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The Hopes and Fears of All the World Are Met in Thee: Identity’s Liberating Power
with Bishop Karen Oliveto
The 15th Annual CLGS Georgia Harkness Lecture
Thursday, 9 October 2025 at 4pm (Pacific Time)
This will be an ONLINE Lecture
Join the Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion (CLGS) for our 15th annual Georgia Harkness Lecture!
In a time marked by rising oppression, historical erasure, and attacks on bodily and spiritual autonomy, the act of naming and claiming one’s identity becomes a sacred and revolutionary act.
Drawing on theological, personal, and communal narratives, Bishop Karen Oliveto explores how embracing the fullness of who we are not only transforms the self, but disrupts systems of marginalization and kindles liberation for others.
When identity is claimed with courage, it becomes a catalyst for collective healing, resistance, and hope.
Bishop Karen Oliveto holds the distinction of being the first openly LGBTQ+ bishop consecrated in The United Methodist Church. She has served in ministry in campus and parish settings in New York and California, in rural and urban locations.
During her 27-year ministry in the San Francisco Bay Area, she was the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Pacific School of Religion, where she was also Adjunct Professor of United Methodist Studies. She was also the first woman to serve as the lead pastor of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco.
Before retiring in 2024, Oliveto served as the Bishop of the Mountain Sky Conference, which included Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and one church in Salmon, Idaho. She and her wife currently reside in Nova Scotia, Canada.
The CLGS Georgia Harkness Lecture
In the fall of 2010 CLGS inaugurated The CLGS Georgia Harkness Lecture, the second of the Center’s two named lectures which is presented every October. (The CLGS John E. Boswell Lecture, offered every April, was launched in 2008.)
Georgia Harkness (1891-1974) was a pioneering theologian in the Methodist tradition, a leading figure in the ecumenical movement, and the first woman hired to teach theology at a Christian seminary. Harkness focused her teaching and writing (more than thirty books and many articles) on the practical application of theology to the pressing social issues of her day, ranging from women’s rights to racism, war and peace, international relations, and, later in her life, full civil rights for gay and lesbian people. Harkness retired from teaching after serving on the faculty at Pacific School of Religion from 1949 to 1960.
The passion Harkness brought to her work of making vital theological connections among wider cultural and political issues, her keen interest in employing poetry and the arts to her theological work, and her firm commitment to civil rights and social justice — all of this contributed to PSR’s “tradition of boldness” — a tradition that shapes the ongoing work of PSR’s Center for LGBTQ & Gender Studies in Religion.
Click here for a list of past CLGS Harkness Lecturers.