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Thomas Santa Maria

Yang Scholar Thomas Santa Maria on Mysticism and Miracles in World Christianity

April 10, 2024

Thomas Santa Maria is a Yang Visting Scholar in World Christianity at Harvard Divinity School for the 2023-24 academic year. He has published in journals including the Catholic Historical Review, and the Journal of Early Modern Christianity. He comes to HDS from Yale University, where he was the Residential College Dean of Silliman College, and before that, a graduate student in renaissance studies and history. His work focuses primarily on the relationship between the body, emotions, and religion in the Early Modern period.... Read more about Yang Scholar Thomas Santa Maria on Mysticism and Miracles in World Christianity

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Rev. Laura Everett Is Focused On "The Work of Repair" in Massachusetts

April 5, 2024
The Rev. Laura Everett, MDiv '04, an itinerant minister, believes that her calling is the work of repair. "When I'm with a congregation, we're trying to repair our broken relationships with one another," she said. "When I'm with the City of Boston Reparations Task Force, that is a citywide effort to repair an unjust history. This is all the work of repair."
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Whose Father Abraham?

April 4, 2024
"It's a mistake to think we can peel away these post-biblical traditions—the Oral Torah, the teachings of Talmud and Midrash, for the Jews; the New Testament and church tradition for the Christians; or, for that matter, the Quran, the only scripture they have for Muslims. And, say, let's get back to the Abraham of Genesis. Well, the Abraham of Genesis is interpreted differently by Jews and Christians. And Genesis itself is not canonical scripture for Islam," says Professor Jon Levenson.
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Zen Mind, Vegetal Mind

April 3, 2024
"As a Zen Buddhist, I regard these questions not simply as theoretical issues to be determined by doctrine but as lived inquiries illuminated through practice. I have long felt a profound kinship with plants, one that first called me to a decade-long career in environmental policy and, most recently, into graduate work at Harvard Divinity School," writes MDiv candidate Rachael Petersen.
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The Stories behind the Theses

March 28, 2024

Abstract art has long served as a vessel for artists — think Hilma af Klint or Wassily Kandinsky — to explore religion and spirituality. Isabel Haro ’24, a concentrator in art, film, and visual studies with a secondary in music, was inspired to pursue a thesis that explored this topic after taking the course “Spiritual Paths to Abstract Art” with Professor Ann Braude at HDS. Haro, who practices Buddhism, wanted to create a collection of work inspired by her own experiences.

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Facing Death with Dignity

March 27, 2024
“In Buddhism, we have this term Kalyāṇamitra, which literally means spiritual companion. It’s like a friend on the path. That is how I think of spiritual care,” said Chris Berlin, Counselor to Buddhist Students and Instructor in Ministry Studies and Pastoral Counseling at HDS.
Harvard Divinity School students took part in a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of their course "The Museum as a Buddhist Institution" led by HDS faculty member Charles Hallisey. Photo by Huayu Liu

Harvard Divinity Scholar, Student Explore Museums as Sites for Buddhist Ministry

March 25, 2024

This interview is one in an ongoing series exploring the intersection of art and religion in HDS courses.

How can we imagine a better world from within our current context? When Charles Hallisey, MDiv ’78, and Molly Silverstein, MDiv ’22, began discussing their Harvard Divinity School course “The Museum as a Buddhist Institution,” this question directed their investigations and collaboration.... Read more about Harvard Divinity Scholar, Student Explore Museums as Sites for Buddhist Ministry

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Great Salt Lake-Inspired Words, Music Shared by Visiting Group from Harvard

March 18, 2024

The Fielding Garr Ranch at Antelope Island State Park in Utah served as the venue for a “gratitude concert,” during which lake-inspired poetry, song and music was performed. The event was organized by Terry Tempest Williams, a conservationist, educator and writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School, or HDS. Having studied the Great Salt Lake for one year, Williams and a group of 15 HDS students have made a pilgrimage to its shores as a culminating moment.

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It May Be Neither Higher nor Intelligence

March 14, 2024
“Whatever AI can tell us about how to reckon with the material reality that we’re subject to illness and death, us, humans, are still going to reckon with that. That is when religion becomes significant," said Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church.
Nathanael Homewood

Yang Scholar Nathanael Homewood Explores ‘Worlds Thought Impossible’ in World Christianity

March 7, 2024

Nathanael J. Homewood is a Yang Visiting Scholar in World Christianity at Harvard Divinity School for the 2023-24 academic year. His research focuses on Christianity in Africa, especially Ghanaian Pentecostalism, and the large-scale connections between Western and non-Western Christianity in America.... Read more about Yang Scholar Nathanael Homewood Explores ‘Worlds Thought Impossible’ in World Christianity

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Divinity School Harambee Group Hosts Screening of Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s New Docuseries

March 7, 2024

Faculty and staff from across Harvard gathered for a screening of “Gospel,” a new docuseries produced and hosted by University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. The event, hosted by HDS Harambee Students of African Descent, consisted of a reception, a screening, and a panel discussion with Gates, and HDS Dean Marla F. Frederick and HDS Professor Ahmad Greene-Hayes, who both appear in the docuseries.

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God at the Movies

March 7, 2024
“How do we tell complex, nuanced stories about religion? I think part of that depends on good writing. And when you can figure out – how to tell a complex story about a person – religion organically fits into that. But if you’re just like, well, we all know what this religion is, you’re doing a disservice both to the religion and to character development,” said Hussein Rashid, assistant dean for religion and public life.
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Calling It as He Sees It

March 5, 2024
HDS Professor Davíd Carrasco was one of several professors who guided broadcast legend Gus Johnson' studies at Harvard's year-long Advanced Leadership Initiative. Carrasco recently organized a dinner and event for students to mingle and hear from Johnson.
Rachel Mallett is a first-year master of divinity student

Student Explores People, Traditions, and 'Ultimate Concern' at Harvard Divinity

March 1, 2024

“I resonate with Paul Tillich’s conception of religion as dealing with the ‘ultimate concern.’ Religion, for me, is a way of harnessing that which we are all ultimately concerned with, in both a tangible sense and a metaphysical one. In other words, we all have an inclination toward fulfillment, and it is necessary for us to feel meaningfully connected with our own life and community, whether or not we believe one thing over another.”... Read more about Student Explores People, Traditions, and 'Ultimate Concern' at Harvard Divinity

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Jewish Identity with and without Zionism

February 15, 2024
Two new books—HDS Visiting Professor of Modern Jewish Studies Shaul Magid’s The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance, completed just before October 7, and Noah Feldman’s To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People, written late enough to be updated—provide judicious, sober genealogies of the political and spiritual conflicts that have afflicted Jewish communities in light of their relationships to Israel. Taken together, they invite a more capacious understanding of Jewish lives and Jewish futures in the diaspora.
Swami Chidekananda, who joined the Hindu Monastic Fellowship Program sponsored by Harvard Divinity School, stands in front of Swartz Hall. Photo by Swami Sachidananda Saraswati

Hindu Monastic at Harvard Divinity School Lives to Learn

February 14, 2024

In many ways, Swami Chidekananda grew up as an “all-American kid.” Raised in Los Angeles, California, his father was a UCLA microbiology professor for more than 40 years, and Chidekananda made the all-star team as a shortstop in baseball. On the inside, though, he felt tension as a first-generation Indian American still very much immersed in the rich Hindu spirituality with which his mother bestowed him.... Read more about Hindu Monastic at Harvard Divinity School Lives to Learn

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