Interfaith Lecture Preview

MAX ZAMBRANO – STAFF WRITER

As made evident from his profession, the James T. and Berta R. Laney Professor in Moral Leadership at Emory University, the Rev. Robert M. Franklin Jr. is someone who believes morality is achievable across all aspects of life, even leadership.

At 1 p.m. Monday, July 12 in the Amphitheater, Franklin, who was the director of religion at Chautauqua from 2014 to 2017, will present his lecture, “Does Moral Leadership Still Matter? How American can Repair,” the first of the Week Three Interfaith Lecture Series, themed “The Ethical Foundations of a Fully Functioning Society.”

Franklin is also the author of Moral Leadership: Integrity, Courage, Imagination, along with several other works. 

“I am motivated by the opportunity to achieve our moral possibilities as a nation, to build bridges of understanding and cooperation between diverse communities, and to enable individuals to achieve their highest good,” Franklin said. “One of the things I love about Chautauqua Institution is its long track record of achievement in promoting each of these.”

In this book, Franklin writes that the United States is in crisis, and the way out is through moral leadership; he proposes a model for readers to use. 

“Robert’s timely book … is a guidebook for how to live in the world and culture that is evolving around us,” said Director of Religion Maureen Rovegno. “He will thoughtfully and appropriately set the stage for the important conversation of the week.”

Moral leadership consists of “intellectual and ethical integrity, a vision and commitment to the public good, and personal investment in a transformative community,” according to the book’s synopsis. 

Franklin has served in several leadership roles himself, such as president emeritus at Morehouse College in Atlanta, the only school in America founded in dedication to developing African American men, according to Franklin’s website. 

During 2020, Franklin ran to fill the remainder of the late Georgia Representative John Lewis’ term. He made it to the runoff election, where he lost to Kwanza Hall. 

In his Interfaith Lecture, Franklin said he wants to address three topics: the moral leaders who inspire people today, what they inspire people to do, and what people will do to make a difference in the world.

“I will talk about moral agency as a responsibility for each one of us,” Franklin said. “But also, I would like to invite people to think about becoming moral leaders who serve the common good. Moral leaders are people who inspire us and guide us to become better versions of ourselves, while holding us accountable for doing so.”

Franklin does not believe that moral leadership has to come from personal goodness or religious piety, he said in a recent Emory News Center article. Rather, he said, moral leadership comes from those searching for a common good and inviting others to join. 

Raised Christian in a Black church and by his mother and grandmother, Franklin used to think these traits were specific to his religion. 

“Later, I discovered that the truths that inspired me were not particular, but rather universal,” he said.

Now, he said, he explores how God is present in other traditions.

“My faith journey is an ongoing conversation with the creator and sustainer of meaning and love,” he said. 

MAX ZAMBRANO – STAFF WRITER

When it comes to death, religion and drugs, Gary Laderman is the man with the answers.

“Laderman has become the foremost ‘death expert’ in American life,” according to a Dec. 14, 2020, Religion News Service article, after describing an 8-year-old Laderman’s dismissal of a rabbi’s advice to not think about death, which he was told after his grandfather died. 

At 1 p.m. Wednesday, July 7 in the Amphitheater, Laderman will present his lecture, “Faith in Drugs: America’s Religious Future,” the closing Interfaith Lecture for Week Two’s theme, “New Frontiers: Exploring the Future of Religion in America.”

Laderman is the Goodrich C. White Professor of American Religious History and Cultures at Emory University in Atlanta. He has always been interested in death, which led to his fascination with religion, but his journey researching and learning about drugs is more recent.

“My scholarly interests in writing a book about religion and drugs emerged later in my career, after I had written a bit on topics like the history of death and funerals in America, religion and popular culture, and religious diversity, and certainty well after I received my tenure,” Laderman said.

He began teaching a class called “Sacred Drugs” at Emory a few years ago — one of the key points of his journey, he said. The others were an essay on LSD and American spirituality, and the chapter “Medicine” in his book Sacred Matters: Celebrity Worship, Sexual Ecstasies, the Living Dead, and Other Signs of Religious Life in the United States.

I’m hoping to get folks to reconsider their understanding of what religion means and how that term is applied in American life.”

Gary Laderman, Goodrich C. White Professor of American Religious History and Cultures, Emory University

In this class, Laderman covers a variety of psychoactive drugs and said he enjoys learning with his students.

“My favorite things to teach are usually those topics that really strike a chord with them, like religion or the pharmaceutical industry; or the history of coffee; or psychedelics, death anxiety and religion,” he said. 

Laderman said, in a Nov. 10, 2020, Emory Report article, that both drugs and religion can help people escape daily life and drive questions about the meaning of life. 

About 300 students typically enroll in the class, he said.

“I love the class and am aware of the impact it has on students, which is tremendously fulfilling,” Laderman said.

Now, Laderman is writing a book with the same name as his Emory class.

Director of Religion Maureen Rovegno said she thought Laderman would be perfect for Week Two’s theme. 

“I asked a friend from Emory to describe Gary,” Rovegno said. “His response was that, ‘Gary is an exceptional, lively, informed and made-for-Chautauqua type speaker, who does very interesting work on contemporary religion and the spiritual habits of millennials.’ Gary will bring the Series’ conversation to a fitting and interesting closure.”

For his lecture, Laderman will hone in on two broad points. 

“On the one hand, I’m hoping to offer an alternative take on America’s religious future by looking at the connections between religious life and the consumption of drugs,” Laderman said. “That is a little far out, perhaps too far out for some people to even entertain, but, on the other hand, I’m hoping to get folks to reconsider their understanding of what religion means and how that term is applied in American life.”

MAX ZAMBRANO – STAFF WRITER

Not everyone would be impassioned by both science and religion. Yet they are Margarita Simon Guillory’s beloved areas of expertise.

For the last seven years, she has been in the field of digital religion, where she looks at ways religiosity and emerging technologies are intersecting.

“I didn’t even know that was a thing until I met people like Heidi Campbell (professor of communications at Texas A&M) who is a pioneer of the subfield,” Guillory said. “It really allows me to hone in on two passions of mine.”

