Dr. Gary Dorrien

Sermon: The Samaritan Woman at the Well and the Issue in Your Life” – John 4:7-24

The Reverend Gary Dorrien is Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University in New York City. An Episcopal priest and prolific scholar, he is widely regarded as one of the preeminent theologians and social ethicists of our time.

Dorrien has authored twenty-five books spanning theology, ethics, philosophy, and political history. His trilogy on the Black social gospel tradition—including The New Abolition: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel (2015), which won the 2017 Grawemeyer Award—has been hailed as definitive scholarship that recovers neglected streams of American religious history. His recent works include American Democratic Socialism: History, Politics, Religion, and Theory (2021) and A Darkly Radiant Vision: The Black Social Gospel in the Shadow of MLK (2023).

Dorrien’s book, Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit, won the prestigious PROSE Award, and three of his books have won the Association of American Publishers Award. He recently published a memoir, Over from Union Road: My Christian-Left-Intellectual Life (2024).

In 2024, Dorrien was awarded the Gandhi King Mandela Peace Prize at Morehouse College for his “distinguished teaching and magisterial, rigorous, monumental scholarship” that centers Black Christian witness and political imagination. Philosopher Cornel West describes him as “the preeminent social ethicist in North America today.” Dorrien’s work illuminates the religious roots of progressive social movements and continues to shape contemporary conversations about justice, democracy, and faith.

Sponsored in part by the Bishop Emerson and Jane Colaw Lectures and by your generous contributions to the Worship program.