We live in a state of flux. Transformation is constant and unavoidable, and in this anthology week we resist the comfort of stasis to confront the trends, discoveries and challenges that are molding our future landscape. We’ll consider our own role in the changes around us: Are we catalysts or mere reactionaries?  Through insightful, interdisciplinary case studies, Chautauqua will bring together social scientists, economists, changemakers and futurists to examine the impact of transformation on us, our communities and our world. 

Confirmed lecturers:
Sian Leah Beilock, President, Dartmouth

Pluralism is a great strength, and a unique hallmark of our life in the United States and our practices here at Chautauqua. What can we learn about thriving, well-being, and community from deep engagement across religious differences, including people of faith engaging with those of no faith at all? How can we nurture the value of pluralism in our society and in our daily lives? In a country that continues to be polarized along social, economic, ethnic, racial, and religious lines, how can we come together to ensure a life of dignity for all? This week, in partnership with Interfaith America, we will hear from academics, faith leaders and activists who will share how and why we are all better if we can learn to live and work together.  

Longtime friend of Chautauqua and National Comedy Center Advisory Board Member Lewis Black, the celebrated comedian known for his trademark acerbic style, helps curate a laugh-inducing and thought-provoking week dedicated to the craft and practice of comedy. We’ll consider how comedy genres, styles and content have evolved to meet modern tastes and sensibilities, and the comedian’s role in defending free speech. The sharpest voices across comedy generations come together at Chautauqua to help us explore these critical questions and others — if we can hear them over the laughter. 

Confirmed lecturers:
Lewis Black, celebrated standup comedian and actor, “Inside Out 2”

In a world of cancel culture, where one perceived wrong act or utterance can lead to loss of employment or reputation, is there something we might learn from the religious concept of sin? How do we understand sin today? What do we make of sin on a personal and a corporate level? How can sinful behavior, or a sinful nature, be redeemed? This week we will dive deep on historical, theological and practical approaches to sin and redemption, and shine a light on the hope we can have for a future — reconciled to one another and to all that is holy.

Chautauqua has long offered a cross-fertilization of art forms, bringing together art makers and art lovers in community — and increasingly it serves as an incubator for new, exciting work, providing a window into the process of creative experimentation and excellence. What are the dual roles and responsibilities of the artist and the audience, and what do works of art tell us about cultural, political, and social ideas and/or ideals? This week aims to connect impactful artistic experiences with a deeper understanding of artistic meaning and process from the makers themselves. 

Confirmed lecturers:
George Saunders, author, Lincoln and the Bardo

Noise inundates us wherever we turn. Commercials on TV and in between YouTube videos. Advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. Blasting music in restaurants and grocery stores. How do we cultivate silence in our lives given how loud our worlds are? What can we learn from the different wisdom traditions on contemplation and meditation? What do we do when we pray?  How can we grow in our practices of meditation, prayer, or contemplation, and what is the role of silence in this growth? This week, we will hear from a range of perspectives from artists to scientists on why the contemplative life matters. 

Confirmed lecturers:
Makoto Fujimura, artist and the author of Art+Faith: A Theology of Making

Chautauqua brings two of America’s most highly regarded think tanks together on its historic lecture platform for a series of discussions on the issues driving the national discourse. What is the state of our democratic republic today? What is its immediate and long-term future? How can Americans find common ground on our most urgent challenges following a bruising national election and continued partisan division? AEI and Brookings experts show the way, in the Chautauqua tradition of sharing diverse and divergent perspectives in smart, good-faith conversation. 

Confirmed lecturers:
Robert Doar, president, American Enterprise Institute
Cecilia Elena Rouse, president, Brookings Institution

Understanding social science research about religion enables people of faith, religious leaders, and the general public to have a more complete picture of continuity, change and diversity in religious life. Even as more people in many countries, including the United States, distance themselves from organized religion by embracing other forms of spirituality or identifying with no religion in particular, religion continues to be very important in the daily lives of billions of people around the world. In the U.S., who is still a believer and how do they engage with society and politics? Across the globe, how are different faith groups affected by broader societal changes? This week we will benefit from the nuanced research of the Pew Research Center’s religion team, while hearing from academics, practitioners and interpreters of data about what it all means.  

In light of world-shaking events that define recent history — such as Big Tech’s emergence as the dominant industry, global conflicts, financial collapses and a deadly pandemic — this week we put our finger on the pulse of the global economy, and especially the American capitalist system. Our expert lecturers will give us their best assessment of the state of play today, what the next 75 years hold, and how America and all of us can be best positioned to continue to succeed and lead in the 21st century. 

