Harvard Divinity School

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

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

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

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, 2023 Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/

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, 2022 Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/

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 explor

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, 2023 Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/ Full trans

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/

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, 2023 Learn 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, 2022 Learn more: hds.harvard.edu

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, 2022 Learn more: https://www.peripheriesjournal.com/

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.

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