also exploring resilience mechanisms among Black religious communities. This project aligns with the Harvard Mind Brain Behavior Interfaculty Initiative’s mission of facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration to address complex issues, contributing to a broader understanding of the interplay between mind, brain, and behavior in the context of Black mental health. This event took place on March 1, 2024.For more information: https://hds.harvard.eduA full transcript is forthcoming.
Full Title: Black Religion and Mental Health Symposium Keynote, "Black Freedom and the Racialization of Religious Excitement in American Psychiatry” by Dr. Judith WeisenfeldProfessor Ahmad Greene-Hayes (Harvard Divinity School) and Professor George Aumoithe (FAS, History and African and African American Studies) proposed this two-day interdisciplinary symposium, integrating mind, brain, and behavior insights into the exploration of Black religious practices and their impact on mental health. They questioned how Black religious spaces can enhance mental health outcomes, considering their dual role as sanctuaries and potential impediments to open discourse.The symposium brought together experts from history, public health, psychiatry, African American studies, religious studies, and civic society, focusing on understanding the neurobiological and socio-behavioral dynamics contributing to mental health stigmatization within Black communities. The symposium aimed to illuminate how societal stressors, such as racism, influence brain function and behavior, thereby affecting mental health, while also exploring resilience mechanisms among Black religious communities. This project aligns with the Harvard Mind Brain Behavior Interfaculty Initiative’s mission of facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration to address complex issues, contributing to a broader understanding of the interplay between mind, brain, and behavior in the context of Black mental health. This event took place on February 29, 2024.For more information: https://hds.harvard.eduA transcript is forthcoming.
This event was sponsored by the Women's Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. This lecture, "More Babies and More Birth Control: American Jews and the Politics of Reproduction," was given by Samira K. Mehta, who is the Visiting Associate Professor of North American Religions. This event took place on February 29, 2024.For more information, see: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/A full transcript is forthcoming.
Full title: Refuge in the Storm Webinar Series, Part III: Caring for Crisis Workers- Buddhist Approaches to Stress Management and Self-CareThis webinar is the third in a series offered by the Buddhist Ministry Initiative at Harvard Divinity School and featured a panel discussion of contributors to part III of Refuge in the Storm: Buddhist Voices in Crisis Care, edited by Nathan Jishin Michon. The panel included Shushin R.A. Peterson, Alex Baskin, and Acala Xiaoxi Wang, and was be co-moderated by Rev. Dr. Nathan Jishin Michon and Rev. Dr. Monica Sanford. For full bios, see: https://youtu.be/ist6h9ge4SQThis event took place February 27, 2024.For more information: https://hds.harvard.eduA transcript is forthcoming.
This was the fourth event in the six-part Religion in Times of Earth Crisis Series. Human-caused climate change already contributes to manifold global disasters. As the planet inevitably continues to warm, these disasters will be routine and unrelenting. Addressing the reality of loss must become a basic spiritual task of our climate present and future, along with summoning the resolve to respond to all our losses. In this session, Matthew Ichihashi Potts considered the apocalyptic roots of the Christian tradition in order to diagnose how Christianity has contributed to the present crisis and suggest possibilities for a different way forward. Through particular attention to grief and hope as religious categories and with specific reference to various moments and movements from within the Christian tradition, Potts reflected upon the spiritual crisis at the heart of climate catastrophe and suggests the potential for a religious response.Speaker: Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial ChurchModerator: Diane L. Moore, Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean of Religion and Public LifeMatthew Ichihashi Potts, MDiv '08, PhD '13, was appointed the Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church and the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in 2021. Potts has served on the faculty at Harvard Divinity School since 2013 and has focused his teaching on sacramental and moral theology, ministry and pastoral theology, religion and literature, and preaching. He is the author of two books, Cormac McCarthy and the Signs of Sacrament: Literature, Theology, and the Moral of Stories (Bloomsbury, 2015) and Forgiveness: An Alternative Account (Yale University Press, 2022). He sits on the editorial board of the journal Literature and Theology. He is also co-host of the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. Potts served as both an officer in the United States Navy and as a college administrator before being ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church.This event took place on February 26, 2024. For more information on this series, visit https://hds.harvard.edu/news/religion-times-earth-crisisFor more information on HDS, visit https://hds.harvard.edu/A transcript is forthcoming
Dr. Luis Eduardo is the Director of Wasiwaska, a research center in Brazil for the study of psychointegrator plants, visionary art and consciousness. Dr. Luna spoke about the ethnobotanical research at his Center, learning with and from the local communities and speaking with and to the plants. He also explored the relationship between his research work and art and how the greater-than-human world has informed his approach to being an artist and an exhibition director.This event took place on February 16, 2024.For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu/A transcript is forthcoming.
This is the third event is a six-part series that took place live on Zoom discussing religion in times of earth crisis. Across the Indian Ocean world, communities have shared stories while encountering legacies of modern state-centrism, colonial capitalism, post-colonial environmental destruction, and religious reform. Muslim communities, among others, have shared stories of religious environments and animals that were inherited, transmitted, and reinterpreted in light of evolving ecological crises. These stories of multispecies ancestors and colonizers, Islamic conceptions of the environment, and narrative traditions of Islamic ecological care have confronted cycles of crises with visions of pasts and futures. In this session, Teren Sevea will discuss the question, “Can listening to these stories compel us to re-evaluate our academic approaches to religion and environments and the relationship of religious pasts and presents, in our time of crisis?”Speaker: Teren Sevea, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Assistant Professor of Islamic StudiesModerator: Diane L. Moore, Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean of Religion and Public LifeTeren Sevea is a scholar of Islam and Muslim societies in South and Southeast Asia. Before joining HDS, he served as Assistant Professor of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Sevea is the author of Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Currently, Sevea is coordinating the project “The Lighthouses of God: Mapping Sanctity Across the Indian Ocean,” which investigates the evolving landscapes of Indian Ocean Islam through photography, film and GIS technology.For more information on the full series, "Religion in Times of Earth Crisis: A Series of Public Online Conversations," see: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/religion-times-earth-crisisThis event took place on February 12, 2024. For more information, generally: https://hds.harvard.eduA transcript is forthcoming.
Full event title: Religion, Conflict, and Peace Book Series Spring 2024: The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance & End of Days Ethics, Tradition, and Power in IsraelThis joint book talk will feature “The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance” by Shaul Magid and “End of Days Ethics, Tradition, and Power in Israel” by Mikhael Manekin.“The Necessity of Exile” is a progressive collection of essays on the Jewish relationship to Zionism and exile. Magid invites us to rethink our current moment through religious and political resources from the Jewish tradition.“End of Days” is a meditation on Jewish morality in the age of Israeli Jewish power, and a cri du coeur by an Orthodox Israeli Jew and former combat officer in the IDF. Manekin calls on fellow Israelis to examine the Jewish religious ethical tradition for an alternative to the secular and religious Zionism that sanctifies power, statehood, and sovereignty.Featuring:- Shaul Magid, Religion, Conflict and Peace Initiative Affiliate, and Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College- Mikhael Manekin, Religion and Public Life Fellow in Conflict and Peace, and director of the Alliance Fellowship program- Moderated by Atalia Omer, T. J. Dermot Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and PeacebuildingThis event took place on February 7, 2024. For more information: https://hds.harvard.eduA transcript is forthcoming.
This is the second event in a six-part series about religion in times of earth crisis. Two hundred years ago, the residents of metropolitan Boston faced a climate crisis. White settlers had destroyed the region’s pine forests, triggering dangerous disruptions to both water and carbon cycles. Activists responded by creating forest parks on previously disrupted landscapes. But many of these activists were themselves descended from the settlers who had caused the harm they sought to heal. In imperfect yet instructive ways, they blended ecological care with new forms of ancestral devotion. Gradually they learned what indigenous communities had long known: that care for the more-than-human world is inseparable from care for our ancestors. In this session, Dan McKanan will discuss these stories and how they can help contemporary Bostonians, and others, recognize that what makes a place wild is not the absence of humans but the presence of ancestors.Speaker: Dan McKanan, Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer in DivinityModerator: Diane L. Moore, Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean of Religion and Public LifeDan McKanan, AB '89, joined the HDS faculty in 2008. He researches religious and spiritual movements for social transformation in the United States and beyond. McKanan serves on the Unitarian Universalist Panel on Theological Education and the board of the Unitarian Universalist Studies Network. At Harvard, he serves as chair of the MTS Curriculum Committee and as faculty director for the Divinity School’s Program for the Evolution of Spirituality.This event took place February 5, 2024. For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/03/04/video-religion-times-earth-crisis-ancestors-and-climate-our-boston-backyard
This is the first event is a six-part series that will take place live on Zoom and is free and open to the public. Environmental catastrophes can create a break in the experience of time, they can rupture the possibility of collective meaning. Yet, for communities shaped by colonialism and racism, this rupture can only be understood in relation to the past, as an event in the “unceremoniously archived procession of our catastrophes,” to use Édouard Glissant’s words. Histories of colonial and racial devastation teach us that environmental futures are linked to our pasts. We may describe them as “ancestral catastrophes,” as Elizabeth Povinelly suggests. In this session, Mayra Rivera explores the question, “How may we engage those stories in ways that honor our pasts and open possibilities for different futures?”Speaker: Mayra Rivera, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx StudiesModerator: Diane L. Moore, Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean of Religion and Public LifeMayra Rivera works at the intersections between philosophy of religion, literature, and theories of coloniality, race and gender—with particular attention to Caribbean postcolonial thought. Her research explores the relationship between discursive and material dimensions of existence in shaping human embodiment and socio-material ecologies. She is the author of The Touch of Transcendence (2007) and Poetics of the Flesh (2015). Rivera is currently working on a project that explores the relationships between coloniality and ecological thought through Caribbean thought.This event took place on January 29, 2024. For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/03/04/video-religion-times-earth-crisis-procession-catastrophes
Join this author discussion about the book "Decolonizing Religion and the Practice of Peace." The book is an investigation of what consolidating religion as a technology of peacebuilding and development does to people's accounts of their religious and cultural traditions and why interreligious peacebuilding entrenches colonial legacies in the present.Throughout the global south, local and international organizations are frequent participants in peacebuilding projects that focus on interreligious dialogue. Yet, the effects of their efforts are often perverse, reinforcing neocolonial practices and disempowering local religious actors. This book is based on empirical research of inter- and intra-religious peacebuilding practices in Kenya and the Philippines.Featuring Atalia Omer, T. J. Dermot Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding; Senior Fellow in Conflict and PeaceModerated by Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean of Religion and Public Life; Lecturer on Religion, Conflict, and Peace; and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World ReligionsThis book event is the first event in our Religion, Conflict, and Peace Spring 2024 Book Series. This event took place January 25, 2024.For more information: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript here: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/03/04/video-rcpi-book-series-decolonizing-religion-and-practice-peace
Pop Apocalypse, hosted by Matthew J. Dillon, postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, explores the mystical and the mythic, the paranormal and the psychedelic in popular culture.For our sixth episode, we welcome the spirit channel, teacher, and playwright Paul Selig.We explore Selig’s early career as a playwright and professor, his spiritual awakening during the Harmonic Convergence of 1987, how he cultivated his mediumship abilities, and the twelve books Selig has channeled from “the Guides.” On the way, we explore what happens to Selig in the channeling state and the metaphysics of mind that make these states possible.A full transcript is forthcoming.Learn more: cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
We invite you to listen to the special evening celebrating the life and writings of Enheduana, also En-hedu-Ana; (c. twenty-third century B.C.E.) who is the first named author in human history. Enheduana, an Akkadian princess and daughter of King Sargon I, was appointed high priestess of the moon god Nanna (Sîn) in the holy city of Ur. Her poems and hymns offer unique, first-hand accounts of her personal experiences of the goddess Inana, and provide insights into issues of gender, sexuality, theology, and goddess-worship in early Mesopotamia. Reception following the event from 6 to 7 pm.Celine Debourse, Assistant Professor in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard presented on “Women in Mesopotamian Temples: Priestess, Slaves, Weavers” and Dr. Sophus Helle, historian and translator of Enheduana’s poems, gave a talk on “Introducing Enheduana’s World: Grief and Gender.” Their presentations were followed by a musical performance, drawn from inspiration from Enheduana’s writings. The world premiere of “To the Stars,” composed by Douglas Knehans, featured CSWR’s Scholar in Residence, Anne Harley (soprano), Maggie Finnegan (soprano), Gabby Diaz (violin), Amy Advocat (bass clarinet), Matt Sharrock (percussion) and Evan Ziporyn (conductor). This event took place December 12, 2023.For more information, https://hds.harvard.edu/homeA transcript is forthcoming.
Peripheries Journal: A Journal of Word, Image, and Sound is celebrating the release of Issue 6. This 2024 edition includes work from Victoria Chang, Angie Estes, Aracelis Girmay, Joanna Klink, Sam Messer, Geoffrey Nutter, Sharon Olds, Alice Oswald, Rowan Ricardo Philips, Tracy K. Smith and many more. General pages are joined by a folio, “Anti-Letters,” that comprises the “personal” writings (ephemera, letters, lists, notes, recordings, photographs etc.) of poets such as Cody-Rose Clevidence, David Grubbs, Susan Howe, Jill Magi, and Jane Miller, among others. This year’s publication featured readings from Victoria Chang, Jorie Graham, and Alice Oswald. This event took place November 30, 2023. For more information, https://hds.harvard.edu/A transcript is forthcoming.
Watch an interview with author Mike Jay about his two most recent books, "Psychonauts: drugs and the making of the modern mind," and "Mescaline: a global history of the first psychedelic." "Mike Jay has written widely on the history of science and medicine, with a specialist interest in the mind sciences, mental health and psychoactive drugs. Alongside Mescaline and Psychonauts, his books include High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture and This Way Madness Lies: The Asylum and Beyond, both of which accompanied exhibitions he curated at Wellcome Collection in London. He writes regularly for New York Review of Books and London Review of Books and is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Humanities, University College London." More at his website, mikejay.netThis event took place on November 27, 2023.For more information, https://hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/01/02/video-psychedelics-and-future-religion-mescaline-and-psychonauts-mike-jay
Full title: LGBTQ+ Rights Under Attack - Session 2: Protecting Against Violence and Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity: A Global PerspectiveThis is the second event in the three-part series “LGBTQ+ Rights Under Attack: The Weaponization of Religious Freedom and Free Speech." In this session, "Protecting Against Violence and Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity: A Global Perspective," Victor Madrigal-Borloz presented the “Report of the UN Independent Expert on Protection against Violence and Discrimination based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity,” which he released in June 2023 while fulfilling his appointment. In conversation with Susie Hayward, Madrigal-Borloz shared his perspective on the global dynamics and trends related to the assault on LGBTQI+ Rights and Freedom of Religion or Belief and how they are feeding in/out of what’s taking place in the United States.Speakers:Victor Madrigal-Borloz, Lecturer on Law and the Eleanor Roosevelt Senior Visiting Researcher at the Harvard Law School Human Rights ProgramSusie Hayward, Associate Director for the Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative and former senior advisor for Religion and Inclusive Societies at the U.S. Institute of PeaceModerator:Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean of Religion and Public LifeOverall Series:After over a decade of steady progress to protect and advance the rights of sexual and gender minorities in the US, a coordinated campaign to halt this progress and even unwind these protections has taken place in state legislatures, courts, and schools across the country. From “bathroom bills” passed to prevent trans people from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity to the illegalization of gender-affirming care for minors to Supreme Court rulings offering constitutional protection for business owners withholding their services to LGBTQ+ people, this legislation is often argued as a matter of religious freedom or free speech. A dominant claim of those pushing back against LGBTQ+ rights is that the accommodation of such legislation requires violating their ability to practice their sincerely held religious beliefs.Religion and Public Life will host a series of three events that engage this vital topic from a variety of angles and perspectives, asking, “What can the academic study of religion and religious literacy work offer to organizers, legal advocates, and other concerned citizens seeking to protect and advance justice in this critical moment for the LGBTQ+ rights movement?” This event took place on November 16, 2023. For more information, https://hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/video/2023/11/16/lgbtq-rights-under-attack-session-2-protecting-against-violence-and-discrimination
Full title: Book Launch and Discussion: Dr. Keith Edward Cantú, Like a Tree Universally Spread Sri Sabhapati Swami and ŚivarājayogaWatch this discussion with author and CSWR Research Affiliate Keith Cantu on his recently released book, "Like a Tree Universally Spread Sri Sabhapati Swami and Śivarājayoga." Cantu will be in conversation with three respondents, Srilata Raman, Professor and Associate Chair, Department for the Study of Religion, University of TorontoAaron Michael Ullrey, Lecturer, Religious Studies, University of Houston, and CSWR Research Affiliate, T&T DatabaseManon Hedenborg White, Associate Professor at Malmö UniversityThis event took place on November 11, 2023.For more information, https://hds.harvard.edu/A transcript is forthcoming.
Philosophers Prof. Christine Hauskeller and Dr. Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes presented a multi-perspectival hermeneutics of psychedelic-occasioned experiences. They discussed the question: How do we make sense of the myriad of experiences and extraordinary states of being that psychedelics can evoke through lenses ground from the discipline of Philosophy?Sjöstedt-Hughes introduced his Metaphysics Matrix as a framework through which to interpret certain psychedelic experiences—covering systems such as physicalism, idealism, dualism, and neutral monism, panpsychism, and cosmopsychism—a “menu” that opens possibilities of interpretation beyond the restricted options imposed by implicit inculcation. Prof. Hauskeller drew upon Critical Theory and on feminist ethics to question the framing of experience as mystical and consider decolonial ways of meaning making.This event took place November 6, 2023.A full transcript is forthcoming.Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
As part of the Transcendence and Transformation initiative, the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School is proud to announce its first ever podcast. Pop Apocalypse, hosted by Matthew J. Dillon, postdoctoral fellow at the CSWR, explores the mystical and the mythic, the paranormal and the psychedelic in popular culture.For episode five of the pod, we are honored to welcome Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Chair of Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. In this career-spanning chat [10:36], we discuss Kripal’s Catholic upbringing, psychoanalysis, and the ecstatic experience in Calcutta that changed the direction of his career. From there, we touch on Jeff’s role at Esalen, historical mystics and paranormal powers, telepathic insects, and how the study of religion and popular culture come together in film, comedy, and comics.The show features interviews with musicians, artists, and writers about how their spiritual experiences and practices inform their work. We also explore the mythological universes in film and fiction with show-runners, writers, and directors. These candid, first-person reflections will be complemented by interviews with scholars who situate these artistic products in the study of mysticism and esotericism.Together, the podcast offers descriptive, interpretive, and theoretical scholarship on religion and popular culture in real-time that will be of interest to scholars and laypersons alike.A full transcript is forthcoming.Learn more: cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
This webinar is the second in a series offered by the Buddhist Ministry Initiative at Harvard Divinity School. It featured a panel discussion of contributors to part II of Refuge in the Storm: Buddhist Voices in Crisis Care, edited by Nathan Jishin Michon. The panel included Kin Cheung (George) Lee and Lourdes Argüelles (Lopon Dorje Khandro), and was co-moderated by Rev. Dr. Nathan Jishin Michon and Rev. Dr. Monica Sanford. Bios:Kin Cheung (George) Lee Dr. Kin Cheung (George) Lee is a California licensed psychologist (PSY28022), a California Board of Psychology recognized clinical supervisor, and a registered clinical psychologist of the Hong Kong Associations of Doctor in Clinical Psychology. Clinically, he is a fellow member of the Asian Academy of Family Therapy, certified therapist in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and certified therapist in Managing and Adapting Practice. In the past 17 years, he has provided psychological services to individuals, couples, and families in various non-government agencies, community mental health centers, and schools in Hong Kong and the United States. Academically, Dr. Lee is a lecturer at The Centre of Buddhist Studies, The University of Hong Kong and a founding member of the Master of Buddhist Counselling program as well as the Postgraduate Diploma in Professional Practice of Buddhist Counselling. He is the former assistant chair of the Department of Psychology at University of the West and former Director of Clinical Training at Alliant International University, Hong Kong program. He is the author of the The Guide to Buddhist Counseling and 小空間(translated: "A Little Emptiness"). Lourdes Argüelles (Lopon Dorje Khandro) Born in Cuba and educated around the world, Lourdes Arguelles, PhD (Lopon Dorje Khandro) is a Ngkma ordained by HE Garchen Rinpoche and a Lopon installed by HH Chetsang Rinpoche, the head of the Drikung Kagyu tradition. She is also Professor Emerita of Education and Cultural Studies at Claremont Graduate University in California as well as a retired California licensed psychotherapist and community organizer who worked pro-bono with survivors of domestic and political violence in the US-Mexico Borderlands. Lopon-la currently lives in retreat except when she is attending dying beings or teaching at Drikung Kyobpa Choling, a Tiberan Buddhist monastery in Escondido,California and to its Sangha in Latin America. Monica SanfordMonica Sanford joined Harvard Divinity School as assistant dean for multireligious ministry in September 2021. Sanford comes to HDS from the Rochester Institute of Technology, where she became one of only two Buddhists in North America to lead a multireligious life department at a college or university.Sanford is one of the first full-trained Buddhist practical theologians in the United States, having earned her PhD in practical theology from Claremont School of Theology. Sanford also holds an undergraduate degree in design from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a master of divinity degree from University of the West. Sanford is an ordained Buddhist lay minister in a Chan lineage and trained as a Buddhist chaplain. Her recent book, Kalyāṇamitra: A Buddhist Model for Spiritual Care (January 2021), is the first textbook for Buddhist chaplains. Nathan Jishin MichonNathan Jishin Michon is a JSPS visiting scholar focused on Buddhist chaplaincy at Ryukoku University in Kyoto, Japan. Jishin is editor of Refuge in the Storm: Buddhist Voices in Crisis Care and A Thousand Hands: Guidebook to Caring for Your Buddhist Community, among other works. Jishin especially focuses their research on Japanese Buddhist chaplaincy, chaplain training, and contemplative forms of care. They previously helped in disaster relief and hospice care.This event took place November 14, 2023.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/video/2023/11/14/refuge-storm-webinar-series-part-ii-sickness-aging-and-death-caring-life-cycle
This discussion followed the screening of Oscar-winning filmmakers Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin's extraordinary film "Wild Life". The film is a story of love, wildness, and restoration in Chile and Argentina, recording the life of Kris Tompkins through an epic decades-spanning love story as wild as the landscapes she dedicated her life to protecting. Special guests in this conversation include Kris Tompkins and Chai Vasarhelyi, with guest curator Geralyn Dreyfous and HDS writer-in-residence Terry Tempest Williams.This event took place November 13, 2023.For more information: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/Transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/video/2023/11/13/wild-life-film-screening-and-discussion
In this project, Elena Guzman explored the way Black women and non-binary people through the Caribbean and its diaspora use spiritual and ritual performance within African Diasporic Religions, including Santeria, Haitian Vodou, Puerto Rican Espiritismo, 21 Divisions, and Obeah, as a means to forge interstitial geographies of the African diaspora.Elena Guzman is an Afro-Boricua filmmaker, educator, and scholar raised in the Bronx with deep roots in the LES. She received her PhD in Anthropology from Cornell University and is an Assistant Professor in the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department and Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington. Her manuscript, "Chimera Geographies: Black Feminist Borderland Performances," focuses on the way Black women and non-binary people throughout the African diaspora use ritual performance in African diaspora religion as a means to forge Black feminist borderlands through spiritual crossings. Her work has been published in Feminist Anthropology, NACLA, and Cultural Anthropology’s Screening Room.This event took place October 31, 2023.For more information: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/homeFull transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/video/2023/10/31/chimera-geographies-black-spiritual-borderland-performances-caribbean
Full Title: From Ms. Marvel to the Smithsonian: A Conversation on Teaching Religious Literacy through Arts and Popular Culture with Dr. Hussein RashidIn this conversation, Dr. Rashid discussed his work and its uses in the classroom, with a particular focus on the Children’s Museum of Manhattan exhibit "America to Zanzibar: Muslim Cultures Near and Far?"Dr. Hussein Rashid is the new Assistant Dean for Religion and Public Life and brought to RPL with a wealth of experience as an educator in public and classroom settings. He has particular expertise in integrating the arts into the study of religion.From work with museums to film, documentary, and comics, Rashid has long engaged the power of images and art to highlight complexity and captivate learners when teaching religious literacy. Among other projects Dr. Rashid executive produced the Times Op-Doc "The Secret History of Muslims in the US" and co-edited a volume on Ms. Marvel, the first Muslim to have her own comic series with Marvel Comics.This event took place October, 24, 2023.For more information, https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/homeA transcript is forthcoming.
Full title: Psychedelics and the Future of Religion: Panel discussion on Race and Exoticism in Global Psychedelic Spirituality with Professors Lucia and SaldanhaDrawing from their respective perspectives and scholarship, Professors Lucia and Saldanha led a conversation around the racialized politics/ethics of the hallucinogenic experience (or discourses thereof) within the context of modern spiritualities.Amanda Lucia is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California-Riverside. She is author of White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals and is the Principal Investigator for the Religion & Sexual Abuse Project.Arun Saldahna is Professor in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Society at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Psychedelic White: Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race and Space After Deleuze.This event took place October 26, 2023.For more information: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/A transcript is forthcoming.
Major religious traditions call on their adherents to respond to the causes of suffering, those who suffer, and the prevention of suffering. The ways we respond and serve can take many forms including activism and holding political office. How does spiritual practice support the difficult work of speaking truth to power as well as being in positions of power without losing focus on the relief of suffering?In this book talk and conversation, Lori E. Lightfoot, Esq., 56th Mayor of Chicago, and Pamela Ayo Yetunde, J.D., Th.D., author of Casting Indra's Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community, reflected on the role of political officeholders and public theologians in the divisive social contexts we live in today.This event was live-streamed on the HDS Youtube channel, and took place October 24, 2023. BiosMayor Lori E. Lightfoot is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago Law School. She was an Assistant United States Attorney who also served in other governmental positions with the Chicago Police Department and the Office of Emergency Management and later, Lightfoot was a law partner at Mayer Brown. Lightfoot served as the 56th Mayor of Chicago. She was the second woman, first African-American female and first openly gay person to ever serve as Mayor. Her tenure ran from May 2019—May 2023. Mayor Lightfoot is a 2023 Senior Leadership Fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where she is teaching a course on leadership and key discussion-making in public health.Pamela Ayo Yetunde, J.D., Th.D., is a pastoral counselor in private practice, Community Dharma Leader, human rights advocate, and the author of Casting Indra's Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinships and Community. Along with HDS's Dr. Cheryl A. Giles, Ayo co-edited Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation and Freedom. This anthology led to Dr. Charles Stang, director of the Center for the Study of World Religions, hosting a powerful program about being Black and Buddhist. Ayo is also an associate editor with Lion's Roar and Buddhadharma and has hosted many of their podcast interviews. You can visit Ayo's website (https://www.pamelaayoyetunde.com:) for more information, including how to purchase the book.For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu/academics/ministry-studies/buddhist-ministry-initiativeFull transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/video/2023/10/24/call-respond-and-serve-role-spirituality-public-theology-and-politics
As part of the Transcendence and Transformation initiative, the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School is proud to announce its first ever podcast. Pop Apocalypse explores the mystical and the mythic, the paranormal and the psychedelic in popular culture.The show features interviews with musicians, artists, and writers about how their spiritual experiences and practices inform their work. We also explore the mythological universes in film and fiction with show-runners, writers, and directors. These candid, first-person reflections will be complemented by interviews with scholars who situate these artistic products in the study of mysticism and esotericism.Together, the podcast offers descriptive, interpretive, and theoretical scholarship on religion and popular culture in real-time that will be of interest to scholars and laypersons alike.Hosted by Matthew J. Dillon, postdoctoral fellow at the CSWR, in conversation with Victoria Nelson.A full transcript is forthcoming.Learn more: cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
This special event, jointly organized by CSWR and HDS Buddhist Ministry Initiative, aimed to commemorate Dhamma Chakra Day and delved into the enduring legacy of Dr. Ambedkar. His peaceful, egalitarian, grassroots movement has left an indelible mark on Indian society and politics. The event showcased three speakers whose research has deepened our understanding of Buddhism's impact and potential in fostering equality and social justice in India.Speaker List:- Dr Ambedkar: Restructuring of Indian Society towards Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality- Prof S. K. Thorat, Chairman, Indian Institute of Dalit Studies- Dr. Raja Sekhar Vundru, "Buddhism and Emancipation of oppressed classes in India," author of Gandhi, Ambedkar and Patel- Chief Secretary, Haryana State, India.- Dr. William Edelglass, Director, Barre Centre for Buddhist Studies, author of "Equality, Solidarity, and Religion: On Ambedkar’s Conversion"Buddhism made a significant comeback in India in October 1956 through a momentous mass conversion led by Dr. Ambedkar and his 500,000 followers, predominantly from the marginalized Untouchable communities. Despite enduring severe structural violence, Dr. Ambedkar eschewed the path of aggression, opting instead for the peaceful transformation of society. He believed that this transformation could only be achieved by embracing the teachings of Buddha-Dhamma. Presently, India boasts over 50 million Buddhists, many of whom found inspiration in Dr. Ambedkar. His conversion movement is a pivotal force, reshaping India's religious and social landscape to a degree not witnessed since the times of Buddha and Ashoka.This event took place on October 19, 2023.For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu/Transcript: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/11/07/video-dhamma-chakra-day-buddhism-and-emancipation-marginalized-classes-india
Through her channel, "Angela's Symposium," Dr. Puca pioneered an innovative approach to academia by utilizing popular social media platforms, aiming to bridge the gap between esoteric academic scholarship and the wider community. This talk explored the challenges and opportunities of digital scholarship, discuss the implications of bridging two worlds for academia at large, and present future avenues for scholarly engagement in the rapidly evolving landscape of digital media.Angela Puca’s research focuses on magic, witchcraft, Paganism, esotericism, shamanism, and related currents. Author of several peer-reviewed publications and co-editor of the forthcoming "Pagan Religions in Five Minutes" for Equinox, she bridged the gap between academia and the communities of magic practitioners by delivering related scholarly content on her YouTube Channel and social media project "Angela’s Symposium."This event took place October 18, 2023.For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu/Transcript: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/11/06/gnoseologies-angelas-symposium-youtube-esotericism-and-academia
This lecture was given by Jessica J. Fowler (University of Montana Western), who's an HDS Visiting Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Catholicism on her work, "Illuminating the Empire: The Spanish Inquisition and the Spread of Global Heresy."This event took place October 11, 2023.For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu/View transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/video/2023/10/11/illuminating-empire-spanish-inquisition-and-spread-global-heresy
Hear from Alejandra Oliva, MTS '19, Mexican-American writer, translator, and immigration-justice activist, speak about her work and her recent book, "Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith and Migration." Héctor Tobar, author of Translation Nation, described it as "a supremely intelligent account of a translator's journey into the Kafkaesque machinery of U.S. immigration and asylum policy."This event took place October 12, 2023. For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu/Transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/video/2023/10/23/rivermouth-chronicle-language-faith-and-migration-conversation-alejandra-oliva
Full Title: Third Annual T&T Presentations Launch: Five New Researchers Present on their Scholarly WorkAt the beginning of the last three academic years, the HDS Center for the Study of World Religion's Transcendence and Transformation scholars come together to hear about the research of the year's new scholars. We are thrilled to introduce and share the recording from this gathering, featuring presentations from Adam Bremer-McCollum, Nicholas Low, Fabien Muller, Russ Powell, and Tara Smith. This event took place on September 21, 2023. Find more information at: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/home Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/10/01/video-transcendence-transformation
Convened by Ahmad Greene-Hayes, Assistant Professor of African American Religious Studies at HDS, this colloquium bridged connections between the critical study of Black religion and studies of race, gender, and sexuality in critical theory and philosophy, among many other fields. The aim of this gathering was to support research and sustained dialogue about the ways in which religion and race are co-constitutive and function as governing categories of analysis at the helm of both religious studies and Black studies, respectively.This panel discussion featured Joy James (Williams College), Keri Day (Princeton Theological Seminary), and Paul Anthony Daniels (Fordham University).This event took place on October 5, 2023.For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/video/2023/10/05/black-religion-and-critical-theory-colloquium-panel-ii
Convened by Ahmad Greene-Hayes, Assistant Professor of African American Religious Studies at HDS, this colloquium bridged connections between the critical study of Black religion and studies of race, gender, and sexuality in critical theory and philosophy, among many other fields. The aim of this gathering was to support research and sustained dialogue about the ways in which religion and race are co-constitutive and function as governing categories of analysis at the helm of both religious studies and Black studies, respectively.This panel discussion featured J. Kameron Carter (Indiana University—Bloomington), Cecilio M. Cooper (Folger Shakespeare Library), and Joseph Winters (Duke University).This event took place on October 5, 2023.For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/video/2023/10/05/-black-religion-and-critical-theory-colloquium-panel-i
Full title: CSWR List Lecture with Adam Afterman: Kabbalistic Neoplatonism: Divine Emanation and Mystical IntegrationDr. Afterman addressed the profound impact of Neoplatonism on Kabbalah, the medieval trend of Jewish mysticism. While its impact on the development of a new form of mystical religiosity of communion and unio mystica is relatively known, he will focus on another critical development: Afterman argued that through an interpretation of Neoplatonic emanation in terms of substantive intra-divine emanation, the kabbalist developed for the first time a Jewish godhead.Dr. Adam Afterman is a Professor at the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Talmud at Tel Aviv University, specializing in Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah. He is a senior scholar and director of the John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue and a senior fellow of the Kogod Center for the Renewal of Jewish Thought at the ShalomHartman Institute in Jerusalem. This event took place September 28, 2023.Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/09/28/list-lecture-jewish-studies-adam-afterman-kabbalistic-neoplatonism-divine-emanation
This panel was presented by the Women’s Studies in Religion Program (WSRP), which brings six scholars in gender from around the country each year to enrich the experience of our students. They shared their thoughts on the ethical responsibility of scholars to be engaged in the study of gender. The scholars who presented were Jessica J. Fowler, Elena Herminia Guzman, Samira K. Mehta, S. Zahara Moballegh, Z. Fareen Parvez, and Ashley M. Purpura.This event took place on August 30, 2023.Find more information for this event here: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/homeTranscript available here: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/10/04/video-ethical-scholarship-gender-religion-and-difference
Amid ongoing ecological collapse, calls for more intense activists are on the rise. What is the role of civil disruption in addressing ecological catastrophe? How can spiritual practice inform direct action? How does taking such actions deeply impact those who dare to act? In this talk, Tim Ream explores these questions as he reflects on decades of direct action and Zen practice.Tim is an organizer, campaigner, writer, film maker, and environmental attorney. He has alternated between outlaw, lawyer, and monk. He’s blocked roads, occupied corporate and government offices, and been jailed a number of times. He has also engaged in frequent, intensive residential Zen practice since 1993, and led Zen retreats for environmental leaders. His activism spans everything from direct action to successful lawsuits to protect wolves and other species.This event took place March 23, 2023. It was organized by Rachael Petersen, MDiv III and co-leader of the HDS Plant Consciousness Reading Group, Interspecies Dialogue, the Harvard Buddhist Community, and Ecotheology Fellowship.A full transcript is forthcoming.Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/research-programming/transcendence-transformation/reading-groups
This webinar is the first in a series offered by the Buddhist Ministry Initiative at Harvard Divinity School. It featured a panel discussion of contributors to part I of Refuge in the Storm: Buddhist Voices in Crisis Care, edited by Nathan Jishin Michon.The panel included Dr. Victor Gabriel, Chun Fai (Jeffrey) Ng, and Dr. g (Claudelle R. Glasgow, Psy.D., SEP, and will be co-moderated by Rev. Dr. Nathan Jishin Michon and Rev. Dr. Monica Sanford.This event took place on September 20, 2023.Find more info: https://hds.harvard.edu/academics/ministry-studies/buddhist-ministry-initiativeRead transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/9/20/2023/video-refuge-storm-webinar-series-part-i-buddhist-approaches-large-scale-and-community
Full Title: The Ziyārat of Imām al-Ḥusayn as Liturgical Text in Early Shī‘ī Ḥadīth and its Role in the Promulgation of Shī‘ī PietyThe intention of this lecture and study is to investigate the intricacies and substance of a genre of devotional literature and liturgical practice in Twelver Shī‘īsm, namely the Ziyārat (visitational eulogy) of Imam al-Ḥusayn. In doing so, this talk presented a historical and close philological-thematic study of this ziyāra, a text that is consistently found throughout classical and contemporary Shi‘ī prayer manuals and formative hadith works such as al-Kāfī. The ziyāra has been ascribed by Twelver Shī‘īs to the sixth Imām, Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765). Unlike most studies dealing with the topic of Shī‘ī devotion, this lecture shall focus on the textual history, Qur’ānic, and mystical-theological themes which imbue this liturgy. The speakers were Vinay Khetia, Academic Director, Shia Research Institute, TorontoFurthermore, the numerous statements of esoteric or gnostic provenance found throughout this text sheds further light upon the development and promulgation of the non-rationalist stream of Shī‘īsm by authorities such as al-Kulaynī, Ibn Qawlawayh, and Ibn Babawayh al-Qummī who place the ontological function of Imāms knowledge and walāya (charismatic persona and authority) at the very centre of any notion of acceptable religiosity. It is the author's contention that this ziyāra text is part and parcel of the broader venture of early esoteric Shī‘īsm thus, a text of this genre would be most appropriately analyzed within this context. Sponsored by the Jaffer Family Foundation of NY. This event took place on September 15, 2023.Find more information for this event here: https://shiism.hds.harvard.edu/Transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/09/15/video-ziyarat-imam-al-husayn-liturgical-text-early-shii-hadeth-and-its-role-promulgation?admin_panel=1
As part of the Transcendence and Transformation initiative, the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School is proud to announce its first ever podcast. Pop Apocalypse explores the mystical and the mythic, the paranormal and the psychedelic in popular culture.The show features interviews with musicians, artists, and writers about how their spiritual experiences and practices inform their work. We also explore the mythological universes in film and fiction with show-runners, writers, and directors. These candid, first-person reflections will be complemented by interviews with scholars who situate these artistic products in the study of mysticism and esotericism.Together, the podcast offers descriptive, interpretive, and theoretical scholarship on religion and popular culture in real-time that will be of interest to scholars and laypersons alike.Hosted by Matthew J. Dillon, postdoctoral fellow at the CSWR, in conversation with Whitley Strieber.A full transcript is forthcoming.Learn more: cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
The entire HDS and Harvard community, friends, alumni, and guests were invited to the opening of HDS's 208th year. The 2023 Convocation featured remarks by Harvard President Claudine Gay, Interim Dean David F. Holland, and David N. Hempton.This event took place on September 7, 2023.Read transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/9/7/2023/convocation-2023Find more information for this event here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news-events/convocation-2023
The Constellation Project is pleased to announce the publication of our second “Prayer Book,” by HDS student Morgan Curtis. “The Decolonial Dames of America,” is a landmark essay about the importance of ancestral repair work needed to be taken by the white descendants of oppressors to cultivate the soil of healing. This event featured a reading by Morgan Curtis in conversation with Melissa Bartholomew, associate dean for diversity, inclusion, and belonging.This event took place April 19, 2023.A full transcript is forthcoming.Learn more: https://www.planetaryhealthalliance.org/the-constellation-project
As part of the Transcendence and Transformation initiative, the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School is proud to announce its first ever podcast. Pop Apocalypse explores the mystical and the mythic, the paranormal and the psychedelic in popular culture.
