John Allen Grim (born October 7, 1946) is the co-founder and co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, alongside his wife Mary Evelyn Tucker. He teaches at Yale University, where he holds appointments in the Yale School of the Environment, the Divinity School, and the Department of Religious Studies. He has also taught at Sarah Lawrence College and Bucknell University.[1] He specializes in Native American religions and has studied the Salish people of Washington State and the Crow/Apsaalooke people of Montana.[1] He has also undertaken field work with healing practitioners in East and Southeast Asia and with religious leaders in Vrindaban and New Delhi, India.[1]
Grim teaches in the joint MA program in religion and ecology at Yale and offers courses in world religions and ecology and Native American and Indigenous traditions. He teaches hybrid/online classes at Yale as well as two massive open online course specializations: one specialization with three courses on "Journey of the Universe"[2] and "The Worldview of Thomas Berry"[3] and another with five courses on "Religions and Ecology",[4] plus a single course on "Christianity and Ecology".[5][6]
Grim is the author of The Shaman[7][8] and the co-author of Ecology and Religion.[9] He has also edited and co-edited numerous volumes including Living Cosmology,[10] the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology,[11] Worldviews and Ecology,[12] and Indigenous Traditions and Ecology,[13] among others.[1]
Grim studied world religions with Thomas Berry in graduate school and worked closely with him for more than 40 years. He co-edited several of his books including The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth[14] and Selected Writings on the Earth Community[15] Grim and his wife Mary Evelyn Tucker are managing trustees of the Thomas Berry Foundation.[16] In 2019, Tucker, Grim, and Andrew Angyal published Thomas Berry: A Biography.[17]
Main article: Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology |
Grim is co-founder and co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. From 1995 to 1998 Grim and Tucker organized a series of ten conferences on World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University.[18] They are the series editors for the ten volumes (distributed by Harvard University Press) that came out of the conferences.[19] At a culminating conference at the United Nations in 1998, they founded the Forum on Religion and Ecology. Speaking at that event were Tim Wirth, Tu Weiming, Maurice Strong, and Bill Moyers.[20]
Grim also frequently speaks and gives interviews on religion and ecology and issues of ecological importance, such as Laudato si' (the Papal Encyclical on the environment)[21][22][23] and Standing Rock/DAPL.[24]
Grim is one of the executive producers of the Northern California Emmy Award-winning film, Journey of the Universe (2011).[25] This documentary aired on PBS for a number of years[26] and is part of a multimedia project that also includes a series of conversations with scientists and environmentalists on DVD and podcasts,[27] and a book written by Brian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker.
Since 1996, Grim has served as president of the American Teilhard Association.[1] The association is dedicated to the work and legacy of French paleontologist, philosopher, and Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Grim earned his B.A. from St. John's University (Minnesota) (1968), and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Fordham University (1975).[1]
Among the awards Grim has received are the Lifetime Achievement Award in religion and ecology,[28] the Interfaith Visionary Award in 2010,[29] the Chancellor's Medal/Joint and Common Future Award (University of Massachusetts, Boston) in 2013,[30] and the Passionist Award for promoting Thomas Berry's work in 2016.[31]
He was awarded honorary doctorates from California Institute of Integral Studies (2005) and St. John's University (Minnesota) (2011).[1]