Over from Union Road: My Christian-Left-Intellectual Life

by Gary Dorrien

Overview

Gary Dorrien, the renowned social ethicist, theologian, and intellectual historian whose many books are routinely described as magisterial and definitive, in this book turns to interpret his own life as a participant in the religious, intellectual, and social justice currents of his generation. Dorrien tells his personal story of growing up in a working-class family in mid-Michigan, fixing on the crucifix in his Roman Catholic parish, being an inattentive student and a voracious reader, getting through high school mostly because he was a high-profile athlete, and being riveted by the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King Jr. At Alma College he began to develop his signature blend of post-Kantian philosophy and Christian socialist theology, mostly in autodidactic fashion, with no intention of becoming an academic.

His graduate education was searingly interrupted by the death of his younger brother. Dorrien emerged from seminary as a social justice organizer and independent scholar. As he later explained to an interviewer, "I am a jock who began as a solidarity activist, became an Episcopal cleric at thirty, became an academic at thirty-five, and never quite settled on a field, so now I explore the intersections of too many fields." Over from Union Road is a rich memoir of this unusual journey and of Dorrien’s later career. For eighteen years he taught at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, suffering the tragic loss of his beloved spouse Brenda Biggs. There he wrote the books that established his early prominence in social ethics and threw himself headlong against the invasion of Iraq. For nineteen years and counting he has taught at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University in New York City.

Dorrien tells his story with the same stylish prose and attention to personalities that mark his many acclaimed works in social ethics, theology, and intellectual history. Over from Union Road is a luminous interpretation of our time through the life experience of an eminent scholar-activist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481322416
Publisher:	Baylor University Press
Publication date:	11/01/2024
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Gary Dorrien is Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University. He is also the author of Anglican Identities: Logos Idealism, Imperial Whiteness, Commonweal Ecumenism and In a Post-Hegelian Spirit: Philosophical Theology as Idealistic Discontent.

Table of Contents

1 Over from Union Road
2 Alma College
3 Harvard-Union-Princeton-Brenda
4 Albany Activism
5 Kalamazoo Heartbreak
6 Over from Kalamazoo
7 Into the Obama Era
8 Twilight Surge

What People are Saying About This

Cynthia Moe-Lobeda

Dorrien artfully weaves his life story together with an intellectual history of progressive political movements (secular and religious) and their interface with socially engaged theologies. He takes us on a dazzling tour! One encounters Dorrien’s intellectual and political trajectory unfolding from his earliest years and an honest account of his life’s pain, struggle, and joys. Like his previous works, this fascinating memoir manifests Dorrien’s soaring intellect and comprehensive grasp of modern theo-political history, and his fierce commitment to scholarship that advances progressive political movements aligned with democratic socialism.

Cornel West

Gary Dorrien is the greatest Christian ethicist since the legendary Reinhold Niebuhr. Yet his working class origins, deep philosophical probing, and especially his genuine roots in the Black prophetic tradition take him beyond Niebuhr in serious and substantive ways. This precious memoir lays bare his powerful and painful wrestling with forms of death, dogma, and domination. What a great intellectual and spiritual gift his life and book are to us in these grim times!

Walter Brueggemann

Gary Dorrien is likely the master church historian of his generation. His large corpus of books attests to his capacity for prolific, incisive, generative thinking. Now he has written a new history book, this one a thoughtful account of his life, vocation, and moral passion. It is a probing commentary on the ongoing battles for social justice in our society, battles that Dorrien joined with relentless passion, courage, and wisdom.

Demian Wheeler

If historicism is the notion that all things are fashioned by their histories and contexts, then Over from Union Road is a deeply historicist work. This riveting and beautiful book is the remarkable story of how Gary Dorrien became Gary Dorrien, how a shy athlete from rural Michigan became the foremost religious historian and theological ethicist of our time. With his signature blend of genealogical detail, comprehensive analysis, and gripping storytelling, Dorrien chronicles the events and experiences, ideas and struggles, and loves and losses that indelibly shaped his spirituality, his activism, and his progressive Christian worldview. Along the way, the reader encounters an intriguing cast of characters, from philosophers and theologians and political organizers, to colleagues and friends and family members, as Dorrien gracefully narrates their lives and how they are intertwined with his own. Part personal memoir and part intellectual and social history, Over from Union Road brilliantly exemplifies what Dorrien once called "theology as biography." It is the long-awaited account of the making of Gary Dorrien—and the movements, traditions, and relationships that made him.