Harvard Divinity School

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 l

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

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 spiritua

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 colla

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 rec

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 c

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-Resid

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?

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.

"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. Tran

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