Galen Guengerich and his wife Holly Atkinson have been coming to Shelter Island for more than thirty years. They now live here full time. In addition to serving on the Sylvester Manor Board, Galen serves as chaplain of the Shelter Island Yacht Club.
Galen is a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute in Israel, where he focuses on the relationship between religious commitments and public policy. For nearly a decade, he has been coordinating efforts to deepen the mutual understanding between Jewish and Palestinian students in academic institutions in Israel on behalf of philanthropists in the US. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and Washington, DC.
He was educated at Franklin and Marshall College (BA), Princeton Theological Seminary (MDiv), and the University of Chicago (PhD). He is author of three books: God Revised: How Religion Must Evolve in a Scientific Age, The Way of Gratitude: A New Spirituality for Today, and Dwell in Possibility: Meditations on Conquering Life’s Challenges. He has also written op-eds for Reuters, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and TIME magazine, as well as a column on “The Search for Meaning” for the online edition of Psychology Today. He served for 31 years as a minister, the last 18 as Senior Minister, of All Souls, a large and influential Unitarian Universalist congregation on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He served for 12 years on the Board of Directors of Interfaith Alliance, the national non-partisan advocacy voice for religious pluralism in the US; he served as chair of the Interfaith Alliance board from 2008-2012.
