Center for the Study of World Religions hosted our annual List Lecture Speaker Adam Afterman. Dr. Adam Afterman is a Professor at the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Talmud at Tel Aviv University, specializing in Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah. He is a senior scholar and director of the John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue and a senior fellow of the Kogod Center for the Renewal of Jewish Thought at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.... Read more about List Lecture in Jewish Studies: Adam Afterman: Kabbalistic Neoplatonism: Divine Emanation and Mystical Integration

Center for the Study of World Religions hosted a talk by Raashid Goyal, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen, Germany. In his talk, Goyal proposes that the term a‘rāb signified “Arabs” and not “nomads,” and that the former entity were originally considered as apart from the nascent community of believers.

It has been another rich year of programming at the CSWR, much of it centering around the Transcendence and Transformation initiative – about to enter its third year. We were pleased to host a fascinating cohort of T&T affiliates, including visiting scholars, post-doctoral fellows, and research associates.  

David Abram joined...

Thursday, April 6, 2023 - Center for the Study of World Religions held its annual Greeley Lecture in Peace and Social Justice (Race, Religion, and Nationalism Series), welcoming Biko Gray, Assistant Professor of American Religion at Syracuse University to the podium.... Read more about Video: Dis/appearing: Black Life, Theodicy & the Study of Religion with Biko Mandela Gray

On February 27, Afe Adogame, Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Religion and Society at Princeton Theological seminary and leading scholar of the African diaspora, delivered the Hackett Lecture in Global Christianity.... Read more about Video: Contesting the Local in the Global: African Christianities Within the Religious Cosmos

This lecture by the Rev. Dr. Joan R. Harrell is a womanist critique of a longstanding racist campaign of domestic terror in the United States. It investigated the intersectionality of racism, in particular the racist acts condoned by religious communities and by the health care system. It gave special attention to the 40-year Syphilis Study at Tuskegee conducted by the United States Public Health Service.... Read more about Video: Becoming the Beloved Community in the Midst of Domestic Terror

Author, activist, and farmer Leah Penniman discusses the movement for food sovereignty and building a food system based on justice, dignity, and abundance for all members of our community.... Read more about Video: Farming While Black

“We always begin by thanking our ancestors,” said Leah Penniman, a Black Kreyol farmer and food justice activist, at the start of her September 17 talk, “Farming While Black: African Diasporic Wisdom for Farming and Food Justice,” hosted by the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) at Harvard Divinity School (HDS).

Race and religion are among the best predictors of how Americans choose a president. Race and religion are also bases for political compromises that call into question our moral credibility on issues ranging from voting rights to police brutality.

Cornell Brooks and Todne Thomas discuss how we demonstrate courage when we decline or choose to compromise during the Annual Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice at the HDS Center for...

Katharine Gerbner, McKnight Land-Grant Professor and Assistant Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, discusses how religion was fundamental to the development of both slavery and race in the Protestant Atlantic world.... Read more about Video: Christian Slavery in the Protestant Atlantic

The Annual Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice was delivered by the Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, and examined the social/political and theological implications of whiteness as an impediment to living God’s justice.

... Read more about Video: Claiming God's Peace When Whiteness Stands Its Ground