Events and Happenings at SFTS

Welcome! We offer a variety of on campus events in San Anselmo, as well as livestreamed on Zoom. Scroll down to explore.

February 2024

Julius Bailey Laurie Garrett-Cobbina San Francisco Theological Seminary Lecture Black Church

This is a FREE, online event and all are welcome 😊. Zoom link here. Calendar invite.

 

DECEMBER 2023

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Welcome to the Way of Peace! JOIN US for a very special evening of worship and music as we celebrate the Holiday season. The SFTS Seminary Singers and the Allen Temple Baptist Church Women's Choir will be performing their celestial sounds. 

Saturday, December 2, 2023   |   5:30 pm
Stewart Chapel, San Francisco Theological Seminary
109 Seminary Road, San Anselmo

The event is FREE and all are welcome. Download the flyer here.

 

May 2023

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San Francisco Theological Seminary Celebrates the Class of 2023!

Learn more >>

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April 2023

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Wednesday, April 26 for “Wading in the Water: A Chaplain Support Group”

An afternoon event to provide connection, support and rest for Chaplains who have served during Covid-19. Gather with other local chaplains, Connect one-on-one, Share experiences of serving during Covid-19 in a facilitated group, and Spend solo time in nature.

MARCH 2023

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Thursday-Friday   |   March 9-10, 2023
10:00 am - 5:00 pm, Scott Hall Rm 101
San Francisco Theological Seminary
105 Seminary Road, San Anselmo

Livestreamed on Zoom

Over the past two decades, scholars have increasingly focused attention on two contrasting features of the Bible: 1) themes of resistance to empire in the New Testament, and 2) the growth of imperialist interpretations of New Testament texts in emergent and subsequent Christian discourse. Many argue that it is impossible to disconnect the web that binds contemporary issues of poverty, climate change, identity, and recurring violence from colonialist renderings of biblical texts. Some link an “imperialist” dimension to the NT canon itself, observing that the NT bears both imperial and anti-imperial imprints. It is difficult to ignore the roles that Bible and Empire have played in fostering a global legacy of chronic distributive imbalance. Likewise, the work of reframing ‘biblical’ teaching grows ever more urgent. 

The purpose of this workshop is to explore the ancient contours and later global legacies of distributive justice (and injustice) in the Bible from a range of disciplinary perspectives. This will involve examining New Testament passages in their Jewish and Roman contexts, as well as critical study of the imperialist uses of such texts and the derivative legacies of transmission, interpretation and re-appropriation. To accomplish this purpose, the workshop will bring together both scholars of New Testament and scholars in other fields (literature, political science, Islam, the natural sciences, medieval history), to show how a broad study of the New Testament/Early Christianity bears on contemporary issues related to unequal distribution of resources and opportunities, such as poverty, climate change, identity, and violence.

CONVENERS:

Eugene Park, Lillian Larsen

PARTICIPANTS:

  • Warren Carter (Philips Theological Seminary)
    Thinking with Matthew’s Massacre of the Innocents: Visual Interpretations
  • Jin Young Choi (Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School)
    Distributive Justice and Food Politics in the Gospel of Mark
  • Jacqueline Hidalgo (Williams College)
    Children of the Apocalypse: Revelation and US Latinx Literature of Environmental Crisis
  • Heather King (University of Redlands)
    'The same God that made you made me': Christian Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Black Authors
  • Lillian Larsen (University of Redlands/SFTS)
    Redrawing the Map of Distributive Justice
  • Lisa Olson (University of Redlands)
    Rationality and Empiricism in Science and Christianity
  • Eugene Park (University of Redlands/SFTS/GTU)
    Whatever is just I will pay you: Issues of distributive justice in the parable of the day-laborers in the vineyard (Matt 20:1-16)
  • Althea Sircar (Political Science)Sana Tayyen (University of Redlands)
    All the children of the world: ICWA and trans-cultural adoption within the political theology of settler colonial Christianity
  • Sana Tayyen
    The Two Sermons: Jesus and the Prophet
  • Pat Wing (University of Redlands)
    The Mongol Apocalypse: A Fourteenth Century Syriac Christian Testament of Jesus to His Disciple Peter

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JOIN US for a conversation about Calvin, the character and legacy of the Reformation(s), and the modern world, with Prof. Ward Holder and other experts, on the occasion of the publication of Holder’s recent book, Calvin and the Christian Tradition: Scripture, Memory, and the Western Mind.

