Lectures, Talks, and Interviews

Eight leading music and arts ministers from around the country explored tradition and innovation in Black sacred music.

In this video interview, Teresa Berger speaks with James O’Donnell and Bryan Spinks—who share their insights about this sacred ritual.

ISM welcomed former Poet Laureate of New York, Marie Howe, gives a talk and poetry reading for the annual Lana Schwebel Memorial Lecture.

Professor Bryan Spinks and ISM director Martin Jean discuss changes in worship practices in the 19th-century Scottish Presbyterian Church.

Did you miss “Unorthodox War: Religion and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine” on March 11th? Watch it on YouTube.

In case you missed it, watch the presentation Visualizing Global Biodiversity: Toward an Understanding of Sacred Places and Relations.

On November 3, 2021, the ISM presented a meditation on Black gospel song.

The lecture explores the evidence in Dorothy L. Sayers’ letters and novels for her personal liturgical background.

Human beings have encountered the Sacred through the vastness of the heavens, the fertility of the Earth, and the mystery of life.

Music is a way of understanding our past and chronicling our present. At its most subversive, music calls us to imagine new futures.

In case you missed it, watch the presentation A Life of Witness: Carolyn Forché, in conversation with Christian Wiman.

Thomas Murray joined the School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music faculty in 1981 and became university organist in 1990. 

Originally scheduled for April, 2020, and cancelled due to Covid-19, Marilynne Robinson has revised and Zoom-recorded two lectures for us now.

ISM Fellows program manager Eben Graves and Mark Roosien discuss how liturgies respond to natural disasters.

ISM Fellows program manager Eben Graves and Ranu Roychoudhuri discuss what photos of the health crisis can tell us.

Eben Graves and Sumarsam discuss Javanese shadow puppetry in the time of COVID-19.

Prof. Vasileios Marinis shows what a mosaic from the Greek monastery of Hosios Loukas can tell us about Easter in the Orthodox Christian tradition.

ISM Director Martin Jean and Professor Markus Rathey discuss Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and more.

ISM Director Martin Jean and Abdul-Rehman Malik , journalist, educator, and cultural organizer, discuss Ramadan in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

ISM Director Martin Jean and Professor Teresa Berger, author of @ Worship: Liturgical Practices in Digital Worlds discuss digital worship.

ISM Director Martin Jean and Professor Teresa Berger, author of @ Worship: Liturgical Practices in Digital Worlds discuss digital worship.

As the shape and meaning of religious journalism expands in the 21st century, Krista Tippett has emerged among the field’s most influential pioneers.