Blog
Welcome to the new Yale Forum Blog!
We will be sharing a variety of original content including interviews, reviews, reports from the field, new and enhanced resources on the Forum website, content from our new video podcast series, FORE Spotlights, and much more.
Check back every Tuesday and Thursday for new content.
For Black History Month, we'll be highlighting a few outstanding black scholars in the field, starting with our own Yale family. Today, we'd like to shine a light on the work of Willie Jennings.
Willie Jennings is the Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School. His main areas of interest and expertise include liberation theologies, cultural identities, and theological anthropology. Some of his recent work includes research into the interplay of religion, race, and the...
Next Tuesday, February 6, at 12pm EST, St. Paul University will be holding a special online conversation between our own Mary Evelyn Tucker and Forum advisor Heather Eaton. The topic will be “Being an Ecological Leader,” and the event is hosted by the St. Paul University School of Leadership, Ecology, and Equity as part of their “Being a Leader: Lunchtime Conversations” series.
From the event site:
Join our inspiring conversation with Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker: Confucian scholar and global leader in religious responses to ecological...
The field of Syntropic agriculture was established by Swiss farmer and researcher Ernst Götsch. He began his research into alternative forms of agriculture in the 1970s in Switzerland and Germany, and it was catalyzed by one question:
“Wouldn’t we achieve greater results if we sought ways of cultivation that favor the development of plants, rather than creating genotypes that support the bad conditions we impose on them?”
In the 1980s he moved to Brazil and began extensive agricultural experiments using a new...
Before we dive into specific applications of the concept of Syntropy, I'd like to spend a bit more time diving into what the force of Syntropy actually is than we did in our introductory post for the year.
Frankly, there isn't a lot out there to guide us in our exploration of this topic. Even Wikipedia has very little to say,...
We wanted to highlight a number of upcoming online events. There is certainly an abundance of rich offerings to kick off the year that you can access no matter where you are in the world. From Thomas to Teilhard to trees, these webinars promise to engage and inform, including one on the increasingly important subject of ecological civilization.
...
Well we've laid 2023 to rest and are ready to move bravely and gently forward into a new phase. We won't leave Hope behind–it will sit with us as we move through the joys and challenges of the months to come. But for this new year, we're going to shift gears here on the Forum blog and bring you a new theme and focus for our exploration. The theme for 2024 is Syntropy (or Syntrophy*).
The term was coined by Buckminster Fuller, and his understanding of it was based on the thought and work...
For the last 12 months you've heard what I and certain figures (ie, Krista Tippet, May Sarton) have to say about the increasingly important topic of Hope. So, to close out our year-long exploration, today I bring you some reflections from the rest of the Forum team.
I asked them each: What brings you Hope? What is something that gives you the spark to go on in the face of our challenging climate truths and global picture? They were welcome to write something or share a poem, image, video, or other expression. Here...
Joyous Solstice to one and all!
As we shared back in October, for our 25th anniversary year, the Forum is releasing a collection of rare audio recordings of Thomas Berry in conversation with Brian Thomas Swimme. We will release one part per month. In October we brought you the project Introduction by Mary Evelyn Tucker and Part 1: Where are We and How did We Get Here?, with an introduction by...
In a few weeks, we'll be wrapping up our blog theme for the year: Hope. But we know this holiday season is proving quite difficult for many. And others are grieving at not seeing the result they felt was necessary for Earth's survival from the COP28 meetings; at the situations in Israel/Palestine, the Ukraine and Russia, and beyond; and at the loss from this year's extreme weather events. We grieve as a planet, and we grieve in our local communities at the hate rising up in places where we never thought it possible, like...
Today in the blog, we'll be sharing information on the Call to Action that has emerged from the COP28 Faith Pavilion. Portions of this post come from the from the recent International Partnership on Religion and Sustainable Development and UNEP Faith for Earth updates from Dubai on faith activity at COP28, as well as from the Call to Action document itself.
The “Faith for Climate: A Call to Action” of the COP28 Faith Pavilion is an expression of hope rooted in reality. We call attention to the extreme urgency of this moment. The climate science...