Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker
Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker
Mary Evelyn Tucker is the co-founder and co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology with her husband, Yale professor John Allen Grim. With the vision of creating a new field of study that could have implications for environmental policy, Tucker and Grim organized a series of ten conferences on World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. Ten volumes came out of the conferences and are distributed by Harvard University Press. After the conferences, she and Grim founded the Forum on Religion and Ecology.
The Forum has organized dozens of conferences, published numerous volumes, and produced a comprehensive website on world religions and ecology. The Forum is inherently interdisciplinary and acknowledges that the world’s religions must engage with other key disciplines (e.g., public policy, science, education, economics) in order to find answers to contemporary environmental challenges.
She is a Senior Lecturer and Research Scholar at Yale University where she has appointments in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as the Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies.
„Our Vision is a flourishing Earth community where religious and spiritual traditions join together for the shared wellbeing of ecosystems, life forms, and people on our common planetary home.“ (https://fore.yale.edu/)
Her special area of study is Asian religions. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in Japanese Confucianism.
Tucker and Grim studied world religions with Thomas Berry in graduate school and worked closely with him for 30 years. To bring Berry’s work forward she has also worked closely with evolutionary philosopher, Brian Swimme. Together they have created a multi-media project called Journey of the Universe which includes an Emmy award winning film, which is now available to watch on Amazon Prime: https://www.journeyoftheuniverse.org
The companion book which Swimme and Tucker authored is published by Yale University Press (2011). Tucker and Grim have spoken and written extensively about the Papal Encyclical on the environment titled Laudato Si’.
Dr. Tucker was a member of the Earth Charter Drafting committee and the International Earth Charter Council. She won the Inspiring Yale Teaching Award in 2015 and has been awarded 5 honorary degrees. With John Grim, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture.