Jeffrey Small "East Meets West"

Jeffrey graduated summa cum laude from Yale University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. Jeffrey also earned a Masters in the Study of Religions from Oxford University in England. While he has enjoyed remarkable success in his professional career, Small’s passion has always been religion and the interconnectivity between world religions.

“We live in a multicultural society in which contact among faiths that seem to have contrary doctrines is more intimate than ever before. What can a religion centered on the figure of Jesus of Nazareth who is seen by his followers as the divine incarnate, a religion in which the supreme cosmic reality Brahman is also a seed of each of our own selves, and a non-theistic religion that defines a path out of human suffering without the help of a supernatural deity teach each other?”

Small is active in the Episcopal Church, currently serving as a member of the Board of Trustees at General Theological Seminary in New York, but he has also studied Yoga in India and practiced Buddhist meditation in Bhutan. A strong advocate of interfaith dialogue, Small examines how to stay true to particular faith traditions while learning from the teachings of other religions.

Reverend Susan Butler, Grace Episcopal Rector, said, “At Grace we are committed to engage the questions the modern world challenges us with. This is why the Grace Speaks lecture series was born--to invite speakers like Jeffrey Small to help us engage the intellectual, spiritual and religious dimensions of our lives as Christians living in the twenty first century.” Grace Speaks is a non-profit community event focusing on Christianity in the twenty first century. Previous speakers include Matthew Fox, John Dominic Crossan, Amy-Jill Levine, and Bishop John Shelby Spong.