At 1 p.m. Tuesday, July 6 in the Amphitheater, Guillory will present her lecture, “To Boldly Go: Technological Frontiers and the Changing Landscape of American Religion,” part of Week Two’s Interfaith Lecture Series, “New Frontiers: Exploring the Future of Religion in America.”

With a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Emory University and a doctoral degree in religious studies from Rice University, Guillory is now associate professor of religion and African American studies at Boston University. 

“I look at the ways in which many Americans, particularly (of) African-American descent, are engaging with forms of technology and new forms of media to express religious identity,” she said.

She is currently finishing a book, Africana Religion in the Digital Age, where she focuses on Black Americans’ use of digital gaming, social media and mobile applications to articulate religious identities.

“Religiosity is not necessarily on its deathbed in this country. People are just practicing differently.”

MARGARITA SIMON GUILLORY
Associate professor of religion and African American studies, 
Boston University

Guillory said people always try to engage in some sort of religiosity, but because of    COVID-19, people now use new digital tools as they become available or necessary. She said new technology usually impacts culture, including religion, in some way.

“You cannot have these wonderful digital tools and expect people to practice religion the same,” she said. “The pandemic is my proof. That’s my data.”

Guillory said numbers show some churches have seen a decrease in in-person attendance during the pandemic, but an increase in online attendance. 

“Religiosity is not necessarily on its deathbed in this country,” she said. “People are just practicing differently.” 

This new way of practicing religion will be part of her lecture today. 

“I’m going to use the ‘frontier’ metaphor as a lens to look at this relationship between American religiosity and technological advancement,” she said.

As a professor, Guillory likes to both teach and learn from her students.

“When I enter that classroom, I make myself vulnerable,” she said. “I am not just the disseminator of knowledge, but I am also on the receiving end. I expect to receive something from my students.”

She said discussions and interactive lectures help students feel comfortable talking with her. This is a style she picked up during her nine years as a high school science teacher.

One thing she learns every semester from her students is to be open to new things, which she said keeps her mind young. 

“They taught me to not be so stagnant, and be malleable and flexible in my thinking and my approach and how I study,” she said. 

In her first visit to Chautauqua, Guillory is looking forward to sharing her thoughts with a community of open-minded learners. She also expects to learn something from others while here. 

“I think I’m most excited about what I also receive in that rich and historic place,” she said. 

MAX ZAMBRANO – STAFF WRITER

When she was 9 years old, the Rev. Katharine Rhodes Henderson learned about the Holocaust, or as she put it, “the evil that people can do to each other.”

As she continued to learn, she was particularly inspired by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor whose anti-Nazism led to his execution.

“The idea is to stand up, to resist evil,” Henderson said. “Maintaining the status quo isn’t what we’re called to do as Christians.”

At 1 p.m. Monday, June 5 in the Amphitheater, Henderson will present her lecture, “Living Between Precarity and Promise,” the first of three Interfaith Lectures based on Week Two’s theme, “New Frontiers: Exploring the Future of Religion in America.”

Henderson is the president of Auburn Theological Seminary, a 203-year-old multifaith leadership development and research institute based in New York City. She has served as president there since 2009 and is in her final months as president. Afterward, she’ll go on sabbatical and explore possibilities while working with faith and justice, she said. 

Her father was a professor at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where Henderson was raised during the civil rights movement. She frequently attended marches and would end up singing at services in Black churches.

“Faith is not only sitting in a pew on a Saturday or Sunday, it’s getting up and taking faith to the streets,” she said.

Additionally, Henderson is the author of God’s Troublemakers: How Women of Faith Are Changing the World.

“I’m very interested in how people of faith and moral courage get into ‘good trouble,’ as (the late Senator) John Lewis would put it,” Henderson said. 

“These are places where people of faith and moral courage need to focus their energies and attention as we think about building the world and building the future.”

Katharine Henderson
President, 
Auburn Theological Seminar

Broadly, Henderson said people of faith and moral courage are responsible for building a more equitable, just and compassionate world.

In today’s times, she sees that as fighting for democratic principles, against authoritarian forces and white supremacy. 

She is inspired, encouraged and influenced by grasstop and grassroot leaders alike. 

“What I see is a web of connections and extraordinary, selfless work on behalf of others and on behalf of the work of justice,” she said. 

During COVID-19, she said, her work at Auburn was not greatly impacted in terms of technology because it is a national institute that is well-adjusted to remote work. She said they have actually been able to expand all over the country, and one of their largest events of the year, a gala fundraiser called Lives of Commitment, which usually drew 600 in-person attendees, welcomed several thousand guests online in 2020. 

She said the same is true for other organizations, and she knows of synagogues and churches in New York City that have expanded membership globally. 

However, numbers of deaths from COVID-19 have been challenging, she said.

“Many of the people we work with who are leaders of congregations or communities have had to learn how to meet the personal needs of people who are dying and their families at a distance,” she said. “It’s very hard to do that when you can’t hold a person’s hand when they’re dying.”

This grief is shared among people of all religions, and people need to grieve, she said. To her, life shouldn’t rush back to “normal.”

“It has been a time of multiple pandemics,” Henderson said. “Not just the COVID-19 pandemic, but the racial reckoning pandemic, the economic and equity pandemic, and as a world, the climate change pandemic.” 

For her lecture, Henderson will focus on how society stands emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on white Christian nationalism, religious freedom, race and climate change. 

“These are places where people of faith and moral courage need to focus their energies and attention as we think about building the world and building the future,” she said.

Henderson said she will share stories of her own experiences at Auburn and from people around the world doing this work. 

Coming out of the July 4 weekend and looking ahead to the nation’s 250th anniversary in five years, Henderson wants people to think about the future of their dreams. She plans to have some calls to action, or an action agenda, about the steps needed to get there.

“None of us is a silent partner,” she said. “We’re all partners in creating the world that God intends.”

MAX ZAMBRANO – STAFF WRITER

To understand China and life, Robin Wang believes Taoism holds many answers.

Taoism is an ancient Chinese philosophy now practiced around the world. Taoists focus on harmonizing with the natural world through meditation practices similar to that in Buddhism and Hinduism. 

“I want to make the connection of how we can understand ancient wisdom and then living a flourished life in the 21st century,” Wang said.

