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 ...
Mar 22, 2022•1 hr 37 min
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, Sen...
Mar 13, 2022•59 min
“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/
Mar 13, 2022•1 hr 28 min
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 p...
Mar 13, 2022•1 hr 32 min
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 connect...
Mar 10, 2022•21 min
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
Mar 07, 2022•58 min
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,...
Mar 07, 2022•1 hr 7 min
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 o...
Mar 07, 2022•1 hr 26 min
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 o...
Mar 01, 2022•1 hr 5 min
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 pa...
Mar 01, 2022•55 min
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 Pennsy...
Feb 23, 2022•1 hr 20 min
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/
Feb 23, 2022•1 hr 1 min
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/
Feb 23, 2022•1 hr 2 min
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...
Feb 23, 2022•58 min
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 enjo...
Dec 15, 2021•24 min
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 cha...
Dec 03, 2021•1 hr 28 min
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...
Dec 02, 2021•1 hr 14 min
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...
Dec 01, 2021•1 hr 26 min
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 ra...
Nov 30, 2021•1 hr 27 min
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 sa...
Nov 30, 2021•1 hr 26 min
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...
Nov 30, 2021•1 hr 31 min
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/fantast...
Oct 27, 2021•20 min
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 com...
Jul 20, 2021•40 min
"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 Literat...
Jul 06, 2021•26 min
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...
Jun 17, 2021•30 min
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...
Jun 10, 2021•27 min
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 ...
Jun 04, 2021•21 min
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 Fe...
May 18, 2021•1 hr 26 min
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
May 10, 2021•1 hr 34 min
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...
Apr 27, 2021•1 hr 23 min
