St. Augustine is perhaps the most significant Christian thinker after St. Paul. Often pictured by Western painters holding in his hand his heart blazing with passionate love, he consistently and repeatedly insisted―from his earliest writings until close to his death―that the essential characteristic of God is love. Yet he also insisted on the doctrines of original sin and everlasting punishment for the damned. How did he reconcile this apparent contradiction? And can it bring us any closer to understanding a God seemingly indifferent to human suffering?  

Margaret Miles is the Emerita Professor of Historical Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where she also served as Dean for six years. She was the first tenured woman at Harvard University Divinity School, where she taught from 1978 to 1996. The author of more than twenty-five books, she has studied Augustine for over fifty years, and while deep in writing her latest and perhaps last book, Beautiful Bodies, she joins Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation about some of her exciting findings.  

You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Learn all the many ways to give at gracecathedral.org/give.

About the Guest

Margaret R. Miles is Emerita Professor of Historical Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. She was Bussey Professor of Theology and the first tenured woman at Harvard University Divinity School from 1978 to 1996, and Dean of GTU from 1996 until her retirement in 2002. Recent books include both research books and books that explore a problem that is both personal and social: Reading Augustine: On Memory, Marriage, Tears and Meditation, Augustine and The Fundamentalist’s Daughter, Getting Here From There (with Hiroko Sakomura), The Wendell Cocktail, and The Long Goodbye: Dementia Diaries.

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.

Gone With the Wind, a nostalgic tale full of the myths of the Southern belle, Southern culture, ‘good food and good manners,’ is still the second most popular book in the USA after the Bible. And the story of slavery in America is not over. It lives on in how we speak to one another, in how we treat one another, in how our societies are organized. Our ability to dehumanize one another can be traced all the way from the plantation to a US President’s Twitter account.  

Patricia J. Williams is University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities at Northeastern University, and Director of Law, Technology and Ethics Initiatives. Her award-winning column, "Diary of a Mad Law Professor," appeared in The Nation Magazine for two decades, and she is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates and a MacArthur fellowship.  She is the author of six books, including The Alchemy of Race and Rights, which was named one of the “feminist classics of the last 20 years” that “literally changed women’s lives” by Ms. magazine; and one of the 10 best non-fiction books of the decade by Amazon.com.   

Join Malcolm Clemens Young in a conversation with Williams about her latest book Giving A Damn: Racism, Romance and Gone With the Wind and how when you begin to unpick current debates around immigration, freedom of speech, the culture wars and wall-building, beneath them lies the unexamined history of enslavement in the West. 

You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Learn all the many ways to give at gracecathedral.org/give. Thank you!  

About the Guest 

Patricia J. Williams is University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities at Northeastern University, and Director of Law, Technology and Ethics Initiatives.  A graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School, she is also Professor Emerita at Columbia University School of Law.  She is the author of six books, her latest being Giving A Damn: Racism, Romance and Gone With the Wind, from Harper Collins.  Her award-winning column, "Diary of a Mad Law Professor," appeared in The Nation Magazine for two decades. She is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates and a MacArthur fellowship.   

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.  More about Grace Forum Online

Awe is mysterious. How do we begin to quantify the goose bumps we feel when we see the Grand Canyon, or the utter amazement when we watch a child walk for the first time? How do you put into words the collective effervescence of standing in a crowd and singing in unison, or the wonder you feel while gazing at centuries-old works of art? Up until fifteen years ago, there was no science of awe, the feeling we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that transcend our understanding of the world. Scientists were studying emotions like fear and disgust, emotions that seemed essential to human survival. Revolutionary thinking, though, has brought into focus how, through the span of evolution, we’ve met our most basic needs socially. We’ve survived thanks to our capacities to cooperate, form communities, and create culture that strengthens our sense of shared identity—actions that are sparked and spurred by awe.

Dacher Keltner is a foremost expert on the science of emotions and consultant to Pixar’s Inside Out. A professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and the faculty director of the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center, he is the author of the best-selling books Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life and The Compassionate Instinct.

Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Dacher Keltner about his new book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life and how greatly we need this elusive emotion.

You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Learn all the many ways to give at gracecathedral.org/give. Thank you!  

About the Guest

Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and the faculty director of the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center. A renowned expert in the biological and evolutionary origins of human emotion, Dr. Keltner studies the science of compassion, awe, love, and beauty, and how emotions shape our moral intuition. His research interests also span issues of power, status, inequality, and social class. He is the author of the best-selling book Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life and of The Compassionate Instinct.

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.  gracecathedral.org/the-forum.

Hosted in partnership with the Northern California Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Foundation, this annual service and Forum conversation gathers local and national interfaith leaders around a theme in Dr. King’s life and work. This year’s theme is “Freedom, Justice, and Beloved Community.”

The theme is taken from Coretta King’s remarks at the Atlanta grave site of her late husband in 1993, the 25th anniversary of his assassination: “Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.”

Hosted by: The Rt. Rev. Dr. Marc Handley Andrus, Bishop, Episcopal Diocese of California Aaron Grizzell, Executive Director, Northern California MLK Foundation

Participants include: Rev. Dr. Sakena Young-Scaggs, Sr. Associate Dean of Religious & Spiritual Life at Stanford; and Sr. Pastor of Stanford Memorial Church Dr. Tracey E. Hucks, Suzanne Young Murray Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School Dr. Raymond Carr, Visiting Scholar/Visiting Professor, Harvard Divinity School

One of the United States’ most provocative public intellectuals, Dr. Cornel West is a philosopher, social critic, political activist, and a champion for racial justice through the traditions of the black Church, progressive politics, and jazz. He has written and edited over thirty books, including the classics  Race Matters and Democracy Matters. He is a radio host; has appeared in two Matrix films; has made several spoken words and hip hop albums; has held professorships at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, and currently is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. He has been called one of the world’s top 50 thinkers for the COVID-19 age. He is, as he describes himself, “a bluesman in the life of the mind, a jazzman in the world of ideas, forever on the move.” 

Join Malcolm Clemens Young online at the final Forum of the Fall season in a conversation with Dr. West about democracy, race, religion, and living & loving out loud. 

You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Learn all the many ways to give at gracecathedral.org/give. Thank you!

About the Guest 

Dr. Cornel West, affectionately known to many as Brother West, is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. Dr. West teaches on the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as courses in Philosophy of Religion, African American Critical Thought, and a wide range of subjects – including but by no means limited to, the classics, philosophy, politics, cultural theory, literature, and music. He has a passion to communicate to a vast variety of publics in order to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. – a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice. Dr. West is the former Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Cornel West graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. He has written 20 books and has edited 13.  He is best known for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and for his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. His most recent book, Black Prophetic Fire, offers an unflinching look at nineteenth and twentieth-century African American leaders and their visionary legacies. Dr. West has partnered with MasterClass.com to provide teachings on several influential courses including a class with Pharrell Williams on Empathy, MasterClass’s first-ever multi-instructor class on Black History, Black Freedom & Black Love, as well as Dr. West’s standalone class on Philosophy. Visit www.cornelwest.com and click the MasterClass banner to learn more. 

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.  More about Grace Forum Online 

Give to Grace

You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Learn all the many ways to give at gracecathedral.org/give. Thank you!

Join our Dean, Malcolm Clemens Young, and Miguel Bustos, Senior Director for the Center for Social Justice at Glide, and celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with a conversation with workers’ and civil rights hero and feminist icon Dolores Huerta. Ms. Huerta will also preach at the 11 am Choral Eucharist service. 

Dolores Huerta founded the Agricultural Workers Association and launched the National Farm Workers Association with César E. Chávez, now called United Farm Workers of America. She was instrumental in the enacting of laws to protect workers and has worked to elect numerous candidates including President Clinton, Governor Jerry Brown, Congresswoman Hilda Solis, and Hillary Clinton. While breaking down one gender barrier after another, she has also had a tremendous impact, not only on farmworker women but also on young women everywhere. At 92, Huerta continues to work tirelessly to develop leaders and advocate for the working poor, women, and children. As founder and president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, she travels across the country engaging in campaigns and influencing legislation that supports equality and defends civil rights. Among the many recognitions and awards for her work, in 2012 President Obama bestowed upon her The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. 