At 1 p.m. Wednesday, June 30 in the Amphitheater, Wang will discuss Taoism in her lecture, “The Dao/Tao of Transcending: Yinyang Rhythm, Body Cultivation, and a Case of Religious Practice in China Today,” part of the Week One Interfaith Lecture Series, “21st Century Religion in China: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?”

Wang is a philosophy professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She is the author of YinYang: The Way of Heaven and Earth in Chinese Thought and Culture and several other books and academic journal articles.

Taoism is a foundation, or root, of Chinese culture, Wang said, influencing all aspects of life — from medicine to art to cooking. She said Taoism can answer philosophical questions like the origin of the universe, what things are made of, and how things change. 

She said learning “suppleness,” the ability to adapt to new situations, is an important aspect of Taoism.

“A way to think about it is how bamboo blows in the wind,” she said. “It is resilience that will never break.”

Suppleness is what’s currently driving Wang in her professional and personal life. She said it’s about searching for truth and practicing goodness.

“Personally, I see it as being a mother,” she said. “How should you guide your children? Be a teacher. How do you help the next generation grow? You don’t have a fixed mindset, but you have a growth mindset.”

“I want to deconstruct this kind of bias about Chinese and Asian women. There is a mystique — people may think they are soft or submissive. I want to see how females play a role in today’s Chinese religion.”

Robin Wang, philosophy professor, Loyola Marymount University

COVID-19 is a key example of how humans deal with uncertainty, Wang said. 

“Uncertainty is a living condition,” she said. “How should we go about it?”

Wang recently finished teaching a summer course on rituals and meditation.

In one assignment, she had students develop a 15-minute meditation exercise instead of writing a paper or taking a test. 

She said young students need a social network to enjoy life, something that was interrupted because of the pandemic. 

“Through this meditation, they created this space between themselves and others in the world,” she said.

She sees meditation as an important exercise for anyone, describing it as a fasting of the mind.

“Meditation is training for attention,” she said. “Attention is a mental muscle. How should we train it? Exercise it, and then bring it to perform certain tasks with efficacy.”

Wang also looked at ways rituals impact all parts of life, including worship, architecture, weddings, family, healing and health, food and sacrifice. She said each culture has its own version of performing rituals.

“Ritual is social grammar — it ties society together,” she said.

In her lecture, she will first describe YinYang rhythm by looking at its origin and key purpose. She said YinYang may appear simple, but she wants people to learn its complex features.

“Everything is interrelated,” she said. “You cannot have one without the other.”

Wang said to understand China, people should understand YinYang.

“YinYang is the key to unfolding Chinese religion and culture,” she said. “It’s a cultural DNA.”

In the second part of the lecture, she will discuss the human body and its connection to transcendence, she said.

“The body is a physical form, but also there is a soul connecting with this physical form,” she said.

In the third and final part of her lecture, Wang will share stories of female Taoists, specifically ones training to become religious leaders. 

“I want to deconstruct this kind of bias about Chinese and Asian women,” she said. “There is a mystique — people may think they are soft or submissive. I want to see how females play a role in today’s Chinese religion.”

In addition, Wang hopes people take away some knowledge about Taoism.

“I think it’s good to let people learn something about this particular practice,” she said. “I want the world to know these people.”

MAX ZAMBRANO – STAFF WRITER

It wasn’t until graduate school that Fenggang Yang realized the importance of religion. He was raised atheist and didn’t follow any religious tradition.

“Even my family tradition didn’t care much about religion,” he said.

Yang was particularly interested in Greek philosophy in college, and wrote his bachelor’s thesis on the notion of logos, which deals with human reason and universal intelligence. After realizing most philosophers reference God, he wrote his master’s thesis on God in Western philosophy. Through this intellectual pursuit, he found faith. 

At 1 p.m. Tuesday, June 29 in the Amphitheater, Yang will discuss religion in post-1949 China (which is when the country officially became the People’s Republic of China) in his lecture, “The Changing Religious Landscape in Modernizing China,” part of the Week One Interfaith Lecture Series, “21st Century Religion in China: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?”

Yang, a sociology professor at Purdue University, said his lecture would focus more on sociological work rather than theological. He is also the founding director of the Center on Religion and the Global East, which “is dedicated to advancing the social scientific study of religion in East Asian societies, East Asian diasporas, and religions originated in East Asia that are spread around the world,” according to its mission statement. 

His personal spiritual journey was entangled with his career pursuit, Yang said. Before following his spiritual path, he simply was interested in logos and philosophy. Yang was in his late 20s, in 1989, when the Tiananmen Square incident and June 4 massacre occurred in Beijing. 

He was in the U.S. at this time, but it still changed his perspective. 

“That triggered my serious pursuit in Christianity as a faith,” he said. “It’s really after that I prayed, and God became real to me, so I converted.”

Through Christianity and the Gospel of John, Yang spotted a familiar word: logos.

“Logos is with God, and logos is God,” he said. “ ‘Wow,’ I said, ‘since college I’ve been pursuing this logos. Finally, I know who is logos.’ ”

Around this same time, Yang said, his parents became Christian. He finds his father’s conversion particularly interesting because he was a lifelong Chinese Communist Party member. Yang said he has interviewed many people and discovered many older, and younger, people have turned to Christianity in China. 

“This is a great awakening happening in China,” he said.

Yang’s lecture will focus on this religious shift. He said it is also based on two books he has published, Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule and Atlas of Religion in China: Social and Geographical Contexts. 

The first book took Yang 10 years to write, he said, after many visits and surveys in different places in China. In the second book, Yang said he used surveys and census data to draw religious maps, such as the distribution of Buddhism, or how many mosques, Protestant churches and Catholic churches are in China, for example. 

His lecture will broadly cover the different religions, but he said will focus more on how religions have survived and thrived under Chinese communism. He said it is possible that China’s Christian population will outnumber the America’s in the next decade.

“How could this be possible, given the suppressive, or repressive, regime?” he said. “That is the main thing I will try to explain. I will try to offer some stories and a general landscape, and as a sociologist, I can try to offer some explanation.”

Although COVID-19 has disrupted Yang’s research — he usually travels to China and other parts of Asia this time of the year — he said the political situation in China has created even more obstacles for him. 

“It has become very difficult for sociologists to do field work research in China or do interviews in China,” he said. 

