Community at the Crossing

The Bridge Seminars

Each week, the Community at the Crossing—an ecumenical group of young people living for a year on the Cathedral close—hosts distinguished guest scholars and teachers.

While a select few already participate in Dialogues on Divinity, bringing their knowledge and insight to the wider public, there is now an opportunity to learn from these eminent thinkers in an even more intimate, roundtable setting, side-by-side with members of the Community at the Crossing.

Seminar 4: Introduction to John’s Gospel

With Dr. Amy-Jill Levine

This introduction to John’s Gospel will address such matters as Johannine spirituality and Christology; depictions of illness, disability, and death; antisemitic interpretations of the Gospel; John’s presentation of gender and sexuality; connections between the Fourth Gospel and the Tanakh/Old Testament; John’s rereading of the Synoptic tradition; and the implications of John’s view of salvation for religious pluralism.

Reserve your seat in class

Seminar 4: Introduction to John’s Gospel

Monday, January 27, 2025
10am - 12pm & 2:30pm - 4:30pm

Tuesday, January 28, 2025
9:30am - 12pm & 2:30pm - 4:30pm

Abstract: This introduction to John’s Gospel will address such matters as Johannine spirituality and Christology; depictions of illness, disability, and death; antisemitic interpretations of the Gospel; John’s presentation of gender and sexuality; connections between the Fourth Gospel and the Tanakh/Old Testament; John’s rereading of the Synoptic tradition; and the implications of John’s view of salvation for religious pluralism.

Bio: Amy-Jill Levine is Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University. She is also University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies Emerita, Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies Emerita at Vanderbilt. She received the 2023 Hubert Walter Award for Interfaith Cooperation from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Reserve your seat in class

$100
Attendance is required at both days of this seminar.

Seminar 5: Brain, Mind, and Body: Meeting Personhood in Theology and Psychiatric Practice

Monday, March 31, 2025
10am - 12pm & 2:30pm - 4:30pm

Tuesday, April 1, 2025
9:30am - 12pm & 2:30pm - 4:30pm

Abstract:

tbd

Bio: The Reverend Dr. Charlie Bell is a Church of England priest and a forensic psychiatrist, Scholar in Residence at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York, and the Fellow in Medicine and Public Theology at Girton College, Cambridge. He is Visiting Scholar at Sarum College and a Research Fellow and Associate Tutor at St Augustine’s College of Theology.

Reserve your seat in class

$100
Attendance is required at both days of this seminar.

Seminar 3: The Singing Prophet: a Brief Course on the Book of Isaiah

Monday, December 9, 2024
10am - 12pm & 2:30pm - 4:30pm

Tuesday, December 10, 2024
9:30am - 12pm & 2:30pm - 4:30pm

Bio: Rev. Peter A. Heasley, S.Th.D., is pastor of the Roman Catholic Church of Corpus Christi and Notre Dame in Manhattan. He teaches Scripture at St. Joseph’s Seminary (Dunwoodie) in Yonkers and is the author of Prophetic Polyphony (Mohr Siebeck, 2020), about allusion to the psalms in Second Isaiah.

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Seminar 2: The Holy Eucharist: The Wonderful Exchange of the Human and the Divine

Monday, November 11, 2024
10am - 12pm & 2:30pm - 4:30pm

Tuesday, November 12, 2024
9:30am - 12pm & 2:30pm - 4:30pm

Abstract: Christians have claimed that the Eucharist is both the liturgy par excellence and the source and summit of the Christian life. During these two days, the Rev. Matthew S.C. Olver, Ph.D. will explore with us:

The nature of ritual in the lives of human beings along with the biblical and human roots of Christian liturgical rites. Why Christians have called the Eucharist a “sacrifice” and what this does and does not mean. The shape of the eucharistic liturgy and what is common and distinct between the rituals of different Christian traditions (with the 1979 American Book of Common Prayer of The Episcopal Church as our starting point). Where daily prayer (known as the Offices or the Liturgy of the Hours) comes from and how they are meant to anchor the Christian life.

Bio: The Rev. Matthew S.C. Olver, Ph.D. (Marquette University) is the Executive Director and Publisher of The Living Church Foundation, Senior Lecturer in Liturgics at Nashotah House Theological Seminary, and has been a priest in the Episcopal Church since 2006. He has published and lectured widely in the area of early Christian liturgy and the development of the Book of Common Prayer in journals such as Anglican Theological Review, Journal of Early Christian Studies, and the Harvard Theological Review. His monograph, The Origin of the Roman Canon Missae, is forthcoming from Brepols.

Price: 100$

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Seminar 1: Christian Division and the Vision of Unity

Monday, October 14, 2024

10am - 12pm and 2:30pm - 4:30pm

Abstract: In this module, Dr. Aaron Hollander will lead a two-day discussion of the history of Christian division and the modern ecumenical movement aimed at reconciliation and reunion. Beginning with a close reading of New Testament depictions of interpretive, ethnic, political, and personal division in the Church, we will proceed through major milestones in the first millennium at which differences of thought and life in the Church became grounds for breaking communion between groups and blaming one another for the division. We will conclude the morning session with a brief discussion of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, which sets the stage for wars of religion in Europe and rival missionary movements worldwide that result in a comprehensively divided Church. In the afternoon, we will turn to the modern ecumenical movement and its several "streams" that envision alternatives to this state of division, alternatives grounded in (respectively) a modernized missionary movement, theological renewal and doctrinal reconciliation, social justice and political solidarity, or a realignment of hearts through a spirituality of hospitable gift-exchange.

Bio: Dr. Aaron T. Hollander is Associate Director of Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute, Editor of Ecumenical Trends, and Adjunct Faculty in Theology at Fordham University. He serves on the steering committee of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network and on the faculty of the Summer Course in Ecumenism at the Centro Pro Unione in Rome; he was also President of the North American Academy of Ecumenists from 2022-2024. He is a scholar of ecumenical theology and lived religion, with his PhD from the University of Chicago (2018). His research foci include the lived dynamics of ecumenical/interreligious conflict and coexistence, the aesthetic texture and political power of holiness (particularly in Orthodox Christianity), and the circulation of theological understanding beyond explicitly religious settings. His first book, forthcoming from Fordham University Press (2025), is entitled Saint George Liberator: Hagiography and Resistance in the Modern Mediterranean.

Price: 50$

Purchase tickets here

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