Friday, March 3, 2023   |   2:00 - 5:00 pm
San Francisco Theological Seminary
105 Seminary Road, San Anselmo

WATCH THE VIDEO >>

PANELISTS

  • Ward Holder (St. Anselm’s College), author of Calvin and the Christian Tradition: Scripture, Memory, and the Western Mind (Cambridge 2022) and Reinhold Niebuhr in Theory and Practice: Christian Realism and American Politics in the Twenty-First Century (Lexington 2019)
  • Barbara Pitkin (Stanford), author of Calvin, the Bible, and History: Exegesis and Historical Reflection in the Era of Reform (Oxford 2020)
  • Christopher Ocker (San Francisco Theological Seminary, University of Redlands), author of The Hybrid Reformation (Cambridge 2022)
  • Ethan Shagan (University of California, Berkeley), author of The Birth of Modern Belief (Princeton 2018)
  • Kirsi Stjerna (Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary/Graduate Theological Union), editor of Women Reformers of Early Modern Europe (Fortress 2022) and author of Lutheran Theology: A Grammar of Faith (T&T Clark 2020)

FEBRUARY 2023

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Saturday, February 4, 2023  |  4:00 PM
Montgomery Chapel
5 Richmond Road, San Anselmo

University of Redlands Conservatory of Music Artist Faculty Francisco Castillo, oboe, Kathryn Nevin, clarinet, and Carolyn Beck, bassoon, bring audiences a concert with a pleasing mix of old and new. The program features 20th century masterworks by French composers Jacques Ibert and Joseph Canteloube, alongside music of California composers Deon Price, Adrienne Albert, and fellow Conservatory faculty Andre Myers. Price’s “Crosswinds” is specially arranged for the Redlands Reed Trio for this performance, and selections by Albert and Myers were recently premiered by the ensemble in 2022.

DECEMBER 2022

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Welcome The Light! JOIN US for a very special evening of worship and music as we celebrate the Holiday season. The SFTS Seminary Singers and the UR School of Music Chorale Ensemble will be performing their celestial sounds. All are welcome.

Saturday, December 3, 2022   |   7:00 pm
Stewart Chapel, San Francisco Theological Seminary
109 Seminary Road, San Anselmo

The event is FREE, but if you would like to support our community programs, we would greatly appreciate an offering to the  SFTS Shaw Chaplaincy Institute at this link:  redlands.edu/supportsfts.

NOVEMBER 2022

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San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo  |  12:00pm - 3:30pm

What does theology say about embodiment? What do bodies say about theology? Wendy Farley writes, it’s time to pay attention to what excluded bodies have to say to theology. Jon Berquist says, the way we understand bodies runs parallel to the way we understand society and God, and so it was in ancient times, in the many competing views of bodies and embodiment present in the Hebrew Bible. 

JOIN US for an informal lunch, a panel discussion with Farley and Berquist and the faculty of San Francisco Theological Seminary, and a “Incarnational Spirituality Lab,” in which participants will together reimagine how theology can be embodied in liturgy, practice, and social justice. We will conclude with an Embodiment of Prayer led by Marcia McFee.

OCTOBER 2022

Event details that say Inaugural Lecture of the H. Eugene Farlough California Chair in African-American Christianity, October 18, 2022 next to image of Julius Bailey outdoors smiling

“A Faith That Will Not Shrink”:  Learning From The Yellow Fever Epidemic and the A.M.E. Church, 1793-1878

The Inaugural Lecture of Julius Bailey as the H. Eugene Farlough California Chair in African-American Christianity.

Watch a recording of the event