China has recently been accused of genocide against its Uyghur Muslim population, which is mostly in China’s rural, northwesternmost Xinjiang province. 

“I think Americans need to be informed and express their care about those human rights abuses by the Chinese government,” he said. 

MAX ZAMBRANO – STAFF WRITER

Kelly James Clark wasn’t always interested in China.

“I didn’t think anything important came out of the East — not actively, I just thought everything important came out of America or Europe,” he said.

Then, after attending some conferences in China, things changed, He learned.

“I realized what happened in China was that we Americans would go and present our philosophical ideas, and Chinese would adapt to us,” he said. “I realized if we were actually going to have dialogues, we needed to start listening to them. We needed to start understanding traditions that shaped and informed them.”

At 1 p.m. today in the Amphitheater, Clark will make his first visit to Chautauqua to discuss his research and findings in his lecture, “A Spiritual Geography of Early Chinese Thought,” part of the Week One Interfaith Lecture Series, “21st Century Religion in China: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?”

Clark’s lecture is based on his forthcoming book, A Spiritual Geography of Early Chinese Thoughts: Gods, Ancestors, and Afterlife. He has written over 30 books, including others on China, and is the former Senior Research Fellow at the Kaufman Interfaith Institute at Grand Valley State University. He has also served as the director of many interfaith, philosophical and scientific conferences.

When he first traveled to China, Clark didn’t expect to find anyone who believed in what he called a High God: a deity who lives in the sky, removed from the world. These preconceived notions came from people Clark trusted and deemed experts, he said. 

As he researched ancient texts, Clark discovered that people in China did seem to believe in a High God, and they believed their ancestors’ souls existed in the afterlife.

“I began to see, in text, that China was kind of a spirit-haunted world — from malevolent spirits all the way to basically a benevolent High God,” he said. 

Clark’s study of Chinese philosophy began after graduate school. He has never taken a formal course on it, but he has worked with scholars who helped him read and translate original Chinese text, and he has done plenty of his own reading, too. 

Clark said he hopes his book rewrites perceptions of what early Chinese believed. Although focused on early Chinese thought, Clark said he believes this has implications for understanding contemporary China, too. For example, he believes most people in China believe in an afterlife, which he did not think was true before his research. 

After receiving a grant, Clark expanded his book to include research on early Chinese afterlife beliefs. Before that grant, afterlife research wasn’t on his radar, because people told him Chinese didn’t believe in afterlife.

Clark, who also works in cognitive science, wanted to learn how thoughts on the afterlife and High Gods influenced structure, order and rituals in ancient China. 

He also learned there is no such thing as “the Chinese.”

Citing China’s broad history and geography, Clark said he believes there was at one time more than 100 different languages, or dialects, in early China. A written language was eventually developed because they had so many different spoken languages, he said.

“One thing that I think is really important about China is whenever anyone says ‘the Chinese,’ or begins a sentence with ‘the Chinese,’ it’s almost certain to be wrong,” he said. “It’s a really diverse group of people, diverse throughout their long history, well over 2,000 years, and diverse across their really big geography, as well.” 

Clark hopes to make China less mysterious in order to bridge a connection between the East and the West. He said, for one, Chinese versions of God were not that different from Western versions. 

“They’re the next great empire, and we need to work hard to understand them,” he said. 

He hopes people realize that on some level, Americans, or the West, and China, or the East, are similar in their aspirations, beliefs and practices.

“Maybe down deep, we’re not so different,” he said.

What do molecular biology, interfaith relations and social justice have in common?

The answer is Satpal Singh. 

Singh received his Ph.D from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India, in molecular biology and went on to train in Germany and the United States. He is currently a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he researches neurodegenerative diseases. 

Before all this, however, Singh narrowly escaped an anti-Sikh pogrom in India. His experience with and survival of religious intolerance led him to become a founding trustee of the Sikh Council for Interfaith Relations, as well as to seek to bring peace and harmony to a world torn by hate and violence in the name of religion. 

Singh will conclude Chautauqua Institution’s 2020 Interfaith Friday series exploring creation and humanity during his lecture at 2 p.m. EDT Friday, Aug. 28, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform. 

A frequent participant in interfaith dialogue on diversity, religion and peace, Singh has represented the Sikh faith in many forums, including delivering a prayer on peace and harmony along with Pope Francis at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City, and organizing Sikh participation in the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Salt Lake City in 2015 and in Toronto in 2018. 

He has organized many retreats between Sikhs and Catholics, and served as a member of the Executive Council of Religions for Peace, USA. 

Singh is also an active participant in discussions around social justice, particularly in gender equality. He has authored many opinion pieces for various publications such as The Washington Post and The Huffington Post. 

His writings are frequently a call-to-action for unity and peace, something he will discuss in his lecute. In a 2015 article for The Huffington Post, Singh wrote about violence in the name of religion and the forces that drive people apart. 

“Our religion, race, caste or gender does not matter to God or to the laws of nature,” Singh wrote. “A tsunami does not target an atheist preferentially over a Buddhist. An earthquake does not level a Sikh house and leave a Muslim house intact. A wildfire does not come with a list of our affiliations to determine which houses to turn into rubble and which ones to spare.”

Director of Religion Maureen Rovegno is looking forward to Singh’s lecture, and thinks it will be a strong finale for the 2020 Interfaith Lecture Series.

“A native of India, he has brought his Sikh heritage into interfaith dialogues across America and around the world for the causes of diversity, interfaith harmony, social justice, equality and peace,” Rovegno said. “We are so very pleased that he will share his Sikh heritage and wisdom during his lecture.”

This program is made possible by Week Nine “Program Sponsor” Erie Insurance and the Joan Brown Campbell Department of Religion Endowment.

At one point during his time at Walter Reed Army Hospital, Dr. Robert J. Wicks was approached by a doctor who asked for his help. “He said he was going down the tubes,” Wicks said, “and I told him he couldn’t go straight home from work every day. He said, ‘Why not?’”

Wicks reminded the doctor of the signs in restaurant bathrooms requiring employees to wash their hands before leaving. 

“He was leaving Walter Reed (emotionally) contaminated; bringing it home to his family,” Wicks said. “I told him he needed to debrief before leaving, or even simply sit quietly, letting the dust settle.”