The show features interviews with musicians, artists, and writers about how their spiritual experiences and practices inform their work. We also explore the mythological universes in film and fiction with show-runners, writers, and directors. These candid, first-person reflections will be complemented by interviews with scholars who situate these artistic products in the study of mysticism and esotericism.
Together, the podcast offers descriptive, interpretive, and theoretical scholarship on religion and popular culture in real-time that will be of interest to scholars and laypersons alike.
Hosted by Matthew J. Dillon, postdoctoral fellow at the CSWR, in conversation with Laurence Caruana.
A full transcript can be found online: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/05/15/audio-pop-apocalypse-psychedelic-gnosis-and-imaginal-double-laurence-caruana
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
As part of the Transcendence and Transformation initiative, the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School is proud to announce its first ever podcast. Pop Apocalypse explores the mystical and the mythic, the paranormal and the psychedelic in popular culture.
The show features interviews with musicians, artists, and writers about how their spiritual experiences and practices inform their work. We also explore the mythological universes in film and fiction with show-runners, writers, and directors. These candid, first-person reflections will be complemented by interviews with scholars who situate these artistic products in the study of mysticism and esotericism.
Together, the podcast offers descriptive, interpretive, and theoretical scholarship on religion and popular culture in real-time that will be of interest to scholars and laypersons alike.
Hosted by Matthew J. Dillon, postdoctoral fellow at the CSWR, in conversation with Alex and Allyson Grey.
A full transcript can be found online: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/05/15/audio-pop-apocalypse-waking-flesh-dream-alex-and-allyson-grey
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
Audre Lorde is one of the most significant and influential Black feminist writer/activists of the twentieth century. In this talk at Harvard Divinity School, Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, founding director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center at Spelman College, examined Lorde’s prolific writings in the context of contemporary Black feminist ethics, discourse, and activism. As the nation faces increasing political resistance to social justice reform in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter Movement, Dr. Guy-Sheftall reflected upon the importance of returning to Lorde’s work as a resource for imagining and building social transformations in society, electoral politics, the criminal justice system, and the academy.
This event took place on April 25, 2023.
A full transcript is forthcoming.
Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
The Center for the Study of World Religions hosted a talk by Raashid Goyal, who researches the history, languages, and literature of the early Islamic and pre-Islamic Near East, with a particular interest in the development of legal and political ideas in the early centuries of Islam.
This event took place July 20, 2023.
A full transcript is forthcoming.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
The principle factor determining what we experience is our mind. During an event hosted by the Buddhist Ministry Initiative at Harvard Divinity School, Khentrul Rinpoche spoke about how to harness the potential of mind to transform unwanted conditions into positive circumstances. When we stop our hate of suffering, we learn how to befriend adversity and find strength in the midst of all that we experience. Not only does this transform our own lives, but it gives us the capacity to better serve others. By cultivating greater compassion and reducing oversensitivity we can effectively help others with the challenges that they face.
This event took place April 20, 2023.
A full transcript is forthcoming.
Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
A new religious philosophy aims to help humans understand again that they are part of and utterly dependent on the living Earth.
This is a special audio version of "Following the Gaian Way," a feature written by Erik Assadourian and appearing in the Spring/Summer 2023 issue of Harvard Divinity Bulletin. Read by Michael Dowd.
Read or follow along on the Harvard Divinity Bulletin website: bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/following-the-gaian-way/
"I see my craft as a poet as being first and foremost grief work. To re-imagine and commit ourselves to a more peaceful and just world, we must first grieve the harms that have necessitated this pursuit."
Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School hosted a poetry reading with Suzannah Omonuk, MDiv '23.
This event took place April 19, 2023.
A full transcript is forthcoming.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/
The Religion and Public Life program at Harvard Divinity School hosted a talk with Larry L. Rasmussen, Christian Environmental Ethicist, and Reinhold Niebuhr Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics, Union Theological Seminary. He was in conversation with: Diane L. Moore, Faculty Director of Religion and Public Life; Lecturer on Religion, Conflict, and Peace; and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions; Terry Tempest Williams, author, environmental activist, HDS Writer-in-Residence; and john gehman, MTS '24, Council of Student Sustainability Leaders.
This event took place April 20, 2023.
A full transcript is forthcoming.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/
Each spring, the Office of Ministry Studies organizes the Billings Preaching Prize Finals, an annual preaching competition open to second- and third-year MDiv students.
Congratulations to MDiv Sharon Christner, the 2023 Billings Preaching Prize Competition winner, and to finalists James Lewis and Stephanie Hollenberg for their incredible talents. The finals were held during Noon Service on April 19 in Williams Chapel. The event also featured a reading from Nicole Marie, the Massachusetts Bible Society scripture reading winner, and john gehman, the reading from contemporary literature winner.
This event took place April 19, 2023.
A full transcript is forthcoming.
Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
Anti-Asian hate spiked 145 percent in 2020 during the height of the pandemic. At the same time, nearly one-third of the COVID deaths among nurses were Filipina nurses. As we look back at the first three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, increasingly complex stories continue to emerge.
How can religious literacy and a lens of racial justice inform the stories that we and our students hear, tell, and seek out?
The Religion and Public Life program at Harvard Divinity School hosted a conversation with Professor Aprilfaye Manalang of Norfolk State University to learn about her ongoing research on religious identity, grief, and COVID with Filipina-American nurses, as well as Jeanne Shin-Cooper of Buffalo Grove High School in Illinois whose students are taking part in this critical interview project. Prof. Manalang discussed her pedagogical practice of promoting Asian-American understanding at a Historically Black University, and the process of communicating this research to a public audience via podcast.
This event took place May 8, 2023.
A full transcript is forthcoming.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/
Throughout millennia, Jews have explored individual and communal consciousness through a variety of techniques and traditions. More recently, Jews have played an outsized role in the “psychedelic renaissance” as researchers, practitioners, and advocates, including prominent leaders. A surge of interest in these substances creates an opportunity to reflect on non-ordinary experiences in Jewish life and theology more broadly.
This panel, hosted by the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, included Sam S. B. Shonkoff, the Taube Family Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, Melila Hellner-Eshed, Professor of Jewish Mysticism in the Department of Jewish Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, as well as a senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, and Jay Michaelson is an affiliated assistant professor at Chicago Theological Seminary and the author of nine books on Judaism and contemplative practice.
A full transcript is forthcoming.
This event took place April 27, 2023.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/home
The Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School hosted his conversation with Professor Fadeke Castor. CSWR Research Associate Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani and Castor discussed multiple subjectivities, ethnographic practices, and being scholar practitioners in the academic context. This event was part of the Gnoseologies: Transcendence and Transformation Today series.
Castor is Assistant Professor of Religion and Africana Studies at Northeastern University and award-winning author of Spiritual Citizenship: Transnational Pathways from Black Power to Ifá in Trinidad. She is also a visiting scholar at the CSWR.
A full transcript is forthcoming.
This event took place April 26, 2023.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith took part in a poetry reading and craft talk as part of the Peripheries Poetry Series at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School.
Tracy K. Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, memoirist, editor, translator, and librettist. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States. Smith is the author of five poetry collections including, Life on Mars, which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize; and To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul which will be published in November 2023. She is a Professor of English and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, and the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute.
A full transcript is forthcoming.
This event took place May 8, 2023.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/home
Graduating students, members of the HDS community, family, and friends took part in the Harvard Divinity School 2023 Multireligious Commencement Service.
The faculty speaker was David N. Hempton, Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies, John Lord O'Brian Professor of Divinity.
The digital program for the Multireligious Commencement Service can also be viewed online (https://hds.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/hds2/files/final_final_mrc_bulletin_20230516.pdf?m=1684942144).
A full transcript is forthcoming.
Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
Professor Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology at the Harvard Divinity School led a online conversation with the 2022-23 Yang Visiting Scholars, Dr. Heather Mellquist Lehto, and Dr. Ashok Kumar Mocherla. This conversation showed us how perspectives on the global scene might confirm, yet also challenge, how we think about Christianity and the study of Christianity here in the United States.The Yang Visiting Scholars in World Christianity program brings distinguished senior and junior scholars of world Christianity to Harvard Divinity School each year, opening up fresh perspectives, particularly from the global south. This is our second year of having Yang Visiting Scholars at HDS, and the cohort for the third year in 2023-24 has been selected and those scholars will also be in attendance.This event took place April 18, 2023.A full transcript is forthcoming.Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
Harvard Divinity School awarded 149 degrees during the 2023 Commencement Diploma Awarding Ceremony on May 25, 2023. The student speaker was MTS candidate Breana Norris.Full transcript forthcoming.Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
What kind of religious and spiritual questions are raised by climate collapse? How might understanding the religious dimensions of climate collapse and responses to it inform scientific, business, policy, activist, and other professional communities seeking to develop sustainable and just climate solutions? Religion and spirituality play a crucial role in shaping drivers of climate change and responses to it worldwide. In this online conversation, Harvard Divinity School faculty members Matthew Ichihasi Potts, Janet Gyatso, and Diane L. Moore examine the religious and spiritual implications of climate change. George Sarrinikolaou, executive director of the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University, offered remarks as a respondent.This event was part of Harvard Climate Action Week, a celebration and acceleration of climate research, education, and engagement across Harvard University. Led by the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability and hosted by schools and centers across Harvard University, the week convened thousands of experts, decision-makers, students, alumni, and scholars.This event took place May 11, 2023.Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
The Center for the Study of World Religions hosted an author discussion (Psychedelics & the Future of Religion Series) with Professor Bill Barnard. Charles Stang, Director of the CSWR, and Barnard discussed his recent book, Liquid Light: Ayahuasca Spirituality and the Santo Daime Tradition. Liquid Light offers an in-depth immersion into the complex and fascinating world of the Santo Daime – a relatively new religion that emerged out of the Amazon rainforest region of Brazil in the middle of the twentieth century, and which now has churches throughout the world.This event took place March 27, 2023.Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/home
Sherah Bloor, editor of the Peripheries Journal at the Center for the Study of World Religions hosted three exciting new voices in poetry. Bloor invited Tawanda Mulalu, Isabel Duarte-Gray, and Jess Yuan to discuss their latest works. The works discussed include Please make me pretty I don't want to die (Mulalu), Even Shorn (Duarte-Gray), and Threshold Amnesia (Yuan). This event took place on April 10, 2023Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
The Harvard Psychedelics Project at Harvard Divinity School, a student organization, presented this conference to gather faculty, researchers, and students from across Harvard University to explore their diverse, interdisciplinary, and promising research on psychedelics. Speakers came from across the University’s Schools, units, and departments, including the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Business School, Harvard College, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and POPLAR at the Petrie-Flom Center. This third series of talks featured Suzannah Clark, Max Ingersoll, Logan Fahrenkopf, Jeffrey Breau, and Paul Gillis-Smith. This event took place on April 1, 2023Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
This lecture on conjuring, gender, and decolonization was given by Visiting Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies and African American Religions and Women's Studies in Religion Program 2022-23 Research Associate Xhercis Méndez.This event took place on April 11, 2023Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/
In collaboration with Harvard Divinity School and the Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project at Harvard University, this symposium was designed to give momentum to our efforts to explore, catalogue, and promulgate Dr. Charles H. Long’s enduring intellectual contributions to the academic study of religion, history, and culture. The event featured an opening keynote on the symposium’s theme, critical responses to key passages from Long’s writings, and a closing keynote followed by a ceremonial libation. Speakers included Corey D. B. Walker, Jacob K. Olupona, Dianne M. Stewart, Tracey E. Hucks, Jennifer Reid, Davíd L. Carrasco, and Lee H. Butler, Jr.This event took place on April 14, 2023Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
The Harvard Psychedelics Project at Harvard Divinity School, a student organization, presented this conference to gather faculty, researchers, and students from across Harvard University to explore their diverse, interdisciplinary, and promising research on psychedelics. Speakers came from across the University’s Schools, units, and departments, including the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Business School, Harvard College, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and POPLAR at the Petrie-Flom Center. This panel concerning the regulation of psychedelics included Glenn Cohen, Rick Doblin, Mason Marks, Leonard Pickard, Jeffrey Breau, and Paul Gillis-Smith. This event took place on April 1, 2023Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
“Thank you, George Floyd, for giving your life for justice.” These words, uttered by former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, were offered in memory of George Floyd. Pelosi would eventually apologize for her words, but the question remains: why did she make this claim? What was it—what is it—about antiblack state-sanctioned violence that lends itself so easily to justifying this violence? Which is to say, what is it about state-sanctioned antiblack violence that lends itself so easily to theodicean claims steeped in atonement logics? In this talk, Biko Mandela Gray suggests that one of the reasons this is possible is because blackness—and therefore black life—operates as a structure of dis/appearance. To an antiblack world, blackness appears largely in the moments that it is dead—which is to say, in the moments that it has disappeared. This (ghostly) structure of dis/appearance is, Gray argues, how religious ideas—such as theodicy, atonement, and yes, even justice—are steeped in (a need for) black death. This event took place on April 6, 2023Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
This panel presented an opportunity to learn from the critical work being done by students to advance justice through analysis, reflection, and action at the intersection of race and climate. Mayra Rivera, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies, will offer an opening address.This event was part of HDS's Climate Justice Week. It took place April 11, 2023.PanelistsPhil Scholer, MTS '24Tracey Robertson Carter, HDS Special StudentNathan Samayo, MDiv '23Eve Woldemikael, MDiv '24ModeratorAliyah Collins, MDiv '23Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
How does religion shape the political, social, and economic systems that have contributed to climate collapse, in both explicit and embedded ways? How can a critical understanding of religion help us reimagine and develop effective responses to climate collapse?RPL Fellows with expertise in policy, environmental science, Native and Indigenous rights, and education discussed the ways religious and spiritual literacy can enhance policy and scientific efforts to understand the drivers of climate collapse and advance climate justice.This event was part of HDS's Climate Justice Week. It took place April 14, 2023.PanelistsCynthia Wilson: RPL Native and Indigenous Rights FellowTeresa Cavazos Cohn: RPL Climate Justice FellowRev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart: RPL Government FellowModeratorSarabinh Levy-Brightman: RPL Education FellowLearn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
Join Research Associate Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani in a conversation with Dr. Natalie Dyer. Dr. Dyer is a Research Scientist with Connor Whole Health at University Hospitals, the President of the Center for Reiki Research, and a practicing Reiki master. In this discussion they talk about the role of Reiki and energy healing in improving health and well-being, the possibility of a non-materialist scientific paradigm, and Dr. Dyer’s latest research on universal love.This event took place on April 5, 2023Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
In this conversation Catherine Brekus, Chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion, discusses the process and possibilities when applying to doctoral programs in religion. This event took place on April 14, 2023Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
What role does religion play in the movement for climate justice? How can religious communities serve as sites of organizing and activism? Panelists will discuss these questions through the lenses of religious literacy, climate grief, climate ministry, and practices to guide communities through the perils of climate catastrophe. This panel will feature: Terry Tempest Williams, HDS Writer-in-ResidenceMatthew Ichihashi Potts, Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church and the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, MDiv '08, PhD '13Rev. Vernon K. Walker, Program Director of Communities Responding to Extreme Weather (CREW)Anna Del Castillo, MDiv '21, Climate Justice Researcher for Religion and Public LifeThis event took place on April 14, 2023Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
The question of Palestine and the Palestinians is shifting more and more from an external matter to an internal question of Israel, Zionism, and the Jewish people writ large. Religion and Public Life Visiting Scholar in Conflict and Peace Raef Zreik interrogates the ways questions of war and peace, borders, security, or the ‘two state’ solution become more and more internal to Israel. Related intimately to the state's identity, character and constitutional structure and democratic nature, these questions highlight the merging conversation of existence and essence.This event took place on March 23, 2023Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/
The Harvard Psychedelics Project at Harvard Divinity School, a student organization, presented this conference to gather faculty, researchers, and students from across Harvard University to explore their diverse, interdisciplinary, and promising research on psychedelics. Speakers came from across the University’s Schools, units, and departments, including the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Business School, Harvard College, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and POPLAR at the Petrie-Flom Center. This first series of talks featured Franklin King, Yvan Beaussant, Grant Jones, Fernando Espi Forcen, Stephen J. Haggarty, Jeffrey Breau, and Paul Gillis-Smith. This event took place on April 1, 2023Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
Charles Hallisey, Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures, talks about Buddhist Studies at Harvard, his path to teaching, and the beauty of the world.Faculty Focus is a special new podcast series from Harvard Divinity School, where we speak with HDS professors about their courses and research interests.Full episode transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/4/14/faculty-focus-charles-hallisey-beauty-world-buddhist-studies-harvardLearn more about HDS: hds.harvard.edu/Music track: "Old Dog New Tricks"; Extreme Music Limited
Black Studies and Critical Race Theory constitute some of the most theoretically sophisticated conversations in the Humanities today on issues of individual and collective identities. The results have not yet been brought to bear on Jewish Studies, in general, or research on antisemitism, in particular. This talk, delivered by Shaul Magid and part of the Albert & Vera List Fund for Jewish Studies Lecture Series at the Center for the Study of World Religions, makes the case that antisemitism can be better theorized through engagement with theories of anti-Blackness, particularly Afropessimism. It focuses on how Jews write about antisemitism, how it is perceived in contemporary America, and how this discussion relates to race and Jewish identity. This event took place on April 3, 2023Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
The Harvard Psychedelics Project at Harvard Divinity School, a student organization, presented this conference to gather faculty, researchers, and students from across Harvard University to explore their diverse, interdisciplinary, and promising research on psychedelics. Speakers came from across the University’s Schools, units, and departments, including the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Business School, Harvard College, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and POPLAR at the Petrie-Flom Center. This first series of talks featured Charles Stang, Natalia Schwien, Rachael Petersen, Andrea Lerner, Ned Hall, and Justin Williams. This event took place on April 1, 2023Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
This lecture is the third of a four-part series this academic year. This series explores the moral and ethical questions surrounding the global climate crisis and the role of religious institutions, organization and members of the general public, outside the scientific community focused on saving the planet. Dekila Chungyalpa is a religion and ecology expert, having worked with faith and Indigenous leaders around the world on developing faith-led environmental and climate projects for 15 years.This event took place on March 22, 2023Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
This lecture on Jewish midwives was given by Visiting Assistant Professor of Judaism and Women's Studies in Religion Program 2022-23 Research Associate Jordan Katz. This event took place on March 22, 2023Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/
In this special episode of Faculty Focus, HDS professors John P. Brown and Charles Hallisey talk about why this summer’s Making Change Professional and Lifelong Learning program is such a valuable experience for those looking to make an investment in themselves and gain a new perspective on the challenges they face.Held across five lively and concentrated days of collaboration, close reading, and multilayered exercises, a team of faculty members from Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Business School will share their insights and reflections about religious and non-religious meanings of “the graciousness of the world” and its relevance for how we think about making change in a “world on fire.”To be held June 4-8, 2023, at Harvard Divinity School. Apply by May 1.Learn more about Making Change and apply: https://hds.harvard.edu/academics/professional-lifelong-learningFull transcript forthcoming:
There are two distinct concepts of translation at work in the encounter between an Amazonian Indigenous people, the Wari’, and the New Tribes Mission evangelical missionaries. While the missionaries conceive translation as a process of converting meanings between languages, conceived as linguistic codes that exist independently of culture, for the Wari’, in consonance with their perspectivist ontology, it is not language that differentiates beings but their bodies, given that those with similar bodies can, as a matter of principle, communicate with each other verbally. Translation is realized through the bodily metamorphosis objectified by mimetism and making kin, shamans being the translators par excellence, capable of circulating between distinct universes and providing the Wari’ with a dictionary-like lexicon that allows them to act in the context of dangerous encounters between humans and animals. This conversation with Aparecida Vilaça, Professor of Social Anthropology at Brazil’s Museu Nacional, aims to engage these issues of translation. This event took place on March 30, 2023 Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
This conversation was the last of the six-part series Religion and the Legacies of Slavery | A Series of Public Online Conversations. The featured speakers were HDS professors Karen L. King, David F. Holland, Dan McKanan, Terrence L. Johnson, and Tracey Hucks. This session was a discussion among presenters reflecting upon the insights shared throughout the series. In addition to identifying themes and throughlines among sessions, we returned to the overarching questions that framed this collaboration: What does the academic study of religion teach us about the complex histories and legacies of slavery? How can a deeper understanding of the roles of religion enhance our commitment to reparative action in our contemporary times? This event took place on March 20, 2023Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
What is dignity? Is it something conferred upon us externally by others, or an inner quality that we all possess? Drawing from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Phakchok Rinpoche provides a fresh understanding of dignity as the power that arises when we know decisively that our nature is inherently pure. With dignity, we know that we are fundamentally whole and complete. We gain an unshakeable confidence in who we are that enables us to meet the challenges of today’s world with greater compassion and wisdom. But many of us have lost contact with dignity. In this talk, Rinpoche offered practical and poignant advice for awakening and cultivating our own inherent dignity through contemplative exercises he calls “dignity training.”This even took place on March 20, 2023 Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
Amahl A. Bishara, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Tufts University, and author of "Back Stories: U.S. News Producation and Palestinian Politics," discusses her book "Crossing a Line: Laws, Violence and Roadblocks to Political Expression." The book looks to sites of political practice, such as journalism, historical commemorations, street demonstrations, social media, in prison, and on the road, to analyze how Palestinians create collectivities in circumstances of constraint. Drawing on firsthand research, personal interviews, and public media, Crossing a Line illuminates how expression is always grounded in place, and how a people can struggle together for liberation even when they cannot join together in protest.The discussion was moderated by Raef Zreik, Religion and Public Life Visiting Scholar in Conflict and Peace. The event was co-sponsored by The Center for Middle Eastern Studies Harvard University.Full transcript forthcoming.
