Chip Gruen is Professor of Religion Studies and Director of the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. His work, both scholarly and public, is driven by a central conviction: that understanding religious difference is a learnable skill, one that requires knowledge, method, and practice, and that the failure to develop this skill has consequences for public life that extend well beyond the academy.

Through the Institute, Dr. Gruen has built programs that bring scholarly approaches to religious discourse in community and professional development settings. He hosts ReligionWise, a podcast featuring scholars, practitioners, and professionals examining religion’s place in public conversation, and WorldViews, a monthly series in which local religious leaders discuss their communities’ beliefs and practices in their own voices. The Institute has developed partnerships with religious communities across Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley and created Understanding Our Neighbors, a curriculum for local elementary schools designed to foster religious and cultural literacy among young students.

His scholarly research examines how religious communities construct narratives about themselves, how they remember, misremember, and present their traditions to both insiders and the broader public. His work focuses on early Christianity and the processes by which some textual traditions were preserved while others were lost, questions that bear directly on how religious communities represent themselves today. His publications appear in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes in the fields of early Christianity and religious studies.

Dr. Gruen is honored to serve as a Trustee of the Parliament of the World’s Religions. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Eastern International Region of the American Academy of Religion. His work has been recognized with awards for both teaching and community engagement, including the Ecumenical Services Award from the Lehigh Council of Churches and the Paul C. Empie Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching from Muhlenberg College.

He holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in Ancient History from the University of Cincinnati, and a B.A. in Philosophy and Classical Studies from the University of Kentucky.