At 2 p.m. EDT Thursday, Aug. 27, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform, Wicks will help Chautauquans understand the meaning of self-care in his lecture, “Night Call: Embracing Compassion and Hope in a Troubled World,” as part of the Week Nine Interfaith Lecture Series. Author of a book of the same name, he is a clinical psychologist, prolific author and recipient of the Holy Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, the highest lay honor of the Catholic Church. Following his lecture, there will be a live Q-and-A session. Viewers are invited to submit questions for Wicks via the submission portal at www.questions.chq.org from any mobile or desktop browser, or on Twitter, using #CHQ2020.

“We have invited Dr. Robert Wicks to conclude our week on the theme, ‘The Future We Want, the World We Need,’” said Maureen Rovegno, Chautauqua’s director of religion, “because for decades he has spoken calm into chaos for individuals and groups experiencing great stress, anxiety and confusion — all of which have been expressed and discussed in our online conversations this Assembly Season.”   

“I practice what might best be called ‘resiliency psychology,’” Wicks said. He assists health care professionals and caregivers in preventing secondary stress, creating balance and distance between themselves and their work. “I teach how to better maintain, and regain, a healthy perspective — (in other words), how to reach out without being pulled down.”

Wicks is a professor emeritus at Loyola University Maryland, and has over 35 years’ experience  in secondary stress prevention. He has spoken to both professionals and laypeople, from the Mayo Clinic to the North American Aerospace Defense Command. He has spoken to and treated caregivers in “20 countries at last count,” including China, Vietnam, India, Thailand, Haiti, Northern Ireland, Hungary, Guatemala, Malta, New Zealand and South Africa. Notably, in 1994, Wicks debriefed relief workers evacuated from Rwanda, assisting them in processing horrific and painful experiences of the genocide. Wicks listened to their stories and provided guidance for post-traumatic stress. 

“They needed to understand,” he said, “that they were not crazy; their situation was.” 

Essentially, he said, “I do darkness for a living. If I’m not careful, I’ll be pulled in.” 

He often debriefs with colleagues, and turns to his own faith for reassurance and balance. He said that the three most important elements to his practice are “presence to self, presence to others, and presence to something greater — in my case, my faith.”

Rovegno thinks there is no better time to hear from Wicks. 

“The cumulative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the undeniable awareness of racial injustices, the deprivations of social and economic inequalities, and the terror of climate degradation and examples of suffering humanity across the globe,” she said, have necessitated a deeper look at how people practice self-care and remain resilient.

When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, Wicks said, “as doctors and nurses, we must recognize the guilt” borne of the inability to save everyone, as well as “the fear of bringing infection home” to families. 

“Guilt and vulnerability are natural,” he said. For people in general, a common stressor is the over-consumption of news media. 

“We only need five minutes to get the news,” he said. Anything longer, he said, is detrimental to a person’s health. 

Wicks also cautioned against dreaming of a new normal. 

“It’s nice to have a fantasy,” he said. “But instead, think of the advantages (to the current situation). Be intrigued by new opportunities, new talents. Help yourself to access silence and solitude (even during lockdown). Create a schedule. … Instead of drifting or dripping through the day, flow through it.” 

Rovegno is excited to hear Wicks’ perspective and suggestions for a healthier way forward. 

“Dr. Wicks will point us to the future we want and the world that we need,” she said, “not just to survive, but to thrive.”

This program is made possible by Week Nine “Program Sponsor” Erie Insurance and the Joan Brown Campbell Department of Religion Endowment.

Jeremy Ben-Ami’s lecture, “Israel-Palestine 2020: One State Remains the Problem & Two States the Solution” follows the Rev. Mitri Raheb’s talk on the same subject from a Palestinian Christian perspective. Raheb said in his lecture a day prior that a growing U.S. Jewish movement for a two-state solution makes him hopeful for Palestine’s future. Ben-Ami is a leader in that movement in Washington D.C., as a founder of the advocacy organization J Street.

“J Street said we have to work for a two-state solution. We have to find a compromise,” Raheb said during his lecture. “Not because they love the Palestinians so much, but because Israel cannot be a democratic country and a Jewish country at the same time.”

Ben-Ami’s lecture will be released at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Aug. 26, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform. The lecture aligns with the Week Nine Interfaith Lecture Series theme, “The Future We Want, the World We Need.” Director of Religion Maureen Rovegno said that Ben-Ami represents the same progressive Judaism that Rabbi Sid Schwarz presented during Week Eight’s Interfaith Friday. 

“(Ben-Ami’s) organization J Street would be very much in the vanguard of seeking justice in all kinds of capacities,” Rovegno said.

In 2008, Ben-Ami founded J Street to influence the U.S. government to pressure Israel to move toward a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. What is now the country of Israel has occupied Palestine since the late 19th century. Under Israel’s president, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is still edging Palestinians out of their homes and is attempting to annex the West Bank. 

Ben-Ami’s connection to Israel traces back to his great-grandparents who left present-day Russia, which persecuted Jews for practicing their religion and culture. They were some of the first settlers of the present-day city of Petah Tikvah, the first modern agricultural settlement in what would become Israel. His father, Yitshaq, was part of the Irgun militia which smuggled Jews into Palestine.

“He was a terrorist,” Ben-Ami said for the Princeton Alumni Weekly in 2009. “He raised money for the cause, but also fought. (The Irgun) blew up buildings, used violence for political purposes, and believed they had legitimate reasons.”

Ben-Ami said in the same interview with his alma mater that the key to Israel continuing to exist as a legitimate state rests on its treatment of Palestinians.

“I believe that the single greatest threat to the future of Israel as a democratic home for the Jewish people is the failure to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians,” Ben-Ami said. “If it is not resolved, Israel’s existence as a Jewish democracy is at stake.”

This program is made possible by Week Nine “Program Sponsor” Erie Insurance and the Joan Brown Campbell Department of Religion Endowment.

When contemplating this week’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme, “The Future We Want, the World We Need,” Bishop Minerva Carcaño had to ask herself, “What is the world we need?”

“I believe the world we need is one where we belong in beloved community, all of us,” Carcaño said. “I believe that’s a basic human yearning, and it’s part of our creation, … (but) we’re not living that way.”

Her talk, “The World We Need — Belonging in Beloved Community” will air at 2 p.m. EDT Monday, Aug. 24, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform.

Carcaño is the bishop of the United Methodist Church’s California-Nevada Conference. In 2004, she became the first Hispanic woman to be elected to the episcopacy of the UMC. Carcaño has spent her career advocating for immigration reform, racial justice, LGBTQ rights and full LGBTQ inclusion within the church.

“Christians are called to love,” she said. “To love everyone, to love the world, to love others as we love ourselves; (it’s) the Second Commandment, second only to loving God. I think that we need to focus on that.”

Her passion for working with immigrants, refugees, farm workers and those in poverty was inspired by her experiences growing up in Edinburg, Texas.

“I come from an immigrant background,” Carcaño said. “I come from the Southern border region of the country. I come from deep poverty. I’m a Hispanic woman, (and) I’m one of the few woman bishops in the mainline denomination.”

For her lecture, Carcaño will speak about what Christians are called to do to create a more loving community, and the consequences of failing to do so.

“The immigration situation is one sign of our brokenness as a human community,” she said, “also certainly racism, and racial inequity.”

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, in May, Carcaño started re-reading the writings of Martin Luther King Jr., and found them to be a source of comfort and inspiration in the last few months.

“His word is so relevant,” she said. “The truth that he spoke is true for us today, as well. We should not forget the words of such a prophet.”

Carcaño is also an advocate for interfaith relations. She emphasizes that the love Christians are called to exhibit is sacrificial, and directed toward all people.

“We believe God created everyone in the whole world; we’re all stewards together,” she said. “We do not as Christians know the totality of God — no one does — otherwise God would not be God. … We will only really truly be people who are Christian or Jewish or Buddist or Hindu by sitting at a table together and hearing one experience of God (and) affirming love of one another, and together assuming care for one another around the globe and for creation itself.”

The topic of “The Future We Want” hits particularly close to home for Methodists at the moment. In May, due to the global pandemic, the UMC was forced to pospone its annual conference, a conference that would have included a vote on splitting the church over disagreements regarding same-sex marriage and LGBTQ inclusion. 

Carcaño sends her “blessing along their way” to the Methodist traditionalists who advocate for strengthening bans on LBGTQ-inclusive practices, but hopes for a future without exclusion.

“My hope is that the United Methodist Church would live out what it says when we proclaim that we are all of sacred worth, when we proclaim that we are all created by God,” she said. “We have no place to stand in terms of exclusion of (an) LGBTQ person. … Jesus went to the margins, where people had been ostracized, to demonstrate that we are not to forget anyone, and we are not to exclude anyone. That’s my hope for our United Methodist Church, that we would remember this scriptural truth and the witness of Jesus to our lives.”

This program is made possible by Week Nine Program Sponsor Erie Insurance and the Joan Brown Campbell Department of Religion Endowment.

When Rabbi Sid Schwarz relays progressive Judaism for Week Eight’s Interfaith Friday, he said that he will also be balancing a millennia of Rabbinic commentary.

“I stand on the shoulders of many,” Schwarz said.

Schwarz will deliver his lecture “The Creation Story and Humanity’s Homework: A Jewish Take” at 2 p.m. EDT Friday, Aug. 21, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform. This Week Eight Interfaith Friday lecture will describe the creation story from the perspective of progressive Judaism.

Schwarz is a senior fellow at Hazon, a Jewish organization based in New York. He also founded PANIM: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, and led the institute for its first 21 years.

Schwarz has attended the last five seasons of Chautauqua’s summers. He previously spoke at Chautauqua in a 2017 conversation with broadcast journalist Bill Moyers on Jewish megatrends during the week on “A Crisis of Faith?”

Schwarz said he sees the Bible as a Rorschach test. There are core traditions that embrace the Hebrew Bible, but an individual reading these stories does so through the context of their own religious journey.

Schwarz jump-started his own religious journey in 1970, the summer before his senior year of high school. He traveled around Eastern Europe with other Jewish teens in the United Synagogue Youth to hear from Soviet Jews who were not permitted to practice their religion, speak their language or engage in Jewish culture. The students learned about the treatment of these people, who in turned gained hope hearing from students who could freely practice their Jewish religion.

At the time, Refuseniks — Jewish people in the Soviet Union who had applied to leave the Soviet Union for Israel — were losing their jobs or were even arrested for wanting to leave. Jewish people worldwide were protesting the treatment of these Jews.

“It made me realize how much privilege I had to freely practice my religion,” Schwarz said.

When Schwarz returned to the United States, he began traveling to synagogues and other institutions across the country to educate people on the treatment of Jewish people in the Soviet Union. This was the start of his human rights work, not just for Jewish people but for other persecuted groups worldwide.

By 1987, Schwarz had become a rabbi and joined the Jewish Communication Relations Council. They were gearing up for December of that year, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was scheduled to meet withPresident Ronald Reagan in Washington D.C. That same year, the Jewish Soviet prisoner Natan Sharansky had just been released and was traveling around the country calling for people to go to D.C. to protest the treatment of Jews and pressure Gorbachev to allow Jewish people to freely leave the Soviet Union.

Schwarz was the one who organized the protest. They had planned for 25,000 to participate. When he filed the form that legitimized the march, Schwarz said they expected 50,000 people, in order to get the attention of the media in advance of the protest. Instead, a quarter of a million people arrived at the protest and broke down public transportation.

It was covered on the front page of every major news publication. After this protest, every time Reagan met with Gorbachev, Reagan would pull out a list of names of Soviet Jews who had been persecuted. The protest was the catalyst for what Schwarz calls the “second exodus” of Jewish people who migrated to Israel.

Schwarz’s Interfaith Friday lecture represents a history with a heavy weight alongside Judaism’s creation story. He plans to detail two different images of God presented in Jewish texts.

“The version of God I like is not the one that is the master of the universe, but rather is unfolding the creation of the world, which continues to this day,” Schwarz said.

This program is sponsored by the Eileen and Warren Martin Lectureship for Emerging Studies in Bible and Theology.