About the Guest 

Dolores Clara Fernandez was born on April 10, 1930, in Dawson, a small mining town in the mountains of northern New Mexico. Her father Juan Fernández, a farm worker and miner by trade was a union activist who ran for political office and won a seat in the New Mexico legislature in 1938. Dolores spent most of her childhood and early adult life in Stockton, California where she and her two brothers moved with their mother, following her parents’ divorce. Dolores found her calling as an organizer while serving in the leadership of the Stockton Community Service Organization (CSO). During this time, she founded the Agricultural Workers Association, set up voter registration drives, and pressed local governments for barrio improvements. In 1955 CSO founder Fred Ross, Sr. introduced her to CSO Executive Director César E. Chávez, a like-minded colleague. The two soon discovered that they shared a common vision of organizing farm workers, an idea that was not in line with the CSO’s mission. As a result, César and Dolores resigned from the CSO and launched the National Farm Workers Association in the spring of 1962. Dolores’ organizing skills were essential to the growth of this budding organization. The first testament to her lobbying and negotiating talents were demonstrated in securing Aid For Dependent Families (“AFDC”) and disability insurance for farm workers in the State of California in 1963, an unparalleled feat at the time. She was also instrumental in the enactment of the Agricultural Relations Act of 1975. This was the first law of its kind in the United States, granting farm workers in California the right to collectively organize and bargain for better wages and working conditions. Robert F. Kennedy acknowledged her in helping him secure the 1968 California Democratic Presidential Primary just moments before he was shot in Los Angeles. Throughout the years, she has worked to elect numerous candidates including President Clinton, Congressman Ron Dellums, Governor Jerry Brown, Congresswoman Hilda Solis, and Hillary Clinton. While Dolores was busy breaking down one gender barrier after another, she was seemingly unaware of the tremendous impact she was having on, not only farm worker women but also young women everywhere. She traversed the country for two years on behalf of the Feminist Majority’s Feminization of Power: 50/50 by the year 2000 Campaign encouraging Latinas to run for office. The campaign resulted in a significant increase in the number of women representatives at the local, state, and federal levels. She also served as National Chair of the 21st Century Party founded in 1992 on the principles that women make up 52% of the party’s candidates and that officers must reflect the ethnic diversity of the nation. At 89, Dolores Huerta continues to work tirelessly to develop leaders and advocate for the working poor, women, and children. As founder and president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, she travels across the country engaging in campaigns and influencing legislation that supports equality and defends civil rights. She often speaks to students and organizations about issues of social justice and public policy. She was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in March 2013. She has received numerous awards: among them The Eleanor Roosevelt Humans Rights Award from President Clinton in l998, Ms. Magazine’s One of the Three Most Important Women of l997, Ladies Home Journal’s 100 Most Important Woman of the 20th Century, The Puffin Foundation’s Award for Creative Citizenship: Labor Leader Award 1984, The Kern County Woman of The Year Award from the California State Legislature, The Ohtli Award from the Mexican Government, The Smithsonian Institution – James Smithson Award, and nine Honorary Doctorates from universities throughout the United States. In 2012 President Obama bestowed Dolores with her most prestigious award, The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.  

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.    

Miguel Bustos is the Senior Director of the GLIDE Center for Social Justice at Glide. He previously served as policy adviser for President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore; Deputy District Director for Congresswoman Barbara Lee; Director of Boards and Commissions for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom; and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for Oakland Mayor Ronald V. Dellums. He is a Deacon at Grace Cathedral.  

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.  More about Grace Forum

As the Senate’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson made clear, an understanding of the judicial system is more important than ever. In Her Honor: My Life on the Bench...What Works, What's Broken, and How to Change It, Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell provides a rare and thought-provoking insider account of our legal system, sharing vivid stories of the cases that came through her courtroom and revealing the strengths, flaws and much-needed changes within our courts. 

