Rev. Dr. Galen Guengerich

Galen Guengerich focuses on the relationship between religious commitments and public policy, especially in contexts of religious pluralism. For nearly a decade, he has been coordinating efforts to deepen the mutual understanding between Jewish and Palestinian students through new academic platforms and, in so doing, address disparities in academic institutions in Israel on behalf of philanthropists in the US. His current academic research examines the role religion has played, through dietary laws and conventions, in exacerbating the climate crisis – and could play in ameliorating it. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and Washington, DC, where he focuses on the interplay between religion and public policy.

He was educated at Franklin and Marshall College (BA, 1982), Princeton Theological Seminary (MDiv, 1985), and the University of Chicago (PhD, 2004). In addition to his doctoral dissertation, titled Comprehensive Commitments and the Public World: Tillich, Rawls and Whitehead on the Nature of Justice, he is author of three books: God Revised: How Religion Must Evolve in a Scientific Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), The Way of Gratitude: A New Spirituality for Today (Random House, 2020), and Dwell in Possibility: Meditations on Conquering Life’s Challenges (Cropton Publishing, 2024). He has also written columns for Reuters, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and TIME magazine, as well as a regular column on “The Search for Meaning” for the online edition of Psychology Today.

He served for 31 years as a minister, the last 18 as Senior Minister, of All Souls, a large and influential Unitarian Universalist congregation on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He served for 12 years on the Board of Directors of Interfaith Alliance, the national non-partisan advocacy voice for religious pluralism in the US; he served as chair of the Interfaith Alliance board from 2008-2012. He has also served on the board of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, a human rights organization. In addition, he has served as a Lecturer in Preaching and Worship at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.