In 2019, people flooded the Hall of Philosophy to see Fr. Richard Rohr in person during his week as chaplain and speaker for the Interfaith Lecture Series. Director of Religion Maureen Rovegno remembers Chautauquans’ fervor for religious programming that week, which centered around Rohr’s book Falling Upward.

“We ran out of worship books in the morning for worship, and we needed more people for the Service of Blessing and Healing, and they just came to experience Chautauqua to the fullest,” Rovegno said.

Rohr will deliver his first lecture for the week at 2 p.m. EDT on Monday, Aug. 17. While tackling the concept of evil throughout Week Eight for the Interfaith Lecture Series, Rohr will discuss how to deal with the capacity for evil in humans in his keynote lecture, “What Do We Do With Evil?”

“The Biblical stories, especially of creation, talk about the fall of humans — that we fell from grace, so to speak, and we saw whatever reality was in a new way,” Rovegno said.

Rohr is a Franciscan mystic of the New Mexico province, a theologian and an author of several books, including his most recent work The Universal Christ, and the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. He has been featured several times on Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday segments (they are also good friends). He also spoke on an episode of Krista Tippett’s “On Being” podcast called “Growing Up Men,” has been mentioned in opinion articles for The New York Times, and has been profiled in The New Yorker.

“(Rohr is) really very good at getting us to look that deeply into ourselves, recognize our own goodness and discern when we fall short of that goodness by the things we choose to say or do — the ways in which we act, especially toward one another or to the Earth,” Rovegno said.

Rovegno said that Rohr’s work commonly makes the connection between humanity and the divine, while also exploring themes of suffering within the human experience.

“He’s very much in tune with human suffering, and he talks about it a lot — … the recognition of suffering, the walking through suffering, the being in suffering,” Rovegno said, “which is what is happening with the world. Our whole way of life has been disrupted, and it’s given us time to think about what it means to be human and what all of humanity is.”

Rovegno said that after reaching out invitations for four years to Rohr, who had a conflict due to an annual conference, he was able to come to Chautauqua for the first time last year. Rohr drew people from all over the world for his week at Chautauqua in 2019. Rovegno recalls meeting a pair who had met online and were fans of Rohr.  One traveled from Mexico, and the other came all the way from Australia. They met in-person for the first time when they came to Chautauqua to see Rohr speak.

“He was loved (at Chautauqua) before he ever set foot here,” Rovegno said.

This program is made possible by the Eileen and Warren Martin Lectureship for Emerging Studies in Bible and Theology & The Strnad Family Fund.

For 20 years, Kainat Felicia Norton and Muinuddin Charles Smith have led Sufi meditations in Chautauqua’s Mystic Heart Program. But Aug. 14 marks their first time discussing Sufism on an Interfaith Friday with Vice President and Senior Pastor Gene Robinson. They’ll join him at 2 p.m. EDT Friday, Aug. 14, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform.

Sufism is a form of Islam that grounds the divine in the living world, rather than a separate dimension. Norton and Smith lead the Inayati Sufi Order as senior Sufi teachers, retreat guides and interfaith ministers.

After studying under Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan until his death in the 1970s, Norton and Smith founded the Light of Guidance Center for Sufi Studies in New York City and continue to run it today.

Hazrat Inayat Khan, who brought the Inayati Order to the West in 1910 and was the father of Pir, led with a universal perspective. As a result of “undogmatic Sufism,” Norton and Smith learned Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist and other religious practices, as well through studying with the Inayat Order.

“It honors all the world’s traditions at one altar,” Norton said.

She said the interfaith focus that Sufism instilled in the couple kept them coming to Chautauqua Institution after they were first invited to help lead meditations in 2001.

Norton and Smith also continue Hazrat’s founding of the Ziraat Concentration of North America. Norton and Smith’s book, An Emerald Earth: Cultivating a Natural Spirituality and Serving Creative Beauty in Our World, is written through this Ziraat perspective, which looks at the inner life through lessons in agriculture.

“It’s written in the language of cultivation, which is a language that’s understood across all cultures and religions,” Norton said.

Their lecture was pre-recorded on Thursday, Aug. 6, in their New York home. Norton said that in terms of the story of creation in Sufism, the Qur’an describes God saying that he created humans because he was alone.

“In Sufism, the relationship between God and humans is out of love,” Norton said.

Since God granted responsibilities to humans on Earth, it puts humans hierarchically above angels, Norton said, because humans have more potential on Earth to fulfill God’s divine call. However, everything created by God is sacred, from rocks and plants to rivers. The Qur’an describes Earth as sacred, as a green, spreading prayer carpet given by God before humans were created.

“We were loved before we were even created,” Norton said.

This program is made possible by the Eugene Ross McCarthy Memorial Fund.

Ingrid Mattson is many things — among them an author, advocate, professor and president — but Chautauqua Institution’s Director of Religion Maureen Rovegno has an overarching title that embodies them all: “bridge-builder.”

“We can’t judge the depth of someone’s belief, or even our own, in many cases, but we can try to improve our encounters and our actions to the point that there is less of a disconnect between what we say we believe and how we are in the world,” Mattson told Krista Tippett in an episode of her podcast “On Being.”

Mattson, the London and Windsor Community Chair in Islamic Studies at Huron University College at Western University in Canada, will present her lecture “Be in this World as if You are a Traveler” at 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Aug. 13, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform. The lecture is in keeping with the Interfaith Lecture Series Week Seven theme, “The Spirituality of Us.”

It struck me, really, like a thunderbolt,” she told Tippett. “I mean, this awakening of, I would say, an almost childlike wonderment at the beauty and glory of creation, and the sense of majesty, the sense of the universe being pervaded with meaning and purpose. That’s really what the Qur’an brought to me before anything — it was this awareness of God before it gave me any specific guidelines for how I should live my life as a Muslim.”

Mattson grew up in a large Catholic family in Ontario, Canada. According to Rovegno, Catholicism has a “mystical component to it,” so the religion served as an “early foundation that opened her up.”

“I’m able to appreciate what Catholic schools gave me in terms of an education and a vision of social justice that certainly the nuns in my community had,” Mattson said in “On Being.” “So that, you know, people talk about my ability to bridge different communities.”

At the age of 23, Mattson converted to Islam. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in Islamic studies at the University of Chicago, and become a professor of Islamic studies and director of Islamic chaplaincy at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, as well as director of the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations.