In the early twentieth century, German sociologist Max Weber wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Its main argument is that the Protestant work ethic, associated with frugality, hard work and thrift, undergirded the rise of modern capitalism. How have modern-day evangelists reinterpreted this concept to create global churches that operate as for-profit corporations? How has this work ethic impacted minority religious traditions in the U.S. and across the globe? And how have different groups attempted to transcend this legacy? We will hear from economists, historians and theologians this week as they assess just how much the Protestant work ethic has unknowingly impacted us all in some way.  

In its 2021 Freedom in the World assessment, the nonprofit Freedom House noted a sharp acceleration the previous year in a global decline of democracy, an effect of what it characterized as decades-long trend of rising authoritarianism. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that a median of 31% of respondents across 24 different nations are supportive of military rule or an authoritarian leader. In this week, we travel across the globe to nations where authoritarian regimes hold or are gaining power to understand: How? Why?  

Religion is often regarded as a major contributor to violence, from individual acts within the home to wars and conflicts abroad. What role does religion play in promoting conflict and extremism? How has religion been used to justify the demonization and even targeted killing of “the other?” On the other hand, religion is, in the United States, a category for protection from discrimination. Most faiths direct believers toward love, forgiveness and peace, away from the nurture and establishment of hate. This week, we will hear from a diverse set of perspectives to make sense of the way that religion contributes to and defends against hate in our society 

Honoring a shared mission to change the world through the power of storytelling, award-winning author, poet, producer and educator Kwame Alexander returns to the Amphitheater stage to lead a series of conversations on making a positive difference in our world. Kwame’s 2023 Amphitheater lecture quickly established a connection between the author and the Chautauqua community, leading to his current role as the Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts and inaugural Writer in Residence — that shared love will be evident throughout this inspiring week at Chautauqua. 

Confirmed lecturers:
LeVar Burton, actor, director, literary advocate; host and producer, “Reading Rainbow”
Kwame Alexander, author, Why Fathers Cry at Night: A Memoir in Love Poems, Letters, Recipes, and Remembrances; Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts and inaugural writer in residence, Chautauqua Institution

With the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, this week we will explore the many ways in which the thorny issues of gender and sex within religious communities intersect with the legal system. Who sets the agenda? How does it impact other communities, be they religious or not? And why is positive law an important mechanism for religious actors? This week, we will hear from legal experts, journalists, and activists on who gets to decide what choices we make when it comes to bodily autonomy.   

Building on a decades-long legacy of thoughtful and informative programming focused on the Middle East, Chautauqua in this week focuses specifically on the increasingly influential states that border the Persian Gulf, including members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Iran and Iraq. We’ll seek to understand the histories, demographies and economies of the Gulf states, how they are ruled or governed, and their relationships to each other and the broader Middle East — especially in the context of ongoing conflicts including Israel-Palestine.

All but one chapter of the Qur’an opens with the phrase that describes the nature of God as the Most Compassionate and the Most Merciful. The Talmud refers to God as “The Merciful One,” and the Christian scriptures share the notion that “God is love.” But is that all that God is? How do we make sense of other descriptions of God, including instances of God’s jealousy, wrath, or judgment? At the same time, God is also ineffable, incapable of fully being understood or described in human language. Why does it matter how we describe God? And can the description of God allow us to better understand human nature? This week, we will hear from scholars and practitioners from different faith and spiritual traditions on how they describe the nature of God and what that means for our understanding of the world and perhaps even ourselves.

We know the saying “those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it” — how does what we know of the past influence the way we draft our own histories for the future? If history is a story, what do those stories mean, and how can those stories be edited or reinterpreted to serve different purposes, even purposes at odds? As we consider history as science, as art, as philosophy. How do fields including politics, industry and faith impact how we interpret history?  

Confirmed lecturers:
Doris Kearns Goodwin, presidential historian, Pulitzer Prize-winning author   

We are in a time of transformative change. Will traditional orthodox understandings see a revival as the promise of secularism faces the death knell? With disaffiliation increasing, how will institutions respond to the trend toward individualization and hybrid identities, such as Jewish-Buddhist? Who will nurture the vitality of our legacy, and how will we move into an uncharted future? Will people continue to organize themselves religiously, or have we begun a transition into privatization and commercialization of the spiritual life? This week we will consider the history, contemporary landscape, and the future-orientation of diverse expressions of religion and spirituality in the 21st century.