Gary John Dorrien (born March 21, 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 18 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 and as Horace De Y. Lentz Visiting Professor at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
His book The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel, won the Grawemeyer Award in 2017.
Logic and Consciousness: The Dialectics of Mind, Hastings Press, 1985.
The Democratic Socialist Vision, Rowman & Littlefield, 1986.
Reconstructing the Common Good: Theology and the Social Order. Orbis Books (June 1990). ISBN 978-0-88344-659-1
The Neoconservative Mind: Politics, Culture, and the War of Ideology, Temple University Press, 1993, 1994.
Soul in Society: The Making and Renewal of Social Christianity, Fortress Press, 1995.
The Word as True Myth: Interpreting Modern Theology, Westminster John Knox Press, 1997.
The Remaking of Evangelical Theology, Westminster John Knox Press, 1998.
The Barthian Revolt in Modern Theology: Theology Without Weapons, Westminster John Knox Press, 2000.
The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion, 1805 - 1900 (v. 1). Westminster John Knox Press; 1 edition (October 1, 2001). ISBN 978-0-664-22354-0
The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity, 1900-1950 (v. 2). Westminster John Knox Press; 1 edition (February 2003). ISBN 978-0-664-22355-7
Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana. Routledge (August 31, 2004). ISBN 978-0-415-94980-4
The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony, and Postmodernity: 1950-2005 (v. 3). Westminster John Knox Press (November 1, 2006). ISBN 978-0-664-22356-4
Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition. Wiley-Blackwell; illustrated edition (December 22, 2008). ISBN 978-1-4051-8687-2
Economy, Difference, Empire: Social Ethics for Social Justice. Columbia University Press; (October 2010). ISBN 978-0-231-14984-6.
Kantian Reason and the Hegelian Spirit: The Idealistic Logic of Modern Theology. Wiley-Blackwell (April 17, 2012). ISBN 978-0470673317
The Obama Question: A Progressive Perspective. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2012. ISBN 978-1-4422-1537-5
The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel. Yale University Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0-300-20560-2
Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel. Yale University Press, 2017. ISBN 978-0-300-20561-9