“Once she moved into the teachings of the Qur’an, it lifted her up to God in a way like never before,” Rovegno said. 

Her writings, both academic and public, focus primarily Qur’an interpretation, Islamic theological ethics and interfaith relations. Her 2007 book, The Story of the Qur’an, is an academic bestseller and was chosen by the United States National Endowment for the Humanities to be included in its “Bridging Cultures” program. 

To have a sense of the scripture, Mattson said she began studying the Qur’an and Arabic even before she converted, and was astounded by how the “beauty of the message came through.”

“It struck me, really, like a thunderbolt,” she told Tippett. “I mean, this awakening of, I would say, an almost childlike wonderment at the beauty and glory of creation, and the sense of majesty, the sense of the universe being pervaded with meaning and purpose. That’s really what the Qur’an brought to me before anything — it was this awareness of God before it gave me any specific guidelines for how I should live my life as a Muslim.”

In 2001, Mattson was elected vice president of the Islamic Society of North America, the largest Muslim organization in the nation. In 2006, she became the first woman, the first non-immigrant, and the first convert to serve as president of the Islamic Society, a role she said nothing could have prepared her for. 

Spending her academic career teaching Islamic Studies and interfaith relations in historically Christian institutions, Dr. Mattson draws deeply from her well of personal spirituality, of which she was aware at a very early age,” Rovegno said. “I can think of no one who can better complete our week’s conversation on spirituality.”

“I mean, how did it come to this?” she said in “On Being.” “That’s why we have to say that God has his plan and we have our plan. And that is how I look at it.”

Rovegno said she is personally indebted to Mattson for her execution of a different role: Mattson founded the first accredited graduate program for Muslim chaplains in America at Hartford Seminary, which Rovegno said “continues to bless Chautauqua.” 

“It is from that excellent program that I annually invite the male Muslim Coordinators for the Abrahamic Program for Young Adults,” which Rovegno founded and has directed since 2006.

In a week focusing on the theme “The Spirituality of Us,” Rovegno said Mattson, a “bridge-builder in interfaith relations,” is the “perfect Muslim voice.”

“Spending her academic career teaching Islamic Studies and interfaith relations in historically Christian institutions, Dr. Mattson draws deeply from her well of personal spirituality, of which she was aware at a very early age,” Rovegno said. “I can think of no one who can better complete our week’s conversation on spirituality.”

This program is made possible by the Eugene Ross McCarthy Memorial Fund.

In 1988, when Kent Nerburn started working on the Red Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota, home to the Ojibwe people, he saw the job as a way to support his career as an artist.

“It was a chance to work, (and) I needed work,” Nerburn said. “Sculpture is not a particularly lucrative profession.”

For two years, Nerburn worked with high school students from the reservation on an oral history project, interviewing Red Lake Ojibwe elders about their memories, traditions and values. Nerburn was amazed by what he learned.

“In the course of that time, I really had a look at the deep spiritual values of the Native people,” he said. “Giving voice to what I was finding out about the Native people to the general, non-Native population felt essential. I found something that felt like a calling.”

Nerburn traded sculpture for writing and spent the next 30 years listening to and working with Native Americans from the Ojibwe, Lakota and Nez Perce tribes. He has written 17 books on spirituality and Native American history and culture. His 1994 creative nonfiction work, Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder, was made into a film in 2016.

Nerburn will be speaking for Week Seven’s Interfaith Lecture Series, “The Spirituality of Us.” His lecture, “Quiet Voices, Important Truths: Life Lessons from the Native Way,” will air at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Aug. 12, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform.

In his long career, Nerburn said he has become one of the rare non-Native writers who is largely respected by Native Americans. He credits this to his willingness to listen without judgment or debate, something he learned from his work in oral history.

I look upon creation as a symphony, and each tradition has the capacity to play a different part of the music of creation; each cultural tradition, each religious tradition can play a certain type of music uniquely and in its own fashion,” Nerburn said. “And I think that the Native American way of seeing a larger family, spirit in everything, a humility in the face of the created universe, respect for their elders and a desire not to dominate, but to understand — it may be time for that music to be played a little more loudly than some of the other instruments in the symphony of creation.”

“In oral history, your job is to listen; your job is to just absorb what is given to you and give it back in an articulate, cogent fashion,” he said. “I never had a need to impose myself or my value systems onto the task.”

A necessary part of this work is confronting and understanding how his own biases as a white man influence his worldview.

“I think that really becomes the task of anyone wanting to learn about another way of looking at the world,” he said. “We’re all caught inside our own frame of reference, and it’s become more and more essential to be aware of this over the years — and in the last few years, it’s become absolutely essential.”

The most transformative aspect of Native American spirituality for Nerburn has been the idea that humans do not exist to rule over or control the environment, but are just another moving part within nature.

“The value system for me, the key element among the Native people, is always (that) everything that lives has spirit, and everything out there is a teacher for you,” he said.

This de-centering of humanity is something Nerburn thinks non-Native Americans, particularly Christians, can learn from.

“We are not at the top of creation for the Native people,” he said. “We are the highpoint of creation in the Christian world, made in the image and the likeness of God, whereas for the Native people, we are part of nature — we are not at the top of nature. We were the last of creation to be made, … so everything else is there to teach us.”

He hopes that, if anything good is to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it would be that more people begin to understand that they not only move through nature, but are moved by it.

“I think this is a wake-up call,” Nerburn said. “We thought that we were the masters of the environment. I hope this makes us all humbler, and more introspective.”

He is deeply concerned by current politics and the individual-first worldview he has seen grow more and more prominent in the last 30 years. He hopes that now more than ever,  his words can introduce more people to Native American spirituality. 

“I look upon creation as a symphony, and each tradition has the capacity to play a different part of the music of creation; each cultural tradition, each religious tradition can play a certain type of music uniquely and in its own fashion,” Nerburn said. “And I think that the Native American way of seeing a larger family, spirit in everything, a humility in the face of the created universe, respect for their elders and a desire not to dominate, but to understand — it may be time for that music to be played a little more loudly than some of the other instruments in the symphony of creation.”

This program is made possible by The Robert S. and Sara M. Lucas Religious Lectureship.