January 2020
“Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Ethics and Religion” is an exciting one-day conference to be held on January 30, 2020, at Union Theological Seminary (UTS) in New York, in conjunction with the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS), the Riverside Church and the Greater Good Initiative. REGISTER New technologies are transforming our world every day, and the pace of change is only accelerating. In coming years, human beings will create machines capable of out-thinking us and potentially taking on such uniquely-human traits as empathy, ethical reasoning, perhaps even consciousness. This will have profound implications for virtually every human activity, as well as the meaning we impart to life and creation themselves. This conference will provide an introduction for non-specialists to Artificial Intelligence (AI): What is it? What can it do and be used for? And what will be its implications for choice and free will; economics and worklife; surveillance economies and surveillance states; the changing nature of facts and truth; [...]
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Date: Friday, January 31, 1:00 – 6:00 pm; Saturday, February 1, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm Instructor: Donna Schaper RSVP: https://myunion.utsnyc.edu/bricks-and-mortals-removethepews This course teaches queer and non-binary theology of sacred sites. It will show what we need the sacred sites for, how endangered they are and how to save them. Establishing an incarnational approach to buildings that neither elevates nor demeans them, it will offer ways to steward them. The course highlight multi-use of sacred spaces as a way to be green, to be neighborly and to establish less distinction between sacralized and desacralized spaces. It argues for hyper-use of open, public spaces in worlds where the privatization of space is rapidly increasing. Students learn how self-governing small institutions are foundational to larger democratic institutions. Donna Schaper is Senior Minister at Judson Memorial Church since 2006. She is active in th New York City Sanctuary Movement, Bricks and Mortals (sacred sites and real estate) and with [...]
Find out moreFebruary 2020
In the Spring 2020 semester, EDS at Union will be examining the perilous journeys that undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers take to get to the United States and the role that faith leaders can play in helping to build a more just future. To that end, EDS at Union has selected Sonia Nazario’s Enrique’s Journey The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with his Mother as our Community Read for the upcoming semester. Please join us in reading this important book, and on-campus to hear from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sonia Nazario on Wednesday, February 5, at 6:00 pm EST. She will deliver a lecture, then sit down in conversation with Dean Kelly Brown Douglas. Click here to register to attend or to watch the live stream* Dean Kelly Brown Douglas noted, “As I read the book, I was struck by the way faith and faith leaders play an important, recurring role throughout the journey that immigrants make, and I was [...]
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The Thích Nhất Hạnh Program for Engaged Buddhism invites you to join us for our monthly Dharma Talk Series: Emptiness and Social Action. Over the course of nine months, a wide array of Buddhist teachers will take us into the essential teachings of the Buddhadharma and what it looks like to move into action to address the dissatisfaction, distress, and suffering that we meet in relationship with the earth, people, and systems today, in the United States, and around the world. How does conceptual, inferential, and experiential knowledge into emptiness of an inherent self invite for a response to circumstances that are stressful, painful, and violent? Each evening will be unique, with a combination of a dharma talk, meditation, and a question and answer period exploring these essential and vital questions within Buddhism and our lives’ for this moment in time. DaRa Williams is a trainer, meditation teacher and psychotherapist. DaRa has been a meditator for [...]
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Please join us for A Fresh Word–Noche: Metaphors for Preaching from the Darkness on Friday, February 7, 2020, from 8:30 am – 4:30 pm. Speakers to include Cláudio Carvalhaes ’07, Associate Professor of Worship, Esther J. Hamori, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible, and Jeremey Hultin, Associate Professor of Biblical Languages. Schedule to be announced. “A Fresh Word” (formerly Got Sermon?), brings the gifts of our faculty to our alumni/ae, students, neighbors, and friends who primarily serve congregations in ministries of preaching. Tickets are $50. The cost of the event includes lunch and light refreshments. Purchase tickets Tickets: https://myunion.utsnyc.edu/a-fresh-word-2020.
Find out moreMarch 2020
The Thích Nhất Hạnh Program for Engaged Buddhism invites you to join us for our monthly Dharma Talk Series: Emptiness and Social Action. Over the course of nine months, a wide array of Buddhist teachers will take us into the essential teachings of the Buddhadharma and what it looks like to move into action to address the dissatisfaction, distress, and suffering that we meet in relationship with the earth, people, and systems today, in the United States, and around the world. How does conceptual, inferential, and experiential knowledge into emptiness of an inherent self invite for a response to circumstances that are stressful, painful, and violent? Each evening will be unique, with a combination of a dharma talk, meditation, and a question and answer period exploring these essential and vital questions within Buddhism and our lives’ for this moment in time. Gina Sharpe is co-founder of New York Insight Meditation Center for which she was Guiding [...]
Find out moreApril 2020
The Thích Nhất Hạnh Program for Engaged Buddhism invites you to join us for our monthly Dharma Talk Series: Emptiness and Social Action. Over the course of nine months, a wide array of Buddhist teachers will take us into the essential teachings of the Buddhadharma and what it looks like to move into action to address the dissatisfaction, distress, and suffering that we meet in relationship with the earth, people, and systems today, in the United States, and around the world. How does conceptual, inferential, and experiential knowledge into emptiness of an inherent self invite for a response to circumstances that are stressful, painful, and violent? Each evening will be unique, with a combination of a dharma talk, meditation, and a question and answer period exploring these essential and vital questions within Buddhism and our lives’ for this moment in time. Dr. Pilar Jennings ’09 is a psychoanalyst in private practice based in New York City [...]
Find out moreMay 2020
The Thích Nhất Hạnh Program for Engaged Buddhism invites you to join us for our monthly Dharma Talk Series: Emptiness and Social Action. Over the course of nine months, a wide array of Buddhist teachers will take us into the essential teachings of the Buddhadharma and what it looks like to move into action to address the dissatisfaction, distress, and suffering that we meet in relationship with the earth, people, and systems today, in the United States, and around the world. How does conceptual, inferential, and experiential knowledge into emptiness of an inherent self invite for a response to circumstances that are stressful, painful, and violent? Each evening will be unique, with a combination of a dharma talk, meditation, and a question and answer period exploring these essential and vital questions within Buddhism and our lives’ for this moment in time. Khenpo Pema Wangdak became a monk at the age of seven and later attended the [...]
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