Gary John Dorrien (born 1952) is an American social ethicist and theologian. He is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and Professor of Religion at Columbia University, both in New York City, and the author of 25 books on ethics, social theory, philosophy, theology, politics, and intellectual history. Prior to joining the faculty at Union and Columbia in 2005, Dorrien taught at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, where he served as Parfet Distinguished Professor and as Dean of Stetson Chapel. An Episcopal priest, he has taught as the Paul E. Raither Distinguished Scholar at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, the Horace De Y. Lentz Visiting Professor at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Lowell Visiting Professor at Boston University School of Theology. Dorrien is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America's Religion and Socialism Commission.

Early life

Born on March 21, 1952, Dorrien grew up in a working class, semi-rural area of middle-Michigan, Bay County, and in nearby Midland, Michigan. His parents, Jack and Virginia Dorrien, grew up in poor areas of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Growing up, his family was nominally Catholic. Dorrien played multiple varsity sports at Midland High School and Alma College, graduating summa cum laude from Alma in 1974. He earned graduate degrees from Union Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary, and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from Union Graduate School in 1989. He has been awarded honorary doctoral degrees from MacMurray College (DLitt, 2005), Trinity College (DD, 2010), Meadville Lombard Theological School (LHD, 2015), Virginia Theological Seminary (DD, 2020), and Wake Forest University (DD, 2024).

Awards

Dorrien won the American Library Association's Choice Award in 2009 for his book Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition, which The Christian Century described as "magnificent, sprawling and monumental." He won the Association of American Publishers' PROSE Award in 2012 for his book Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit: The Idealistic Logic of Modern Theology, described as "a brilliant and much needed account of the influence of Immanuel Kant and the tradition of post-Kantian idealism on modern theology." He won the Grawemeyer Award in 2017 for his book The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel, described by theologian William Stacey Johnson as, "a magisterial treatment of a neglected stream of American religious history presented by one of this generation's premiere interpreters of modern religious thought performing at the top of his game." He won the Choice Award in 2018 for his book Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel, which Choice described as "intellectual history at its finest...A triumph of careful scholarship, rigorous argument, clear prose, unblinking judgments and groundbreaking conclusions…indispensable." He won the American Library Association's Choice Award for the third time in 2023 for his book American Democratic Socialism: History, Politics, Religion, and Theory, described in Current Affairs as “a masterpiece. American Democratic Socialism will be the definitive history for some time.” He won the Gandhi King Mandela Peace Prize in 2024 at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia; the prize citation commended his “distinguished teaching and magisterial, rigorous, monumental, and definitive scholarship that counter and disrupt White racist theology and ethical inquiry by centering the truths of Black life, Black Christian witness, and political imagination.”

Books