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. 

September 30, 2021

On October 17-18, GreenFaith is organizing “Faiths 4 Climate Justice: A Global, Multi-Religious Action.” Individuals and organizations around the globe are participating in this effort to have their voices heard on issues of climate justice.

From the event site: Two weeks before global climate negotiations, people of diverse religions will rise to send a message: destroying the planet is against our religions.

SUNDAY, 17 OCTOBER
At temples, mosques, and churches around the globe, we’ll call for...

September 27, 2021

Welcome to a new season of Spotlights. This podcast began around a year ago, and since we’re starting our second year, this episode features our host, Sam Mickey, reflecting on the year and looking ahead toward the year to come. He talks about the aim, scope, and themes of the podcast, while also inviting suggestions for any new developments or potential interviewees. He also mentions the Religion and Ecology Early-Career Scholar reading group (REECS), which was launched on episode 17, featuring Russell Powell and Timothy...

September 23, 2021

This shmita year (5782), the Deep Water Initiative is launching Project Hakhel – an open invitation for people to creatively reflect upon how religion and ecological engagement can intersect. They are asking that individuals submit creative projects that demonstrate how they are being inspired to take ecological action during the shmita year.

From the project site:
We have [also] just entered a shmita year (5782), otherwise known as a Sabbatical Year, which occurs just once every seven years.  Shmita quite literally means...

September 20, 2021

This week’s episode of Spotlights is a remix of two previous episodes, featuring guests who work at the intersection of Buddhism and ecology. First, we hear from Dekila Chungyalpa, Director of the Loka Initiative at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She discusses her personal journey into the world of Buddhist environmentalism. Then we hear from Chris Ives, PhD, Professor of Religious Studies at Stonehill College. He discusses his teaching and research in Buddhist environmental ethics, specifically with a view to...

September 16, 2021


Next Tuesday, September 21, Katherine Hayhoe's new book. Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, will be released from Simon and Schuster. Advance reviews are calling it a must-read for our troubled times.

From the Publisher's site:
Called “one of the nation's most effective communicators on climate change” by The New York Times, Katharine Hayhoe knows how to navigate all sides of the conversation on our...

September 13, 2021

This week’s episode of Spotlights is another short clip from our full episode with Dr. Todd LeVasseur, visiting assistant professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. We discuss the importance of integrating activism into academia in order to facilitate viable responses to the climate emergency. We reflect on this issue for academia in general and for the academic field and activist force of religion and ecology in particular.

You can...

September 9, 2021

We here at the Forum are excited to announce that we will soon be releasing a new section on our website: a religiously-engaged Ecojustice resource hub. 

This resource hub will offer some general information on the topic, but will be organized primarily by religious tradition. We'll be offering tradition-specific lists of, and links to, print resources, multimedia, engaged projects, official statements, and more. 

We anticipate the release of this new resource sometime before the end of this month...

September 6, 2021

This week’s episode of Spotlights is a clip from our full episode with Dr. Todd LeVasseur, visiting assistant professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Reflecting on his recently published book, Climate Change, Religion, and our Bodily Future (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), he discusses the profound importance of religious studies and academia getting their responses to the climate emergency right. 

You can watch the clip below or listen to it here...

September 1, 2021

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It's almost time for the Faith Action on the United Nations Development Goals launch webinar we told you about in the blog a couple of weeks ago!

The event will take place tomorrow, September 2, at 11am EST. It will include remarks from the leaders of the involved organizations (David Hales, Iyad Abu Moghli, William Swing, Mary Evelyn Tucker), a presentation on several of the engaged projects, and a live demo of the interactive database. 

This virtual event is free and open to...

August 30, 2021

This week’s episode of Spotlights features Dr. Todd LeVasseur, visiting assistant professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, where he is also the director of the Sustainability Literacy Institute. We discuss his recently published book, Climate Change, Religion, and our Bodily Future (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), including topics related to posthumanism, queer ecologies, ecological animisms, indigenous knowledges, material feminisms, deep adaptation, and more. We also...