In this lecture Visiting Assistant Professor of African Religions and Women's Studies in Religion Program 2022-23 Research Associate Elyan Hill discusses embodied visualities and domestic enslavement in Togolese sacred arts. This event took place on February 22, 2023. Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/
Join Research Associate Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani in her conversation with Dr. Grace Nono as they discuss Dr. Nono’s work as an ethnographer and performer, about shamanism in the Philippines, and some of the possible connections between sound and healing. This event is part of the Gnoseologies Series focused on ways of knowing that are often labeled as “non-rational.” Traditionally referred to as gnosis in Western philosophical and religious traditions, and often understood in contraposition to science (episteme), these ways of knowing are becoming more and more influential in contemporary societies, popular culture, and academic research. This event took place on March 8, 2023Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
Slavery is most readily associated with the U.S. American South with the geographies of the North often eclipsed. Tracey Hucks, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies at HDS and Suzanne Young Murray Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, led a discussion on slavery and the slave trade that focuses on New England and the DeWolf family of Rhode Island. The DeWolf family was understood as the largest slave trading family in the United States and Dain Perry, a direct descendant, was featured in this webinar. The event will also highlight the reparative and healing workshops co-facilitated by Dain and his wife Constance Perry conducted throughout the U.S. at religious, social, and educational institutions. Hosted by Dr. Diane L. Moore, Faculty Director, Religion and Public Life, and Dr. Melissa Wood Bartholomew, Associate Dean of the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. This event took place on March 6, 2023. Full transcript forthcoming.Learn more about Religion and the Legacies of Slavery: A Series of Public Online Conversations: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/religion-and-legacies-slavery
On March 2, 2023, a cohort of Harvard Divinity School students engaged in an evening of storytelling, poetry, and photography as they shared their experiences of joy and resistance from their summer in Israel/Palestine. Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
The Leading Toward Justice webinar series features panel discussions spotlighting alumni impact in the world and the ways alumni leverage their HDS training while working in secular or public professions. This session discussed the critical importance of ethical practices and religious literacy in community organizing and advocacy fields.Panelists:- Ryan Andersen, MDiv ’04 - Lead Organizer, Calgary Alliance for the Public Good- Jasmine Beach-Ferrera, MDiv ’10 - Executive Director, Campaign for Southern Equality- Erica Williams, MRPL ’22 – Spiritual Leader, Community Organizer, and International Human Rights ActivistModerated by Susan O. Hayward, MDiv ’07, Associate Director for the Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative (RLPI) at Harvard Divinity SchoolThis event took place on February 10, 2023.Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
Monica Sanford, Assistant Dean for Multireligious Ministry and Lecturer in Ministry Studies at HDS, talks about the evolution and importance of multireligious ministry and setting students up for success. Faculty Focus is a special podcast series from Harvard Divinity School, where we speak with HDS professors about their courses and research interests.Full episode transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/6/3/faculty-focus-monica-sanford-multireligious-ministryLearn more about HDS: hds.harvard.edu/Music track: "Old Dog New Tricks"; Extreme Music Limited
The 1619 Project spawned an unprecedented national conversation in and outside the classroom on slavery’s ongoing afterlives in American society. The enthusiastic response to the project was not universal. A few historians noted in a letter to the Times that the project reflected “a displacement of historical understanding of ideology.” The challenge raised here underscores central ethical concerns at the center of American national identity: who is responsible for slavery? What role does religion play in addressing the lingering “afterlives” of African enslavement in the United States? Do African and African American scholars play a unique role in public debates and scholarship on slavery? HDS Professor Terrence Johnson examined how the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois and Toni Morrison established a framework for exploring the role of religion and ethics in grappling with the memory and history of African enslavement. Hosted by Dr. Diane L. Moore, Faculty Director, Religion and Public Life, and Dr. Melissa Wood Bartholomew, Associate Dean of the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. This event took place on February 27, 2023Learn more about Religion and the Legacies of Slavery: A Series of Public Online Conversations: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/religion-and-legacies-slavery
In this event, Dr. Amy Hale and Dr. Christa Shusko present their book Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses, edited by Amy Hale. They discuss some of the latest and pressing topics in the study of (Western) Esotericism and talk about some of the opportunities and challenges of inhabiting this field of study as women and scholars.This conversation is part of the Gnoseologies series. This online series focuses on ways of knowing that are often labeled as “non-rational.” Traditionally referred to as gnosis in Western philosophical and religious traditions, and often understood in contraposition to science (episteme), these ways of knowing are becoming more and more influential in contemporary societies, popular culture, and academic research. Going beyond dichotomies such as body and mind, ordinary and extraordinary, reason and experience, and matter and spirit, this series hosts scholars of different disciplines and practitioners interested in exploring and expanding the boundaries of what counts as “knowledge” today.This event took place on February 22, 2023Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
As a state-of-the-art “wearable technology” of the time, talismans provided protection, perquisites, and prescriptions for the devotees of premodern Korean Buddhism. Among a varied array of talismans discovered from tombs, stupas, and spell books, this talk focuses on a collage of the twenty-four Buddhist talismans to illustrate how they provided a vocabulary and structure to address believers’ soteriological concerns and transform their cosmological views. By examining these talismans as a crucial part of the Korean Buddhist mortuary ritual, the talk argues for the pervasiveness of talismanic culture in Chosŏn Buddhism, which allowed its followers to manage the fears of disease, demons, and death. My findings further suggest that multiple layers of ambiguities built around talismans, such as tensions between text and image, legibility and illegibility, as well as accessibility and inaccessibility, played a key role in enacting the efficacy and potency of talismans, and that the twenty-four talismans occupied a central place in Chosŏn Buddhist devotional practice. Challenging the common view of Chosŏn Buddhism as being dormant and defeated, this talk presents a surprisingly vibrant and dynamic picture of Chosŏn Buddhism through these little-studied materials.This event took place on February 6, 2023Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/3/4/video-wearing-divine-protection
Randy Chung Gonzales was leading an ordinary life in his hometown of Lamas, Peru, when his employer, anthropologist Frédérique Apffel-Marglin, asked him to accompany her to an ayahuasca ceremony led by a local shaman. There, to everyone’s great surprise, Randy was initiated by discarnate entities, who instructed him and gave him healing powers. In this unique book, Randy tells his story to Frédérique, who offers cultural context and describes how she herself has been transformed from an academic anthropologist into an advocate for the sharing of indigenous wisdom and ecospirituality. Initiated by the Spirits argues powerfully that shamanic sacred plants can heal the epidemics of mental illness in Western societies, as well as the global ecological crisis. This event took place on February 9, 2023Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/3/4/video-initiated-spirits-fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9rique-apffel-marglin-phd-randy-chung-gonzales
This lecture, given by Visiting Lecturer on Islam and Women's Studies in Religion Program 2022-23 Research Associate Rahina Muazu, discusses awra (an Arabic word that is translated as nakedness, genital organs, private parts, genitalia, blemish, defects, etc.) and the female voice in Islamic law. This event took place on October 27, 2022Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/3/4/what-%E2%80%9C%E2%80%99awra%E2%80%9D-women-gendered-space-and-islamic-law
Harvard Divinity School was founded nearly forty years after slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, yet many of our school’s founders and early students were intimately familiar with both enslavement and the slave trade. Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery highlights the case of our first dean, John Gorham Palfrey, who was abandoned as a child in Boston when his father moved to Louisiana to establish a plantation. Palfrey’s mentor William Ellery Channing, who was the intellectual founder of the Divinity School, was the great grandson of a slave trader and in his own childhood was cared for by a formerly enslaved woman, Duchess Quamino. Channing was also related by marriage to the Perkins and Higginson families, who had derived vast fortunes from trade in slaves and slave-produced goods. These family legacies shaped the antislavery commitments of people like Channing and Palfrey, while the associated fortunes laid the foundation for the Divinity School endowment. In this session, we consider whether the exploration of family histories can inform reparative work in the present day. This event took place on February 13, 2023.Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/religion-and-legacies-slavery
It has long been a historical truism that, in the early modern West, pseudoscientific racial hierarchies replaced religious hierarchies as the dominant framework for understanding human difference and justifying oppressive colonialist practices, including slavery. Recent research has challenged this axiom to suggest how important religious conceptions of difference remained to the racist imagination into the modern period—and, indeed, into our present day. The convergence of racialist and religious orderings of humanity converged in American institutions like Harvard University, persisting in ways with which we have not sufficiently reckoned. This conversation is part of the Religion and the Legacies of Slavery series at HDS. The featured speakers are David F. Holland, John A. Bartlett Professor of New England Church History at HDS, and Kathryn Gin Lum, Associate Professor in Religious Studies at Stanford University. This event took place on February 6, 2023Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/2/14/video-religion-race-and-double-helix-white-supremacy
As part of Harvard Divinity School's annual William James Lectures on Religious Experience, Professor John Kaag presented "William James and the Sick Soul." This lecture discussed William James's 1895 lecture entitled "Is Life Worth Living?" It was no theoretical question for James, who had contemplated suicide during an existential crisis as a young man a quarter-century earlier. This lecture showed why the founder of pragmatism and empirical psychology can still speak so directly and profoundly to anyone struggling to make a life worth living.This event took place on February 2, 2023 Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/3/3/video-william-james-and-sick-soul
This conversation was the first of the six-part series Religion and the Legacies of Slavery: A Series of Public Online Conversations. The featured speaker was Karen L. King, Hollis Professor of Divinity at HDS.This event took place on January 30, 2023Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/2/2/video-enslavement-formation-earliest-christianity
This fall, Harvard Divinity School celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative (BMI). In honor of this anniversary, the community engaged in discussions of Buddhist ministry in the context of HDS. In this audio, Phillip Henderson, the CEO of the Ho Family Foundation, discusses the importance of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative at HDS. This event took place on October 27, 2022Learn more: hds.harvard.eduFull transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/1/17/audio-bmi-10th-anniversary-phillip-henderson-and-ho-family-foundation
Peripheries is a non-profit literary and arts journal established in 2017 that publishes artistic work that is, broadly understood, "peripheral"; work that explores the interstices between discourses, traditions, languages, forms, and genres. In this spirit, along with publishing poetry, visual art, and short stories, our scope is expansive, including translations, interviews, creative nonfiction, reviews, aphorisms, recipes, instructions, and manifestos. In this video HDS celebrates the launch of the 2022 edition of Peripheries. This celebration previewed this fifth edition with a lineup of international contributors, who read, performed, and presented their artworks. This event took place on November 30, 2022Learn more: https://www.peripheriesjournal.com/Full transcript: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/video-release-party-peripheries-vol-5
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole.Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/audio-seasons-light
Christianity in Iraq is on the brink of erasure. Once home to some of the world’s oldest Christian sites and communities, Iraq and the greater Levant has witnessed an onslaught of instability and violence targeting minority religions. Despite these challenges, leaders of Iraq’s Christian community have risen to become a voice for persecuted religious groups across the region. Archbishop Bashar Warda is a face of these efforts, and his remarks will draw upon both his experience in Iraq, and of the Gospel in defending Christianity and religious freedom today. This event took place on November 17, 2022Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/1/13/video-christianity-iraq-challenges-and-hopes
This lecture, given by Visiting Associate Professor of African American Religions and Women's Studies in Religion Program 2022-23 Research Associate Kinitra D. Brooks, has to do with conjure feminism and Dona Kimpa Vita. This event took place on November 17, 2022Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/homeFull transcript: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/1/5/video-thou-shalt-not-suffer-witch-live
The 2022 Ministry Colloquium at HDS, "Spirituality, Mental Health, and Science," featured a talk from Dr. Lisa Miller, author of The Awakened Brain and Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. In this lecture she explored the relationship between spirituality and physical well being. This event took place on November 9, 2022Learn more: hds.harvard.eduFull transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/1/2/video-spirituality-mental-health-and-science
Professor Terrence L. Johnson facilitated a conversation with Professor Anthony Pinn, Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religion at Rice University, who is a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Divinity School for the academic year 2022-23, focused on Professor Pinn’s most recent book, The Interplay of Things. In The Interplay of Things, Pinn theorizes religion as a technology for interrogating human experiences and the boundaries between people and other things. Rather than considering religion in terms of institutions, doctrines, and creeds, Pinn shows how religion exposes the openness and porousness of all things and how they are always involved in processes of exchange and interplay. This event took place on November 7, 2022Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/1/2/video-art-and-religion-technology
Join Dr. David Yaden and Dr. Michael Ferguson, world experts in the sciences of psychedelics and spirituality, as they discuss Dr. Yaden's new book, "The Varieties of Spiritual Experience." Inspired by the history, philosophy, and methodology of William James's classic text "The Varieties of Religious Experience," this new volume is a twenty-first-century response to timeless questions about humankind's spiritual nature. "The Varieties of Spiritual Experience" introduces a rich array of original empirical data collected and analyzed by Dr. Yaden and his colleagues, thus enriching the book's treatment of spirituality with a uniquely evidence-based series of perspectives.This event took place on November 3, 2022Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/homeFull transcript: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/video-varieties-spiritual-experience-21st-century-research-and-perspectives
Francis X. Clooney, S. J., Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology, talks about his journey from New York City to Kathmandu, "thinking big" in his teaching and courses, and why HDS is an exciting place for comparative theology and Hindu studies. Faculty Focus is a special podcast series from Harvard Divinity School where we speak with HDS professors about their courses and research interests.Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/11/21/faculty-focus-crossing-religious-boundaries-catholic-priest-hindu-scholar-francis-clooneyLearn more about HDS: hds.harvard.edu/Music track: "Old Dog New Tricks"; Extreme Music Limited
Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani discusses affect theater with her guests Prof. Cristiana Giordano (UC Davis) and Prof. Greg Pierotti (University of Arizona), and how it can transform academic research. They talk about the role of affects, emotions, and collaborative practices in academic and non-academic processes of meaning-making.This event occured on November 2, 2022Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/homeFull transcript: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/30/video-affect-theater-and-collaborative-meaning-making
This fall, Harvard Divinity School celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative (BMI). In honor of this anniversary, the community engaged in discussions of Buddhist ministry in the context of HDS. In this video, Dr. Monica Sanford closes the celebration by asking Janet Gyatso what she wants to see in the future for the BMI. This event took place on October 27, 2022Learn more: hds.harvard.eduFull transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/1/16/video-bmi-10th-anniversary-closing-remarks
This fall, Harvard Divinity School celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative (BMI). In honor of this anniversary, the community engaged in discussions of Buddhist ministry in the context of HDS.This event took place on October 27, 2022Learn more: hds.harvard.eduFull transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/1/12/audio-bmi-10th-anniversary-celebration-ven-priya-rakkhit-sraman
This fall, Harvard Divinity School celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative (BMI). In honor of this anniversary, the community engaged in discussions of Buddhist ministry in the context of HDS.This event took place on October 27, 2022Learn more: hds.harvard.eduFull transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/1/13/audio-bmi-10th-anniversary-celebration-bhante-kusala
This fall, Harvard Divinity School celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative (BMI). In honor of this anniversary, the community engaged in discussions of Buddhist ministry in the context of HDS.This event took place on October 27, 2022Learn more: hds.harvard.eduFull transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/1/16/audio-bmi-10th-anniversary-maria-azhunova
This fall, Harvard Divinity School celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative (BMI). In honor of this anniversary, the community engaged in discussions of Buddhist ministry in the context of HDS. In this discussion, Dr. Monica Sanford and Dr. Charles Hallisey dialogue about the nature and practice of Buddhist ministry.This event took place on October 27, 2022Learn more: hds.harvard.eduFull transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/1/11/video-buddhist-ministry-initiative-tenth-anniversary-celebration
This fall, Harvard Divinity School celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative (BMI). In honor of this anniversary, the community engaged in discussions of Buddhist ministry in the context of HDS.This event took place on October 27, 2022Learn more: hds.harvard.eduFull transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/1/16/audio-bmi-10th-anniversary-nancy-chu
This fall, Harvard Divinity School celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative (BMI). In honor of this anniversary, the community engaged in discussions of Buddhist ministry in the context of HDS.This event took place on October 27, 2022Learn more: hds.harvard.eduFull transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/1/13/audio-bmi-10th-anniversary-harrison-blum
Cynthia Wilson, (RPL Native and Indigenous Rights Fellow) and Angelo Baca (Cultural Resources Coordinator for Utah Diné Bikéyah) speak from their experience as Indigenous community organizers helping to secure the protection of Bears Ears National Monument. Located in southeast Utah, Bears Ears was subjected to Proclamation 9681 by President Trump in 2017 to reduce protected lands by more than 1.1 million acres. Following an Indigenous-led movement to protect Bears Ears, a reparative proclamation to modify the boundaries was issued by President Biden in October, 2021. Cynthia Wilson and Angelo Baca will discuss lessons learned from listening, organizing, mobilizing, and planning from a placed-based approach while engaging local Tribal voices, advancing community priorities and goals of ancestral land protection. This event took place on April 28, 2022Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.eduFull transcript: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/15/video-bears-ears-listening
Mayra Rivera, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies, talks about coloniality and race, environmental catastrophe, and transforming the way we see the world.Faculty Focus is a special new podcast series from Harvard Divinity School, where we speak with HDS professors about their courses and research interests.Full episode transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/11/04/faculty-focus-mayra-riveraLearn more about HDS: hds.harvard.edu/Music track: "Old Dog New Tricks"; Extreme Music Limited
Illuminations is a new limited series from Ministry of Ideas that reveals the untold friendship of religion and science. Through interviews and stories drawn from a range of cultures, faiths, and eras, this series reveals the unknown and unexpected histories of how religion and science have been entangled across time. We hear why the Dalai Lama loves quantum mechanics; why the Mormon faith inspires a search for extraterrestrial life; why the Scientific Revolution was catalyzed by a religious quest to uncover divine craftsmanship. These surprising narratives explode the myth that faith and science are destined to be enemies and reveal how they worked as mutual inspiration.This event took place on October 24, 2022Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/public-events-calendar?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D162727621Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/8/video-illuminations-launch-party
When a sacred lake bursts into toxic flames, and the temple at its shore is charred, the resident goddess flees. Where can She go? Highlighting the paradox between Hinduism’s view of water as female, sacred and sentient, and the endemic pollution of water resources and climate- driven drought in contemporary India, this ethnographic and archival project considers the existential ethics at stake in apocalyptic climate change. If water is life, as our popular understanding suggests, we ask, what is a life without water? Visiting Professor of South Asian Religions and Women's Studies in Religion Program 2022-23 Research Associate Tulasi Srinivas explores these questions in this lecture.This event took place on October 13, 2022Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/homeFull transcript: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/2/video-runaway-goddess-sacred-waters-era-climate-apocalypse?admin_panel=1
This conversation with religious studies scholar and Black and biracial educator Marcelitte Failla (Emory University)” our Research Associate Giovanna Parmigiani, the host of the series, discusses the practice of Tarot reading, Black Witches, Divination, Resilience, and the meanings, limitations, and possibilities of being a “scholar practitioner.”Marcelitte Failla is a Black and biracial educator and scholar of African-heritage religions. Through a Black feminist lens, her work explores how religions such as Yoruba Ifá, Haitian Vodou, and North American Hoodoo are used for collective healing and social justice. This event took place on Wednesday, October 19, 2022. Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/5/video-black-tarot-african-american-women-and-divine-processes-resilience
This lecture was part of the 60th anniversary symposium for God is Red at Harvard Divinity School. This lecture series discusses how Vine Deloria Jr.'s landmark text speaks to the field of religious studies, Native American studies, theology, and environmental studies in the twenty-first century. In this lecture Dr. Suzan Harjo (Cheyenne & Hodulgee Muscogee) from the the Morning Star Institute discusses the impact of Deloria's work on studies of Native American rights and Native American Religions. This event took place on Thursday, October 6, 2022Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/public-events-calendar?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D162305702Full transcript: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/11/15/video-impact-god-red-native-american-rights-and-native-american-religion
This lecture was part of the 60th anniversary symposium for God is Red at Harvard Divinity School. This lecture series discusses how Vine Deloria Jr.'s landmark text speaks to the field of religious studies, Native American studies, theology, and environmental studies in the twenty-first century. In this lecture Dr. Dan Wildcat (Yuchi/Muscogee) from Haskell Indian Nations University discusses the impact of Deloria's work in the present and in future scholarship. This event took place on Friday, October 7, 2022Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/homeFull transcript: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/11/29/video-impact-god-red-future
Repeated elections in Israel reveal the intensification of rhetoric around "transfer" and the normalization of the settlement project in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. At the same time, recent reports by a host of respected human rights organizations brought into question the limits and blinders of the construct of "Jewish democracy." A panel of public intellectuals examined the gradual strengthening of Jewish exclusionary political parties, the influences of Jewish and Christian American agendas on Israeli political trends, and the historical and philosophical meanings of Jewish political modernity.This event took place October 25, 2022.Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/programs/religion-conflict-peaceFull transcript: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/10/27/video-another-israeli-election-assessing-trends-israeli-and-jewish-politics
This lecture was part of the 60th anniversary symposium for God is Red at Harvard Divinity School. This lecture series discusses how Vine Deloria Jr.'s landmark text speaks to the field of religious studies, Native American studies, theology, and environmental studies in the twenty-first century. In this lecture Dr. Susan Hill (Mohawk) from the University of Toronto discusses the impact of Deloria's work on studies of religion, land, and the environment . This event took place on Friday, October 7, 2022Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/homeFull transcript: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/11/21/video-impact-god-red-religion-land-and-environment
This lecture was part of the 60th anniversary symposium for God is Red at Harvard Divinity School. This lecture series discusses how Vine Deloria Jr.'s landmark text speaks to the field of religious studies, Native American studies, theology, and environmental studies in the twenty-first century. In this lecture Dr. Michael McNally from the Carleton College discusses the impact of Deloria's work on religious studies. This event took place on Friday, October 7, 2022Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/homeFull transcript: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/11/7/video-impact-god-red-religious-studies?admin_panel=1
This lecture was part of the 60th anniversary symposium for God is Red at Harvard Divinity School. This lecture series discusses how Vine Deloria Jr.'s landmark text speaks to the field of religious studies, Native American studies, theology, and environmental studies in the twenty-first century. In this lecture Dr. Robert Warrior (Osage) from the University of Kansas discusses the impact of Deloria's work on theology. This event took place on Friday, October 7, 2022Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/public-events-calendar?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D162305702Full transcript: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/11/08/video-impact-god-red-theology-4
Lecture by Gerald J. Steinacher, James A. Rawley Professor of History, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who specializes in the history of the Holocaust and its immediate aftermath. Introduction of the speaker by Professor Kevin J. Madigan, Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Faculty Dean, Eliot House, Harvard College.This event took place on September 29, 2022Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/11/02/video-pope-against-nuremberg-nazi-war-crime-trials-vatican-and-question-postwar-justice
Associate Dean for Ministry Studies Teddy Hickman-Maynard talks about preparing future leaders, innovative teaching, and trauma theology.Faculty Focus is a special new podcast series from Harvard Divinity School, where we speak with HDS professors about their courses and research interests.Full episode transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/10/17/faculty-focus-teddy-hickman-maynard-preparing-future-leaders-peace-justiceLearn more about HDS: https://hds.harvard.edu/Music track: "Old Dog New Tricks"; Extreme Music Limited
This Leading Toward Justice webinar features panel discussions spotlighting alumni impact in the world and the ways alumni leverage their HDS training while working in secular or public professions. This session will discuss the critical importance of ethical practices and religious literacy in government and public service fields. Moderated by Susan O. Hayward, MDiv ’07, associate director for the Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative (RLPI) at Harvard Divinity School Panelists:Gary Burrill, MDiv ’91: Parliamentary Member, Nova Scotia House of AssemblyJacqueline Y. Collins, MPA ’01, MTS ’03: State Senator of Illinois, Assistant Majority LeaderUsra Ghazi, MTS ’15: Foreign Service Officer, U.S. Department of StateKelly Raths, MDiv '05: Former Assistant Director, Oregon Department of CorrectionsThis event took place on October 3, 2022Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/leading-toward-justice-hds-alums-discuss-intersections-religion-ethics-and-governmentFull transcript: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/12/1/video-leading-towards-justice-intersections-religion-ethics-and-government
Writer and human rights activist Simran Jeet Singh, MTS '08, discusses his new book, The Light We Give, and his ongoing work as a public scholar and educator on Sikhism and religious pluralism. Event participants discussed the intersections between Singh’s work, public understanding about Sikhism, and Religion and Public Life approaches to teaching and learning about religion. This discussion focused on educators working with students from 7th grade through college.This event took place on September 29, 2022.Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/9/29/video-teaching-and-learning-about-sikhism-simran-jeet-singh-lunchtime-conversation
Harvard Divinity School and the Center for the Study of World Religions host this panel discussion to inaugurate the second year of the CSWR's “Transcendence and Transformation” initiative, hosted by Director Charles M. Stang. The panel features the initiative's newest post-doctoral fellows and research associates as well as discussions of the history of “shamanic” healing practices in Central Asia; how best to teach embodied contemplative practices in the classroom; early Christian controversies over allegorical interpretation of the Bible, and universal salvation; the neuroscience of contemplative Christian prayer; and the "Great Resurrection" in Nizari Isma'ilism.This event took place on October 3, 2022.Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/10/3/video-transcendence-and-transformation-take-two
Presented by the Women’s Studies in Religion Program, these five new and one returning research associates for 2022-23 shared their thoughts on the ethical responsibility of scholars to be engaged in the study of gender.This event was held August 24, 2022.A full transcript can be found on the WSRP website: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/10/06/video-ethical-scholarship-gender-religion-difference-womens-studies-religion-panelLearn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/
In this first episode of Faculty Focus, HDS Professor Charles M. Stang discusses psychedelics and spirituality, early Christianity and demonology, and why Dune makes for good academic inquiry.
Faculty Focus is a special new podcast series from Harvard Divinity School, where we’ll speak with HDS professors about their courses and research interests.
Full transcript of this episode available on the HDS website: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/10/3/faculty-focus-charles-stang-why-dune-makes-good-academic-inquiry
Learn more about HDS: https://hds.harvard.edu/
Harvard Divinity School and the Swartz Hall Art Committee celebrate the unveiling of "Earth Bound," an original creation by artist and Mashpee Wampanoag tribal member Ramona Peters.
The ceremony included remarks by HDS Dean David N. Hempton, Peters, Mashpee Wampanoag Historic Preservation Officer David Weeden, and others.
"Earth Bound," is an ahkuhq or cooking vessel, which will have a permanent home on display inside Harvard Divinity School’s Swartz Hall. The work was commissioned by HDS and the Swartz Hall Art Committee, with support from the Harvard Culture Lab Innovation Fund.
This event took place September 19, 2022.
Visit the HDS website for a full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/09/29/video-earth-bound-welcoming-new-artwork-ramona-peters
Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/about/history-and-mission/ramona-peters-earth-bound
Harvard Divinity School marked the opening of the 2022-23 academic year with its 207th Convocation. Harvard Radcliffe Institute Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin delivered the address, titled "Legacies of Slavery: Bondage and Resistance." Brown-Nagin chaired the Presidential Initiative on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, which issued its report earlier this year.
The ceremony included a welcome from HDS Dean David N. Hempton, an introduction by Tracey E. Hucks, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies at HDS and Suzanne Young Murray Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, music by Aric Flemming, MDiv ’19, and Christopher Hossfeld, director of music and ritual at HDS, and readings by HDS students Ahmaad Edmund and Siana Monet.
The event was held September 1, 2022.
Visit the HDS website for a full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/09/29/video-hds-2022-convocation-legacies-slavery-bondage-and-resistance
Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
Curiously, the English language lacks a word for “the belief that human beings only live once.” In this talk, Professor Steven Arrigg Koh discussed this long-held belief in the United States, prevalent amongst those with both sacred and secular views. “Univitalism” (the term coined by Professor Koh to describe this phenomenon) is so common that it is assumed by American Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, and agnostics alike—and is thus implicitly or explicitly integral to the reasoning of many U.S. legal and political decisionmakers. By contrast, a significant minority of Americans and many in Eastern societies subscribe to a “multivitalist” worldview, wherein individuals are reborn.
This event took place February 18, 2022.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/home
What is the role of Palestinian universities in the struggle for freedom and justice? Rana Khoury, Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative Fellow and Vice President for Development at Dar Al-Kalima University, shares her exploration of developing a dedicated curriculum and the experience of Dar Al-Kalima University in shaping Palestinian students as cultural activists. Khoury is in conversation with Hilary Rantisi: Associate Director of the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative at Harvard Divinity School.
This event took place April 26, 2022.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/programs/religion-conflict-peace
In conversation with Daniel Boyarin, Rabbi Brant Rosen interrogated the ways that Zionist hegemony is expressed through the Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) that has become a staple on the American Jewish holiday calendar, projecting themes of militarism, colonialism, and empire on to sacred religious tradition. He also presented an alternative framing of this day as a religious observance – one that expresses remembrance, repentance, and reparations.
Presenters: Brant Rosen: Topol Fellow at RCPI; Rabbi, Tzedek Chicago
In conversation with: Prof. Daniel Boyarin: Caroline Zelaznik Gruss and Joseph S. Gruss Visiting Professor in Talmudic Civil Law at Harvard Law School (2021-2022)
Moderator: Atalia Omer: Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at University of Notre Dame and T. J. Dermot Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding and Senior Fellow in Conflict and Peace at Harvard Divinity School
This event took place April 19, 2022.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/programs/religion-conflict-peace
Sixty years ago on Good Friday, a famous experiment took place at Boston University's Marsh Chapel conducted by Harvard Divinity School student Walter Pahnke, where he tried to answer the question: Do psychedelic drugs occasioned mystical experiences?
In 2022, conversations about the connections between psychedelics, science and medicine, and spirituality are again top of mind, from Harvard and the academy to research hospitals and beyond.
In this episode, Harvard Divinity School student Paul Gillis-Smith speaks to scholar J. Christian Greer about the impact of the “Marsh Chapel Miracle,” what role psychedelics might play in the future of religion, and why, he says, there’s potential for great harm, but reasons to be hopeful, too.
Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/05/12/psychedelics-spirituality-culture-seekership
Our year-long, intentional engagement with our Common Read text, "Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation," by Nick Estes, Melanie K. Yazzie, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, and David Correia, concluded with a powerful session with all four authors who engaged in conversation with HDS faculty, staff, and students.
Dean Teddy Hickman-Maynard, Dean Steph Gauchel, and MDiv candidates Rebecca Mendoza Nunziato and Emma Thomas explored the themes of this urgent text with the authors and discussed ways our community can respond to their call to advance the work of decolonization and Native liberation at Harvard and beyond.
Jocelyne Cesari, J. Dermot Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding, discussed her recent publication, "We God's People: Christianity, Islam and Hinduism in the World of Nations" with David F. Holland and Ousmane Kane.
This event took place on April 21, 2022.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
Each spring, the Office of Ministry Studies organizes the Billings Preaching Prize Finals, an annual preaching competition open to second- and third-year MDiv students.
Congratulations to MDiv candidate Mauricio Bruce, the 2022 Billings Preaching Prize Competition winner, and to finalists Sharon Christner and Erica Williams for their incredible talents. The finals were held during Noon Service on April 20 in Williams Chapel. The event also featured a reading from Carolyn Beard, the Massachusetts Bible Society scripture reading winner, and jessica young chang, the non-scripture reading winner.
Spiritual leader, human rights activist, and grassroots organizer Erica Williams’ project for the MRPL was to launch the “Set It Off Movement” which is aimed at ending the dehumanization, destruction, and death-dealing of poor Black women in America. The movement was inspired by the 1996 film Set It Off, which follows four Black women friends in Los Angeles, California, who plan to execute a bank robbery—each doing so for different reasons—to achieve better for themselves and their families.
This event took place on April 26, 2022.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/
Nurhaizatul Jamil, Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Islam and 2021-22 Women's Studies in Religion Program Research Associate, delivered the lecture, "Islamic Self-Help, Gendered Anxieties, and Racial Capitalism in Singapore."
This event took place on April 12, 2022.
Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/
In this webinar, speakers showcased the unique impact of Divinity School alumni in the world, discussing the critical importance and need for ethical practices and religious literacy in the field of journalism today.
This event took place on April 27, 2022.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/
As writers and poets, we often wonder: who is this porous and gullible and hungry person writing my poems, who is feeding her and is she for real? Is it truly me who wrote this? Is that my story, my voice? Why don’t I sound like myself—or worse, why does my self sound…not quite right? These questions can be painful, discouraging, silencing. Let’s move beyond them and go deeper into the real mysteries, the useful ones, the ones that help us write and propel us further into our journey as writers. In this talk, Brenda Shaughnessy examined why some “first words” last, what trusting your voice means, and how inchoate feelings can be transformed into art.
This event took place on April 19, 2022.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
A yearly tradition at HDS, the Stendahl Symposium honors the memory of former professor Krister Stendahl, who tirelessly sought to repair fractions between Jews and Christians, supported the ordination of women, and pushed for the full inclusion and participation of women and minority voices in academia and interfaith work.
Each year, the symposium carries Stendahl’s legacy forward by presenting student papers centered around the topic of “Conversations Across Religious Boundaries.” This year's symposium centered the political nature of Stendahl's legacy by engaging the following subtheme: "Solidarity, Resistance, and Liberation In and Through Religious Difference."
This event took place on April 19, 2022.
Erik Davis’ first book, the celebrated "Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information," was published almost twenty-five years ago. Still in print, this cult classic of media studies continues to inform conversations about technology, consciousness, and new digital expressions of religion and esotericism. In this Gnoseologies event, speakers discussed Davis’ intellectual trajectory, the relevant lessons of 1990s "cyberdelia," and how techgnostic themes continue to inform our era of AI, post-truth polarization, the simulation hypothesis, and the explosion of digital occultism, from Insta-witches to TikTok “reality shifters."
This event took place on April 13, 2022.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
Since the signing of Oslo, or the Declaration of Principles, in 1993, the question of Palestine has been rammed into the constricting paradigms of statehood and diplomatic negotiations. The peace process framework not only eschewed the consequential dimension of power from the question of Palestine but limited its possible futures by reducing it to a matter of, at best, equitable partitions. This conversation aimed to peel back those debilitating frameworks to consider how other approaches like anti-racism, feminism, and anti-imperialism could help overcome restrictive binaries and lead to decolonial futures.
This event took place on April 6, 2022.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/programs/religion-conflict-peace
Walking Through the Twilight is a photographic exploration of American Jewish activism in solidarity with Palestinians against the Israeli military occupation. The project explores the interplay between Jewish religious identity and activism, discussing issues of identity, faith, and action.
This event took place on April 12, 2022.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/programs/religion-conflict-peace
The resurgence of the “divine feminine” as a discursive concept and framework in religious studies and in popular practice in Europe and the United States, raises the question of the salience of the concept in African Religions. In this talk, drawing from ethnographic research with Luba women whose religious practice informs their positionality in war, Georgette Mulunda Ledgister demonstrated the African indigenous orientation towards un-gendered expressions of religion that allow practitioners to transcend the strictures and the structures of gender.
This event took place on April 11, 2022.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
What drives people to join hate groups? And when they decide to leave, what comes next? "Healing from Extremism" was a panel event featuring former extremists, chaplains, and current Parents for Peace staff who work on the front lines of de-radicalization work. The panel and Q&A were moderated by Susie Hayward, Associate Director of the Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative at Harvard Divinity School.
This event took place on April 11, 2022.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/programs/religious-literacy-professions
For many years esoteric and occult practices in art have been sidelined as marginal and even taboo within art historical discourses. However, the recent cultural explosion of interest in esotericism and the occult is redefining the contributions of esotericism to the development of visual art, particularly from the late nineteenth century onward. In this illustrated talk and conversation, Dr. Amy Hale explored how our understanding of artists’ esoteric practice shapes the conversation between art, artists, and the audience.
This event took place on March 30, 2022.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
This presentation chronicled the evolution of the collaborative art exhibition, "Ye Shall Inherit the Earth & Faces of the Divine." The exhibition, featuring works of artists from the African Diasporic and Palestinian exilic communities, attempts to gesture towards some commentary about both the universality and specificity of conversations ranging from human rights, human dignity, and artistic production-as-a practice of resistance. Follow the Inherit exhibition on Instagram @inherit_exhibit22.
This event took place on March 29, 2022.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/programs/religion-conflict-peace
What is the paranormal? How can we make sense of out-of-the-ordinary experiences? How can we study the paranormal—anthropologically? In this talk, Dr. Jack Hunter and Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani discussed the anthropology of the paranormal.
This event took place on March 23, 2022.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
In this talk, Vivien Sansour shared excerpts of her upcoming autobiographical book weaving a poetic narration of people, plants, and other food stories from Palestine to South America, taking us on her journey of establishing the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library and the projects that resulted from it. Professor Bahhur explored how stories inform our political and social realities on a global level and how they can be catalysts for a new conversation about indigenous knowledge and spirituality.
This event took place on March 22, 2022.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/programs/religion-conflict-peace
This event featured seven poets from Gaza-Palestine who in May 2021 were working to submit their poems to "Peripheries" while under Israeli attacks. Five of the poets write in Arabic while two, the co-editors of the special folio in 2021, are bilingual poets, writing in Arabic and English. The poets include Mosab Abu Toha, Tayseer Abu Odeh, Nasser Rabah, Waleed Al-Akkad, Hamed Ashour, Ne’ma Hasan, and Mona Al-Mosaddar.
This event took place on March 21, 2022.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
On February 24-25, a convening of Religion and Public Life and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University brought together a small group of scholars and activists to assess the normative frameworks that shape how U.S. foreign policy thinks about the role of religion in world affairs.
This public follow-up event, moderated by Peter Mandaville, George Mason and Georgetown Universities, and Susie Hayward, Religion and Public Life, featured several workshop participants as they shared insights and recommendations generated from the February discussion about how religion can be reimagined in policy and activist responses to meet the challenges of the present day.
This event took place on March 4, 2022.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/
This event is part of the RCPI Fellows' Spring Series, "Disrupting Injustice and Promoting Moral Imagination in Israel/Palestine." Conflict and Peace Fellows at Religion and Public Life (RPL) talk about their projects illuminating transnational solidarities, reimagining Jewish identity, Palestinian steadfastness (Sumoud), and cultivating moral imagination and creative possibilities for a just peace in Israel/Palestine.
Salem Al-Qudwa, RCPI Fellow and Architect, in conversation with Sara Roy, Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.
Salem Al-Qudwa showcased his work focusing on community and people with an emphasis on ethics, social injustice, and architecture in conflict zones such as the Gaza Strip. He also introduced his work on gender and in-between spaces exploring barriers, exploitation, and the relationship of widowed women to space and architecture.
Co-sponsored by The Middle East Forum at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard.
This event took place on March 8, 2022.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/programs/religion-conflict-peace
“The Writing of Wisdom: Divine Sophia in Russia” is part of the CSWR’s new initiative, “Transcendence and Transformation".
In this presentation, Judith Deutsch Kornblatt analyzed ancient icons of Divine Wisdom along with many other influences on the pivotal religious philosopher and poet Vladimir Solovyov and, through him, on his heirs in Russian religious thought in the 20th century.
This event took place on March 10, 2022.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
This conversation is part of a ten-week series of online conversations with poets, writers, public servants, theologians, biologists, scholars, and activists who are engaged in the spiritual reckoning and awakening surrounding climate collapse, sacred land protection, and planetary health.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s thriller "The Ministry for the Future" (2020) is science fiction that reads as hard-edged journalism. With short chapters and a myriad of characters, Robinson creates a kaleidoscope of perspectives on a global climate collapse coming in 2025. Bill McKibben writes “In Kim Stanley Robinson’s anti-dystopian novel, climate change is the crisis that finally forces mankind to deal with global inequality.” At heart an optimist, Robinson lays out a possible path to move forward with faith in what we can create together in a post-capitalist world.
Respondent: Sarah Dimick, Assistant Professor of English, Harvard University
This event took place on November 22, 2021.
Sponsored by: Harvard Divinity School, The Constellation Project, The Center for the Study of World Religions, Religion and Public Life at HDS, Theasophie Teas, and the Planetary Health Alliance.
Vladimir Putin's invasion and war on Ukraine is a crisis. It's a crisis that is unfolding before our very eyes across social media and cable and online news, and it's more than just a political crisis, though that's likely what most of us are hearing about. Putin's war is crisis of humanity. It's a crisis of conscience … and it's a crisis with deep religious ties.
I'm Jonathan Beasley, and in today's episode of the Harvard Religion Beat, I'm speaking with Sean Eriksen about the religious connection to Putin's war on Ukraine. Sean is a graduate student at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, specializing in contemporary Russian national identity and regime ideology. Sean is originally from Australia. He holds degrees in law and international relations, and he's lived in Kyiv, Ukraine, and has travelled throughout the former Soviet Union.
Full episode transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/03/10/putin-unholy-war
Virtual Voices of Divinity is an ongoing conversation series that showcases the unique impact of HDS alumni in the world. This talk featured Palwasha Kakar, MTS ’04, Interim Director of Religion and Inclusive Societies at US Institute of Peace, Rick Santos, MTS ’92, President and CEO at Church World Service, and Karen Tse, MDiv ’00, Founder and CEO of International Bridges to Justice.
This event took place on March 1, 2022.
Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/alumni-friends
In this talk, Sapir Sluzker Amran and Dr. Yali Hashash explored the role of powerful civic grassroots movements in Israel/Palestine that center feminist-queer-class-race intersectionality and solidarity while challenging secular liberal thinking about feminist leadership. They discussed the role of alternative and community archives by showcasing feminist activism from the 1950s onwards and highlighting Mizrahi feminist struggles for housing in Israel/Palestine.
This event took place on March 1, 2022.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/home
Yeshe Tsogyal, the leading female presence of Tibet, appears in two distinct genres of literature, autobiographical and ritual practice texts (sādhana). In this talk, Anne Carolyn Klein/Rigzin Drolma drew on recent practice texts related writings to conclude that this sādhana is at core a conversation about one’s own relation to a divine feminine, which gradually reveals a wholistic divine, a non-binary writ large, that is nonetheless fully feminine in image and metaphor.
