Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago
The 2026 Sorensen Lecture, "Love Divine in Justice-Struggle: Why the Social Gospel Matters (to Me)," was delivered by religion scholar Gary Dorrien from Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University.
Gary Dorrien is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University, teaching social ethics, theology, and philosophy of religion. He is the author of 24 books and more than 300 articles that range across the fields of social ethics, philosophy, theology, political economics, social and political theory, religious history, cultural criticism, and intellectual history.
Among numerous other awards and prizes, Dorrien in 2017 won the Grawemeyer Award for his book The New Abolition: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel. Theologian William Stacy Johnson called the book “a magisterial treatment of a neglected stream of American religious history presented by one of this generation’s premier interpreters of modern religious thought operating at the top of his game.”
The Margaret Lindquist Sorensen Lectureship was established in 1978 by a gift from her son, Andrew A. Sorensen ’62 B.D., to provide an annual lecture on politics and ethics.
March 3, 2026
Yale Divinity School
The 2026 Sorensen Lecture, "Love Divine in Justice-Struggle: Why the Social Gospel Matters (to Me)," was delivered by religion scholar Gary Dorrien from Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University.
Gary Dorrien is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University, teaching social ethics, theology, and philosophy of religion. He is the author of 24 books and more than 300 articles that range across the fields of social ethics, philosophy, theology, political economics, social and political theory, religious history, cultural criticism, and intellectual history.
Among numerous other awards and prizes, Dorrien in 2017 won the Grawemeyer Award for his book The New Abolition: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel. Theologian William Stacy Johnson called the book “a magisterial treatment of a neglected stream of American religious history presented by one of this generation’s premier interpreters of modern religious thought operating at the top of his game.”
The Margaret Lindquist Sorensen Lectureship was established in 1978 by a gift from her son, Andrew A. Sorensen ’62 B.D., to provide an annual lecture on politics and ethics.
March 3, 2026
Yale Divinity School
