Galen Guengerich,
Senior Minister of All Souls Church


Galen Guengerich is Senior Minister of All Souls Unitarian Church, an historic congregation located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. He is the tenth person to hold this position in the congregation’s 188-year history. His name is pronounced GAIL-en GING (rhymes with “sing”) -rich.

Rev. Guengerich was educated at Franklin and Marshall College (BA, Phi Beta Kappa, 1982), Princeton Theological Seminary (M.Div., graduated first in class, 1985) and The University of Chicago (PhD, 2004). His doctoral dissertation is titled Comprehensive Commitments and the Public World: Tillich, Rawls and Whitehead on the Nature of Justice.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of The Interfaith Alliance Foundation, the national non-partisan education and advocacy voice for faith and freedom. In addition, he serves on the Advisory Board of Musica Viva of New York, one of Manhattan’s leading chorale ensembles.

Rev. Guengerich is widely acclaimed for his eloquent and thought-provoking sermons and speeches. His sermon at All Souls on Sept. 16, 2001—the Sunday after 9/11—was selected to be included in Representative American Speeches 2001-2002. Titled “The Shaking of the Foundations,” the sermon appears along with speeches by Governor George Pataki, President George Bush and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as one of seven “Responses to September 11th.”

He has appeared on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, as well as on The Fox Newschannel programs In Depth and On Religion, and he has been the featured speaker at conferences across the nation. He now regularly appears on Morning Meditation from All Souls, a semi-monthly half-hour radio show on WQXR, the radio station of The New York Times.

In the past, Rev. Guengerich has served as Visiting Scholar at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and on the boards of Dads and Daughters, the national advocacy nonprofit for fathers and daughters; the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, a human rights organization; and the New York City Audubon Society.

He lives in Manhattan with his wife, Holly G. Atkinson, MD, and daughter Zoë, who is fourteen years old.

11/2007