This event took place on February 28, 2022.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/transcendence-and-transformation
Ever since Columbus reported he was hailed as "a celestial being" in 1492, stories of unexpected apotheoses have haunted the modern age. From Haile Selassie to Prince Philip, men unwittingly turned divine have much to reveal about empire, race, and the relationship between politics and divinity, as HDS alumna Anna Della Subin argues in her recent book "Accidental Gods". In conversation with Charles M. Stang, she explored how deification has been both a means of liberation and a way to sanctify oppression; how accidental gods are present in the canonical texts of comparative religion; and how myths of European explorers mistaken for “white gods” imbued whiteness with a divinity still entrenched today.
This event took place on February 17, 2022.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
n this talk, Dr. Elizabeth Pérez discussed practices of embodied knowledge production and transmission in such Afro-Diasporic religions as Cuban Lucumí, Haitian Vodou, and Brazilian Candomblé. In conversation with CSWR Research Associate Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani, she connected the insights from her first book on sacred food preparation with current scholarship on gut feelings, knowing, and beings in Black Atlantic traditions. “Gut & Other Knowledges in Religions of the African Diaspora” is part of the CSWR’s new initiative, “Transcendence and Transformation."
This event took place on February 23, 2022.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/transcendence-and-transformation-events-calendar
Annual Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice
The after-effects of the 1/6 Insurrection continue to reverberate across America. Since that fateful and disturbing day, pushbacks against the teaching of race in America, abortion rollbacks, and Covid denialism have swept across the country. What has been the role of evangelical Christianity in fueling these issues? Anthea Butler, Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought and Chair of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, examined the historical antecedents of Evangelical beliefs and political action leading up to today’s troubling times, and the prospects for the future of religion, peace, and political action in America, in her lecture.
This event took place on February 10, 2022.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
In this event, Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative Fellow Oriel Eisner, activist Neomi-Nur Zahor, and journalist Basil al-Adraa discussed their experience engaging in immersive solidarity work and shared resistance in the last year as a part of a renewal of efforts in joint struggle against the Occupation.
This event took place on February 15, 2022.
Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/programs/
Heather R. White, Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion and Gender and Queer Studies and 2021-22 Women's Studies in Religion Program Research Associate, delivered the lecture, "Safe, Sacred, Free: Queer Movements and Religious Spaces."
This event took place on February 15, 2022.
Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/
Diana Espírito Santo is associate professor of social anthropology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. In this lecture, she examined the ambiguous, dark spaces of paradox from the point of view of two distinct ethnographic sites: Brazil and Cuba, with Umbanda and creole espiritismo respectively. In exploring the various vignettes—of a self that must forget itself in order to retain its mode of conscious trance in Brazil, of the impossibility of knowing one’s spirits in a multiplying metamorphic cosmos in Cuba, both signaling the general breakdown of reality and its knowability—she thought through an interstitial, in-between, impossible logic, and called out the gaps in scholarly approach premised on the notion that knowledge is there to be grasped, with the right techniques.
This event took place on February 16, 2022.
Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/transcendence-and-transformation
Did you know that Christmas was illegal in Massachusetts from 1659 to 1681, and anyone caught celebrating the holiday would be subject to a fine of 5 shillings?
And who was responsible for canceling Christmas? Was it pagans, or liberal policymakers, or the anti-religious? Nope, it was one of the most pious groups of people at the time: the Puritans.
"Puritans abided by what's sometimes been called the regulative principle of Biblicism, which is that not only do you need to do what the Bible enjoins you to do, but you should avoid establishing, as practices of spiritual significance, things that the Bible does not expressly endorse," says HDS Professor David F. Holland. “And so the absence of Christmas in scripture was the primary source of the kind of Puritan concern about it and condemnation of it.”
But there was also another big reason for the ban, namely that Christmas had a tradition of being a time of social disorder, similar to Carnival. And that disorder, drunkenness, irreverence, and often sexual licentiousness, was something Puritans found unacceptable.
Even though anti-Christmas sentiment and culture was still very much prevalent in New England until the mid-nineteenth century, Christmas became a national holiday in 1870 thanks to one particular phenomenon.
“What really kind of gives Christmas it's propriety or its legitimacy in the culture of New England is the rise of a kind of cult of domesticity in the early nineteenth century and what some scholars have referred to as the birth of childhood,” says Holland, “the recognition of childhood as a distinctive stage of human development that deserves a certain kind of indulgence and a certain kind of happiness.”
This conversation was part of the fall 2021 series "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now." The featured speaker was writer Michael Pollan.
Michael Pollan has been educating us with illuminating prose on “the botany of desire” for a very long time. He discusses his latest book "This Is Your Mind On Plants" and his landmark bestseller "How To Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence."
Pollan’s call for change, restoration, and resiliency may be the very thing we need to bolster our consciousness in the midst of climate collapse.
Respondent: Charles Stang, director of the Center for the Study of World Religions
About this event series: "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now" is a ten-week series of online conversations with poets, writers, public servants, theologians, biologists, scholars, and activists who are engaged in the spiritual reckoning and awakening surrounding climate collapse, sacred land protection, and planetary health. Environmentalist, author, and HDS Writer-in-Residence Terry Tempest Williams will lead conversations concerning our response to climate chaos: How might we recast this a time of meaning rather than despair? How do arts and activism combine to let us see possibility instead of pessimism? Where do we find the strength to fully face all that is breaking our hearts?
This conversation was part of the fall 2021 series "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now." The featured speaker was poet Victoria Chang.
Victoria Chang writes in her New York Times Notable Book of 2020, Obit, “I always knew that grief was something I could smell. But I didn’t know that it’s not actually a noun but a verb. That it moves.”
After the deaths of her parents, she refused to write elegies; instead, Chang wrote poetic obituaries of the beautiful, broken world that surrounds her (many see them as love letters). How does poetry illuminate this time of uncertainty? How do we embrace grief and not look away from all that is breaking our hearts? What we thought was a pause is now a place, and grief is part of this place.
Respondent: Jorie Graham, Poet, Harvard English Department
About this event series: "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now" is a ten-week series of online conversations with poets, writers, public servants, theologians, biologists, scholars, and activists who are engaged in the spiritual reckoning and awakening surrounding climate collapse, sacred land protection, and planetary health. Environmentalist, author, and HDS Writer-in-Residence Terry Tempest Williams will lead conversations concerning our response to climate chaos: How might we recast this a time of meaning rather than despair? How do arts and activism combine to let us see possibility instead of pessimism? Where do we find the strength to fully face all that is breaking our hearts?
This conversation was part of the fall 2021 series "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now." The featured speaker was Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies and Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs at Harvard Divinity School.
We are not the only species that lives and loves and grieves on this planet. Janet Gyatso focuses on the phenomenology of being not just among humans but with all other sentient beings. How we can cultivate the capacity to have such experiences, in ways that might reform our ethical and spiritual practices? How might compassion and an understanding toward animals heighten and mirror reciprocal relationships toward each other. What does it mean not only to be human, but one species among many?
About this event series: "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now" is a ten-week series of online conversations with poets, writers, public servants, theologians, biologists, scholars, and activists who are engaged in the spiritual reckoning and awakening surrounding climate collapse, sacred land protection, and planetary health. Environmentalist, author, and HDS Writer-in-Residence Terry Tempest Williams will lead conversations concerning our response to climate chaos: How might we recast this a time of meaning rather than despair? How do arts and activism combine to let us see possibility instead of pessimism? Where do we find the strength to fully face all that is breaking our hearts?
This conversation was part of the fall 2021 series "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now." The featured speakers were climate activist Morgan Curtis, MDiv '24, and brontë velez, Black-latinx transdisciplinary artist.
Morgan Curtis and brontë velez discuss the intersectionality of race, class, gender, and climate collapse, and how seeing the world whole through the lens of relationships creates communities of care rather than conflict. They consider what reparations might look like on behalf of racial justice and justice for the Earth, and why it is critical to find a radical, intergenerational, diverse and dynamic dialogue that calls for a global paradigm shift.
Respondent: Melissa Wood Bartholomew, Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at Harvard Divinity School
About this event series: "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now" is a ten-week series of online conversations with poets, writers, public servants, theologians, biologists, scholars, and activists who are engaged in the spiritual reckoning and awakening surrounding climate collapse, sacred land protection, and planetary health. Environmentalist, author, and HDS Writer-in-Residence Terry Tempest Williams will lead conversations concerning our response to climate chaos: How might we recast this a time of meaning rather than despair? How do arts and activism combine to let us see possibility instead of pessimism? Where do we find the strength to fully face all that is breaking our hearts?
This conversation was part of the fall 2021 series "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now." The featured speaker was Gwich’in activist Bernadette Demientieff.
Bernadette Demientieff, Executive Director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, discusses why sacred land protection matters to indigenous communities. Learn how her community in Alaska is standing strong to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—Coastal Plain from becoming an oil and gas reserve. “Our identity is non-negotiable,” she says. “We will never sell our culture and our traditional lifestyle for any amount of money.”
About this event series: "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now" is a ten-week series of online conversations with poets, writers, public servants, theologians, biologists, scholars, and activists who are engaged in the spiritual reckoning and awakening surrounding climate collapse, sacred land protection, and planetary health. Environmentalist, author, and HDS Writer-in-Residence Terry Tempest Williams will lead conversations concerning our response to climate chaos: How might we recast this a time of meaning rather than despair? How do arts and activism combine to let us see possibility instead of pessimism? Where do we find the strength to fully face all that is breaking our hearts?
This conversation was part of the fall 2021 series "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now." The featured speaker was British filmmaker Lucy Walker.
Following the aftermath of the 2018 Camp Fire (the deadliest in California’s history), British filmmaker Lucy Walker directed “Bring Your Own Brigade” (2021). The film urgently asks: why are catastrophic wildfires increasing in number and severity around the world, and what can be done about it? Clips of the groundbreaking film will be shown throughout the conversation, even as the American West continues to burn.
Respondent: Teresa Cavasas Cohn, University of Idaho, RPL Climate Change Fellow
About this event series: "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now" is a ten-week series of online conversations with poets, writers, public servants, theologians, biologists, scholars, and activists who are engaged in the spiritual reckoning and awakening surrounding climate collapse, sacred land protection, and planetary health. Environmentalist, author, and HDS Writer-in-Residence Terry Tempest Williams will lead conversations concerning our response to climate chaos: How might we recast this a time of meaning rather than despair? How do arts and activism combine to let us see possibility instead of pessimism? Where do we find the strength to fully face all that is breaking our hearts?
Dune. The Matrix. Blade Runner. Star Wars.
We know that fantasy and sci-fi use religion, but do they change actual religion in the process? Do they impact how we believe, what we believe, and even the nature of belief itself?
In this episode, we investigate why fantasy and sci-fi use religious elements in storytelling and even create full religions of their own. Do they appropriate or appreciate, respect or denigrate?
View the full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/10/27/fantastic-faiths-and-what-we-can-learn-them
This week, we conclude our Divinity Dialogues Gomes Award podcast series with a reflective conversation between Dean Hempton and our 2021 Gomes Friend of the School honoree, Drew Gilpin Faust.
Faust holds several titles, including President Emerita of Harvard University and Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor. She has also been a longtime partner and advocate for the Divinity School and was recognized as this year’s Friend of the School for her humane leadership, guided by a profound commitment to collaboration and an unflinching attention to the past in service of a more just future.
This episode includes an excerpt from the discussion Dean Hempton had with President Emerita Faust at the award ceremony in May 2021.
View the full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/transcript-divinity-dialogues-gomes-honoree-president-emerita-faust-conversation-dean-hempton
"The notion of a stranger, for me—the way I was raised and the way that I studied—is that the stranger just might hold the key to your liberation"
Continuing "Divinity Dialogues"—a special edition podcast series from Harvard Divinity School that puts conversations on faith, purpose, and bearing witness at the center of today’s most pressing issues. Today, we hear from HDS alum Robin Coste Lewis, MTS ’97.
Robin is a poet laureate, National Book Award winner, Doctor of Creative Writing and Literature, LA Woman of the Year, and avid Sanskrit scholar whose current research focuses on the intersecting production histories of early African American poetry and photography. She is also one of this year's Gomes Distinguished Alumni Honorees.
In the interview, Robin delves into the connections between Sanskrit and the time-space continuum and what Shiva might be able to teach us about liberation by way of strangers.
Note: The full conversation was edited for time to keep this podcast in the 30-minute range.
Transcript available: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/07/06/2021/divinity-dialogues-robin-coste-lewis-epic-poetry-and-sacredness-female-deities
Continuing "Divinity Dialogues"—a special edition podcast series from Harvard Divinity School that puts conversations on faith, purpose, and bearing witness at the center of today’s most pressing issues.
Today, we hear from HDS alum Omar Sultan Haque, MTS ’04, MD ’08. Dr. Haque is a physician, social scientist, teacher, and philosopher who studies questions ranging across social medicine, religion, and bioethics. He is also one of this year's Gomes Distinguished Alumni Honorees.
In the interview, Haque shares how he began his spiritual journey as an atheist, what psychiatry misses with its materialistic bias, and how to navigate moral pluralism within the medical field.
Full transcript available here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/06/17/divinity-dialogues-medicine-metaphysics-and-moral-pluralism
Continuing "Divinity Dialogues"—a special edition podcast series from Harvard Divinity School that puts conversations on faith, purpose, and bearing witness at the center of today’s most pressing issues.
Today, we hear from HDS alum Rod Owens, MDiv ’17, author, activist, Buddhist Lama, and one of this year’s Gomes Distinguished Alumni Honorees. Considered one of the leaders of the next generation of Dharma teachers, Lama Rod blends his formal Buddhist training with experiences from his life as a Black, queer male, born and raised in the South, and heavily influenced by the church and its community.
In the interview, Owens talks about practicing non-attachment, seeking spaciousness rather than rigidity, and finding freedom.
Full transcript available here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/06/10/divinity-dialogues-lama-rod-owens-love-rage-and-freedom
Episode 1 - Introducing Divinity Dialogues—a special edition podcast series from Harvard Divinity School that puts conversations on faith, purpose, and bearing witness at the center of today’s most pressing issues.
Today, we hear from HDS alum Joshua Eaton, MDiv ’10, investigative journalist and one of this year’s Gomes Distinguished Alumni Honorees. Based in Washington, D.C., Joshua Eaton holds the powerful accountable and gives a voice to the vulnerable. He has worked with investigative teams at CQ Roll Call and ThinkProgress.
In the interview, Eaton talks how spirituality has moved him in his career, what we can do to bring ethics and compassion back to leadership, and how to keep the vital work of storytelling alive in a world governed by the “hot take industrial complex.”
Full transcript available on the HDS site: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/06/04/investigative-journalist-joshua-eaton-hot-take-industrial-complex
A dialogue between CSWR director and HDS Professor Charles Stang and Tanya Luhrmann on her book, "How God Becomes Real."
Tanya Marie Luhrmann is the Albert Ray Lang Professor at Stanford University, in the Stanford Anthropology Department (and Psychology, by courtesy). Her work focuses on local theory of mind and the world of the spirit: on voices, visions, and the presence of invisible others. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and received a John Guggenheim Fellowship award in 2007. "How God Becomes Real" was published by Princeton University Press in 2020.
Full transcript available: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/04/26/2021/video-how-god-becomes-real-kindling-presence-invisible-others
Todne Thomas, HDS Assistant Professor of African American Religions, discusses her recent publication, "Kincraft: The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality."
Judith Casselberry (Bowdoin College) and Soong-Chan Rah (North Park University) served as respondents.
Full transcription available: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/05/10/video-author-discussion-todne-thomas-kincraft-making-black-evangelical-sociality
This lecture focused on the Hindu view of life from the margins. While the “Hindu margin” is a fairly large heterogeneous group, this lecture laid the lens on the third gender, Kinnars (pejorative term hijṛā) and spiritual partners, categorized as “consorts.” Both these groups were discussed within the ritual praxis of “lived religions,” within the larger world of Śākta Tantra (Goddess esoteric traditions).
Sravana Borkataky-Varma is a historian, educator, and social entrepreneur. As a historian, she studies Indian religions focusing on esoteric rituals and gender, particularly in Hinduism (Śākta Tantra). As an educator, she is currently working as a Lecturer at Harvard University’s Faculty of Divinity and at University of North Carolina-Wilmington, where she teaches introductory courses on World Religions and higher-level courses on Hinduism, Buddhism, Religion and Film, and History of Yoga.
Full transcript available: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/04/27/hindu-margins-third-gender-and-women-spiritual-partners
How do we face the harsh realities and the loss associated with climate change, while still finding joy in the natural wonder that surrounds us?
Today, we're speaking with Terry Tempest Williams, activist, conservationist, Harvard Divinity School Writer in Residence, and author of numerous books, including the environmental literature classic, "Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place."
In this episode, Terry talks about the spiritual implications of climate change, the class she's teaching at HDS, and how we can still find beauty despite the chaos that surrounds us.
View the full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/04/21/terry-tempest-williams-finding-beauty-broken-world
Examining religion's role in past pandemics, the responsibility faith leaders have during a health crisis, and how religious practice has been changed by the Coronavirus.
Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/03/12/podcast-religion-time-pandemic
This panel brought together Daan Keiman, spiritual caregiver and facilitator at a psilocybin retreat in the Netherlands, with Jamie Beachy, a MAPS MDMA Therapist and director of the Center for Contemplative Chaplaincy at Naropa University, in dialogue with Trace Haythorn of ACPE to explore their visions for psychedelic chaplaincy.
What is the potential role of spiritual caregivers in providing support for people preparing for, undergoing, or integrating psychedelic experiences? What are the challenges in creating psychedelic education and training opportunities for chaplains and clergy? To what extent does the continually increasing access to psychedelics call on us to rethink, reshape, or expand conceptions of chaplaincy writ large?
The panel was moderated by Rachael Petersen. Rachael is a visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religion and the Psychedelics and Religion Program Director for the Riverstyx Foundation.
Full video and transcript available: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/03/08/video-what-psychedelic-chaplaincy
A conversation with pastor, professor, and policy influencer Quardricos Driskell about whether Black History Month has taken on new significance in 2021. We also chat about avoiding complacency around racial justice issues now that the Trump presidency is over, how the Black Lives Matter movement can continue its momentum by working across generational divides, and why Democrats running for political office should talk more openly about their faith.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/02/12/what-black-history-month-2021-means-rising-spiritual-and-ethical-movement
The HDS Office of Development and External Relations was pleased to host "Virtual Voices of Divinity: Making Meaning in 2021 at the Crossroads of Business and Capitalism, Ethics, Faith, and Justice," on February 2, 2021.
Featured speakers included:
John P. Brown, MBA '74, MDiv '88, Practitioner in Residence in Religion, Business Ethics, and the Economic Order, HDS
Katherine Collins, MTS '11, Head of Sustainable Investing, Putnam Investments
Karim Hutson, MBA '03, MTS '08, Founder & Managing Member, Genesis Companies
Al-Husein Madhany, MTS '01, Head of Global People Operations, Moveworks.ai.
Full transcript available on the HDS website: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/02/11/video-making-meaning-2021-crossroads-business-and-capitalism-ethics-faith-and-justice
The most influential religious historian of the twentieth century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. Did the ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? And did the earliest Christians inherit the same secret tradition? A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs, and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age?
This discussion on Febrary 1, 2021, between CSWR Director Charles Stang and Brian Muraresku about his new book, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name, a groundbreaking dive into the role of psychedelics in the ancient Mediterranean world.
Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/02/12/video-psychedelics-ancient-religion-no-name
In an October 2020 op-ed for the Christian Post, Joe Biden wrote: “My Catholic faith drilled into me a core truth—that every person on earth is equal in rights and dignity, because we are all beloved children of God.” As president, he continued, “These are the principles that will shape all that I do, and my faith will continue to serve as my anchor, as it has my entire life.”
I’m Jonathan Beasley, and this is a special pop-up episode of the Harvard Religion Beat. Today, I’m chatting with E. J. Dionne, who many of you likely know as a journalist, author, and political commentator. He also teaches at Georgetown and here at Harvard and HDS. And just before the election he co-authored the report "A Time to Heal, A Time to Build," with Melissa Rogers for the Brookings Institution, where he is a senior fellow in Governance Studies.
I wanted to speak with E. J. to get his insight into how Joe Biden’s Catholicism will shape the way he governs as president, and how his faith will serve as a road map for how his administration will tackle economic injustices, equal rights, religious freedom, and racial justice—all while trying to heal a very divided nation.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/1/19/how-joe-bidens-faith-will-shape-his-presidency
Music credit: InSpectr, "After the Border" (Free Music Archive)
“Light of a Clear Blue Morning” by Dolly Parton
Julia Reimann, MDiv II and Margaret Hamm, MDiv II, vocals; Carolyn Beard, MDiv II, vocals and bass; Mary Perez, MDiv II, guitar; Madeline Levy, MTS II, fiddle; and Kate Hoeting, MTS II, banjo
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
It’s been a long dark night And I’ve been a waitin’ for the morning It’s been a long hard fight But I can see a brand new day a dawning And I've been looking for the sunshine ’Cause I ain’t seen it in so long Everything’s gonna work out just fine Everything’s gonna be all right That's been all wrong
'Cause I can see the light of a clear blue morning I can see the light of a brand new day I can see the light of a clear blue morning Everything's gonna be all right It's gonna be okay
It's been a long long time Since I've known the taste of freedom And those clinging vines That had me bound, well I don't need 'em
I've been like a captured eagle You know an eagle's born to fly And now that I have won my freedom Like an eagle I'm eager for the sky
'Cause I can see the light of a clear blue morning I can see the light of a brand new day I can see the light of a clear blue morning Everything's gonna be all right It's gonna be okay
'Cause I can see the light of a clear blue morning I can see the light of a brand new day I can see the light of a clear blue morning Everything's gonna be all right It's gonna be okay Everything's gonna be all right It's gonna be okay
From the Pagan Tradition | A Winter Solstice Blessing Chanted by Natalia Schwien, MTS II
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
A fire is burning
The long night draws near
All who need comfort
Are welcome by here
We’ll dance ‘neath the stars
And toast the past year
For the spirit of solstice
Is still living here
We’ll count all our blessings
While the Mother lays down
With snow as her blanket
Covering the ground
Thanks to the Mother
For the life that she brings
She’ll waken to warm us
Again in the spring
The poor and the hungry
The sick and the lost
These are our children
No matter the cost
Meditation | “Rainbow,” by Kacey Musgraves
Taylor Donaldson, MTS II, soprano Christopher Hossfeld, piano
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
When it rains it pours
But you didn't even notice
It ain't rainin' anymore
It's hard to breathe when all you know is
The struggle of
Staying above
The rising water line
Well, the sky has finally opened
The rain and wind stopped blowin'
But you're stuck out
in the same old storm again
You hold tight to your umbrella
But, darling, I'm just tryin' to tell ya
That there's always been a rainbow
hangin' over your head
If you could see what I see
You'd be blinded by the colours
Yellow, red and orange and green
And at least a million others
So tie up the boat
Take off your coat
And take a look around
'Cause the sky has finally opened
The rain and wind stopped blowin'
But you're stuck out
in the same old storm again
You hold tight to your umbrella
Well, darling, I'm just tryin' to tell ya
That there's always been a rainbow
hangin' over your head
Oh, tie up the boat
Take off your coat
And take a look around
Everything is alright now
'Cause the sky has finally opened
The rain and wind stopped blowin'
But you're stuck out
in the same old storm again
Let go of your umbrella
'Cause, darling, I'm just tryin' to tell ya
That there's always been a rainbow
hangin' over your head
Yeah, there's always been a rainbow
hangin' over your head
It'll all be alright
From the Buddhist Tradition | Attadiipaa Sutta (A Lamp to Oneself) Read by Liem Nguyen, MDiv II
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
Monks, be a lamp unto yourselves,
be your own refuge, having no other;
let the Dhamma be a lamp
and a refuge to you, having no other.
Those who are lamps unto themselves...
should investigate to the very heart of things:
‘What is the source of sorrow,
lamentation, pain, grief and despair?
How do they arise?’
Here, monks, the uninstructed worldling.
Change occurs in this man's body,
and it becomes different.
On account of this change and difference,
sorrow, lamentation, pain,
grief and despair arise.
But seeing the body’s impermanence,
its change-ability, its waning, its ceasing,
he says ‘formerly as now,
all bodies were impermanent
and unsatisfactory,
and subject to change.’
Thus, seeing this as it really is,
with perfect insight,
he abandons all sorrow, lamentation, pain,
grief and despair.
He is not worried at their abandonment,
but unworried lives at ease,
and thus living at ease he is said to be
‘assuredly delivered.’
From the Traditions of Queer Spiritualities | Excerpts from “Poem of Perfect Miracles,” by Walt Whitman Read by Vivian Trutzl, MTS II
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
Why! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses
toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach,
just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love—
or sleep in the bed at night
with any one I love,
Or sit at the table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at strangers opposite me
riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive,
of an August forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
To me, every hour of the light and dark
is a miracle,
Every inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth
is spread with the same,
Every cubic foot of the interior
swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass—
the frames, limbs, organs,
of [people] men and women,
and all that concerns them,
All these to me
are unspeakably perfect miracles.
— Whitman, Walt. Excerpts from “Poem of Perfect Miracles,” Leaves of Grass (1856), whitmanarchive.org.
Meditation | Hine ma tov, a round from the Jewish tradition Sung by the HDS Choir
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT: Hine ma tov uma na’im
Shevet achim gam yachad
Translation:
Behold how good and how pleasing it is
for us to sit together in unity.
From Those Who are Unaffiliated | Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan Read by Kate Hoeting, MTS II
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi everyone!
I’m going to be reading a passage
from Carl Sagan’s book Pale Blue Dot,
in which he is reflecting on the famous photo
which you can see here, titled Pale Blue Dot,
taken from the Voyager I spacecraft
on its way out of our solar system of Earth.
It’s a little self portrait,
and you can see in the middle-right,
sort of in that orange sunbeam,
is a tiny pixel which is Earth.
Look again at that dot.
That's here. That's home. That's us.
On it, everyone you love, everyone you know,
everyone you ever heard of,
every human being who ever was,
lived out their lives.
The aggregate of our joy and suffering,
thousands of… religions, ideologies,
and economic doctrines,
every hunter and forager,
every hero and coward,
every creator and destroyer of civilization,
every king and peasant,
every young couple in love,
every [parent], hopeful child,
inventor and explorer,
every teacher of morals,
every corrupt politician,
every "superstar," every "supreme leader,"
every saint and sinner
in the history of our species lived there—
on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
[…]
The Earth is the only world known so far
to harbor life.
There is nowhere else,
at least in the near future,
to which our species could migrate.
Visit, yes. Settle, not yet.
Like it or not, for the moment the Earth
is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling
and character-building experience.
There is perhaps no better demonstration
of the folly of human conceits
than this distant image of our tiny world.
To me, it underscores our responsibility
to deal more kindly with one another,
and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot,
the only home we've ever known.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (New York: Random House, 1994), 8-9.
From Traditions of the Afrikan Diaspora | Regla de Ocha-Ifá, an AfroCuban Spiritual Tradition Chanted by Nadia Milad Issa, MTS I Preferred spelling of the student representative.
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
Text on-screen at beginning of reading:
Translations of Yoruba chants are highly exclusive to men Akpwón, an issue central to Nadia’s scholarly research. A rough translation, provided by one of their elders, of what they are singing follows.
Yemayá is the Ocean and the universal mother.
The Mayo is one of the names to refer to Yemayá.
Oraye is the call to all people across the world to work together in community.
Bambi is a power of Yemayá.
Sung text:
Yemayá mayo, Yemayá mayo.
Yemayá mayo awoyo kuekue Ilé.
Oraye Bambi Oraye, Bobo raye Oni Yemayá,
Oraye Bambi Oraye O, Bobo Raye Alawa Bocheche.
From the Tradition of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints | Isaiah 60: 1-4; 18-20, The Holy Bible (King James Version) Read by Joe Sorensen, MDiv III
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
Arise, shine; for thy light is come,
and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.
For, behold,
the darkness shall cover the earth,
and gross darkness the people:
but the Lord shall arise upon thee,
and his glory shall be seen upon thee.
And the Gentiles shall come to thy light,
and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
Lift up thine eyes round about, and see:
all they gather themselves together,
they come to thee:
thy sons shall come from far,
and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side.
Violence shall no more be heard in thy land,
wasting nor destruction within thy borders;
but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation,
and thy gates Praise.
The sun shall be no more thy light by day;
neither for brightness shall the moon
give light unto thee:
but the Lord shall be unto thee
an everlasting light,
and thy God thy glory.
Thy sun shall no more go down;
neither shall thy moon withdraw itself:
for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light,
and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.
From the Islamic Tradition | The Qur’an, Surah Nur, Chapter 24, Verse 34–35 Read by Reem Shaikh, MTS II
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
وَلَقَدْ أَنزَلْنَآ إِلَيْكُمْ ءَايَـٰتٍۢ مُّبَيِّنَـٰتٍۢ وَمَثَلًۭا مِّنَ ٱلَّذِينَ خَلَوْا۟ مِن قَبْلِكُمْ وَمَوْعِظَةًۭ لِّلْمُتَّقِينَ۞ ٱللَّهُ نُورُ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ ۚ مَثَلُ نُورِهِۦ كَمِشْكَوٰةٍۢ فِيهَا مِصْبَاحٌ ۖ ٱلْمِصْبَاحُ فِى زُجَاجَةٍ ۖ ٱلزُّجَاجَةُ كَأَنَّهَا كَوْكَبٌۭ دُرِّىٌّۭ يُوقَدُ مِن شَجَرَةٍۢ مُّبَـٰرَكَةٍۢ زَيْتُونَةٍۢ لَّا شَرْقِيَّةٍۢ وَلَا غَرْبِيَّةٍۢ يَكَادُ زَيْتُهَا يُضِىٓءُ وَلَوْ لَمْ تَمْسَسْهُ نَارٌۭ ۚ نُّورٌ عَلَىٰ نُورٍۢ ۗ يَهْدِى ٱللَّهُ لِنُورِهِۦ مَن يَشَآءُ ۚ وَيَضْرِبُ ٱللَّهُ ٱلْأَمْثَـٰلَ لِلنَّاسِ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ بِكُلِّ شَىْءٍ عَلِيمٌۭ
Indeed, We have sent down to you
clear revelations,
along with examples of those
who had gone before you,
and a lesson to the God-fearing.
Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth.
His light is like a niche in which there is a lamp,
the lamp is in a crystal,
the crystal is like a shining star,
lit from ˹the oil of˺ a blessed olive tree,
˹located˺ neither to the east nor the west,
whose oil would almost glow,
even without being touched by fire.
Light upon light!
Allah guides whoever He wills to His light.
And Allah sets forth parables for humanity.
For Allah has ˹perfect˺ knowledge of all things.
From the Christian Tradition | 2 Corinthians 4:6-18, The Bible (NRSV) Read by Emmanuel Correa Vazquez, MDiv III
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
For it is the God who said,
“Let light shine out of darkness,”
who has shone in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.
But we have this treasure in clay jars,
so that it may be made clear
that this extraordinary power belongs to God
and does not come from us.
We are afflicted in every way,
but not crushed;
perplexed, but not driven to despair;
persecuted, but not forsaken;
struck down, but not destroyed;
always carrying in the body
the death of Jesus,
so that the life of Jesus
may also be made visible in our bodies.
For while we live,
we are always being given up to death
for Jesus' sake,
so that the life of Jesus
may be made visible in our mortal flesh.
So death is at work in us, but life in you.
But just as we have the same spirit of faith
that is in accordance with scripture—
“I believed, and so I spoke”—
we also believe, and so we speak,
because we know
that the one who raised the Lord Jesus
will raise us also with Jesus,
and will bring us with you into his presence.
Yes, everything is for your sake,
so that grace, as it extends
to more and more people,
may increase thanksgiving,
to the glory of God.
So we do not lose heart.
Even though our outer nature is wasting away,
our inner nature is being renewed day by day.
For this slight momentary affliction
is preparing us for an eternal weight
of glory beyond all measure,
because we look not at what can be seen
but at what cannot be seen;
for what can be seen is temporary,
but what cannot be seen is eternal.
From the Hindu Tradition Read by Malini Srikrishna, MTS II
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
The ancient Indian or Hindu traditions
are passed down
by grandmothers, grandfathers,
their stories and just the spirit
of our ancestors.
So here is a prayer
my grandmother taught me.
The human body is the temple of God.
To kindle the light of awareness within you
is to experience true light.
The sacred flame in your inner shrine
is constantly burning—embrace it!
The experience of unity
is what will enable you to find
the purpose of this body, of this temple.
Every season can be a season of light
when we recognize that the true light
is already always within us.
To harness it,
we must intentionally take the time
to reflect on the ways in which darkness
has shown up in our bodies and our lives.
Be it through hatred, separation,
ignorance or deception.
A central aspect of discovering our inner shrine
is recognizing the unity of all Life.
If one life form suffers,
you, me and all life forms
are suffering in the process.
To recognize that
is to truly recognize ourselves, our unity.
How we can manifest and really live this unity
is by setting a clear vision
for the way our lives will work
to transform malicious histories
into a future that reinforces truth.
So, for this Season of Light,
I invite you to discover the ways
in which your body has been
a carrier of histories of hatred and love
and envision the future and qualities
you want it to become a temple for.
Let us be brave
and let our fire burn all that is dark
so we pave the way for an unimaginable
and unifying light force.
One that burns away hatred
and is eternal in its capacity to love.
Meditation | “Adoro te devote,” 13th-century Benedictine plainsong Tianyi Yuan, MTS I, bamboo flute
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
Shining, in the Gathering Light | “Holy Darkness” by Dan Schutte HDS Choir with Xavier Sayeed, MTS I, guitar and bass
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
Refrain: Holy darkness, blessed night, heaven’s answer, hidden from our sight. As we await you, O God of silence, we embrace your holy night.
I have tried you in fires of affliction; I have taught your soul to grieve. In the barren soil of your loneliness, there I will plant my seed. Refrain.
I have taught you the price of compassion; you have stood before the grave. Though my love can seem like a raging storm, this is the love that saves. Refrain.
In your deepest hour of darkness I will give you wealth untold. When the silence stills your spirit, will my riches fill your soul. Refrain.
