The Forum at Grace Cathedral

California Against the Sea: Imagining a Future for Our Coastline California's spectacular coastline has long seemed almost permanent. But as rising seas, intensifying storms, and coastal erosion reshape the Pacific shore, that assumption is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. In California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline, environmental journalist and Pulitzer finalist...

Forum with Craig Lieckfelt Grace Cathedral, San Francisco What can a plate of food teach us about freedom, faith, and grace? For chef and author Craig Allen Lieckfelt, the answer begins in a Detroit classroom, where a lesson in economics — guns and butter, what a nation arms itself with and what it feeds its people — becomes an unexpected framework for understanding a life. In Guns + Butter: Pop-U...

The Forum with Anna Lembke Grace Cathedral, San Francisco   We live in a world of unprecedented access to pleasure—and unprecedented opportunity for overconsumption. From our smartphones and social media to food, shopping, gaming, and entertainment, high-reward stimuli are available to us virtually around the clock. But as psychiatrist and author Dr. Anna Lembke argues in Dopamine Nation: Finding...

The Forum with Arlie Russell Hochschild   Grace Cathedral, San Francisco    For all our attempts to understand America's political divisions, two essential questions call for answers. How did it happen that many Americans were predisposed to find strong appeal in Donald Trump? How does political appeal actually work?   In Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, bestselling author and...

The Forum with Marion Nestle Grace Cathedral, San Francisco    If you want to understand how the food business works, just have a look at a box of breakfast cereal. Hardly anything on supermarket shelves is bigger, bolder, or more deliberately designed. The fiercely competitive industry that brings us Cheerios, Froot Loops, and Trix sells a distinctly American dream: indulgence and health in one c...

The Forum with David Treuer  Grace Cathedral, San Francisco     Co-presented with Litquake    In the wake of George Floyd's murder and January 6, National Book Award finalist and bestseller David Treuer decided to hold himself and his family together the only way he knew how: he sat down to write a letter. Ranging from Treuer's upbringing on the Leech Lake reservation in Minnesota to the experienc...

The Forum with John Macaskill Grace Cathedral, San Francisco    For nearly a thousand years, the Order of St. John has carried forward a simple but radical commitment: to care for the sick and vulnerable, regardless of faith, background, or ability to pay. What began in Jerusalem as a hospital for pilgrims has evolved into an international humanitarian organization, combining an ancient tradition...

Forum with Paulina Borsook Grace Cathedral, San Francisco  Twenty-six years after the original publication of Cyberselfish, Paulina Borsook's "smart, funny and irreverent" (The New York Times) critique of high-tech culture reads as a remarkably prescient assessment of an ethos that has seeped into nearly every corner of our world. Cyberselfish identified the warning signs of a culture profoundly l...

Grace Cathedral, San Francisco,  September 20, 2026 Fiction writer, essayist, and journalist Lauren Markham, in her most recent book Immemorial (longlisted for the Pen America Jean Stein Award and shortlisted for the Northern California book award), has written a speculative essay on language in the face of climate catastrophe: how can we memorialize what has been lost, and what soon will be?  "I...

William E. Swing Forum: An Unusual Swing Grace Cathedral, San Francisco In his sixth book, An Unusual Swing: A Bishop's Follow-Through, William E. Swing—the seventh Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California and founder of the United Religions Initiative—reflects on the first twenty-five years of the global interfaith movement he launched, as well as the personal journey that transformed him fr...

Anne Lamott and Neal Allen Forum: Good Writing   Grace Cathedral, San Francisco    Join bestselling author Anne Lamott and writer and spiritual coach Neal Allen for an inspiring and entertaining conversation that will change the way you think about language. Drawing on their new book Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences, they offer powerful techniques for transforming worthy sentences i...

Forum with Bill Fontana: Resonance   Grace Cathedral, San Francisco     San Francisco artist Bill Fontana is internationally recognized for his pioneering experiments in sound. Since the late 1960s, he has consistently used sound as a sculptural medium to interact with and transform our perceptions of visual and architectural spaces. Applying his knowledge of composition, he draws out patterns of...

