Program for the Evolution of Spirituality
Program for the Evolution of Spirituality
Launched in 2020 by Dan McKanan, the Program for the Evolution of Spirituality supports the scholarly study of emerging spiritual movements, marginalized spiritualities, and the innovative edges of established religious traditions. It also prepares students for ministry in these movements. Through conferences, field experiences, course offerings, and public lectures, the program expands HDS's expertise in topics such as spirituality among the millennial generation, ecological spirituality, and the ethics of power in spiritual communities.
Belonging
The 2026 PES Conference will directly explore our founding commitment to inclusion and belonging. We welcome proposals related to the limits, contradictions, and paradoxes of belonging in spiritual communities and the academy. Visit this page to read the full Call for Papers and submit a proposal.
100 Years Rudolf Steiner
Harvard’s Program for the Evolution of Spirituality was delighted to host a special conference marking the centennial of the death of spiritual teacher Rudolf Steiner. This conference took place at Harvard Divinity School on December 15 and 16, 2025.
Working Groups
In 2025-2026, six student-facilitated working groups on diverse topics foster a collaborative community of practitioners working at the intersections of scholarly, creative, and spiritual work.
PES News
Boston's Centuries-Long History of Climate Activism Stems from Ancestry and Spirituality
In the U.S., religion tends to obstruct climate realism and action, according to a 2022 Pew Research Study. Dan McKanan, Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Senior Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School, joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to detail Boston’s history with climate activism, and how religion, ancestry and spirituality tie in.
Making a Space for ‘Alternative Spiritualities’
Since Harvard Divinity School committed to offering a fully multireligious master of divinity curriculum about 20 years ago, we have been blessed by steadily growing numbers of pagans, animists, readers of the Urantia Book or A Course in Miracles, practitioners of entheogenic or queer or African diasporic spiritualities, seekers, and people who affiliate with two, three, or more traditions. This diversity poses challenges, since we cannot possibly offer courses in every tradition to which our students belong. But it also invites us to reimagine both religion and the practice of ministry.
A Century Before the First Earth Day, There was the Forest Festival in the Middlesex Fells
On Oct. 15, 1880, climate activists and citizen scientists gathered atop Bear Hill in what is now the Middlesex Fells Reservation for the Boston area’s first Forest Festival — a 19th-century precursor to Earth Day. Over the next five years, the Forest Festivals would galvanize metropolitan Bostonians to protect many of the green spaces that we all enjoy today. For environmentalists today, the Forest Festivals are both an inspiring model of movement building and a reminder that we cannot save the planet without the commitment of ordinary people.
HDS Program Aims to Create New Spaces for the Spiritually Marginalized
Historically, professional organizations in the study of religion have ignored the experiences and practices of marginal and new religious movements. The new Program for the Evolution of Spirituality (PES) at Harvard Divinity School is working to ameliorate the marginalization of these spiritual movements through associated courses, ongoing colloquia, and conferences that center the experiences and practices of marginal spiritual communities.
Earth Day at 50: Climate Change, Spirituality, and Social Justice
On April 22, 1970, millions of people in the United States took part in demonstrations and rallies in streets, parks, auditoriums, and college campuses to call for a healthy, sustainable environment and to decry its deterioration. That first Earth Day launched the modern environmental movement.
