Rebecca Lyman is the Samuel Garrett Professor of Church History emerita at The Church Divinity School of the Pacific, at the ecumenical and interfaith Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She is also an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of California. Rev. Lyman is an historian of ancient Christianity, focused particularly on the use and abuse of the category of "heresy" in antiquity. In her book, Early Christian Traditions, she introduces us to the world of the early church. Beginning with the Jewish, Greek, and Roman cultures in which the first followers of Jesus lived and worshiped, she traces the growth of the Christian church's theology, worship, leadership, and ethics through its first six centuries.

Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Lyman about the often thin line between orthodoxy and heresy, true and false teachers, and the early church's "family quarrels."

About the Guest

The Rev. Rebecca Lyman is the Samuel Garrett Professor of Church History emerita at The Church Divinity School of the Pacific, at the ecumenical and interfaith Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She is also an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of California. She is a historian of ancient Christianity, focused particularly on the use and abuse of the category of "heresy" in antiquity. She has a B.A. in Religion and History from Western Michigan University, an M.A. in Medieval and Byzantine Studies from The Catholic University of America, and a D. Phil in Theology from Oxford University. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, and is a member of the Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology Group at the University of California Berkeley. She is completing a new history of the "heresy" of Arius . Her next project is a novel about a lost gospel as traced through a sequence of women's communities from the second to the twentieth century.

About the Moderator

The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.

About The Forum

The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum and upcoming discussions. You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum.