Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker

The Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale
Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
Yale University
New Haven, CT 

Brief Biography:

Ph.D., Columbia University M.A., Fordham University M.A., SUNY, Fredonia B.A., Trinity College

Mary Evelyn Tucker is a Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Scholar at Yale University where she teaches in a joint Master’s program in religion and ecology between the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies as well as the Divinity School. She is a co-founder and co-director with John Grim of the Forum on Religion and Ecology. Together they organized a series of ten conferences on World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. They are series editors for the ten volumes from the conferences distributed by Harvard University Press. From this series Mary Evelyn edited Buddhism and Ecology (Harvard, 1997), Confucianism and Ecology (Harvard, 1998), Hinduism and Ecology (Harvard, 2000),

Most recently she and her husband, John Grim, completed a book on Ecology and Religion (Island Press, 2014). She has also written Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase (Open Court Press, 2003). She and John also co-edited a Daedalus volume titled “Religion and Ecology: Can the Climate Change?” (2001) and Worldviews and Ecology (Orbis, 1994). They also co-edited the Routledge Handbook on Religion and Ecology (2016).

In 2011 Tucker completed the Journey of the Universe with Brian Swimme, which includes a book from Yale University Press, a film on PBS, and an educational series of interviews. The film won a regional EMMY. She edited Living Cosmology: Christian Responses to Journey of the Universe (Orbis 2016).

 In her area of special research in Confucianism she has written several books including Moral and Spiritual Cultivation in Japanese Neo-Confucianism (SUNY, 1989) and The Philosophy of Qi (Columbia University Press, 2007). With noted Confucian scholar Tu Weiming she edited two volumes on Confucian Spirituality (Crossroad, 2004).

 She edited Thomas Berry's books: Evening Thoughts (Sierra Club Books and University of California Press, 2006), The Sacred Universe (Columbia University Press, 2009), Christian Future and the Fate of Earth (Orbis Book, 2009), and The Great Work (1999). With John Grim she edited Thomas Berry: Selected Writings (Orbis 2014). She and her husband are managing trustees of the Thomas Berry Foundation. She has also co-authored (with John Grim and Andrew Angyal) the first ever comprehensive look at the life and thought of this important individual: Thomas Berry: A Biography (Columbia University Press, 2019)

She was a member of the Interfaith Partnership for the Environment at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). She served on the International Earth Charter Drafting Committee from 1997-2000 and for ten years was a member of the Earth Charter International Council.