Benediction Mark D. Jordan, Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Divinity
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
God of ten thousand names and none,
Author of words and songs and the silence from which they sound,
Companion in all the changes of light, kindling or quenching:
Tonight we need rest, healing, courage, clear-seeing, perhaps a little joy, hope—hope in abundance.
Help us to believe again in the good we gather to do—even when we cannot gather.
Show us how to keep pace with the mountains, which walk towards you no matter the winter.
Bless us in each other’s faces.
Bless us by living us.
Closing Muisc | “Grateful” by Hezekiah Walker Performed by Aric Flemming, MDiv ’19
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
I am
Grateful for the things
That you have done
Yes, I’m grateful for the victories we’ve won
I could go on and on and on
About your works
Because I’m grateful to praise you, Lord
And flowing from my heart
Are the issues of my heart
It’s gratefulness
Communal Invocation | Adapted from the poetry of Hafiz Read by Kerry A. Maloney and Xavier I. Sayeed, MTS I
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
One:Light will someday split you open even if your life is now a cage,
All:for a divine seed, the crown of destiny, is hidden and sown on an ancient, fertile plain you hold the title to.
One:Love will surely burst you wide open into an unfettered, blooming new galaxy
All:even if your mind is now a spoiled mule.
One:A life-giving radiance will come; the Friend's gratuity will come.
All:O look again within yourself, for I know you were once the elegant host to all the marvels in creation.
One:From a sacred crevice in your body a bow rises each night and shoots your soul into God.
All:Behold the Beautiful Drunk Singing One from the lunar vantage point of love.
One:That One is conducting the affairs of the whole universe
All:while throwing wild parties in a tree house—on a limb in your heart.
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
Transcript: Good evening and welcome to this year’s Seasons of Light celebration at Harvard Divinity School. My name is Kerry Maloney, and I am the Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life here at HDS. Seasons of Light is our campus’ annual ritual to honor the unity of holy darkness and holy light in the world’s religious traditions that are represented on our campus.
While we usually enjoy the deep intimacy of one another’s presence for this event, jammed into our largest sacred space on campus to share music, prayers, chants, and texts, this year, of course, due to the pandemic, we are scattered across the United States and around the globe. Nevertheless, we believe the power of our spiritual traditions enables us to transcend time and space to be truly together for this holy occasion—in a year when our unity and interdependence may never have mattered more.
As we begin tonight, I invite you, if you haven’t yet had the chance to do so and if you are able, to dim the lights in the room from which you are joining us, perhaps lighting a candle or two to help you see. Also, please have near you if you can one unlit candle and the means by which to light it later in our ritual. Closed captioning is available throughout our gathering tonight. Please turn it on at the bottom of your screen if you would like to use it.
I’m joining you tonight from Eastern Massachusetts, not far from the Harvard campus, where we are on the homelands of the Mashpee Wampanoag, Aquinnah Wampanoag, Nipmuc, and Massachusett tribal nations. The Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness believes that land acknowledgment is a “meaningful step toward honoring the truth, making the invisible visible, and correcting the American stories that erase indigenous people’s tribal history and culture. Land Acknowledgements demonstrate a commitment to counter the Doctrine of Discovery and to undo the ongoing legacy of settler colonialism.” We acknowledge the painful history of genocide, stolen land, and forced removal; and we honor and stand in solidarity with the diverse indigenous communities who continue to have a connection with this land.
Friends, we have gathered tonight in the midst of a harrowing year—political treachery and chaos, a long-overdue racial reckoning, a global pandemic that has stolen the lives of hundreds of thousands and shattered the security, hopes, and well-being of countless more. It is important that we are together tonight to pray and to meditate; to make beautiful music and to hear sacred texts; to rest in the deep, holy darkness; to kindle flames of hope and resistance; and to act together in solidarity with the marginalized. As we begin now, look around this digital room at your companions, your spiritual siblings far and near, and know you are not alone. Take a deep breath, and then another, and bless your capacity to breathe in a world where that ability cannot be taken for granted, not even one breath, especially by those who are black and brown. And center yourself in stillness for our brief time together. Let us feast on the darkness. Let us rejoice in the light.
Meditation | MUSIC: Xavier I. Sayeed, MTS I and Eilaf Farajallah, MTS I Five Prayers: A Pageant of Formative Sounds and Souls
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587sLife.
From the Jewish Tradition | “The Light of the Spirit Never Dies” by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Read by Madeline Levy, MTS II
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
There’s an interesting question
the commentators ask about Chanukah.
For eight days we light lights,
and each night we make
the blessing over miracles:
she-asah nissim la-avotenu.
But what was the miracle of the first night?
The light that should have lasted one day
lasted eight.
But that means
there was something miraculous
about days 2 to 8;
but nothing miraculous about the first day.
Perhaps the miracle was this,
that the Maccabees found one cruse of oil
with its seal intact, undefiled.
There was no reason to suppose
that anything would have survived
the systematic desecration
the Greeks and their supporters
did to the Temple.
Yet the Maccabees searched
and found that one jar.
Why did they search?
Because they had faith
from the worst tragedy
something would survive.
The miracle of the first night
was that of faith itself,
the faith that something would remain
with which to begin again.
from 8 Short Thoughts for 8 Chanukah Nights
https://rabbisacks.org/8-thoughts-8-nights/
From the Unitarian Universalist Tradition | “Dark and Light,” by Jacqui James Read by Alex Jensen, MDiv III
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
Blackmail, blacklist, black mark.
Black Monday, black mood, black-hearted.
Black plague, black mass, black market.
Good guys wear white, bad guys wear black.
We fear black cats, and the Dark Continent.
But it’s okay to tell a white lie
lily-white hands are coveted,
it’s great to be pure as the driven snow.
Angels and brides wear white.
Devil’s food cake is chocolate;
angel’s food cake is white!
We shape language and we are shaped by it.
In our culture, white is esteemed.
It is heavenly, sun-like, clean, pure,
immaculate, innocent, and beautiful.
At the same time, black is evil,
wicked, gloomy, depressing, angry, sullen.
Ascribing negative and positive values
to black and white
enhances the institutionalization
of this culture’s racism.
Let us acknowledge
the negative connotations of whiteness.
White things can be soft, vulnerable,
pallid, and ashen.
Light can be blinding, bleaching, enervating.
Conversely, we must acknowledge
that darkness has a redemptive character,
that in darkness there is power and beauty.
The dark nurtured and protected us
before our birth.
Welcome darkness.
Don’t be afraid of it or deny it.
Darkness brings relief from the blinding sun,
from scorching heat, from exhausting labor.
Night signals permission to rest,
to be with our loved ones,
to conceive new life,
to search our hearts,
to remember our dreams.
The dark of winter is a time of hibernation.
Seeds grow in the dark, fertile earth.
The words black and dark
don’t need to be destroyed or ignored,
only balanced and reclaimed
in their wholeness.
The words white and light
don’t need to be destroyed or ignored,
only balanced and reclaimed
in their wholeness.
Imagine a world that had only light—or dark.
We need both.
Dark and light. Light and dark.
— from Been in the Storm So Long (2015) eds. Mark Morrison-Reed and Jacqui James.
https://www.uua.org/worship/words/meditation/dark-and-light
From Those Who are Claimed by Multiple Belongings | “In Praise of Fire” by John O’Donohue Read by Jessica Young Chang, MDiv II
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
TRANSCRIPT:
Let us praise the grace and risk of Fire.
In the beginning,
The Word was red,
And the sound was thunder,
And the wound in the unseen
Spilled forth the red weather of being.
In the name of the Fire,
The Flame
And the Light:
Praise the pure presence of fire
That burns from within
Without thought of time.
The hunger of Fire has no need
For the reliquary of the future;
It adores the eros of now,
Where the memory of the earth
In flames that lick and drink the air
Is made to release
Its long-enduring forms
In a powder of ashes
Left for the wind to decipher.
As air intensifies the hunger of fire,
May the thought of death
Breathe new urgency
Into our love of life.
As fire cleanses dross,
May the flame of passion
Burn away what is false.
As short as the time
From spark to flame,
So brief may the distance be
Between heart and being.
May we discover
Beneath our fear
Embers of anger
To kindle justice.
May courage
Cause our lives to flame,
In the name of the Fire,
And the Flame
And the Light.
Prelude | Adagio by Franz Josef Haydn Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, piano
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
Kindling the Light | “Vajra Mantra” by Satigata
Chris Berlin, Counselor to Buddhist Students; Darren Becker, MDiv ’15; Andrew Stauffer MDiv ’18; and Alanna Coady, MDiv ’18
The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s
Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
Nyasha Junior, Visiting Associate Professor of Women's Studies and African-American Religions, and Catherine Brekus, Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America, discuss Jarena Lee as Protestant icon.
View the full transcript here: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/11/03/audio-jarena-lee-protestant-icon-conversation-nyasha-junior-and-catherine-brekus
The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.
The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.
The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.
The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.
The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.
The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.
The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.
The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.
The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.
The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.
The COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to explore how religion and whiteness are interconnected. Where is religion in a president refusing to wear masks in public? What of whiteness in a governor suing one of its state’s own cities to prevent mask mandates? These current events, and their asymmetrical racialized consequences, offer a view of whiteness’s historical and phenomenological role as one of religious ‘prophylaxis,’ a living theodicy, a rejection of our responsibility to one another across lines of social distance that gives way to a sanctioning of and justification for social atrocities past, present, and future.
This talk explored whiteness revealed as spirit possession in moments when the efficacy of this prophylaxis is challenged, and also showed how whiteness is working to transform the occasion of pandemic response into a perverse opportunity.
Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/10/09/video-spirits-whiteness-age-covid-19
As the 2020 presidential election nears, Lauren R. Kerby and Jeff Sharlet discussed the politics of white evangelicals in the U.S. today. Kerby's book, Saving History: How White Evangelicals Tour the Nation's Capital and Redeem a Christian America, offers a starting point for this important conversation about how race, nationalism, and Christianity become entangled for many white evangelicals through what they learn from their leaders about American history.
Their political commitments are baffling to many observers, but this conversation will explore how white evangelicals’ relationship to the nation offers a key to understanding their continued allegiance to Donald Trump.
Lauren R. Kerby is a lecturer on religious studies at Harvard Divinity School and the education specialist for the Religious Literacy Project. She earned her PhD from Boston University. She is the author of Saving History: How White Evangelicals Tour the Nation's Capital and Redeem a Christian America (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
Jeff Sharlet is the Frederick Sessions Beebe '35 Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College. He is the author or editor of seven books including the national bestseller The Family, recently adapted into a Netflix documentary series of the same name, and This Brilliant Darkness. Sharlet is an editor at large for VQR and a contributor to publications including Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, and GQ, for which his reporting on anti-LGBTQ+ crusades in Russia won the National Magazine Award.
Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/10/07/video-campaign-white-christian-america-lauren-r-kerby-conversation-jeff-sharlet
Mystical-type experiences are profound and often characterized by an authoritative sense of the unity and sacredness and sometimes interpreted as an encounter with God or Ultimate Reality. Although such experiences have been described by mystics and religious figures throughout the ages, there are few experimental studies because such experiences usually occur at low rates and often unpredictably. Psilocybin in the form the Psilocybe genus of mushrooms has been used for centuries within some cultures for religious and healing purposes.
This presentation, held September 15, 2020, reviewed a series of studies investigating the effects of psilocybin administered to carefully screened and psychologically prepared volunteers who were encouraged to close their eyes and direct their attention inwards. Under such conditions, psilocybin occasions profound personally and spiritually meaningful mystical-type experiences in the majority of participants.
Roland Griffiths is Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurosciences and Director of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His principal research focus is on the behavioral and subjective effects of mood-altering drugs.
Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/09/29/video-psilocybin-and-mystical-experience-implications-healthy-psychological
This conversation was presented on August 27, 2020, by the HDS Women’s Studies in Religion Program, which brings five scholars in gender from around the country each year to enrich the experience of HDS students. The research associates shared their thoughts on the ethical responsibility of scholars to be engaged in the study of gender.
Full transcript here: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/08/27/video-ethical-scholarship-gender-religion-and-difference
In conjunction with the HDS Committee on Racial Justice and Healing and in cooperation with the courses "Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion" (T&M) and "Introduction to Ministry Studies" (IMS), Professors David Holland and Matthew Potts hosted a two-part series of community conversations on issues of white supremacy and anti-blackness in the study of ministry and religion.
On September 2, Professor Potts, Associate Professor of Religion and Literature and of Ministry Studies, moderated a discussion on white supremacy in the study and practice of ministry.
Panelists included: Cheryl Giles, Francis Greenwood Peabody Senior Lecturer on Pastoral Care and Counseling; Karen King, Hollis Professor of Divinity; Ousmane Kane, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, Professor of African and African American Studies (FAS), and Denominational Counselor to Muslim Students; Dan McKanan, Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer in Divinity; and Michelle Sanchez, Associate Professor of Theology.
These community-wide events seek to facilitate conversations among students, staff, faculty, and alumni on essential topics. We hope all in the HDS community can join us for these critical discussions as we launch into a promising, and challenging, new academic year.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/09/02/video-white-supremacy-study-and-practice-ministry
Cornell William Brooks, Visiting Professor of the Practice of Prophetic Religion and Public Leadership at HDS and Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice at Harvard Kennedy School, virtually delivered the 205th Convocation address at Harvard Divinity School.
Brooks's address was entitled "George and Jesus: Policing an Insurrection of Hope."
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/08/27/convocation-2020-george-and-jesus-policing-insurrection-hope
John Camardella’s students have learned how to go beyond the textbook and embrace the “complex ways that religions function in the human experience.”
Camardella is a world religions educator at Prospect High School in Illinois.
Interview Transcript: We want our students to make a difference in society and all of us in education have to examine that if our time in the classroom is preparing them to do that or not.
Before they were leaving my classroom thinking they knew the answers because of some Scantron tests. And now they're leaving aware that they do have the vocabulary in the context of certain religions, but now they're leaving being comfortable with the questions.
The most common shifting that students have in the class is that they are now hyper-aware that a lack of understanding about sort of these complex ways that religions function in different cultures and in different human experiences that it actually can fuel racism and prejudice and bigotry, right? And it does not lead to cooperative endeavors, you know, in local areas and national areas.
That's invaluable for these young men and women who are entering our society as citizens. The program was instrumental in helping me as a person and as an educator make that shift and now it's serving the students in my classroom and I'm forever grateful for that.
Religious literacy is one of the “most urgent issues that anyone serious about social justice can undertake.” An RPL fellowship gave Greg Khalil the space to critically think about his work.
Khalil is the co-founder and president of Telos Group.
Interview Transcript: I do a lot of work in building social movement, including communities of faith, across lines of difference. And this work is complicated because, to build movement, you have to invite people on a journey that's theirs. That's not yours.
And I think, through RLP, it gave some affirmation. But it also challenged me to think more critically about that ethical dilemma, which you feel on a day-to-day basis when you're in the trenches but you don't really examine.
And so learning literacy with regards to religion is one of the most urgent issues that anyone who is serious about social justice, peacemaking, political change can undertake.
There is not just a blind spot among academia and among many liberals. There is a willful disdain for religion, faith, and theology. And yet these are essential parts of the human experience that drive us as individuals, as communities, and as a body politic.
What I walk away with is a great sense of hope that there are serious people doing this work and an even greater sense of drive to say, hey, so many of our friends need to be involved in this conversation. It's not a question of whether religion, faith will shape our world. It's a question of how.
And if we sit back on the sidelines and if we don't learn to be literate and how to engage honestly as peers, unfortunately, fundamentalist, supremacist, extremist religious narratives will continue to gain prominence and shape our world.
Gathering Historias, an initiative of the Arnold Arboretum, envisions an outdoor landscape that fully includes and connects the stories of our expanding Latino communities. Developed by Steven Fisher, a master’s degree candidate at the Harvard Divinity School, this project recognizes that the diverse voices of Latino communities can contribute to our cultural narratives of the environment.
In this recording we hear from Wendy Estrada who has lived throughout Latin America. Now living in Brookline, Mass., with her family, Wendy remembers some of her favorite sounds she experienced in her former home in Panama City.
You can read the English and Spanish transcript of this recording, and listen to others, on the Gathering Historias project site: https://www.arboretum.harvard.edu/visit/gathering-historias/. You can read a story about the project for more information: https://www.arboretum.harvard.edu/gathering-historias-reveals-deep-rooted-connections-to-nature-and-community/
Casper ter Kuile, MDiv '16, MPP '16, and Angie Thurston, MDiv '16, map and convene the Millennial leaders of spiritual communities at the forefront of religious change. From CrossFit to dinner churchers, Muslim small groups, and maker spaces, their work illuminates the rapidly shifting generational patterns in American religious life today.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/04/02/video-religion-new-generation
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at https://hds.harvard.edu/.
This week, the HDS Episcopal/Anglican Fellowship is offering a podcast version of Noon Service on the topic “Mary’s YES, our YES!” Celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation with Anne Stetson MDiv II, Jonathan Robert Smith MDiv II, Joris Bürmann, MDiv II, Carolyn Beard MDiv I, and The Rev. Dr. Regina L. Walton, Counselor to Episcopal/Anglican Students. Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license number A-715440.
Three Hindu monastics visiting Harvard Divinity School this year spoke on March 11, 2020, on the great tradition of the Upanisads and Vedanta, and why this wisdom is relevant in today’s global society.
Featuring: Swami Sarvapriyananda (Ramakrishna Mission); Brahmacharini Shweta Chaitanya (Chinmaya Mission); Sadhak Akshar–Guru: Mahant Swami Maharaj (BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha).
Moderated by Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology, Harvard Divinity School. The discussant was Anantanand Rambachan, Professor of Religion, Saint Olaf College.
Made possible by support from the Nagral Fund.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/03/19/video-vedanta-21st-century
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at https://hds.harvard.edu/.
Considerable attention has been directed to the possibility of a technological singularity when artificial intelligences “wake up” and start acting in their own self-interest. Long before then, however, humanity will confront an ethical singularity—a point at which the evaluation of values systems acquires infinite value. The computational factories and intelligence-gathering infrastructure of the global attention economy have begun to function as karmic engines, perfecting values-reinforcing feedback loops that are transforming everything from the dynamics of social interaction to geopolitics.
Drawing on Buddhist resources, this talk made the case that our prospects of realizing more humane global futures depends on changing how we are present and developing both capacities for and commitments to compassionate ethical creativity.
Peter D. Hershock is director of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu. He has authored or edited more than a dozen books on Buddhism, most recently "Philosophies of Place: An Intercultural Conversation" (edited, 2019). His current project, initiated as a 2017-18 Fellow of the Berggruen Institute in China, is a monograph on The Intelligence Revolution: The Challenges of Humane Presence in an Era of Artificial Agents and Smart Services—a reflection on the personal and societal impacts of the attention economy and artificial intelligence.
Video and full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/02/19/intelligence-revolution-and-new-attention-economy-ethical-singularity
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at https://hds.harvard.edu/.
This event, held February 11 at the CSWR, is part of a year-long series titled "Theological Bioethics Within Marginalized Communities."
This lecture is a womanist critique of a longstanding racist campaign of domestic terror in the United States. It investigated the intersectionality of racism, in particular the racist acts condoned by religious communities and by the health care system. It gave special attention to the 40-year Syphilis Study at Tuskegee conducted by the United States Public Health Service.
The Rev. Dr. Joan R. Harrell is a womanist practical theologian and journalist committed to social justice. Her scholarship investigates the intersectionality of racism, sexism, xenophobia, religion, politics, media and public health inequities in marginalized communities. She is a Journalism Lecturer and the inaugural Diversity Coordinator for the Auburn University School of Communication and Journalism and Associate Pastor at the historic Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery, Al.
Video and full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/02/13/video-becoming-beloved-community-midst-domestic-terror
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at https://hds.harvard.edu/.
This talk examined the forms that grief can take, in the work of Zoe Leonard, Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowicz, and John Constable.
Kate Zambreno is the author of several acclaimed books, including Screen Tests, Heroines, and Green Girl. She has recently published a collection of talks and essays, Appendix Project, in the shadow of Book of Mutter, her meditation on grief. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, VQR, and elsewhere. A novel, Drifts, is forthcoming in May 2020. She teaches in the writing programs at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College.
Video and full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/02/10/video-forms-grief
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
Stephanie Paulsell, HDS Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies and Interim Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church, discusses her recent publication on Virginia Woolf.
Amy Hollywood (HDS) and Terry Tempest Williams (HDS) responded.
Video and full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/12/02/video-religion-around-virginia-woolf-author-discussion
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at https://hds.harvard.edu/.
On November 6, 2019, Harvard Divinity School hosted its annual Theological Education Day. The day featured many panel discussions, including this one on admissions and financial aid.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/ted-financial-aid-2019.pdf
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at https://hds.harvard.edu/.
K. Healan Gaston, Harvard Divinity School Lecturer in American Religious History and Ethics, discusses her recent publication, Imagining Judeo-Christian America--Religion, Secularism, and the Redefinition of Democracy.
E.J. Dionne (Harvard Divinity School) and Mark Silk (Trinity College) serve as respondents.
Video and full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/11/18/video-imagining-judeo-christian-america-religion-secularism-and-redefinition-democracy
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
On Thursday, November 14, 2019, Kerry M. Sonia, WSRP Research Associate and Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Hebrew Bible, gave the lecture, “Like a Woman in Labor: The Ritual and Social Dimensions of Childbirth in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel.”
Video and full transcript here: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/11/14/video-making-babies-childbirth-and-ceramic-production-hebrew-bible-and-israelite
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at https://hds.harvard.edu/.
Artist and author Rachel Sussman shares her physical, intellectual, and spiritual journey around the world and through time-space as she discusses her epic 10-year project, "The Oldest Living Things in the World," newer mind-expanding works incubated at NASA and SETI, and, for the first time, her personal journey of spiritual awakening and transformation through her relationship with ayahuasca.
Artist and author Rachel Sussman is a Guggenheim and MacDowell Colony Fellow, and two-time TED speaker. Her critically acclaimed, decade-long project "The Oldest Living Things in the World" combines art, science, and philosophy into a traveling exhibition and New York Times bestselling book. For the past five years she has been deepening her investigations of personal and cosmic time, being, and consciousness, fostered by a spiritual awakening ignited by shamanic medicine practices.
Video and full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/11/14/video-all-time-world-artists-awakening-ayahuasca
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
What might it look like to see Jerusalem, with its cross-hatched encounters between people of diverse faiths and cultures, as a city of the book? Merav Mack and Benjamin Balint share their forays into the city's most inaccessible reaches in the making of their recently published book, Jerusalem: City of the Book.
Video and full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/11/11/video-jerusalem-city-book
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Graham Harvey, professor of religious studies at The Open University (UK), discusses animism and how our relations are damaged by ongoing efforts to separate (human) culture from ‘nature’ and humans from other species. Engaging with Indigenous knowledges, Harvey seeks to replace ‘nature’ with more respectful relationships with the world.
Graham Harvey is professor of religious studies at The Open University, UK. His research largely concerns “the new animism,” especially in the rituals and protocols through which Indigenous and other communities engage with the larger-than-human world. His publications include Food, Sex and Strangers: Understanding Religion as Everyday Life (2013), and Animism: Respecting the Living World (2nd edition 2017).
Video and full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/11/07/video-we-have-always-been-animists
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
On November 6, 2019, Harvard Divinity School hosted its annual Theological Education Day. The day featured many panel discussions, including this one with students and staff describing life at HDS.
Full transcription here: https://hds.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/ted-community-2019.pdf
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at https://hds.harvard.edu/.
On November 6, 2019, Harvard Divinity School hosted its annual Theological Education Day. The day featured many panel discussions, including this one on ministry studies and field education program.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/ted-ministry-at-hds-2019.pdf
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at https://hds.harvard.edu/.
On November 6, 2019, Harvard Divinity School hosted its annual Theological Education Day. Dean David N. Hempton and Angela Counts, Director of Admissions, welcomed participants.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/ted-welcome-2019.pdf
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at https://hds.harvard.edu/.
On November 6, 2019, Harvard Divinity School hosted its annual Theological Education Day. The day featured many panel discussions, including this one that introduced participants to the school's MDiv, MTS, ThM, and PhD degree programs.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/ted-mdiv-2019.pdf
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at https://hds.harvard.edu/.
A conversation on Nov. 4 with the three Hindu monastics visiting HDS this year, each representing a different Hindu tradition: Swami Sarvapriyananda (Ramakrishna Mission), Brahmacharini Shweta Chaitanya (Chinmaya Mission), and Sadhak Akshar–Guru: Mahant Swami Maharaj (BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha). They introduced the traditions to which they belong, explained why they joined the traditions, and what it has meant for their lives. Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Parkman Professor of Divinity, moderated the conversation.
Video and full transcription here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/11/04/video-being-hindu-monastic-personal-journeys
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
Alicia Izharuddin (University of Malaya), Visiting Senior Lecturer on Women’s Studies and Islam, gives a lecture entitled “‘Bureaucratic Islam and the Romance Industry in Southeast Asia.”
Video and full transcript: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/10/24/video-bureaucratic-islam-and-romance-industry-southeast-asia
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Anne E. Monius, Professor of South Asian Religions at Harvard Divinity School, passed away on August 3, 2019.
A distinguished scholar and engaged as well as engaging teacher, Professor Monius taught for 17 years at Harvard Divinity School, where she specialized in the religious traditions of India. Her research examined the practices and products of literary culture to reconstruct the history of religions in South Asia.
HDS faculty and friends remembered Professor Monius during a memorial service on October 11, 2019.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/video-anne-e-monius-memorial-service
Jyoti Puri, Visiting Professor of Women’s Studies and South Asian Religions Colorado Scholar from Simmons University, presents on “Death in Transit: Cremation, Spectacle, and Looking Off-center.”
Video and full transcript here: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/09/27/video-death-transit-cremation-spectacle-and-looking-off-center
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
Marder formulates the paradox of “excessive heat” that, on the one hand, signals the ardency of faith and the love of God and, on the other, the effect of sin configured as ariditas (dryness), undoing viriditas (the greening green, a self-refreshing power of creation). The difference between the two kinds of excessive heat is folded into the material distinction between the woods and wood: while timber is dry and ready to go up in flames, living trees are anything but inert matter ready to be incinerated. Paradoxically, though, the woods themselves are ablaze; they are heat, which Hildegard associates with spirit. In them, solar energy is not only captured and detained but perpetually transformed in an ongoing elemental conversation with water, the earth, and the atmosphere.
Michael Marder is IKERBASQUE Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. His writings span the fields of phenomenology, political thought, and environmental philosophy.
Video and full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/09/26/ardencies-st-hidegard-blazing-plants
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
In this lecture, Ruth Harris examines how Vivekananda conveyed the meaning of “guru-bakhti” to his female disciples, and the spiritual lens through which he sought to mold them in a male spiritual milieu.
Ruth Harris is Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford and Senior Research Fellow at All Souls’ College. She has published widely in the history of religion, science, women’s history, French history, and more recently, global history.
The lecture took place at the Center for the Studies for World Religions on September 23, 2019.
Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/09/23/gurus-women-yoga
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Author, activist, and farmer Leah Penniman discusses the movement for food sovereignty and building a food system based on justice, dignity, and abundance for all members of our community. The talk took place at the Center for the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) at Harvard Divinity School on September 17, 2019.
Leah Penniman is a Black Kreyol educator, farmer/peyizan, author, and food justice activist from Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York. She has been farming since 1996, and co-founded Soul Fire Farm in 2011 with the mission to end racism in our food system.
Her James Beard award-winning book, Farming While Black, offers the first comprehensive manual for African-heritage people ready to reclaim their rightful place of dignified agency in our food system.
Video and full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/09/17/video-farming-while-black
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Professor Davíd Carrasco, Neil L. Rudenstine Professor for the Study of Latin America delivered the 2019 Convocation address "Toni Morrison Stories: Goodness and Mercy and Mexico," on September 5, 2019.
Wampanoag elder Ramona Peters welcomed students to the location on the ancestral lands of the Massachuset, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag people. Actress, poet, songwriter, and educator Alexandria Danielle King performed and HDS Professor Cornel West provided a blessing. Jazz pianist Danilo Pérez performed an original tribute to Morrison.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/09/05/video-convocation-2019-toni-morrison-stories
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Today, mindfulness meditation courses can be found everywhere from schools to prisons to sports teams. The trendy fitness apparel company Lululemon is now advertising mindful clothing for men. There’s also Mindful Meats, Mindful Mints, and Sherwin-Williams sells a paint color they call Mindful Gray. There’s even Mindful Mayo, which you can buy at your local Whole Foods for $5.99.
So why has mindfulness meditation suddenly become so popular? Well, for starters, recent studies show benefits against an array of conditions both physical and mental, including helping to counter stress, chronic pain, and other ailments such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
But are there possible downsides to mindfulness being fully embraced by capitalists? As David Gelles writes in the New York Times, “With so many mindful goods and services for sale, it can be easy to forget that mindfulness is a quality of being, not a piece of merchandise.”
This is the Harvard Religion Beat, a podcast examining religion’s underestimated and often misunderstood role in society. Here, I’m speaking with Chris Berlin, mediation teacher, instructor at Harvard Divinity School, and counselor to Buddhist students at Harvard. I wanted to get his insight into this mainstreaming of mediation and what he thinks the reasons are for today’s mindfulness boom. I’ll also talk to him about the potential issues faced in our new digital mindfulness landscape, as well as how small benefits can lead to lasting positive change.
The Rundown
00:01 - Jon Kabat-Zinn speaking with Bill Moyers 00:36 - Birth and rise of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction 02:03 - Mindfulness meditation gains popularity 04:25 – Intro to the episode and to guest Chris Berlin, mediation teacher and instructor at HDS 05:59 - Mindfulness as a secular approach to traditional meditation practice 10:34 – Benefits and how mindfulness meditation has/n't changed over the years 12:21 - Explosion of the digital mindfulness landscape and possible downsides 14:45 - Whatever works for you 17:20 - Anything we do, we can be mindful about it 19:23 - Credits, connect with us, and Veritalk
If you don’t already, please follow us on social and subscribe to our e-newsletter! hds.harvard.edu/news/connect
Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/08/13/mainstream-meditation-and-million-dollar-mindfulness-boom
Music credits: Chris Zabriskie; InSpectr (Free Music Archive)
Following the award ceremony on May 2, 2019 for the Peter J. Gomes STB '68 Memorial Honors, the alumni honorees spoke on the topic of “spiritual innovation.”
The panelists were:
Erik Martínez Resly, MDiv ’12, founder and co-director of The Sanctuaries in Washington D.C.
Salma Kazmi, MTS ’09, founding executive director of the Boston Islamic Seminary, former associate director of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, and co-founder of the Center for Jewish-Muslim Relations
Varun Soni, MTS ’99, dean of religious life at the University of Southern California (USC) and the first Hindu to serve as the chief religious or spiritual leader of an American university.
Vanessa Zoltan, MDiv ’15, a humanist chaplain, and CEO and founder of the feminist production company Not Sorry Productions, who with collaborator Casper ter Kuile, created “Harry Potter and Sacred Text”
Kerry Maloney, the School’s chaplain, director of the HDS Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, and an instructor in ministry studies.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/video-divinity-dialogues-2019-gomes-honorees
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
In Navajo worldview, thought creates the world, which is then spoken into being. This process places sacred value on the power of language. Sherwin Bitsui’s poetry attempts to connect Diné thought to a changed world by translating the present through an encoding rooted in his culture and language. In this excerpt from his talk at Harvard Divinity School, he offered insight into how Navajo thought and language can inform a poetics, thus opening possibilities for poetry.
Sherwin Bitsui is the author of three collections of poetry: Dissolve, Flood Song, and Shapeshift. He is Diné of the Todí¬ch’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tlizí¬laaní¬ (Many Goats Clan), and has received the Whiting Award, the American Book Award, and the PEN Book Award.
Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/03/07/song-thinking-outwardly
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Award-winning American poet Susan Howe visited Harvard Divinity School on April 24 to speak about the binding together of freedom and law, spontaneity and habit, as occasions for awakening a reader to the exaltation of spirit in process. Crossing the guarded borders between image and word, individual and community, history and the present, poetry provides an opening to the transcendent order that chance makes possible.
Susan Howe's collection of poems, That This, won the Bollingen Prize in 2011. In 2017 she received the Robert Frost award for distinguished lifetime achievement in American poetry.
Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/04/24/concordance-susan-howe
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
How is our lived experience of religion and spirituality changing? Where are the boundaries of religion being tested and transformed? How will scholars and practitioners define and understand religion in the future? A multi-generational panel conversation of scholars and practitioners explored the shifting structures of religious practice and identity, and shared insights about the emerging landscape of spiritual community.
Panelists: Dr. Nancy Ammerman, Boston University Dr. Christopher White, Vassar University Dr. Anna Sun, Harvard Divinity School and Kenyon College Casper Ter Kuile, Harvard Divinity School Angie Thurston, Harvard Divinity School
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/04/23/video-lived-religion-spirituality-2019
In November of 2018, the FBI released its report on hate crimes in the U.S. for 2017. It wasn’t good news. Hate crimes on the basis of religious identity surged 23 percent, the biggest annual increase since 2001, the year of the 9/11 terror attacks. And one of the most startling statistics is that the number of hate crimes targeting Jewish people increased 37 percent from the previous year.
So, why are hate crimes on the rise? Many have placed blame at the foot of political leaders and specifically President Trump for emboldening anti-Semites and white supremacists—very fine people, he’s called them—but yet, there’s another, equally troubling side to the story—one that calls into question the validity of the FBI’s own hate crime statistics and gives us more questions than answers.
I’m Jonathan Beasley, and this is the Harvard Religion Beat, a podcast examining religion’s underestimated and often misunderstood role in society.
The Rundown
00:01 - Phone call and defacing of synagogue library 01:19 - Violence against religious minorities is on the rise 02:56 - Responsibility of politics leaders and President Trump 04:41 - Rabbi Gerson on what it's like to lead worshipers in unsettling times 06:13 - The FBI's misleading hate crime statistics 10:21 - Emboldening of white supremacists 13:41 - White nationalism's global rise 14:47 - Hope for the future 15:54 - International response needed 16:36 - Golf clap + other ways to connect
If you don’t already, please follow us on social and subscribe to our e-newsletter! And listen to our other pod “Ministry of Ideas!”
hds.harvard.edu/news/connect www.ministryofideas.org/
Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/04/23/podcast-why-hate-crimes-are-rise
How do you measure and govern for happiness? Harvard Divinity School hosted an international conference on April 13, 2019, inspired by the Gross National Happiness policies of the Kingdom of Bhutan.
