The Dead Sea Café is an open community forum for Christianity, current events, the arts, faith, spirituality, snacks and hot beverages. Started by T. Baird Soules, it is featured at The Ark Five College Episcopal Center in Amherst by our gracious host, the Reverend Christopher Carlisle, Episcopal Chaplain to UMass.

The Dead Sea Café blog will feature regular writing and correspondence for the UMass Amherst community and beyond. Currently we are publishing chapters of Rev. Carlisle's book, "Un-Churched: Leaving the Institution to Find God", and we will be inviting guests to discuss key issues of the text.
We'd love to have your regular insights on topics discussed as well. Please join us a subscriber and a contributor.

The Reverend Christopher Carlisle is an Episcopal priest and Chaplain at the
University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where he has been for the past twenty-
five years. He received his BA from Columbia University, his MTS from Harvard
University, and his M.Div from Yale University. Apart from his innovative Episcopal ministry integrating religion, the arts, and intellectual life, he has taught a multi-disciplinary course in epistemology in the University of Massachusetts undergraduate honors college entitled "Belief", and "Homelessness and Shelter," a service learning course.
On the basis of his experience at the chaplaincy – whose goal, he says, is to provide a laboratory for the church – he speaks on the need for change in the twenty-first century American church, and travels throughout the world researching alternative forms of Christian community.