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.
This week, tens of thousands of people streamed into the city of Glasgow for COP 26, the 2021 United Nations climate change conference. Among them were scores of religious groups and faith leaders.
There were many statements released by religious groups and figures in the lead-up to COP26. Some of the most impactful were the joint statement released this summer by Pope Francis, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, which urged global...
This week, the Spotlights podcast welcomes Dr. Mirei Takashima Claremon, a global citizen, behavioral scientist, and cross-cultural consumer insights expert based in Los Angeles. She discusses her work leading the Behavioral Sustainability movement, reflecting on the limits of analytical thinking for ecology and sustainability. Emphasizing the importance of holistic and cross-cultural perspectives, she also talks about the role that Shintoism and Buddhism play in her life and work.
You can follow her blog and connect...
This week, the Forum released our new religiously-engaged Ecojustice Resource Hub! Our team has been working hard this year to bring this project to fruition, and we're very pleased to finally unveil it. See Monday's announcement here.
The resource hub offers:
A landing page with links to background information on, and histories of, the movement Several bibliographies, tailored to the users needs Tradition-specific lists of environmental justice-related...
This week's episode of Spotlights is a clip from our interview with Norman Wirzba, PhD, the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology at Duke University, and Senior Fellow at Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics. He talks about a life of rootedness and the limits of what is “enough,” reflecting on his new book, This Sacred Life: Humanity's Place in a Wounded World (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Details for the full episode are here.
Watch this episode below, or listen to it here.
An...
On
October 25 - November 2, Stanford University will be holding the Contemplation by Design Summit, an interactive online event encompassing talks, live meditations, workshops, and more.
From the event website:
Contemplation By Design is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, campus-wide program cultivating resilience, well-being, wisdom, compassion, and sustainable, ethical, purposeful service. Summit participants will have the opportunity to cultivate perspective, meaningful purpose, and contemplative practices that refresh...
This week's episode of Spotlights features Norman Wirzba, PhD, the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology at Duke University, and Senior Fellow at Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics. He discusses his new book, This Sacred Life: Humanity's Place in a Wounded World (Cambridge University Press, 2021), which gives a deep philosophical and religious articulation of humanity's identity and vocation by rooting people in a symbiotic, meshwork world that is saturated with sacred gifts. We reflect on numerous topics...
In honor of the celebration of Indigenous Peoples' Day this week, we wanted to highlight some of the Indigenous resources available around the Forum site.
Our Indigenous section can be found here. We provide two overview essays: one by our co-founder and co-director, John Grim, and one by University of Michigan professor, Kyle White, who is Potawatomi and a member of the Citizen...
Enjoy this clip from the episode of Spotlights featuring Matthew David Segall, PhD, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Reflecting on his new book, Physics of the World-Soul: Alfred North Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology (SacraSage Press, 2021), he describes the creative and alluring power of worldly divinity in Whitehead's cosmology. You can find details about the full episode here.
Watch...
This week, the Faith Plans for People and Planet site was launched, an exciting project organized by WWF and FaithInvest. The project involves faith groups around the world creating step by step plans on how they will take concrete action to help the planet.
From the Faith Plans site:
Faith groups are developing Plans looking at how they can use their assets, resources and influence to drive practical action on the environment over the next seven to 10 years. This initiative is inspired by the success...
This episode of Spotlights features Matthew David Segall, PhD, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He discusses his new book, Physics of the World-Soul: Alfred North Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology (SacraSage Press, 2021), describing the context and key concepts of Whitehead's process philosophy. We reflect on Whiteheadian contributions to debates on a variety of topics, including panpsychism,...