During this conference, academics, practitioners, politicians, corporate leaders and spiritual leaders sought answers to the question of universal happiness. The event was kicked off with a Keynote Address by Her Excellency, Doma Tshering, Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of Bhutan to the United Nations, New York.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/keynote.pdf?m=1600910847
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
How do you measure and govern for happiness? Harvard Divinity School hosted an international conference on April 13, 2019, inspired by the Gross National Happiness policies of the Kingdom of Bhutan.
During this conference, academics, practitioners, politicians, corporate leaders and spiritual leaders sought answers to the question of universal happiness. The closing included the following: Documentary on Portraits of Bhutan gg by Robert X. Fogarty and Ben Reece of Dear World, USA
Bhutanese Cultural Program by The Bhutanese Community from New York City
Thangka and Buddhist Paintings by Joseph T. La. Torre
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/conference-wrap.pdf?m=1600910952
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
How do you measure and govern for happiness? Harvard Divinity School hosted an international conference on April 13, 2019, inspired by the Gross National Happiness policies of the Kingdom of Bhutan.
During this conference, academics, practitioners, politicians, corporate leaders and spiritual leaders sought answers to the question of universal happiness. This panel's topic was the Happiness Movement: Mobilizing Individuals, Communities and Hacking Happiness from Artificial to Heartificial Intelligence. Panelists included Mr. John C. Havens, Prof. Rhonda Phillips, Mr. Namgyal Lhendup, Mr. Arnaud Collery, and Professor Neil Gershenfeld.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/panel-two.pdf?m=1600910905
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
How do you measure and govern for happiness? Harvard Divinity School hosted an international conference on April 13, 2019, inspired by the Gross National Happiness policies of the Kingdom of Bhutan.
During this conference, academics, practitioners, politicians, corporate leaders and spiritual leaders sought answers to the question of universal happiness. This panel's topic was Scaling Happiness and Health: Translating Science to Application. Panelists included Kasisomayajula “Vish” Viswanath, Dr. Alejandro Adler, Eric Coles, and Kaka.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/panel-three.pdf?m=1600910930
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
How do you measure and govern for happiness? Harvard Divinity School hosted an international conference on April 13, 2019, inspired by the Gross National Happiness policies of the Kingdom of Bhutan.
During this conference, academics, practitioners, politicians, corporate leaders and spiritual leaders sought answers to the question of universal happiness. This panel covered the Bhutanese statecraft on Economics and the Spirit of GNH. Panelists included Dasho Karma Tshiteem, Professor Sophus Reinert, Professor Wolfgang Drechsler, and Professor John Helliwell.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/panel-one.pdf?m=1600910876
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
This monthly public series, convened by Dean David N. Hempton of HDS, brings together a cross-disciplinary RPP Working Group of faculty, experts, students, and alumni from across Harvard University and the local area to explore topics and cases in religions and the practice of peace. This meeting concerned indigenous guardianship and culture with intersections of nature and peace.
Speakers • Margarita Mora, Director of Partnerships, Nia Tero • Indira S. Raimberdy, Executive Director, Peace Building Center
Moderator • Professor Dan McKanan, Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer in Divinity, Harvard Divinity School
For more info, please see: https://tinyurl.com/y4g89cxo
https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/04/11/video-indigenous-guardianship-nature-peace
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
The ongoing destruction of Earth’s natural systems is the result of decisions, made daily, by billions of people. These decisions are voluntary and involuntary at once, collective and personal. The question must be asked: what is driving our actions? How do we reignite and reimagine a spiritual relationship with this beautiful planet we call home? From traditions around the world, and from within ourselves, how might we create different narratives that honor nature and acknowledge the sacred? Two indigenous leaders—Nainoa Thompson and Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq (Uncle)—have both been identified by their communities as messengers who are sharing their wisdom with us as we try to heal this broken world together, and they will guide us through these challenging questions as they reflect on their traditions and spiritual practices. Storytelling is a form of bearing witness to change as we contemplate what it means to be responsible citizens in the Anthropocene.
Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/04/04/video-indigenous-views-climate-change
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
Damaris S. Parsitau, 2018-19 WSRP Visiting Associate Professor, delivers the lecture “The Kingdom of Holy Women: Pentecostalism, Sex and Women’s Bodies in an African Church,” which is based on five years of ethnographic research carried out at the Ministry of Repentance and Holiness, a new and controversial Pentecostal church based in Kenya.
Her book-in-progress explores the Ministry’s aims to control, discipline and objectify women’s bodies as sites of tensions and erotic desires that make women responsible for the sins of others and their supposed failure to enter the anticipated Kingdom of God.
Full transcript here: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/04/03/video-kingdom-holy-women-african-church
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
This talk contradicts the longstanding reading of Emerson as invested in idealism and instead charts his obsession with matter both organic and inorganic, organized and unorganized. By attending to his interest in sciences of life, Branka Arsić reconstructs the geological and botanical theories that led him to formulate a genuinely vitalist ontology; and by outlining his vitalism through readings of both early and late essays and lectures, Arsić will ultimately be asking what the ethical and political consequences of his vitalism are.
Branka Arsić specializes in literatures of the 19th century Americas and their scientific, philosophical, and religious contexts. She is the author, most recently, of Bird Relics: Grief and Vitalism in Thoreau (Harvard University Press, 2016).
Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/04/03/video-all-one-stuff-emersons-materialism
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
The Harvard Divinity School Buddhist Community (HBC) hosted the Fifth Annual Buddhism and Race Conference: Centering Intersectionalities, on March 8, 2019 at Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA.
During this conference, scholars, sangha leaders, activists, and students from diverse backgrounds joined together to engage in conversations about issues at the intersection of Buddhism, race, and beyond. This panel discussed the intersections of Buddhism, Race, and Multiple Religious Belongings.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/buddhism-panel-2.pdf
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Dr. Alaa Murabit discusses the promotion of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), at Harvard Divinity School, highlighting the intersection between women's leadership, religion, and sustainable development. She presents unique examples of women's religious leadership to advance human rights, societal development, and peacebuilding and explores the importance of leveraging religious scholarship.
Speaker: Dr. Alaa Murabit, UN High-Level Commissioner and SDG Global Advocate
Moderator and Discussant: Professor Jocelyne Cesari, T. J. Dermot Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding for 2018-19 at Harvard Divinity School
For more info: https://tinyurl.com/y5jc894g
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/03/14/video-promoting-the-un-sustainable-development-goals
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Presented as a rational, scientific, and practical religion, modern Buddhism appears to have all the answers. Even the secular forms of mindfulness promise ever-increasing practitioners that Buddhist meditation will provide the solutions to all their mental, emotional, and spiritual issues. But is there a problem with all of this?
In his new book, "A Critique of Western Buddhism: Ruins of the Buddhist Real," scholar Glenn Wallis argues that there is, and that Buddhism as we know it "must be ruined." On March 11, 2019, Wallis was in conversation with HDS professor Charles Hallisey at the Center for the Study of World Religions.
Glenn Wallis holds a Ph.D. in Buddhist studies from Harvard University's Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies. He is the founder and director of Incite Seminars, in Philadelphia.
Charles Hallisey is the Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures at Harvard Divinity School. His research centers on Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, Pali language and literature, Buddhist ethics, and literature in Buddhist culture.
Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/03/11/case-against-buddhism
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
On March 1, 2019, Harvard Divinity School hosted its third annual Black Religion, Spirituality, and Culture Conference. The theme was Blackness at the Margins. The day featured many panel discussions, including this one.
The revolutionary artist Nina Simone once said, “It’s an artist’s duty to reflect the times.” What does it mean to create art that reveals and speaks to the contemporary social, cultural, intellectual, and political times? The panel addresses many facets of the role of art in these times.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/brcs-panel-3.pdf
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
On March 1, 2019, Harvard Divinity School hosted its third annual Black Religion, Spirituality, and Culture Conference. The theme was Blackness at the Margins. The day featured many panel discussions, including this one. This conversation addressed immigration, gentrification, and the politics of displacement.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/brsc-panel-2.pdf
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
On March 1, 2019, Harvard Divinity School hosted its third annual Black Religion, Spirituality, and Culture Conference. The theme was Blackness at the Margins. The day featured many panel discussions, including this one. This panel addressed the ways in which Afro-religious traditions are represented within the movie, "Black Panther," and shape the relationship between those on the African continent and those in the diaspora for black liberation.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/brsc-panel-1.pdf
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
The Harvard Divinity School Buddhist Community (HBC) hosted the Fifth Annual Buddhism and Race Conference: Centering Intersectionalities, on March 8, 2019 at Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA.
During this conference, scholars, sangha leaders, activists, and students from diverse backgrounds joined together to engage in conversations about issues at the intersection of Buddhism, race, and beyond. This panel discussed the intersections of Buddhism, Race, and Gender.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/buddhism-panel-1.pdf
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
The Annual Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice took place February 27, 2019, at the HDS Center for the Study of World Religions. (Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/)
Race and religion are among the best predictors of how Americans choose a president. Race and religion are also bases for political compromises that call into question our moral credibility on issues ranging from voting rights to police brutality. How do we demonstrate courage when we decline or choose to compromise?
Cornell William Brooks is Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also Director of The William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice at the School’s Center for Public Leadership, and a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School. Brooks is the former president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights attorney, and an ordained minister.
Todne Thomas is a socio-cultural anthropologist and Assistant Professor of African American Religions at Harvard Divinity School. Her current research examines the familial and spiritual experiences of black evangelicals and the neoliberal displacement of black sacred space.
Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/02/26/faith-faustian-bargains
"Business" is a taboo topic in divinity school--but anyone who wants to change the world needs to understand how to think like an entrepreneur. Leading experts on social and wellness entrepreneurship, innovative leadership, and the intersection of money and spirituality share their stories and wisdom in a panel discussion.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/03/05/video-business-of-spirituality
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Poor mestizos in northern Peru offer a new way to theorize humanism and sentient landscapes that interact with humans in terms of environmental justice, collective ethics, and health. By defining “community” and “well-being” as humans-in-relationship-to-places-as-persons, poor mestizos resignify “nature” itself as an anchor for social justice.
Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York-Buffalo, speaks on her research in northern Peru. She has worked with Mapuche shamans in Southern Chile and shamans on the north coast of Peru.
Full transcript: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/02/20/video-subversive-politics-northern-peru
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Much has been written about the Northern Ireland peace process, particularly on securing the peace. However, as Senator George Mitchell commented in relation to the Good Friday agreement, “If you think getting this agreement was difficult, implementing it will be even more difficult.” Twenty-one years after the signing of the Good Friday agreement, those have proven to be prophetic words. Dr. Mason will explore what reconciliation looks like in a contested space, the power of memory and story in keeping the pain of the past alive, and how theology can move into that contested narrative in a way that brings about dialogue, honesty, and healing. He will also address the current Brexit situation, exploring how Brexit has been a very difficult experience for these two islands.
Event sponsored by Religions and the Practice of Peace (RPP) and Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School
Speakers: Rev. Dr. Gary Mason, director of Rethinking Conflict; senior research fellow at the Kennedy Institute for Conflict Intervention at Maynooth University in Ireland David N. Hempton, Dean of the Faculty of Divinity
For more info see here: https://tinyurl.com/y4yrhmzg
Video and full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/02/27/video-reconciliation-memory-theology-shaping-public-stage
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Wylin D. Wilson, 2018-19 WSRP Visiting Associate Professor, delivers the lecture "'Bioethics on the Margins: Vulnerable Populations and Health Outcomes."
Full transcript here: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/02/20/video-bioethics-on-the-margins
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
On February 19, U.S. presidential candidate, spiritual lecturer, and number one New York Times bestselling author Marianne Williamson spoke at HDS on the topic "Reparations for Slavery: The Role of Repentance in Politics." The event featured an opening talk by HDS student Kassi Underwood, MDiv '19.
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/02/19/video-marianne-williamson-role-repentance-politics
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/
This panel explores the intersection of racism, oppression, urban trauma, disaster, and other social realities faced by those desperately in need of peace. More than the absence of violence and war, we need the aggressive and proactive generation of peace, healing, and bliss under a continuing barrage of compromises to health and well-being. What is peace? How do we create it when there is little? Who deserves peacemaking?
Speakers and Moderators:
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Zumbi, founder, Kilombo Novo; director, Trauma Response and Recovery at Boston Public Health Commission
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Emily Click, assistant dean for ministry studies and field education and Lecturer on Ministry at Harvard Divinity School
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David Harris, managing director, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School
For more info: http://tinyurl.com/y33o4t6c
Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/02/14/video-rpp-colloquium-indigenous-perspectives-peacemaking-racism
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
Evolution is an organizing principle of the living world. While competition is integral to evolution, cooperation can be seen as the master architect of biological complexity, language, and culture. Human beings have emerged from this evolutionary process as “SuperCooperators.”
In this Religions and the Practice of Peace (RPP) Colloquium, Martin Nowak discusses the scientific interpretation of evolution and its compatibility with Christian theology, which holds that God is the primary cause for all that exists, the creator and sustainer of the universe.
S. Zahra Moballegh, 2018-19 WSRP Visiting Associate Professor, delivers the lecture "Veiled Women Unveiling God: Understanding the Qur’an Through Its Women Characters."
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
Sound Education was a 3-day event at Harvard University for educational and academic podcasters and radio hosts, and their listeners. It was hosted by Ministry of Ideas, a podcast based at Harvard Divinity School. The conference featured many panel discussions, including this one with strategies for growing a podcast's audience.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Phakchok Rinpoche and Erric Solomon are authors of the recently released book Radically Happy: A User’s Guide to the Mind. These two meditation experts—a seasoned Silicon Valley entrepreneur and a traditionally trained Tibetan Rinpoche— discussed their efforts to make meditation, mindfulness, and Buddhist thought accessible to a secular and modern audience.
Sound Education was a 3-day event at Harvard University for educational and academic podcasters and radio hosts, and their listeners. It was hosted by Ministry of Ideas, a podcast based at Harvard Divinity School (HDS).
Zachary Davis, host of Ministry of Ideas, welcomed participants. Diane Moore, Director of the Religious Literacy Project, delivered the first keynote address. Moore is HDS Lecturer in Religion, Conflict, and Peace, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Peter Hayes (Ph.D., Yale, 1982) specializes in the histories of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust and, in particular, in the conduct of the nation’s largest corporations during the Third Reich. Dr. Hayes gave this year's Dudleian Lecture on "Kristallnacht 1938: Crescendo and Overture."
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
On November 7, 2018, Harvard Divinity School hosted its annual Theological Education Day. The day featured many panel discussions, including this one with students and staff describing life at HDS.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
On November 7, 2018, Harvard Divinity School hosted its annual Theological Education Day. The day featured many panel discussions, including this one on admissions and financial aid.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
At the 2018 Diversity and Explorations Program (DivEx), Jacob Olupona gave the keynote address during dinner that coincided with Harvard Divinity School's Theological Education Day (TED).
Jacob K. Olupona is Professor of African Religious Traditions, with a joint appointment as Professor of African and African American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
DivEx is a three-day introduction to graduate programs at Harvard Divinity School that span religious and cultural divides to prepare ethical leaders to work in a complex world.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
On November 7, 2018, Harvard Divinity School hosted its annual Theological Education Day. The day featured many panel discussions, including this one that introduced participants to the school's MDiv, MTS, ThM, and PhD degree programs. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
On November 7, 2018, Harvard Divinity School hosted its annual Theological Education Day. The day featured many panel discussions, including this one on ministry studies and field education program. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
On November 7, 2018, Harvard Divinity School hosted its annual Theological Education Day. Dean David N. Hempton and Angela Counts, Director of Admissions, welcomed participants. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Sound Education was a 3-day event at Harvard University for educational and academic podcasters and radio hosts, and their listeners. It was hosted by Ministry of Ideas, a podcast based at Harvard Divinity School. The conference featured many panel discussions, including this one with strategies for packaging history into audio programs.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Sound Education was a 3-day event at Harvard University for educational and academic podcasters and radio hosts, and their listeners. It was hosted by Ministry of Ideas, a podcast based at Harvard Divinity School. The conference featured many panel discussions, including this one with lessons for sound design on educational podcasts.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Sound Education was a 3-day event at Harvard University for educational and academic podcasters and radio hosts, and their listeners. It was hosted by Ministry of Ideas, a podcast based at Harvard Divinity School. The conference featured many panel discussions, including this one with lessons from how the Radiolab team plans, produces, and polishes a typical episode.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Barbara Zimbalist, 2018-19 WSRP Visiting Associate Professor, delivers the lecture "Translating Christ in the Middle Ages: Visionary Translation, Divine Rhetoric, and Verbal Devotion in England, France, and the Low Countries."
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election thanks in large part to overwhelming support from one particular group of folks: white evangelicals.
And despite what seems to be weekly, if not daily controversy over the president’s public remarks or past behaviors, a poll from earlier this year found that 75 percent of white evangelicals still hold a positive opinion of Mr. Trump.
Given what we know about evangelicals and their social positions centered on family values, and given what we know about Trump, a thrice-married casino mogul facing numerous allegations of adultery, sexual assault, and bigotry, where does this evangelical support for Trump come from?
This is the Harvard Religion Beat*, a podcast examining religion’s underestimated and often misunderstood role in society. Here, we're speaking with Dudley Rose, Professor of Ministry Studies here at Harvard Divinity, and an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. We wanted to get his insight into some of the historical and present-day factors that are behind evangelical support for Trump. We’ll also look forward a bit to 2020 and talk what the Democrats might need to do in order to appeal to Christian conservatives in the upcoming elections.
The Rundown
00:26 - White evangelical support for Trump 01:53 - Intro to the pod and to my guest, Prof. Dudley Rose 02:25 - Evangelical oppression? 05:01 - Abortion as a redline 08:46 - Evangelicals "dream president" 10:47 - Jesus chatting w/ Trump 11:51 - Lesser of two evils? 14:56 - Democrats win over white evangelicals? 17:14 - "Evangelicals are people of hope, not fear" 18:06 - Golf clap + other ways to connect
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*re-named from "Beyond Belief" in April 2019.
How did pious medieval Muslims experience health and disease? Rooted in the prophet’s experiences with medicine and healing, Muslim pietistic literature developed cosmologies in which physical suffering and medical interventions interacted with religious obligations and spiritual health.
Ahmed Ragab discusses his recent publication, Piety and Patienthood in Medieval Islam. Ragab is Richard T. Watson Associate Professor of Science and Religion at Harvard Divinity School.
Respondents: Mark Jordan, Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School Nancy Khalek, William A. Dyer Jr. Assistant Professor of the Humanities, Brown University
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Religion was fundamental to the development of both slavery and race in the Protestant Atlantic world. For slaveholders, Christianity was a sign of freedom, and most believed that slaves should not be eligible for conversion. Meanwhile, Protestant missionaries arrived in the plantation colonies in the 1670s and were appalled that most slave owners rejected the prospect of slave conversion. Over time, missionaries increasingly used the language of race to support their arguments for slave conversion. Enslaved Christians, meanwhile, developed an alternate vision of Protestantism that linked religious conversion to literacy and freedom.
This lecture discusses the differing motivations of slave owners, missionaries, and enslaved populations since the 17th century in the Protestant Atlantic.
Speaker: Katharine Gerbner is a McKnight Land-Grant Professor and Assistant Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. Her research explores the religious dimensions of race, authority, and freedom in early America and the Atlantic world.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
This event features three unique voices from several different traditions and life experiences: Mary Ashu, a forest ranger from Cameroon; Prathima Muniyappa, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab exploring the use of space technology to advance issues of social justice; and Stacy Bare, a war veteran, National Geographic Adventurer, and co-founder of the Great Outdoors Lab.
More event info here: https://goo.gl/6Pkk4Z
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
It is commonplace today to group the three monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—under the category of the “Abrahamic.” Scholars have investigated the roots, ancient and modern, for this category, and continue to debate its contemporary merits. Meanwhile, practitioners are doing significant work in the wider world under the aegis of the “Abrahamic.” This panel will explore the public practice of the Abrahamic Religions. Panelists will reflect on their work in light of this category, including its strengths and limitations.
Chair: Charles Stang, Professor of Early Christian Thought, Harvard Divinity School; Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions
Panelists: Huda Abuarquob, Regional Director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace
Joseph Montville, Director of the Program on Healing Historical Memory, and chair of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution in the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University
Stephanie Saldaña, The Abraham Path, founder of Mosaic Stories
The RPP Colloquium Series is organized with generous support from the Reverend Karen Vickers Budney, MDiv ’91, and Mr. Albert J. Budney, Jr., MBA ’74, as well as the Once Here Foundation.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Anglican church leaders in sub-Saharan Africa have a vision of a malaria-free world. Join us for a panel discussion on the role of faith and learn how religious leaders and communities are working to end malaria for good.
Panelists: The Right Rev. Andre Soares, bishop of the Diocese of Angola and vice-president of the Council of Christian Churches in Angola The Right Rev. David Njovu, bishop of the Diocese of Lusaka (Zambia) The Right Rev. Cleophas Lunga, bishop of the Diocese of Matebeleland (Zimbabwe)
Moderators: Jacob Olupona, Professor of African Religious Traditions, Harvard Divinity School Dyann Wirth, Richard Pearson Strong Professor of Infectious Diseases, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Cornelia Holden, MDiv ’03 discusses her experiences as a spiritual innovator and founder of Mindful Warrior and the Core Leadership California at Ministry Colloquium. Cornelia works with large companies, universities, secondary schools and athletic teams to develop mental stability, resilience, presence and authenticity to empower them to make values-driven decisions regularly and under pressure. Her work is grounded in spiritual principles, experiential education in body-centered approaches to the mind and a deep commitment to equity and inclusion.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
By bringing together scholars from across Harvard, this panel discussed the importance of a critical, nuanced, and interdisciplinary understanding of refugee, asylum, and immigrant issues, while highlighting activist efforts.
The discussion took place October 11, 2018. It was moderated by HDS's Francis Clooney, S.J., and organized by MTS '19 candidate Shannon Boley.
More event info here: https://goo.gl/gpL6ys
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Anna Sun, 2018–19 WSRP Visiting Associate Professor, delivers the lecture "Turning Ghosts into Ancestors: Ritual, Gender, and the Afterlife in Contemporary Urban China."
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
On October 3, 2018, André Aciman, author of "Call Me by Your Name," and writer Benjamin Balint will discuss themes of exile and homecoming, of time, place, identity, and art across Aciman’s works of fiction and nonfiction.
André Aciman is the author of Enigma Variations, Call Me by Your Name, Out of Egypt, and False Papers, and is the editor of The Proust Project (all published by FSG). He teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He lives with his wife and family in Manhattan.
Benjamin Balint is a library fellow at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, and Die Zeit, and his translations from the Hebrew have appeared in the New Yorker. He is the author of Kafka’s Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy and, with Merav Mack, Jerusalem: City of the Book (forthcoming).
This event was hosted by the Center for Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panel 2 of the Thinking Islam Within Religious Studies: Methods, Histories and Futures conference
Panelists include Ahmed Ragab, Charles Stang, and Guy Stroumsa.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panel 3 of the Thinking Islam Within Religious Studies: Methods, Histories and Futures conference
Panelists include Diana Eck, Ali Asani, and Roy Mottahedeh.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panel 1 of the Thinking Islam Within Religious Studies: Methods, Histories and Futures conference
Panelists include Mohsen Goudarzi, Jane McAuliffe, Shady Nasser, and Walid Saleh.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
How is the comparative scholarship on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam possible? What are its presuppositions, and what does it entail? How can the history of religions help interfaith understanding? These are some of the questions this lecture addresses.
Lecture by Guy Stroumsa, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Oxford University; response by Jon Levenson, Harvard Divinity School; opening remarks by Charles Stang, Harvard Divinity School, and Adam Afterman, Tel-Aviv University
Held Wednesday, September 26, 2018, at HDS. Sponsored by the Center for the Study of World Religions at HDS, John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue, Alwaleed Islamic Studies Program, and Center for Middle Eastern Studies.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panel 3 of the Symposium on Religious Literacy and Business: Media & Entertainment moderated by Stephen Prothero and featuring panelists CarolAnne Dolan, Geralyn Dreyfous, Amir Hussain, and Gordon Quinn.
This symposium brings together media professionals and scholars of media, religion, and business to assess the state of religious literacy in the field and the role of entertainment media in shaping the public understanding of religion. Our aim is to foster critical reflection and collaborative relationships between scholars and media professionals in order to improve the religious literacy of the American public and reduce conflict and antagonism by encouraging more complicated, nuanced, and creative representations of religion on screen.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Abigail E. Disney delivers the keynote address of the Religious Literacy and Business: Media & Entertainment Symposium.
This symposium brings together media professionals and scholars of media, religion, and business to assess the state of religious literacy in the field and the role of entertainment media in shaping the public understanding of religion. Our aim is to foster critical reflection and collaborative relationships between scholars and media professionals in order to improve the religious literacy of the American public and reduce conflict and antagonism by encouraging more complicated, nuanced, and creative representations of religion on screen.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panel 1 of the Symposium on Religious Literacy and Business: Media & Entertainment, moderated by Sarabinh Levy-Brightman and featuring panelists John L. Jackson, Jr., Mik Moore, Joanna Piacenza, Sheila Murphy, and Christopher White.
This symposium brings together media professionals and scholars of media, religion, and business to assess the state of religious literacy in the field and the role of entertainment media in shaping the public understanding of religion. Our aim is to foster critical reflection and collaborative relationships between scholars and media professionals in order to improve the religious literacy of the American public and reduce conflict and antagonism by encouraging more complicated, nuanced, and creative representations of religion on screen.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panel 4 of the Symposium on Religious Literacy and Business: Media & Entertainment moderated by Lauren R. Kerby and featuring panelists Mario Cader-Frech, Bruno del Granado, Kerida McDonald, and Ross Murray.
This symposium brings together media professionals and scholars of media, religion, and business to assess the state of religious literacy in the field and the role of entertainment media in shaping the public understanding of religion. Our aim is to foster critical reflection and collaborative relationships between scholars and media professionals in order to improve the religious literacy of the American public and reduce conflict and antagonism by encouraging more complicated, nuanced, and creative representations of religion on screen.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panel 2 of the Symposium on Religious Literacy and Business: Media & Entertainment moderated by Diane L. Moore and featuring panelists Lorraine Ali, Sarah Hammerschlag, Rhon S. Manigault-Bryant, and Anthony Petro.
This symposium brings together media professionals and scholars of media, religion, and business to assess the state of religious literacy in the field and the role of entertainment media in shaping the public understanding of religion. Our aim is to foster critical reflection and collaborative relationships between scholars and media professionals in order to improve the religious literacy of the American public and reduce conflict and antagonism by encouraging more complicated, nuanced, and creative representations of religion on screen.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad presented "Hindu View of Life: Speaking For and Against Oneself" on Monday, September 17, at the Center for the Study of World Religions at HDS.
By reflecting on three key textual passages, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad engaged with the intersectional nature of his Hindu identity. This examination of Hinduism and intersectionality offered a new perspective on how identity is creatively and constantly reconfigured by the textual lessons and the lived reality of religious traditions.
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, MA, DPhil (Oxon), is Fellow of the British Academy, and Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University. He is the author of some fifty papers and six books. His "Divine Self, Human Self: The Philosophy of Being in Two Gita Commentaries" won the Best Book Award 2011–2015 of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. His "Human Being, Bodily Being: Phenomenology from Classical India" was recently published by Oxford University Press.
Learn more about the CSWR at https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
Religious traditions insist on the importance of cultivating our faculty of attention, whether it be attention to ourselves, others, our environment, or the presence of the divine in any of these three. This panel will explore whether and how the practice of writing, especially fiction writing, helps us cultivate this art of attention. What is it about writing, and the imagination and patience required, that helps us learn how better to attend?
The panelists are Stephanie Paulsell, Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies, HDS; C.E. Morgan, author of the novels All the Living and The Sport of Kings, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Chris Adrian, novelist, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panel 1 of West Africa and the Maghreb: Reassessing Intellectual Connections in the 21st Century
Panelists: Armaan Sidiqi, Harvard University, “Perspectives on “Politicized Sufism”: A Case Study of the ṭarīqa QadīrīBoutchichiyya” Jaison M. Carter, Harvard University, ”Black Muslimness Mobilized: A Study of West African Sufism in Diaspora” Ariela Marcus-Sells, Elon University, “Technologies of Devotion in the works of Sidi Mukhtar al-Kunti” Christine Thun-Nhi Dang, New York University, “The Politics of Love in African Performances of Sufi Poetry” Chair: Stephanie Paulsell, Harvard Divinity School
As part of the efforts to promote the study of Islam in Africa at Harvard, an Islam in Africa conference series was initiated under the sponsorship of HDS, NELC, CAS, AAAS, and the Hutchins Center with the goal to convene an international symposium every year to facilitate intellectual conversation between junior and senior scholars involved in cutting edge research in the field. In line with the mission of the Alwaleed Chair in Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, this conference series is centered on the history of Muslim institutions and ideas in Africa.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panel 2 of West Africa and the Maghreb: Prayers, Invocations, and the Talismanic Tradition
Panelists: James C. Riggan, Florida State University, “Qur’anic Exorcism in North and West Africa” Zachary Wright, Northwestern University Qatar and Adam Larson, Weill Cornell University – Qatar,“Genealogy of Prayer Manuals 18th Century to the Present” Paul Anderson, Harvard, “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered: A Reconsideration of the Evil Eye and Ruqyah through Ethnographic Analysis” Oludamini Ogunnaike, College of Williams and Mary, “Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection: West African Madih Poetry and its Precedents” Chair: Kimberly C. Patton, Harvard Divinity School
As part of the efforts to promote the study of Islam in Africa at Harvard, an Islam in Africa conference series was initiated under the sponsorship of HDS, NELC, CAS, AAAS, and the Hutchins Center with the goal to convene an international symposium every year to facilitate intellectual conversation between junior and senior scholars involved in cutting edge research in the field. In line with the mission of the Alwaleed Chair in Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, this conference series is centered on the history of Muslim institutions and ideas in Africa.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panel 4 of West Africa and the Maghreb: Jihadi Ideology: What is New, What is Not?
Panelists: William Miles, Northeastern University, “Jihadism in Muslim West Africa in Historical Perspective” Abdulbasit Kassim, Rice University, Jihadi-Salafism and the Vocabulary of Takfīr in the 21st Century Hausaland and Bornu” Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem, Northwestern University Evanston, “Assessing the Salafi Current in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania” Anouar Boukhars, McDaniel College, “The Strategic Incentives for Insurgents to Embrace Extreme Ideology: The Case of the Sahel and Maghreb”
As part of the efforts to promote the study of Islam in Africa at Harvard, an Islam in Africa conference series was initiated under the sponsorship of HDS, NELC, CAS, AAAS, and the Hutchins Center with the goal to convene an international symposium every year to facilitate intellectual conversation between junior and senior scholars involved in cutting edge research in the field. In line with the mission of the Alwaleed Chair in Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, this conference series is centered on the history of Muslim institutions and ideas in Africa.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panel 3 of West Africa and the Maghreb: Re-evalutating the Historic Core Curriculum
Panelists: Ismail Warcheid, CNRS France, “Scholarly Networks, Legal Debates, and Territorial Integration” David Owen, Harvard University, “Of Radd and Sharḥ and Ṭurra: The Long and Late Dynamism of the African Commentary Tradition on Akhḍarī's Sullam on Avicennian Organon Logic” Alexis Trouillot, Université Paris VII, “The Study of Mathematics in the Sahel from the 15thto the 20th C.” Abubakar Abdulkadir, University of Alberta, Canada, “Poetry in West Africa and the Maghreb” Chair: Charles Hallisey, Harvard Divinity School
As part of the efforts to promote the study of Islam in Africa at Harvard, an Islam in Africa conference series was initiated under the sponsorship of HDS, NELC, CAS, AAAS, and the Hutchins Center with the goal to convene an international symposium every year to facilitate intellectual conversation between junior and senior scholars involved in cutting edge research in the field. In line with the mission of the Alwaleed Chair in Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, this conference series is centered on the history of Muslim institutions and ideas in Africa.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panel 5 of West Africa and the Maghreb: New Intellectual Connections
Panelists: Mansour Kedidir, CRASC Algeria, “Connections of Intellectuals in the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa: Trajectories and Representations” Fatima Harrak, Institute of African Studies, Rabat Morocco, “Research on Moroccan-African Relations at the Rabat Institute of African Studies” Robert Parks, CEMA, Algeria, “American Research Centers in North Africa and Sahara-Sahel Studies” Ebrima Sall, Trust Africa, Senegal “CODESRIA and the New Pan-Africanist Intellectual Connections Across the Sahara” Chair: Jacob K. Olupona, Harvard Divinity School
As part of the efforts to promote the study of Islam in Africa at Harvard, an Islam in Africa conference series was initiated under the sponsorship of HDS, NELC, CAS, AAAS, and the Hutchins Center with the goal to convene an international symposium every year to facilitate intellectual conversation between junior and senior scholars involved in cutting edge research in the field. In line with the mission of the Alwaleed Chair in Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, this conference series is centered on the history of Muslim institutions and ideas in Africa.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
As part of the efforts to promote the study of Islam in Africa at Harvard, an Islam in Africa conference series was initiated under the sponsorship of HDS, NELC, CAS, AAAS, and the Hutchins Center with the goal to convene an international symposium every year to facilitate intellectual conversation between junior and senior scholars involved in cutting edge research in the field. In line with the mission of the Alwaleed Chair in Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, this conference series is centered on the history of Muslim institutions and ideas in Africa.
Women’s Studies in Religion Program (WSRP) 2017–18 Research Associates discuss their research and share their thoughts on the ethical responsibility of scholars to be engaged in the study of gender.
Each year, WSRP brings five scholars in gender from around the world to pursue research on women and religion and to enrich the experience of our students.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Dr. Frank Rogers delivers the keynote for "Cultivating Resilience Through the Peaks and Valleys of Chaplaincy" conference. The conference focuses on resiliency practices upheld by seasoned chaplains from the major fields of chaplaincy.