Judge Cordell, the first African American woman to sit on the Superior Court of Northern California, knows firsthand how prejudice has permeated our legal system. And yet, she believes in the system. From ending school segregation to legalizing same-sex marriage, its progress relies on legal professionals and jurors who strive to make the imperfect system as fair as possible.   

Join attorney and Grace Cathedral Trustee Tobias Keller in a conversation with Judge Cordell about what our legal system, for better or worse, means to the everyday lives of all Americans. 

About the Guest 

Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell is a legal commentator and police reform advocate, who is a frequent commentator on news outlets including NPR, CNN and MSNBC. A graduate of Stanford Law School, she became the first African American woman jurist in Northern California, a position she held from 1982 to 2001. Prior to her time on the bench, she was the first lawyer to open a private practice in East Palo Alto, a low-income community of color, and was an Assistant Dean of Stanford Law School where she implemented a highly successful minority admissions program. Following her retirement from the bench, she was a Vice Provost at Stanford University and, in 2010, was appointed the Independent Police Auditor for the City of San Jose. Judge Cordell’s public service record spans decades, during which time she has overseen commissions that investigated violence and mental health care in the jail system, as well as accounts of racism in the San Francisco police department. She has received numerous awards, including Silicon Valley NAACP’s William E.B. Dubois Award, the Iola Williams Public Service Award, the National Council of Negro Women’s Public Service Award, the Social Justice Award from Legal Advocates for Children & Youth and the Rose Bird Memorial Award from the California Women Lawyers. Judge Cordell founded the African American Donor Task Force to increase black participation in the national bone marrow registry. She is the co-founder of the African American Composer Initiative and CA Parks for All. An artist and pianist, she resides in California with her partner and is the proud mother of two daughters. 

About the Moderator 

Tobias Keller counsels clients in a variety of industries dealing with financial distress, advising on dislocations arising from excessive leverage, uncontrolled litigation or unanticipated employee or vendor problems, and the governance questions that arise in connection with those challenges. He regularly lectures for organizations on governance, distressed mergers and acquisitions and various restructuring topics. He is a fellow in the American College of Bankruptcy and has been recognized as a leading lawyer in publications including Chambers USA. 

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.  gracecathedral.org/the-forum.

Give to Grace

You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Learn all the many ways to give at gracecathedral.org/give. Thank you!

On October 8, Grace Cathedral’s 2022 Artist in Residence Lee Mingwei presented his work, Our Labyrinth For Grace. It is an epic twelve-hour performance by three dancers, the Men of the cathedral’s Choir of Men and Boys, and organist Susan Jane Matthews.  

In Our Labyrinth, dancers use a broom to sweep a mound of rice along a labyrinthian path, to the subtle sound of ankle bells. At each location, the performance has changed, as the space and time where it takes place infuses the work with a different feeling and character.  

 Join Malcolm Clemens Young in a conversation with Lee Mingwei and the dancers who performed Our Labyrinth For Grace about the creation of the work, what it feels like to perform it, and how the work has evolved over time and space. For more about Lee’s residency, visit gracecathedral.org/air2022. 

You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/givetograce.   

About the Guests 

Born in Taiwan in 1964 and currently living in Paris and New York City, Mingwei Lee creates participatory installations, where strangers can explore issues of trust, intimacy, and self-awareness. leemingwei.com.

Jean-Gabriel Manolis is a French dancer-performer. He has taken part in the performances of Our Labyrinth at Centre Pompidou (Paris, France) and provided artistic advice and supported the new performers at Museum MACAN (Jakarta, Indonesia) in 2018, at Gropius Bau (Berlin, Germany) in 2020 and more recently at Tate Modern (London, UK) in 2022. 

