Rev. Dr. Galen Guengerich

Galen Guengerich’s research and writing focus on the relationship between religious commitments and public policy, especially in contexts of religious pluralism. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in the US and writes a Substack column, Conscience and Civilization, exploring questions of religion, ethics, and public life. For nearly a decade, he has worked on behalf of US philanthropists to develop academic initiatives in Israel that foster mutual understanding between Jewish and Palestinian students while addressing disparities in access to higher education.

He was educated at Franklin & Marshall College (BA), Princeton Theological Seminary (MDiv), and the University of Chicago (PhD). His doctoral dissertation was titled Comprehensive Commitments and the Public World: Tillich, Rawls and Whitehead on the Nature of Justice. He is also the author of four 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), Dwell in Possibility: Meditations on Conquering Life’s Challenges (Cropton Publishing, 2024), and Dwell in Possibility, Volume 2: More Meditations on Conquering Life’s Challenges (Cropton Publishing, 2025). His writing has appeared in Reuters, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and TIME magazine. He also wrote a regular column on “The Search for Meaning” for Psychology Today.

He served for 31 years as a minister of All Souls, a large Unitarian Universalist congregation on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, including 18 years as senior minister. For 12 years, he was a member of the board of directors of Interfaith Alliance, a national nonpartisan organization that advocates religious pluralism, serving as board chair from 2008–2012. He has also served on the board of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, a human rights organization, and as a lecturer in preaching and worship at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.