Rogers is the Muriel Bernice Roberts Professor of Spiritual Formation and Narrative Pedagogy and the co-director of the Center for Engaged Compassion at the Claremont School of Theology and the author of Practicing Compassion.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Francisca Cho proposes that Buddhist epistemic frameworks regarding the nature of ritual apparitions offer an account of the religious possibilities of film that is absent in Western phenomenological conversations on the same topic.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Congratulations to the Harvard Divinity School class of 2018, who received their diplomas during the HDS Diploma Awarding Ceremony on May 25, 2017. Lindsey Franklin, MDiv ’18, and Denson Staples, MDiv ’18, gave the student address.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
The promotion of more just and peaceful societies is a fundamental goal of the United Nations (UN). In response to the spike in violent conflict worldwide and unparalleled levels of forced displacement, the UN broke new ground in 2016 with two “peacebuilding resolutions,” which set forth a new UN approach to “sustaining peace” that addresses “all stages of conflict” and “all its dimensions.” During this session, we explored what law, policy, and ethics can teach us about “sustaining peace” and how the UN can be assisted in forging a more coherent vision of this new paradigm.
This session of the fourth annual RPP Colloquium Series features Benjamin B. Ferencz, JD ’43 HLS, recipient of the Harvard Law School Medal of Freedom 2014, and former United States prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nüremberg; respondent Gabriella Blum, LLM ’01, SJD ’03, Rita E. Hauser Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, faculty director of the Program on International Law and Armed Conflict (PILAC), and member of the Program on Negotiation executive board at Harvard Law School; respondent J. Bryan Hehir, Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life at Harvard Kennedy School, secretary for social services of the Archdiocese of Boston; and moderator Federica D’Alessandra, LLM, 2013-16 Fellow and 2010-12 Associate at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, 2016-17 Visiting Scholar/Researcher at HLS, 2017-18 Fellow at HDS, and 2016-18 RPP adviser.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
David Freudberg of Humankind talks with Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann and Sensei Joshin Byrnes.
Cultivating Resilience Through the Peaks and Valleys of Chaplaincy focuses on resiliency practices upheld by seasoned chaplains from the major fields of chaplaincy.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Kimberly Blockett, Visiting Associate Professor of Women's Studies and African American Religions, and WSRP Research Associate and Colorado Scholar, Brandywine, presents “#sayhername: Recovering Zilpha Elaw’s Rebellious Evangelicalism."
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Laura R. Prieto, Visiting Professor of Women’s Studies and American Religious History from Simmons College, presents “Making Disciples: Women, Missions, and Colonial Education in the Early 20th-Century Philippines”.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
HDS students Hal Edmonson, Lou Fish-Sadin, Sally Fritsche, and Isaac Martinez deliver sermons for the Billings Preaching Prize Competition during Noon Service on April 11, 2018.
The annual preaching competition is open to second- and third-year MDiv students.
In addition, Samm Melton, the Massachusetts Bible Society scripture reading winner read the scripture passage.
02:16 Samm Melton 03:58 Hal Edmonson 16:38 Lou Fish-Sadin 28:09 Sally Fritsche 38:21 Isaac Martinez
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Terry Tempest Williams, the 2017–18 Writer-in-Residence at Harvard Divinity School, delivers the 2018 Ingersoll Lecture.
She has been called "a citizen writer," a writer who speaks and speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. A conservationist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, she has consistently shown us how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. "So here is my question," she asks, "what might a different kind of power look like, feel like, and can power be redistributed equitably even beyond our own species?"
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
The 2018 Peter J. Gomes STB '68 Memorial honorees speak for the final installment of this year’s Divinity Dialogues.
The panelists were: Robert Michael Franklin, MDiv '78; Jalane D. Schmidt, MDiv '96, AM '05, PhD '05; Simran Jeet Singh, MTS '08; Karen I. Tse, MDiv '00; and Ann D. Braude, Senior Lecturer on American Religious History and director of the Women’s Studies in Religion Program.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is the most performed living composer in the world today. His style is often characterized as a “mystic” or “holy” minimalism, inspired in part by Gregorian chant. This panel explores the religious dimensions of Pärt’s music and how it has been received, performed, and adapted for various vocal and instrumental ensembles.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
Satigata is a group of Harvard Divinity School alumni and students who blend Buddhist chanting, modern rock, and folk set to guitar, hand drums, and Buddhist bells. They recently released the album "Boundless." For more information visit:
Jaya/Berlin. Based on the song "Take me Away" by Jaya. Mantra melody by Chris Berlin.
Violence is not inevitable in stressed and oppressed communities and the building of peace in those communities requires the building of bridges between unlikely collaborators. That's the lesson learned in Boston over three decades of trying to change the trajectory of proven-risk youth and their families.
This session of the fourth annual RPP Colloquium Series features Rev. Dr. Ray Hammond, MD '75, MA '82, AB '71, pastor and founder of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, chairman and co-founder of the Ten Point Coalition and executive committee member of the Black Ministerial Alliance, Boston. The event is moderated by Stephanie Paulsell, PhD, Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies; formerly associate dean for ministry studies and Houghton Professor of the Practice of Ministry Studies at Harvard Divinity School.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
America is no longer a majority-white-Christian nation. Journalist, author, commentator, and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne and Dr. Robert P. Jones, author of The End of White Christian America, discuss this seismic change, its impact on the politics and social values of the United States, and its implications for the future.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
Based on personal study and experience, Anne Waldman speaks on the refuge and Bodhisattva vows, the Six Realms of Existence, “co-emergent wisdom” and a parallel vow to poetry, and the joys and contradictions therein. She integrates her own poetry, particular writers associated with the Beat Literary Movement, and Giorgio Agamben’s notion of being contemporary with one’s time as “looking into the darkness”.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
This session of the fourth annual RPP Colloquium Series explores some of the key challenges that nonviolent resistance movements face, including obstacles to building and maintaining movement cohesion, ensuring effective communication, and gaining political leverage; how advocates of principled nonviolence (who promote nonviolence on a moral basis) often clash with advocates of civil resistance (who promote nonviolent action on a strategic or utilitarian basis); the ongoing debate on diversity of tactics; and the ways in which power and privilege undermine solidarity. The colloquium highlights the power of women in these movements and addresses ways in which spiritually-engaged communities are well-positioned to address many of these key movement challenges.
It features Erica Chenoweth, PhD, Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver and Fellow, One Earth Future Foundation; and moderator and respondent Jocelyne Cesari, PhD, Professor and Chair of Religion and Politics at the University of Birmingham, UK, Senior Research Fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center on Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Professorial Fellow at the Institute for Religion, Politics, and Society at the Australian Catholic University, and Visiting Professor of Religion and Politics at Harvard Divinity School.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
The Annual Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice was delivered by Kelly Brown Douglas and examined the social/political and theological implications of whiteness as an impediment to living God’s justice.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Is religion a cause of violent conflict or a catalyst for its transformation? Do faith leaders have a role at the international peacebuilding tables? Current international affairs highlight the power of religious ideologies—and their misappropriation—as a catalyst for social action. They have also prompted unprecedented interest in the role of religious leaders and ideologies to transform conflict and violence.
The keynote session of the fourth annual RPP Colloquium dinner series features Canon Sarah Snyder, PhD, Archbishop of Canterbury's Director of Reconciliation and The Right Reverend Anthony Poggo, PhD, the Advisor for Anglican Communion Affairs to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Together, they share their experience of working in conflict zones and reflect on vital lessons for the contemporary world. The event is moderated by Dean David N. Hempton, Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies and John Lord O'Brian Professor of Divinity.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Held on December 7–8, 2017, the Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative (RLPI) seeks to consider how religion is embedded in both constructive and antagonistic approaches to immigration, especially with respect to work undertaken by (or in collaboration with) governmental agencies.
This panel continues this discussion in relation to Middle Tennessee. The panelists include Melissa Borja, Abdou Kattih, Kim Snyder, and Daniel Valdez.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Held on December 7–8, 2017, the Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative (RLPI) seeks to consider how religion is embedded in both constructive and antagonistic approaches to immigration, especially with respect to work undertaken by (or in collaboration with) governmental agencies.
This panel continues this discussion in relation to the Greater Boston Area. The panelists include Celina Barrios-Millner, Joe Curtatone, Erica James, Marjean Perhot, Patricia Montes, and Kathleen O'Keefe Reed.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Held on December 7–8, 2017, the Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative (RLPI) seeks to consider how religion is embedded in both constructive and antagonistic approaches to immigration, especially with respect to work undertaken by (or in collaboration with) governmental agencies.
This panel and the following remarks will close the symposium. The panelists include Michelle Boorstein, Jack Jenkins, Diane L. Moore, Stephen Prothero, and Amy Sullivan.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Held on December 7–8, 2017, the Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative (RLPI) seeks to consider how religion is embedded in both constructive and antagonistic approaches to immigration, especially with respect to work undertaken by (or in collaboration with) governmental agencies.
This panel continues this discussion in relation to the Arizona-Mexico Border. The panelists include Kristin Du Mez, Scott Harshbarger, Juanita Molina, and Christopher Montoya.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Held on December 7–8, 2017, the Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative (RLPI) seeks to consider how religion is embedded in both constructive and antagonistic approaches to immigration, especially with respect to work undertaken by (or in collaboration with) governmental agencies.
Shaun Casey, MDiv ’83, ThD ’98, gives the keynote address at the Religious Literacy and Government Symposium. Nadeem Mazen, Cambridge City Council member, and Diane L. Moore, director of the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School, respond.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
From the Commission of Appraisal in 1936 to the Black Empowerment impulse of the 1960s, James Luther Adams was a significant shaper of Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist institutions. And as a social ethicist, he helped envision the new national and international institutions that emerged in the post-World War II period. Professor Dan McKanan’s lecture explores the way Adams translated his theological and ethical vision into institutional practice, seeking insights that might help religious liberals respond faithfully to the institutional crises of the twenty-first century.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Journalist and author E.J. Dionne, William H. Bloomberg Visiting Professor, delivers the 2017 Horace De Y. Lentz Lecture.
As part of the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, this panel reflects on the interaction between religion scholars and law enforcement officials over the past 25 years and what may be learned from that experience to inform interaction going forward.
Panelists include Eileen Barker, London School of Economics and Political Science; Michael Barkun, Syracuse University; David T. Resch, Federal Bureau of Investigation; Robin Montgomery, Brookfield, CT; Steven Weitzman, University of Pennsylvania; Eugene V. Gallagher, Connecticut College; and Gregory B. Saathoff, University of Virginia. Nancy Ammerman of Boston University serves as the respondent.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
The South Asian Religions Colloquium (SARC) seeks to share ongoing, current scholarly research on topics in South Asian religions with Harvard students and faculty as well as the wider Boston academic community.
This event features speaker James Mallinson, Senior Lecturer in Sanskrit and Classical Indian Studies at the University of London.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
"Forests think." Eduardo Kohn, author of the book How Forests Think, discusses a kind of thinking, which he calls “sylvan," that is manifested by tropical forests and those that live with them. This mode of thought can provide an ethical orientation in these times of planetary human-driven ecological devastation that some call the “Anthropocene." He presents his work as “cosmic diplomacy."
How Forests Think, which has been translated into several languages, won the 2014 Gregory Bateson Prize and is short-listed for the upcoming 2018 Prix littéraire François Sommer. Eduardo Kohn's research continues to be concerned with capacitating sylvan thinking in its many forms. He teaches Anthropology at McGill University.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
WSRP 2017–18 Research Associate Avital Davidovich-Eshed, PhD (Bar Ilan University), Visiting Lecturer in Women's Studies and Judaism, delivers her talk, "Enclosed Gardens Revealed: The Concept of Virginity in Medieval Jewish Culture."
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Journalist and author E.J. Dionne, William H. Bloomberg Visiting Professor, delivers the 2017 Horace De Y. Lentz Lecture.
Dionne is a distinguished journalist and author, political commentator, and longtime op-ed columnist for The Washington Post. He is also a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a government professor at Georgetown University, and a frequent commentator on politics for National Public Radio, ABC’s “This Week,” and MSNBC. His most recent book, co-authored with Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, is One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
At the 2017 Diversity and Explorations Program (DivEx), Davíd Carrasco presents his talk, "Gifts from Mexico: Revitalizing Life Through the Day of the Dead Celebration". He describes one of the gifts from Mexico and Mexican's is the idea of convivencia, which he defines as "living together in order to give life the upper hand over death." He discusses three examples of convivencia that he has experienced and ends on the ways in which convivencia exists on our campus.
Davíd Carrasco is Harvard Divinity School's Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America, with a joint appointment with the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
DivEx is a three-day introduction to graduate programs at Harvard Divinity School that span religious and cultural divides to prepare ethical leaders to work in a complex world.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
As part of the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Speakers Series, Khenpo Sodargye speaks about developing inner peace. Khenpo Sodargye is the abbot and senior educator at the renowned Larung Buddhist Institute, the largest Buddhist academy of this kind in the world. Khenpo trained closely with Khenchen Jigme Phuntsok Rinpoche, one of the great luminaries of his generation. As a Tibetan lama, Buddhist scholar and teacher, prolific translator into Chinese, and modern Buddhist thinker, Khenpo Sodargye is renowned across Asia and the west for his interest in the integration of traditional Buddhist teachings with global issues and modern life.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Mark D. Jordan, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Christian Thought (HDS) and Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality (Faculty of Arts and Sciences), discusses his recent publication, Teaching Bodies: Moral Formation in the Summa of Thomas Aquinas. James Keenan, S.J. (BC) and David Decosimo (BU) serve as respondents.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
The world is currently facing the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II, and little substantive aid is forthcoming from Wealthy Western countries, who often politicize refugees as national threats. This panel discusses storytelling, advocacy, and activism with the understanding that nothing can replace personal encounter in re-framing our understanding of this global crisis.
Speakers: Anita Häusermann Fábos, Associate Professor of International Development and Social Change, Clark University; Cheryl Hamilton, director, International Institute of New England's Lowell office and creator of the "Suitcase Stories" series; U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo, multi-genre artist; and Ziad Reslan, graduate student, Harvard Kennedy School of Government and co-coordinator of the Middle East Refugee Service Initiative
Moderator: Diane L. Moore, director of the Religious Literacy Project and Lecturer on Religion, Conflict and Peace at Harvard Divinity School
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
As part of the ministry colloquium series Mohammad Darawshe speaks about the current challenges of and opportunities for building a shared society in Israel.
He is the director of planning, equality and shared society at Givat Haviva, the Center for Shared Society in Israel. Mohammad is an Arab with an Israeli Passport—a Muslim, Palestinian citizen of the State of Israel. Like 20 percent of Israel’s population, he is, as he puts it, “a child of both identities.” He brings an unexpected way of seeing inside the Middle Eastern present and future. Mohammad is considered a leading political analyst and expert on Jewish-Arab relations inside Israel.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panelists Jennifer Graber, University of Texas at Austin; Heather Curtis, Tufts University; and Amy Howe, Brown University discuss carceral punishment in relation to religion and the historical roots of US incarceration. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panelists Glenn Martin, JustLeadershipUSA; Kaia Stern, Harvard University; Rahsaan Hall, Massachusetts ACLU; Bev Williams, Criminal Justice Reform Campaign, GBIO; and Karlene Griffiths Sekou, Founder and Principal Consultant at The Dignity Project International, discuss carceral punishment in relation to activist strategies and the study of religion. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panelists Cornel West, Harvard Divinity School; Devin Singh, Dartmouth College; Michelle Sanchez, Harvard Divinity School; M. Shawn Copeland, Boston College; and Andre Willis, Brown University, discuss carceral punishment in relation to theology and humanities. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Willie Jennings, Yale Divinity School, opened the Christianity, Race, and Mass Incarceration Conference as the keynote speaker. The conference gathers scholars of various disciplines, activists, organizers, and formerly incarcerated persons to study carceral punishment, especially as it relates to questions of Christian thought and practice, and to provoke awareness and activism around incarceration in America. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
On October 12, 2017, alumni spoke about their experience participating in the protests at Charlottesville or who support this protest in their own context. These alumni, including Willie Bodrick II, MDiv ’14; Tracy Howe Wispelwey, MDiv ’12; and Jalane Schmidt, MDiv '96, AM ’05, PhD ’05, will share their observations in order to open up a larger conversation on the important topic of public voice. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Catherine Brekus, HDS Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America, discusses her recent publication, Sarah Osborn’s Collected Writings. David Holland (HDS) and Margaret Bendroth serve as respondents.
View the full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2017/10/16/sarah-osborn-collected-writings
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
This session of the fourth annual RPP Colloquium dinner series explores restorative justice, its spiritual dimensions, and the potential contributions of its approach to advancing sustainable peace in our communities and our world. The session features presentations by Fania Davis, J.D., PhD, Co-Executive Director, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY); and sujatha baliga, J.D., Director, Restorative Justice Project; Vice President, Impact Justice; Just Beginnings Fellow.
Fania Davis presents “The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice: Resources for Cultivating Peace in Our Communities,” and sujatha baliga delivers a talk entitled “Have You Been Angry Long Enough? Faith, Forgiveness, and Restorative Justice”. The event is moderated by Janet Gyatso, PhD, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies, Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs, Harvard Divinity School.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
This year's Dudleian Lecture is presented by Dr. Paul C.H. Lim, Associate Professor of the History of Christianity and Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
MDiv candidate Tim Gallati is studying experiences of “silence” in nature and contemplative practice with applications in virtual and augmented realities. This piece is titled "Retreat," and is the sound captured during the walk from Gallati's apartment in Central Square, through Cambridge, and into and within the retreat house of Society of Saint John the Evangelist. Headphones recommended. Read more here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2017/09/25/listening-ear-heart
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
Laura Dassow Walls, author of Henry David Thoreau: A Life and Richard Higgins, author of Thoreau and the Language of Trees to discuss Thoreau's life and work. Respondents include Barry Andrews, a Unitarian Universalist minister, who is the author of several books on Transcendentalism and a longtime participant in the Thoreau Society, and Terry Tempest Williams, author, conservationist, and activist who will be a writer-in-residence at HDS during the 2017–18 academic year.
This event took place on September 14, 2017 and is a part of a series of events to honor the life of Henry David Thoreau in the year of his 200th birthday.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
How do our views of land and landscape influence our religious imagination, and vice versa?
The panelists were: Matthew L. Potts, Associate Professor of Religion and Literature and of Ministry Studies; Charles M. Stang, Professor of Early Christian Thought, Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions; and Terry Tempest Williams, Writer-in-Residence.
Delivered on September 7, 2017, by Brad S. Gregory, Professor of History and Dorothy G. Griffin Collegiate Chair at the University of Notre Dame.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Women’s Studies in Religion Program (WSRP) Research Associates discuss the courses they'll be teaching during the 2017-18 academic year, and share their thoughts on the ethical responsibility of scholars to be engaged in the study of gender.
Each year, WSRP brings five scholars in gender from around the world to pursue research on women and religion and to enrich the experience of our students.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
On August 29, HDS Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy Cornel West delivered the 2017 Convocation address.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
Congratulations to the Harvard Divinity School class of 2017, who received their diplomas during the HDS Diploma Awarding Ceremony on May 25, 2017. David Price, MDiv ’17, gave the student address.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
The 2017 Multireligious Commencement Service was held on Wednesday, May 24, at Memorial Church. Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies Stephanie Paulsell was the faculty speaker.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
On the occasion of the bicentenary of the birth of the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, this presentation by Center for the Study of World Religions Visiting Fellow Sasha Dehghani provides an introduction to the life and writings of Bahá'u'lláh (1817–1892), with a focus on the principle of unity in its diverse forms of expression.
Bahá'u'lláh's teachings on unity have not only earned the appreciation of some of the leading thinkers across different religions and races, such as Leo Tolstoy, E. G. Browne, Muhammad Iqbal, Mahatma Gandhi, and W.E.B. Du Bois, but have also encouraged the Bahá'ís to strive toward peaceful and coherent models of community life, and enabled them to withstand oppression in a spirit of constructive resilience.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Harvard Divinity School Professor Harvey Cox delivers the talk, "Whatever Happened to Secularization?" The talk took place during HDS's bicentennial celebration and alumni reunion on April 29, 2017.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
Harvard President Drew Faust spoke during HDS's bicentennial celebration on April 28, 2017.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
HDS Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy Cornel West and Center for the Study of World Religions Visiting Scholar Sasha Dehghani delivered a talk, "Religion and Nonviolence: Past and Present." The discussion took place during the HDS bicentennial celebration and alumni reunion on April 29, 2017.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
Alumni/Alumnae Council Chairperson Christopher J. Hanson, MDiv ’10, moderated a discussion with this year's Gomes Honorees about their time at HDS, their views on the importance of School, and their work in the world. The panel was part of HDS's bicentennial celebration and alumni reunion on April 29, 2017.
This year, the council recognized the preacher and civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Charles Gilchrist Adams, B.D. ’64; the activist and educator Precious Rasheeda Muhammad, M.T.S. ’01; Mary E. Hunt, M.T.S. ’74, the feminist theologian and cofounder of the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual; and the scholar David Little, Th.D. ’63, formerly the T.J. Dermot Dunphy Professor of the Practice in Religion, Ethnicity, and International Conflict at HDS. The AAC also recognizes two non-alumni who had an outsized impact on HDS: Constance Buchanan, founding director of the Women’s Studies in Religion Program, and the late Buddhist scholar Robert H.L. Slater, the first director of the Center for the Study of World Religions.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
The panel "Violence and Justice: The Missing Piece in Our Anti-Poverty Agenda," was part of HDS's bicentennial celebration on April 28, 2017.
The panel was moderated by Jeffrey D. Sachs, world-renowned professor of economics, leader in sustainable development, senior UN advisor, bestselling author, and syndicated columnist. The panelists were Gary Haugen, CEO of the International Justice Mission and author, Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor and director, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, and Sheryl WuDunn, co-author of "A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity" and "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide."
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Tanenbaum CEO Joyce Dubensky and Tanenbaum’s Syrian Peacemaker Hind Kabawat will discuss Tanenbaum’s groundbreaking new book Peacemakers in Action: Profiles in Religious Peacebuilding Volume II.
The event will be moderated by HDS Senior Lecturer on Religious Studies and Education Diane L. Moore, director of the Religious Literacy Project.
Co-sponsored by the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School. With generous support from the Rev. Karen Vickers Budney, MDiv ’91, and Mr. Albert J. Budney, Jr., MBA ’74, and the El-Hibri Foundation.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Between 1970 and 1985, HDS changed from an almost exclusively male institution into a school with a majority of women students and a commitment to gender analysis. Panelists who propelled the women’s studies revolution follow its reverberations into the twenty-first century.
The panel was introduced by Ann Braude, director of the HDS Women's Studies in Religion Program. It was moderated by Margaret R. Miles, Bussey Professor of Theology at HDS, 1978–1996. The panelists were Katie Geneva Cannon, Annie Scales Rogers Professor of Christian Ethics, Union Presbyterian Seminar, Karen L. King, HDS Hollis Professor of Divinity, and Ping Yao, Professor of History and director of the Asian and Asian American Studies Program, California State University, Los Angeles.
The panel was part of HDS's bicentennial celebration on April 28, 2017.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Harvard Divinity School Dean David N. Hempton discusses the role of HDS at Harvard, as well as the role of religion and ethics at other Harvard Schools with Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean James Ryan, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, and Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria. The panel was part of HDS's bicentennial celebration on April 28, 2017.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
Harvey Cox, HDS Hollis Professor of Divinity Emeritus, discusses his recent publication, The Market as God.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Listen to Kwame Dawes read "To Buy a Pair of Shoes" for the last day of our #NationalPoetryMonth 2017 celebration. Originally published in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Summer/Autumn 2013.
Listen to Joanna Klink read "Feverish" for #NationalPoetryMonth. Originally published in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Spring/Summer 2009.
Listen to Kim Garcia read "Genesis Suite" for #NationalPoetryMonth. Originally published in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Autumn 2006.
Listen to Naomi Shihab Nye read "It's Good to Sit Down with a Racist Every Now and Then" for #NationalPoetryMonth. Originally published in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Winter/Spring 2012.
Dr. Anna Sun, HDS Berggruen Fellow and Associate Professor of Sociology and Asian Studies at Kenyon College gives a lecture based on her research project for the year, "The Logic of Prayer in Contemporary China."
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Listen to Tania Runyan read "Paul's Blinding of Elymas" for #NationalPoetryMonth. Originally published in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Summer/Autumn 2012.
Eliza Griswold, HDS’s inaugural Berggruen Fellow, delivers her talk, "New Poems and a Talk on Syrian Artists in Exile," on April 13, 2017, at the Center for the Study of World Religions at HDS.
Griswold, a poet, writer, and journalist, read from poems she's written this year at HDS, and present the blueprint of her Berggruen Fellowship project mapping Syrian artists, filmmakers, poets, and writers since the revolution began.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
HDS students Jiaying Ding, Sally Fritsche, and Chandra Plowden deliver sermons for the Billings Preaching Prize Competition during Noon Service on April 12, 2017.
The annual preaching competition is open to second- and third-year MDiv students.
In addition, Denson Staples, the Massachusetts Bible Society scripture reading winner, and Mandi Rice, the non-biblical text reading winner, each read their scripture passage
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Panel on Resistance and Complicity to Empire Through Political Movements panel featuring:
Zulfiyya Abdurahimova: PhD candidate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Nadeem Mazen: Cambridge City Councilor, first elected Muslim politician in Massachusetts
Haley Rogers: CAIR Massachusetts Director of Development and Community Relations
Mariam Durrani: Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Listen to Richie Hofmann read "Capriccio" for #NationalPoetryMonth. Originally published in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Summer/Autumn 2012.
At a time when the White House proposes to increase military spending by $54 billion while slashing funds for social programs at home and humanitarian aid abroad, we recall the warning of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that a nation spending more money on the military than on social uplift "is approaching spiritual death." What role can religious communities play today in resisting war and militarism and working for social and economic justice?
Speaker David Cortright, Director of Policy Studies and the Peace Accords Matrix, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame; Special Adviser for Policy Studies, Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame
Moderator and respondent J. Bryan Hehir, Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life, Harvard Kennedy School of Government; Secretary of Health Care and Social Services, Catholic Archdiocese of Boston
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Congratulations to the Stendahl Symposium awardees who submitted papers on the theme: “Resisting Hegemonies: Understanding Multiplicity in a World of Difference”
Denson Staples: "The Remembrance of God: Particularity, Universality, and Divine-Human Relations in the Qur'an"
Siobhan Kelly: "Savior Rhetoric in Transgender Celebrity"
James Ramsey: "Time, Sound, and the Margins: Theological Stick Figures of Kendrick and Coltrane"
Deborah Frempong: "Genres of Self: Locating the Human in Oyono's Houseboy and Sembene's Black Girl"
Professor Laura Nasrallah introduced the speakers, with Professor Cornel West responding to them.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Ousmane Kane, HDS Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society and Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, discusses his recent publication, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa.
Ali Asani (FAS), Khaled El-Rouayheb (NELC), and Fallou Ngom (BU) served as respondents.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Consciousness Hacking is a growing community interested in expanding the focus area of local design, science and tech talent to include contemplative frameworks. This event brings together experts in Neuro-Engineering, Meditation, Psychiatry, Self-Reflection Technology, and more. Speakers include Dr. Jeffrey Rediger, Dr. Andreas Mershin, Baruti KMT-Sisouvong, and Chris Berlin.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Dr. Tyler Roberts presents the 2017 Dudleian Lecture.
Dr. Tyler Roberts, Professor of Religious Studies at Grinnell College, presents the 2017 Dudleian Lecture.
Marx’s claim that premise of all criticism is the criticism of religion continues to shape critical projects today. It enables scholars of religion such as Bruce Lincoln to distinguish the study of religion from theology and other religious discourses and literary critics such as Stathis Gourgouris to distinguish the secular from the religious. But we are left, consequently, with impoverished notions of critique and of religion. Starting instead from Foucault, who dreamt of a criticism that “would multiply not judgments but signs of life,” and with special attention to Ted Smith’s political theology, “Signs of Life” considers how we might rethink the critical project with and not against at least certain forms of “religion.”
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, HDS Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity, discusses her recent publication, Congress of Wo/men: Religion, Gender, and Kyriarchal Power.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
The Islamic tradition and Muslim communities have rich and long legacies of teachings, practices, and precedents for prioritizing nonviolent approaches to conflict transformation.
Two leading scholar-practitioners discuss theological, spiritual, and practical resources for peace in Islamic scripture and tradition, historical cases, and implications for our contemporary world.
Dr. A. Rashied Omar speaks on “Justice and Compassion: Embodying the Core Values of Peacebuilding in Islam”
Afra Jalabi speaks on “In Search of the Lost Hero: The ‘Muslim’ as a Peace-Maker: Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Islamic Nonviolence and its New Possibilities”
Moderated by Prof. Jocelyne Cesari
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Iqbal Akhtar, Associate Professor, Florida International University, “The Indic Chronicle of Light from Zanibar”
Kim Wortmann, PhD Student, Harvard University, “Zanzibar and Oman: Ibadi Revival in an East Africa town”
Caity Bolton, PhD Student, Graduate Center CUNY, “Divine Science: Knowledge, Islamic Education and Development in Zanzibar”
Ahmed Sharif, PhD student, NYU, “Somalia, Sudan, and the rise of Scholar Politics in the ICU”
Panel chair: Kai Kresse, Columbia University
Texts, Knowledge, and Practice: The Meaning of Scholarship in Muslim Africa website: http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/islamafrica
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Zachary Wright, Associate Professor of History, Northwestern University Qatar Visionary Knowledge: Encounters with the Prophet in Islamic Africa, 18th Century to the Present
Khaled Esseissah, Ph.D. student, History Department, Indiana University-Bloomington The Ulama of Bilad Shinqiti (Mauritania) and their Roles in Disseminating Islamic Learning Outside Africa
Ahmed Chanfi, Senior Lecturer, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany Northeastern African `ulama' and Salafism in Mecca and Medina: The Case of the Ethiopian Born Shaykh Muhammad ʿAli Amin al-Jami and the al-Jamiyya Movement in Saudi Arabia
Dahlia Gubara, Assistant Professor, American University of Beirut Black Magic, White Magic, and the Man from Katsina
Panel chair: Oludamini Ogunnaike, College of William and Mary
Texts, Knowledge, and Practice: The Meaning of Scholarship in Muslim Africa website: http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/islamafrica
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Anthony Pinn, MDiv ’89, delivered the William James Lecture on March 9, 2017, at HDS. Pinn, the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of religion at Rice University, discussed “the problem soul.” Pinn calls it an important but underappreciated dimension in The Souls of Black Folk, one of the most well-known books by W.E.B. Du Bois.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Robert C. Neville, Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Theology at the Boston University School of Theology, gave the CSWR's Annual Comparative Theology Lecture on March 6, 2017.
Professor Neville discussed the nature of comparative theology and the different approaches one could take: being grounded in a home tradition versus using a comparative approach to inform one’s own ideas about religion.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Robert C. Neville, Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Theology at the Boston University School of Theology, gave the CSWR's Annual Comparative Theology Lecture on March 6, 2017.
Professor Neville discussed the nature of comparative theology and the different approaches one could take: being grounded in a home tradition versus using a comparative approach to inform one’s own ideas about religion.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
On March 2, 2017, Rev. Jim Mitulski, Mark D. Jordan, and Lynne Gerber explore the profound challenges AIDS has made to Christian theologies, both liberal and conservative, and the constructive possibilities of an AIDS Theology of Liberation.
The Rev. Jim Mitulski has been engaging AIDS theologically, liturgically, and pastorally since the first days of the epidemic. He served as pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco from 1986 to 2000 where he was deemed the “compassion of the Castro.” Rev. Mitulski is currently the Interim Senior Pastor of the Congregational Church of Needham.
Mark D. Jordan is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Christian Thought and a Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality.
Lynne Gerber is a Visiting Scholar in the Women’s Studies in Religion Program.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
This discussion will consider social scientific research shedding light on religion’s role in advancing cooperation within groups, as well as its complex role in competition and cooperation among groups.
Speakers: Omar Sultan Haque, MD, PhD, MTS, Program in Psychiatry and the Law; Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University; and Joseph Henrich, PhD, Professor, Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard; codirector of the Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition and Culture and the Cultural Evolution of Religion Consortium, University of British Columbia.
Moderator and Respondent: Jeff Seul, JD, MTS '97 HDS, LLM '01 HLS, Lecturer on the Practice of Peace, Harvard Divinity School; cochair, Peace Appeal Foundation.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Larycia Hawkins, Abd el-Kader Visiting Faculty Fellow at University of Virginia, delivered the annual Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice on February 23, 2017.
Hawkins discussed the meaning of solidarity in the context of political and theological spaces. Drawing largely from Christian theology and political theory and focusing on racism in the U.S., she explored how these ideas must be enacted practically and not remain theoretical works in the academy.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
WSRP Research Associate Changshen Shi (Ching-ning Wang) delivers the talk, "The Making of A Modern Female Chan Teacher: Gender, Religion, and Modernity."
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Abdulkadir Hashim, Senior Lecturer Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies Praise and Prestige: Significance of Elegiac Poetry among Muslim Intellectuals in the Late Twentieth Century Kenya Coast
Lidwien Kapteijns, Elizabeth Kimball Kendall and Elisabeth Hodder Professor of History, Wellesley College, and Alessandra Vianello, Affiliated Researcher at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), ʻIlm and the Common People: Sufi Vernacular Poetry and Islamic Education in Brava, c. 1890–1925
Hassan Mwakimako, Associate Professor, Department of Religious and Philosophical Studies, Pwani University Kenya, “Swahili Islamic Manuscripts; the Friday khutba of Shaykh Al-Amin b. Ali al-Mazrui, 1890-1947.”
Kai Kresse, Associate Professor Columbia University, ‘Enduring relevance. Sample of Oral Poetry on the Swahili Coast
Panel chair: Chanfi Ahmed, Humboldt Universität
Texts, Knowledge, and Practice: The Meaning of Scholarship in Muslim Africa website: http://hds.harvard.edu/texts-knowledge-practice-africa
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Iqbal Akhtar, Associate Professor, Florida International University, “The Indic Chronicle of Light from Zanibar”
Kim Wortmann, PhD Student, Harvard University, “Zanzibar and Oman: Ibadi Revival in an East Africa town”
Caity Bolton, PhD Student, Graduate Center CUNY, “Divine Science: Knowledge, Islamic Education and Development in Zanzibar”
Ahmed Sharif, PhD student, NYU, “Somalia, Sudan, and the rise of Scholar Politics in the ICU”
Panel chair: Kai Kresse, Columbia University
Texts, Knowledge, and Practice: The Meaning of Scholarship in Muslim Africa website: http://hds.harvard.edu/texts-knowledge-practice-africa
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Ousmane Kane, Alwaleed Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society at Harvard Divinity School delivers a lecture titled “History, Movement, and the Spread of Islamic Scholarship in Muslim Africa.”