Dave Evans Forum: How to Live a Meaningful Life Grace Cathedral, San Francisco  In a world grappling with major societal shifts and increasing isolation, it's easy to feel like nothing we do matters. So many of us feel like something is missing, disconnected, and stuck. There must be more to life than simply surviving each day—but how do we uncover it?  Bestselling author Dave Evans, with Bill Bur...

Ana Raquel Minian Forum: In the Shadow of Liberty Grace Cathedral, San Francisco  Many Americans have watched in horror as children are torn from their parents and American citizens have been killed under the current administration's immigration policy. But as historian Ana Raquel Minian reveals in In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention, this is only the latest chap...

Rebecca Solnit Forum: Notes on a World of Change Grace Cathedral, San Francisco  As white nationalist and authoritarian movements push toward isolation and individualism, other currents continue to gather strength. Antiracism, feminism, expansive understandings of gender, environmental thinking, scientific discovery, and Indigenous and non-Western ways of knowing resonate across borders and genera...

The San Francisco Symphony perform ed Mozart's Requiem with guest conductor Manfred Honeck, in a special version that reimagines the piece in the context of an 18th-century funeral service. In collaboration with the Symphony, Dean Malcolm Clemens Young gives a preconcert talk before the performance.

Adam Hochschild Forum: American Midnight Grace Cathedral, San Francisco  Between World War I and the Roaring Twenties lies a largely forgotten chapter of American history—one whose tensions still echo a hundred years later. In these turbulent years, democracy was tested by war, pandemic, and violence driven by conflicts over race, immigration, and labor rights. In American Midnight: The Great War,...

The Forum with Eugene Kirpichov Grace Cathedral, San Francisco  Many believe today's economic model is failing. There is a science-based, hopeful alternative: a regenerative model that works like a living system, helping leaders, communities, and citizens navigate climate chaos, inequality, and ecological breakdown with clarity and purpose. Instead of reacting to crisis after crisis, a regenerativ...

The Forum with Randall Balmer Grace Cathedral, San Francisco  The 1st Amendment to the US Constitution codified the principle that government should play no role in favoring or supporting any religion, while allowing free exercise of all religions (including unbelief). More than 200 years later, the results from this experiment are overwhelming: The separation of church and state has shielded the...

The Forum with  Ma ggi Dawn Grace Cathedral, San Francisco       Author, professor, and priest Maggi Dawn has written two guides to the church year:  Beginnings and Endings (and what happens in between): Daily Bible readings from Advent to Epiphany  and  Giving It Up: Daily Bible Readings from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day.      Our everyday lives are full of small-scale beginnings and endings  –  b...

The Forum with David Richo Grace Cathedral, San Francisco  When you feel you have been wronged, the urge to retaliate can feel overwhelming and justified. In the groundbreaking work Sweeter Than Revenge: Overcoming Your Payback Mind, acclaimed author and psychotherapist David Richo explores the complex dynamics of retaliation, offering profound insights into why we seek revenge and practices to he...

#LifeAfterDeath #Resurrection #Grief #Requiem Discover what Jesus really teaches about life after death through a deeply personal story about loss and hope. In this moving All Souls Day sermon from Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, Dean Malcolm Clemens Young shares the story of his beloved dog Poppy's peaceful death and explores Jesus' profound answer to the Sadducees' question about resurrection. W...

In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity, it can seem impossible to escape. But in this inspiring field guide to dropping out of the attention economy, artist and critic Jenny Odell shows us how we can still win back our lives. Odell is an artist, writer, and educator whose work focuses on close obser...

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...

Every year since 2012, we have offered a residency to artists to create work illuminating the cathedral's vision and annual theme and reimagining church as they do so.  Our 2025 Artist in Residence, for our Year of the Future, is composer, DJ, and curator Mason Bates. Mason Bates is imaginatively transforming the way classical music is created and experienced. He is the composer of the Grammy-winn...