Today, Sara Gabler speaks with renowned theologian and social ethicist, Gary Dorrien, about his new memoir, Over from Union Road: My Christian-Left-Intellectual Life. From his roots in rural Michigan to elite halls of Harvard and Columbia, Dorrien approaches lofty ideas with curiosity and grounds his scholarship in social activism. His memoir is an intellectual history of contemporary left-theology as much as it is a recounting of his life. 

Dorrien describes the long tradition of liberal theology, a tradition from the nineteenth century that values intellectual freedom and forges a third way between dogmatic orthodoxy and secular denialism. As Dorrien elaborates, liberal theology embraces the historical critical method and allows science to explain the world. In the twentieth century US liberal theology merged with the social gospel, a movement of Protestant Christians who believed it was their duty to address social problems like poverty and inequality. It was through progressivism that Dorrien argues these two movements achieved a union. 

They also discuss the differences between conservative and progressive evangelicalism, Dorrien’s organizing work with the DSA, and his books on the Black social gospel. He lists the top three intellectual influences on his life as Martin Luther King, Jr., Walter Rauschenbush, and James Cone.

Gary Dorrien is a theologian, ethicist, professor, priest, and author of over two dozen books, several of which have won the Choice Award from the American Library Association. He is also an activist with decades of work in progressive and labor movements. Dorrien is ordained in the Episcopal Church, and is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University.

Featured image of the cover of Over from Union Road by Gary Dorrien.

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