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Divinity School professors have long taught ethics in the Yard. Beginning early in the 1880s, as HDS pioneered the analysis of "social problems" using the case method, Francis Peabody taught an undergraduate course on urban ills. Students called it "drainage, drunkenness, and divorce."
Today teaching has to address other ethical anxieties. Despite claims of universal liberation, many of them have to do with sexuality and gender.
Professor Mark Jordan discusses teaching sexual ethics at Harvard in the age of hook-up apps, fluid identities, and "affirmative consent."
Mark D. Jordan is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Christian Thought at Harvard Divinity School and Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Martin Doblmeier, Cornel West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy, Harvard Divinity School, and project director Andrew Finstuen discuss Doblmeier's documentary on Reinhold Niebuhr.
K. Healan Gaston, Lecturer on American Religious History at Harvard Divinity School moderated the discussion.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
For over 20 years, January 16th has been recognized annually in the United States as Religious Freedom Day.
Diane Moore, director of the Religious Literacy Project, and Dudley Rose, associate dean for Ministry Studies discuss religious freedom as a principle based not on shared ancestry, culture, or faith but on a shared commitment to liberty.
Moderated by Aisha Ansano, MDiv ’16, ministerial intern at First Church in Boston.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Alastair Ager, Sahar Ali, Nahuel Arenas, and Manal Omar discuss the humanitarian crisis of resource distribution in Sudan.
Stephen Prothero moderated the discussion.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Jean Duff, Rudelmar Bueno de Faria, and Katherine Marshall discuss the humanitarian crisis of infectious disease through the lens of Ebola and HIV/AIDS.
Stephen Prothero moderated the discussion.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
The the symposium on Religious Literacy and Humanitarian Action opened on January 19, 2017 with a plenary panel featuring Alastair Ager, Rudelmar Bueno de Faria, and Azza Karam.
Opening remarks are offered by HDS Dean David N. Hempton, Diane L. Moore, director of the Religious Literacy Project at HDS, and Stephen Prothero, Professor of Religion at Boston University.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Vinya Ariyaratne, Nobuyuki Asai, Tara Gingerich, and Susan Hayward discuss the humanitarian crisis of a natural disaster.
Diane L. Moore moderated the discussion.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Fadi Hallisso, Azza Karam, Anwar Khan, and Tahir Zaman discuss the humanitarian crisis of the Syrian conflict.
Diane L. Moore moderated the discussion.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Etty Terem, Associate Professor, Rhodes College, “The New Mi`yar of al-Wazzani: Redefining Islamic Orthodoxy and the Making of Modern Morocco”
Ismail Warscheid, Research Fellow CNRS, “A West African Approach to Islamic Law? Sahelo Saharan Legal Writing in Post Classical Malikism”
Sarah Eltantawi, Assistant Professor, Comparative Religion and Islamic Studies. The Evergreen State College ”The influence of Northern Nigeria’s encounter with European colonialism on the development of Islamic law.”
Matthew Steele, PhD Student, Harvard University, “The Khalil and Commentary: Making of Legal Literary Canon in West Africa”
Panel chair: Zachary Wright, Northwestern University Qatar
Texts, Knowledge, and Practice: The Meaning of Scholarship in Muslim Africa website: http://hds.harvard.edu/texts-knowledge-practice-africa
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Mauro Nobili, Assistant Professor of History, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign A Nineteenth-Century Political Project: Nūḥ b. al-Ṭāhir’s Tārīkh al-fattāsh
Noah Salomon, Associate Professor of Religion, Carleton College, “Rethinking Scripturalism: Ethics, Knowledge, and Textual Practice in Contemporary Sudan”
Oludamini Ogunnaike, Assistant Professor of Religion, College of William and Mary, “Philosophical Sufism in the Sokoto Caliphate: The Case of Shaykh Dan Tafa”
Farah El-Sharif, PhD Student, Harvard University Sunnah as “Open Source” in Hājj ʿUmar al-Fūti’s Kitāb al-Rimāh
Panel chair: Charles Hallisey, Harvard Divinity School
Texts, Knowledge, and Practice: The Meaning of Scholarship in Muslim Africa website: http://hds.harvard.edu/texts-knowledge-practice-africa
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Journalists and scholars discussed the Black Lives Matter movement during a symposium organized by the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School in collaboration with Boston University.
The panelists were: Adelle Banks, of Religion News Service; Lilly Fowler, of Religion and Ethics Newsweekly; Nathan Schneider of the University of Colorado, Boulder; Wendi Thomas, a 2016 Nieman Fellow; and Diane Winston, the the Knight Center Chair in Media and Religion at the University of Southern California, Annenberg.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
A roundtable discussion with journalists and scholars during a symposium organized by the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School in collaboration with Boston University.
Panelists were: Diane Moore, Harvard Divinity School; Stephen Prothero, Boston University; and Laurie Goodstein, The New York Times.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Journalists and scholars discussed Donald Trump and evangelicals during a symposium organized by the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School in collaboration with Boston University.
The panelists were: Michelle Boorstein, The Washington Post, Jason DeRose, National Public Radio News; Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Princeton University; Debra Mason, Missouri School of Journalism; and Jeff Sharlet, Dartmouth College.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
New York Times religion reporter Laurie Goodstein delivers the keynote address during the Religious Literacy and Journalism Symposium at Harvard Divinity School.
Opening remarks are offered by HDS Dean David N. Hempton, Diane L. Moore, director of the Religious Literacy Project at HDS, and Stephen Prothero, Professor of Religion at Boston University.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Journalists and scholars discussed refugees, immigration, and national security during a symposium organized by the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School in collaboration with Boston University.
Panelists were: Michelle Boorstein, The Washington Post; Stewart Hoover, UC Boulder College of Media, Communication and Information; and Angela Zito, Center for Religion and Media at New York University.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Religions and the Practice of Peace Colloquium co-sponsored with the conference "Pluralism Project @ 25: Diversity and Inclusion in the American Crucible."
This event was held on September 22, 2016. The featured speakers were Sarbpreet Singh, playwright, commentator, and poet, and J. Mehr Kaur, graduate of Smith College with a BA in theatre and an emphasis in directing. Mr. Singh and Ms. Kaur were joined by the actors Benjamin Gutman, Sydney Grant, Monica Giordano, and Michelle Finston, who performed an excerpt from Mr. Singh’s play "Kultar’s Mime."
Thanks to the generous support from the El-Hibri Foundation.
This monthly public series, convened by HDS Dean David N. Hempton, brings together a cross-disciplinary RPP Working Group of faculty, experts, graduate students, and alumni from across Harvard University and the local area to explore topics and cases in religions and the practice of peace.
Part of the Religions and the Practice of Peace Colloquium Dinner Series, this event was held on October 6, 2016, and featured 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee, Liberian peace activist, trained social worker, and women’s rights advocate.
The conversation was moderated by David N. Hempton, Dean of Harvard Divinity School and Ann Braude, director of the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at HDS.
Co-sponsored by the Women's Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. With generous support from the Provostial Fund for the Arts and Humanities at Harvard University, the Susan Shallcross Swartz Endowment for Christian Studies, and the El-Hibri Foundation.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
WSRP Research Associate Gwynn Kessler delivers the talk, "The Crooked and the Straight: Queer Theory and Biblical Interpretation."
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Grassroots relationship building across divides has emerged as a recommendation from scholars, practitioners, and religious peacebuilders in many of our RPP conversations.
While recent political and social turmoil in the US has led to much pain, partisanship, and anger, it also presents an opportunity for individuals and communities in this country to demonstrate and model a more constructive path forward.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake will discuss the challenges of leading a city in today's turbulent racial and political climate.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Professor Guy Stroumsa delivered the 2016 Albert and Vera List Fund for Jewish Studies Lecture on the topic "Christianity and the God of Israel: Henri Bergson, Simone Weil, Emmanuel Levinas."
Professor Stroumsa is Martin Buber Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Professor Emeritus of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions, University of Oxford.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
WSRP Research Associate Rosalyn LaPier delivered the talk, “People, Plants, and Purity: Blackfeet Women of the O’kan.”
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
In what ways does piety and the contemplative life encourage or discourage social change activism? How do liberal and conservative religious traditions integrate or divide the inner life and work for social justice. In what ways can social change activism be a spiritual practice itself?
Join with a diverse panel of religious leaders in exploring how different religious traditions balance inner spiritual development with the mandate to work for economic and social justice for all.
Panelists include: Claire Schaeffer-Duffy, cofounder of the Saints Francis & Thérèse Catholic Worker; HDS professor Cheryl Giles; Celene Ibrahim, Muslim chaplain at Tufts University and HDS alum; David Jaffe, rabbi, author, and founder of the Kirva Institute; and Dudley Rose, HDS associate dean for ministry studies.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
In 1939, Rev. Waitstill Sharp, a Unitarian minister, and his wife, Martha, a social worker, agreed to travel to Prague to investigate reports of a humanitarian crisis. A new documentary by Ken Burns and Artemis Joukowsky, Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War, tells the riveting story of the Sharps’ work in Europe during World War II.
In this discussion, panelists Artemis Joukowsky, HDS professor Kevin Madigan, Amber Moulton of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, and Sana Mustafa, an activist and Syrian refugee place the Sharps’ efforts in a larger historical context of modern refugee crises. The panel was was moderated by HDS professor Dan McKanan.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Charles Stang, HDS Professor of Early Christian Thought, discusses his recent publication, Our Divine Double. Gregory Shaw (Stonehill College) and Benjamin Dunning (Fordham University) serve as respondents.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Arvind Sharma, Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, discusses the recent tensions between the academic and faith communities.
This is the second Hindu View of Life Annual Lecture.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
In what ways does piety and the contemplative life encourage or discourage social change activism? How do liberal and conservative religious traditions integrate or divide the inner life and work for social justice. In what ways can social change activism be a spiritual practice itself? Join with a diverse panel of religious leaders in exploring how different religious traditions balance inner spiritual development with the mandate to work for economic and social justice for all.
Panelists include: Claire Schaeffer-Duffy, cofounder of the Saints Francis & Thérèse Catholic Worker; HDS professor Cheryl Giles; Celene Ibrahim, Muslim chaplain at Tufts University and HDS alum; David Jaffe, rabbi, author, and founder of the Kirva Institute; and Dudley Rose, HDS associate dean for ministry studies.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Join Karen Tse for this special bicentennial colloquium on “leading from within,” human rights as ministry, and how to leverage the HDS experience to effect global change.
After years as a public defender and human rights lawyer, Karen Tse, MDiv ’00, heard the call to ministry and enrolled at HDS. While a student, she was inspired to combine her vocations and found International Bridges to Justice (IBJ), a global nonprofit that works to end torture as an investigative tool through early access to counsel. Today, IBJ is active in over 40 countries around the world, training scores of police, prosecutors, and judges.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
What are the moral questions that underlie issues of money in politics, corporate power, and wealth in democracy? What resources do we find in our various religious traditions to help us approach these questions with thoughtful consideration, moral insight, action, and hope? This panel discussion brings together leaders, scholars, writers, and activists of many faith traditions to discuss questions at the intersection of democracy, faith, money, and morals.
Panelists are Sojourners founder, Jim Wallis; Cambridge City Councillor, Nadeem Mazen; president of American Promise, Jeff Clements; recent HDS alum Tajay Bongsa; the Rev. Mariama White-Hammond; and Rabbi Aryeh Klapper. The event and panel was moderated by HDS Professor Dan McKanan.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Cities across the northeast are ranked as some of the least Bible-minded cities in America. Both inside and outside the church, people in our region have a lot of issues with the Bible.
This September, Rev. Anne Robertson, humanist author Tom Krattenmaker, and Fr. Warren Savage are traveling to New Haven, Albany, Providence, and Boston to help us talk about it in a series of town-hall style discussions about the Bible. Learn more at massbible.org/experiment.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
WSRP Research Associate Taylor Petrey delivers his talk, “The Mormon Homosexual: Caring and Curing from the 1970s to the Present.”
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Sandeep Das (tabla) and Rajib Karmaker (sitar) perform music from India.
Remarks by Anne Monius, Professor of South Asian Religions.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
For twenty-five years, the Pluralism Project at Harvard has studied the changing religious landscape of the United States. Join us as we mark this milestone with “The Pluralism Project at 25: Diversity and Inclusion in the American Crucible,” a conference featuring conversations about the critical challenges and opportunities religious diversity poses today.
In this panel co-sponsored by the El Hibri Foundation and moderated by Diana L. Eck, Parvez Ahmed, Imam Hassan Selim, Taymullah Abdur-Rahman, Celene Ibrahim discuss Islamaphobia in the interfaith age.
“The Pluralism Project at 25: Diversity and Inclusion in the American Crucible” is part of Harvard Divinity School Bicentennial celebrations. From August 2016 through May 2017, HDS will celebrate 200 years of excellence in the study of religion and look ahead to its future. Learn more at http://hds.harvard.edu/about/hds-bicentennial.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
For twenty-five years, the Pluralism Project at Harvard has studied the changing religious landscape of the United States. Join us as we mark this milestone with “The Pluralism Project at 25: Diversity and Inclusion in the American Crucible,” a conference featuring conversations about the critical challenges and opportunities religious diversity poses today.
In this panel, Preeta Bansal, Patrice Brodeur, Kathryn Lohre, and Melissa Nozell discuss pluralism and the practice of peacebuilding.
“The Pluralism Project at 25: Diversity and Inclusion in the American Crucible” is part of Harvard Divinity School Bicentennial celebrations. From August 2016 through May 2017, HDS will celebrate 200 years of excellence in the study of religion and look ahead to its future. Learn more at http://hds.harvard.edu/about/hds-bicentennial.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
For twenty-five years, the Pluralism Project at Harvard has studied the changing religious landscape of the United States. Join us as we mark this milestone with “The Pluralism Project at 25: Diversity and Inclusion in the American Crucible,” a conference featuring conversations about the critical challenges and opportunities religious diversity poses today.
In this keynote, Imam Khalid Latif and Rabbi Yehuda Sarna lead a dialogue on religious diversity and inclusion.
“The Pluralism Project at 25: Diversity and Inclusion in the American Crucible” is part of Harvard Divinity School Bicentennial celebrations. From August 2016 through May 2017, HDS will celebrate 200 years of excellence in the study of religion and look ahead to its future. Learn more at http://hds.harvard.edu/about/hds-bicentennial.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
For twenty-five years, the Pluralism Project at Harvard has studied the changing religious landscape of the United States. Join us as we mark this milestone with “The Pluralism Project at 25: Diversity and Inclusion in the American Crucible,” a conference featuring conversations about the critical challenges and opportunities religious diversity poses today.
In this panel, Zaheer Ali, Chloe Breyer, Nancy Khalil, and Harpreet Singh discuss challenges of diversity and inclusion.
“The Pluralism Project at 25: Diversity and Inclusion in the American Crucible” is part of Harvard Divinity School Bicentennial celebrations. From August 2016 through May 2017, HDS will celebrate 200 years of excellence in the study of religion and look ahead to its future. Learn more at http://hds.harvard.edu/about/hds-bicentennial.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
For twenty-five years, the Pluralism Project at Harvard has studied the changing religious landscape of the United States. Join us as we mark this milestone with “The Pluralism Project at 25: Diversity and Inclusion in the American Crucible,” a conference featuring conversations about the critical challenges and opportunities religious diversity poses today.
In this panel, Anurima Bhargava, Greg McGonigle, Janet Penn, Brendan Randall, Neelima Shukla-Bhatt discuss religious diversity on campuses.
“The Pluralism Project at 25: Diversity and Inclusion in the American Crucible” is part of Harvard Divinity School Bicentennial celebrations. From August 2016 through May 2017, HDS will celebrate 200 years of excellence in the study of religion and look ahead to its future. Learn more at http://hds.harvard.edu/about/hds-bicentennial.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Former directors, residents, and students of the Center for the Study of World Religions discuss the different eras of the Center’s history of studying religion.
Speakers include Khytie Brown, PhD student in the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University with a primary field in Religion; William A. Graham, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, Murray A. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies (FAS), and Member of the Faculty of Divinity at HDS; Anne E. Monius, Professor of South Asian Religions at HDS; David Mozina, Assistant Professor, Department of Theology, Boston College; and Peter Slater, fellow emeritus, Professor of Theology, Trinity College at University of Toronto.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
On August 30, former HDS Dean George Rupp delivered the 2016 Convocation address. Harvard University President Drew Faust offered welcoming remarks.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
A panel of HDS faculty launches the bicentennial of HDS by discussing the outcome of the 200-year history of the School: a multireligious divinity school.
The panel includes Dean David N. Hempton, Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs Janet Gyatso, Professor Diana Eck, Professor David Lamberth, Professor Jacob Olupona, Professor Stephanie Paulsell, and Professor Ahmed Ragab.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
WSRP Research Associates share their thoughts on the ethical responsibility of scholars to be engaged in the study of gender.
Religions and the Practice of Peace (RPP) Colloquium presents:
Dr. R. Scott Appleby, Dean of Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, presented "Integral Human Development and the Moral Imagination: Implications for Religion, Development, and Peacebuilding," on January 28, 2016.
The event was moderated by HDS Dean David N. Hempton, Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies and John Lord O'Brian Professor of Divinity.
With generous support from the El-Hibri Foundation.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Congratulations to the Harvard Divinity School class of 2016, who received their diplomas during the HDS Diploma Awarding Ceremony on May 26, 2016. Erez Golan, MTS ’16, gave the student address.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Graduating HDS students, their families, faculty, and staff participated in the 2016 Multireligious Commencement Service on May 25, 2016. Kimberley C. Patton, Professor of the Comparative and Historical Study of Religion, gave the faculty address.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Helmut Koester, John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Emeritus, passed away on New Year’s Day, 2016, at age 89.
Koester was a leading scholar in the history of Christianity, New Testament exegesis and theology, the religions of the ancient Roman world, and archeology.
HDS faculty and friends remembered Professor Koester during a memorial service on May 6, 2016.
The Buddhism and Race Conference organized by Harvard Buddhist Community at Harvard Divinity School addresses issues surrounding race and racism within the Buddhist community. Activists, sangha leaders, community members, and students join together to learn from one another and share justice-oriented teachings and training.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Marla Frederick, Professor of African and African American Studies and of Religion, discusses her recent publication, Colored Television: American Religion Gone Global.
Catherine Brekus, Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America at HDS, and Nimi Wariboko, Walter G. Muelder Professor of Social Ethics at Boston University School of Theology, serve as respondents.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
In this year’s Stendahl Symposium, four Harvard Divinity School students present their papers centered around the broad topic of “conversations across religious boundaries.”
The Stendahl Symposium has become an annual HDS tradition in memory of former professor Krister Stendahl, who tirelessly sought to repair fractions between Jews and Christians, supported the ordination of women, and pushed for the full inclusion and participation of women and minority voices in academia and interfaith work.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Dr. Marc Gopin presents “The Ethical and Spiritual Foundations of Judaic Conflict Resolution Practice and Peacebuilding: A Thirty Year Journey.”
Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou presents “Orthodox Christianity, Humanitarianism, and Peacebuilding: Crisis, Sustainability, Human Security."
Jocelyne Cesari mediates the conversation.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Vasudha Narayanan discusses the role of paradox in the Vaishnava/ Hindu traditions during the CSWR’s inaugural Hindu Way of Life Lecture.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
HDS students Angie Thurston and Casper ter Kuile and HDS alumnus Derek van Bever discussed the growing numbers of the religiously unaffiliated in America, and innovations in spiritual practice both within and beyond traditional religious institutions.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne discusses the role of religion in politics and the 2016 elections.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Jill Abramson, AB ’76, lecturer at Harvard University and former executive editor of The New York Times delivers the keynote address at the 2016 Dean’s Leadership Forum.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Following the award ceremony on April 7, 2013 for the Peter J. Gomes STB '68 Memorial Honors, the alumni honorees formed a panel of speakers for the final installment of this year's Divinity Dialogues.
The panelists were Cynthia L. G. Kane, MDiv '96, Lieutenant Commander in the Chaplain Corps of the United States Navy; Valarie K. Kaur, MTS '07, activist, filmmaker, and lawyer; Betsee Parker, MDiv '85 an Episcopal priest whose philanthropy supports education, community development, and public health in Africa; and Dean of the Howard University School of Divinity, Alton B. Pollard III, MDiv '81.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
On the second day of the "Spirit of Sustainable Agriculture" conference, speakers at the plenary panel were Michelle Velez, Lauren O’Brien, Hisham Moharram, Sebastian Kretschmer, Joan Armon, Chara Armon.
“The Spirit of Sustainable Agriculture” aims to bring together farmers, religious and spiritual leaders, and academics, respectively, to join in a robust and stimulating discussion about the spirit of sustainable agriculture, delineating its past, celebrating and investigating its present, and theorizing its future.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
The opening keynote address of the “The Spirit of Sustainable Agriculture” conference was delivered by Nigel Savage, president and CEO of Hazon.
“The Spirit of Sustainable Agriculture” aims to bring together farmers, religious and spiritual leaders, and academics, respectively, to join in a robust and stimulating discussion about the spirit of sustainable agriculture, delineating its past, celebrating and investigating its present, and theorizing its future.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Martin Luther did more than just serve as a catalyst for the Reformation. By nailing his 95 theses to the door of a Wittenberg, Germany, church in 1517, he became the world's first mass media figure and launched a new form of theological writing, argues University of St. Andrews Professor Andrew Pettegree.
Andrew Pettegree is Professor Modern History at the University of St Andrews, and director of the Universal Short Title Catalogue. He is the author of a number of books on the Reformation and, more recently, the history of communication, including Reformation and the Culture of Communication, The Book in the Renaissance, and The Invention of News. In 2015, The Invention of News won the Goldsmith Prize of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Dr. Leah Gunning Francis discusses “A Boy, A Wrestler and the Racialized Imaginiation: (En)Countering Narrative in Ferguson and Beyond.”
Rev. Dr. David Anderson Hooker presents on “Transforming Historical Harms: Performing Historical and Spiritual Narratives to Transform Race, Privilege, Fear, and Faith.”
The event will be moderated by Catherine Brekus, Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America.
Co-sponsored by the Racial Justice and Healing Initiative at Harvard Divinity School. With generous support from the El-Hibri Foundation.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies and associate dean for faculty and academic affairs, discusses her recent publication, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet.
David Eckel, Professor of Religion and Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Religion at Boston University, and Mark D. Jordan, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Christian Thought at HDS, serve as respondents.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
This lecture and performance by visiting artists features musicologist Dr. Hilary Finchum-Sung, Seoul National University, and musicians Lee Tae-Baek, Yi Ji-Young, Won Wan-Chul, Lee Suk-Joo, and Lim Hyeun-Bin.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
After five centuries of marginalization under the Chosŏn dynasty, Korean Buddhism appeared ready for a return to the mainstream of Korea’s religious culture at the beginning of the twentieth century. Donald Baker, Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, explores how modernization, particularly the modern concept of religion introduced by Christians, impacts the transition.
This year's Ahnkook Lecture on Korean Buddhism is part of the series "Religious Identities in Asia," co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of World Religions, the Korea Institute, and the Asia Center.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
Marianne Moyaert explores the opportunities, challenges, and problems with liturgy in comparative theology the 2015–16 Comparative Theology Lecture.
Marianne Moyaert is the chair of comparative theology in the Faculty of Theology at VU Amsterdam and guest lecturer of post-holocaust theology in the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at KU Leuven.
This lecture took place on March 3, 2016.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
The texts of the world's major religions have impact throughout all of human experience. Join professors from across Harvard as they discuss those texts during an event coinciding with the launch of HDS's new online course, "World Religions Through Their Scriptures."
The course is Harvard Divinity School's second massive open online course offered through the edX platform. Led by HDS Senior Lecturer Diane Moore, director of the Religious Literacy Project, the course will be taught by six faculty members and launched March 1, 2016.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Associate Professor of New Testament Giovanni Bazzana discusses his recent publication with two respondents. The respondents will be Shaye J.D. Cohen, Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University; and Lawrence Wills, Ethelbert Talbot Professor of Biblical Studies at the Episcopal Divinity School.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Climate change is a stark reminder of our thoroughgoing interconnectedness. Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi and Dr. Julie A. Nelson explore Buddhist resources that can help us to care for the earth and all of its inhabitants, and how these resources can be brought to bear in the most effective ways.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.
"Leadership is a calling. Finding that calling is essential to all of us."
Bill George, Senior Fellow at Harvard Business School and author of Discover Your True North: Becoming an Authentic Leader discusses business and religion with Derek van Bever, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and Emily Click, Assistant Dean for Ministry Studies and Field Education at Harvard Divinity School.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Associate Professor of African American Religions Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús discusses her recent publication, Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion.
Mark D. Jordan, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Christian Thought, HDS; Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Professor, Anthropology and American Studies, Tufts University; and Suzanna Walters, director of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, and Professor of Sociology, Northeastern University serve as respondents.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
WSRP 2015–16 Research Associate Susanna Drake (Macalester College), Visiting Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Early Christianity, delivers her talk, "Veiled Bodies, Unveiled Texts: Early Christian Practices of Un/covering."
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Ahmed Ragab, Richard T. Watson Assistant Professor of Science and Religion at HDS, discusses his recent publication with three respondents.
The three respondents will be: Shigehisa Kuriyama, Reischauer Institute Professor of Cultural History, Professor and Chair of the Dept. of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Professor in the Dept. of History of Science at Harvard University; Roy Mottahadeh, Gurney Professor of Islamic History at Harvard University; and Charles Stang, Professor of Early Christian Thought at HDS.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Alumni of the Diversity and Explorations Program discuss their experiences at HDS.
DivEx is a three-day introduction to graduate programs at HDS that span religious and cultural divides to prepare ethical leaders to work in a complex world.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Musicians Pato Banton and Antoinette Hall lead attendees in songs about the power of love. Angie Thurston, MDiv '16, gave the introduction.
Matthew L. Potts, Assistant Professor of Ministry Studies at HDS, discusses his recent book, Cormac McCarthy and the Signs of Sacrament: Literature, Theology, and the Moral of Stories.
Amy Hollywood, Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian Studies at HDS, and Shelly Rambo, Associate Professor of Theology at Boston University, serve as respondents.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
In this panel, Grace Jill Schireson, Melissa Blacker, Robert Caper, Andrew Olendzki, Stuart A. Pizer, Shinzen Young, and Polly Young-Eisendrath discuss human freedom.
Presented by Enlightening Conversations, "Enlightenment: Idealized or Real" is the second program in a series in which psychoanalysts and Buddhist teachers speak openly and honestly about the nitty-gritty of human liberation.
In this panel, Paul Fulton, Josh Bartok, Chris Ives, Malcolm Slavin, and Frank Summers discuss the ethical foundations of human freedom.
Presented by Enlightening Conversations, "Enlightenment: Idealized or Real" is the second program in a series in which psychoanalysts and Buddhist teachers speak openly and honestly about the nitty-gritty of human liberation.
In this panel, Robert Caper, Lewis Kirshner, Robert Langan, Lama Willa Miller, and Robert Waldinger discuss disillusionment as a path to enlightenment.
Presented by Enlightening Conversations, "Enlightenment: Idealized or Real" is the second program in a series in which psychoanalysts and Buddhist teachers speak openly and honestly about the nitty-gritty of human liberation.
J. Albert Harrill, professor in the Department of Classics at The Ohio State University provides a critical reassessment of the apostle's life in its historical context.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Growing numbers of people are finding meaningful community in places outside of church. Learn how the CEO of CrossFit, Greg Glassman, thinks of his work as church, perhaps even religion.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Examining Islamic peace teachings and paradigms within a larger comparative context, Dr. Funk will explore both the distinctiveness of Islamic approaches to peacemaking and ways in which Islamic experiences of conflict and peace mirror those of other communities. Particular attention will be given to keynote themes emphasized by Muslim peacebuilders, and to examples of various ways in which Islamic precepts have been applied to support restorative justice, nonviolent social justice advocacy, and interfaith understanding.
Dr. Nathan C. Funk is associate professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada and co-author of Islam and Peacemaking in the Middle East and Peace and Conflict Resolution in Islam: Precept and Practice.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
John B. Carman, Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Religion Emeritus at HDS, speak about his recently co-authored book Christians in South Indian Villages, 1959–2009: Decline and Revival in Telangana.
Sathianathan Clarke, Bishop Sundo Kim Chair for World Christianity and Professor of Theology, Culture and Mission at Wesley Theological Seminary, and Christopher Duraisingh, Visiting Professor in Applied Theology at the Episcopal Divinity School, will serve as the respondents.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
On November 4, 2015, Harvard Divinity School hosted its annual Theological Education Day. Dean David N. Hempton and Angela Counts, Director of Admissions, welcomed participants.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
On November 4, 2015, Harvard Divinity School hosted its annual Theological Education Day. The day featured many panel discussions, including this one with students and staff describing life at HDS.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Harvard Divinity School Professor Matthew Potts addresses prospective students at the Diversity and Explorations Program (DivEx).
DivEx is a three-day introduction to graduate programs at HDS that span religious and cultural divides to prepare ethical leaders to work in a complex world.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
On November 4, 2015, Harvard Divinity School hosted its annual Theological Education Day. The day featured many panel discussions, including this one on ministry studies and field education program.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
At the 2014 Diversity and Explorations Program (DivEx), Harvard Divinity School MDiv candidate and previous DivEx participant David Waters describes his journey to Harvard, shares why he loves HDS, and suggests why DivEx participants might love it too.
DivEx is a three-day introduction to graduate programs at HDS that span religious and cultural divides to prepare ethical leaders to work in a complex world.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
On November 4, 2015, Harvard Divinity School hosted its annual Theological Education Day. The day featured many panel discussions, including this one on admissions and financial aid.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
On November 4, 2015, Harvard Divinity School hosted its annual Theological Education Day. The day featured many panel discussions, including this one that introduced participants to the school's MDiv, MTS, ThM, and PhD degree programs.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Kathleen S. Cummings, associate professor of American Studies and the Director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at University of Notre Dame, delivers the 2015–16 Dudleian Lecture. Respondents to the lecture are Ann Braude (Harvard Divinity School) and James T. Kloppenberg (Harvard University).
Cummings' teaching and research center on the history of women and American religion and the study of U.S. Catholicism. Her first book, New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholicism in the Progressive Era, was published in 2009 with the University of North Carolina Press.
The Dudleian Lecture is Harvard’s oldest endowed lectureship was established in 1750 by the bequest of Judge Paul Dudley (1675-1751).
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Kathleen S. Cummings (University of Notre Dame) delivers the 2015–16 Dudleian Lecture. Respondents to the lecture are Ann Braude (Harvard Divinity School) and James T. Kloppenberg (Harvard University).
Cummings' teaching and research center on the history of women and American religion and the study of U.S. Catholicism. Her first book, New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholicism in the Progressive Era, was published in 2009 with the University of North Carolina Press.
The Dudleian Lecture is Harvard’s oldest endowed lectureship was established in 1750 by the bequest of Judge Paul Dudley (1675-1751).
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Indigenous Peoples in this hemisphere are now in the greatest cultural crisis since 1492 with the real threat of losing their original languages. What are the implications of this loss that is primarily the result of planned cultural genocide perpetuated for over a century?
Richard A. Grounds, PhD, delivers the Dana McLean Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice at the Center for the Study of World Religions.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Internationally acclaimed spiritual leader, Marianne Williamson, shares her insight on the creation of a beloved community through the use of political and ethical externalization.
This lecture was delivered at Harvard Divinity School on October 14, 2015.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
The Rev. Liz Walker, MDiv '05, speaks on the theme of "risk" at the first installment of this year's distinguished alumni speaker series, Divinity Dialogues.
Besides serving as a minister and pastor at Roxbury Presbyterian Church, Walker is also a humanitarian aid worker, the founder of My Sister’s Keeper, and a journalist and former anchor for WBZ-TV in Boston.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
A reflection by MDiv candidate Rod Owens at Noon Service, hosted by the HDS Racial Justice and Healing Initiative, September 9, 2015.
A reflection by MDiv candidate Shrestha Singh at Noon Service, hosted by the HDS Racial Justice and Healing Initiative, September 9, 2015.
A reflection by MTS candidate Rachel Deitch at Noon Service hosted by HDS Humanists on September 23, 2015.
A reflection by MTS candidate Ingrid Norton at Noon Service hosted by HDS Humanists on September 23, 2015.
In the second Divinity Dialogues event of the 2014–15 academic year, Sejal H. Patel, MTS '14, and Suzanne Skees, MTS '92, discuss the role of care in their work.
Patel is a San Francisco-based writer, criminal defense lawyer, and former federal prosecutor who litigated the exoneration of a Boston-area man who served 10 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Skees works for the Skees Family Foundation, which supports innovative self-help programs in the U.S. and developing countries in education and job-creation.
Rev. Susan Hayward, MDiv '07, directs the United States Institute of Peace's religious peacebuilding program, which seeks to recognize religious dynamics in violent conflict and develop strategies for engaging religious actors and factors to transform drivers of violence and build sustainable peace. Hayward will discuss the new volume that she has co-edited, Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding: Illuminating the Unseen, offering reflections on the opportunities and challenges women religious leaders across faiths and regions face as they navigate complex conflicts and power dynamics in institutions to accomplish their goals.
Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.
Women’s Studies in Religion Program (WSRP) Research Associates share their thoughts on the ethical responsibility of scholars to be engaged in the study of gender.
Professor Caner Dagli, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, delivers a lecture as part of the Junior Fellowship Series "Religion and Nature" at the Center for the Study of World Religions.
Professor Jocelyne Cesari discusses her new book, The Awakening of Muslim Democracy, with two respondents.
His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, spoke to a capacity crowd at Harvard's Memorial Church on Thursday, March 26, 2015.
The Karmapa's talk, "Caring for Life on Earth in the Twenty-first Century," was sponsored by HDS, the Harvard College Freshman Dean's Office, and the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation. His two-day visit to Harvard Divinity School also included meetings with students and blessings for his many Boston-area followers.
Speaking to a capacity crowd inside Harvard's Memorial Church on November 19, 2014, former President Jimmy Carter enlightened those in attendance to the driving factors behind his latest book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power.
During his talk, Carter charged the hundreds who came to hear him speak to stop the harm being done to women and girls around the world.