  Born in Kyoto, Japan, Aya Sone started taking ballet class at the age of four. In 2021, she performed Our Labyrinth for the first time at Museum Villa Stuck in Munich and since then at Intermediatheque in Tokyo and at Tate Modern in London (2022).    Wu Cheng-Lung has studied Taichi Dowing, Chinese martial art, Chinese drum, meditation, Gurdjieff movements, Mevlevi Sema Ceremony, and Jerzy Grotowski’s physical training. He has performed Our Labyrinth at Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Museum of National Taipei University of Education (MoNTUE) in Taiwan (2015 and 2016); Center Georges Pompidou, France (2017); and Tate Modern, UK (2022).

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.  gracecathedral.org/the-forum. 

Sunday, October 2, 2022 Grace Cathedral’s mission is to reimagine church with courage, joy, and wonder. Art is an integral part of that vision and mission. In our Year of Connection, art can connect us to others and also to ourselves in ways we can’t imagine until we see it. Every year since 2012 we have offered a residency to artists to create work illuminating the cathedral’s annual theme, and reimagining church as they do so.   When we thought about this year’s theme of Connection, we immediately thought of the phenomenal New York and Paris-based artist Lee Mingwei. Mingwei’s work draws people in, it asks people to engage with the work and with each other, it is infused with ritual and beauty, and is about the space and time in which it happens. He began as a weaver, and he sees his work in the context of warp and weave, relationship, and connection. His work has been shown around the world, and in 2024, the de Young Museum is offering the first US retrospective of his work.  Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young in a conversation with Lee Mingwei about the connections between his personal story and his art.   For more about Lee’s residency, visit gracecathedral.org/air2022.   About the Guest Born in Taiwan in 1964 and currently living in Paris and New York City, Lee creates participatory installations, where strangers can explore issues of trust, intimacy, and self-awareness. His projects are often open-ended scenarios for everyday interaction, and take on different forms with the involvement of participants and change during the course of an exhibition. The projects also often express a sense of sacredness, ritual, and beauty. Lee received his BFA at California College of the Arts and an MFA from Yale University in 1997 and has held solo exhibitions internationally including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Mori Art Museum, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art and has been featured in biennales in Venice, Lyon, Liverpool, Taipei, Sydney, Whitney, and Asia Pacific Triennials. In the spring of 2024, the de Young Museum is offering the first US retrospective of his work.   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.  gracecathedral.org/the-forum   You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Learn all the many ways to give at gracecathedral.org/give.

September 25, 2022  

After World War II, President Truman signed the 1949 Housing Act, which authorized the demolition and reconstruction of urban neighborhoods that were considered slums. This policy — quote unquote “redevelopment” — specifically targeted neighborhoods that were low income and not-white. In the 1960s, the Fillmore became a focus of San Francisco’s urban renewal, one of the largest projects of its kind on the West Coast. It impacted nearly 20,000 people. And by the time new housing and storefronts were finally completed in the 1980s, most of the former Fillmore residents couldn't afford to move back in.

We see its legacy today in the chronic number of people living on the streets, and in controversies over housing development projects like Plaza East in the Western Addition, and the plan to replace its 193 units of public housing with a larger 755-apartment, mixed-income complex. Is there too much focus on how to build more buildings, and not enough on how to create thriving and resilient communities?

Sandhya Naidu Janardhan is an architect specializing in community-led design and sustainable architecture, and Managing Director at Mumbai-based Community Design Agency, which works alongside communities on the margins, addressing cultural and societal inequalities through the built environment through building trust, participatory planning, community-led action, and human-centered design.

 In this conversation with Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, they talk about innovations in housing and community building, and what we in the housing-crunched Bay Area can learn from her inspiring work in India. 

You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Click here to give.   

About the Guest 

Sandhya Naidu Janardhan is an architect with 12 years of experience in community-led design and sustainable architecture. Managing Director at Community Design Agency, she is working with a diverse group of disadvantaged communities, civic agencies and designers to address inequities in the built environment. Licensed and educated in India, Sandhya is also a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a TEDIndia Fellow. Her previous work spans multiple countries, in both the commercial and not-for-profit sectors – including landscape architecture and design for a Singapore-based interdisciplinary design firm, and post-earthquake reconstruction in Haiti for a US Based non-profit. 

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.  gracecathedral.org/the-forum.