Greg Cootsona is a speaker and writer in science and faith, emerging adults, C. S. Lewis, and Christian life and thought. He teaches in religion, humanities, philosophy, and sociology at California State University, Chico and co-directs Science for the Church.
Greg has appeared on the Today Show three times and been interviewed by CNN, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, the BBC, and the New York Times. He has spoken at college campuses throughout the United States such as Columbia University, Rice University, Duke University, and the University of Wisconsin (Madison), as well as Fuller and Princeton Theological Seminaries and the Graduate Theological Union. He has written for several periodicals such as The Wall Street Journal, Christianity Today, Theology and Science Journal. He has also spoken at TEDx Chico.
The current project, Science for the Church, is designed to bring science to Christian congregations as a resource for spiritual growth. He has also directed projects totaling $4.5 million funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation, the American Academy of Religion, the Louisville Institute, and the Lilly Endowment. His most recent project, STEAM (Science and Theology for Emerging Adult Ministries) offered resources for leaders of emerging adult ministries on how to engage Christian faith with mainstream science. He directed Science for Students and Emerging, Young Adults, a project, funded by the John Templeton Foundation grant, which studies 18-30 year olds’ attitudes on faith and science and how these attitudes are formed and change.
He is a minister at-large in the Sacramento presbytery, having served as associate pastor for adult discipleship at Bidwell Presbyterian Church in Chico from 2002-2016 and at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City from 1996-2002.
His most recent books, Science and Religion in America: A New Look (Routledge, forthcoming), Negotiating Science and Religion in America: Past, Present, and Future (Routledge, 2020) and Mere Science and Christian Faith: Bridging the Divide with Emerging Adults (InterVarsity, 2018), are his six, seventh, and eighth. He has also written C. S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian. Say Yes To No: Using The Power Of No To Create The Best In Life, Work, and Love (which has French and Portuguese translations) and The Time for Yes: Enjoying What’s Best in Life, Work, and Love both of which address human flourishing in a technological world. Finally, he has written Creation and Last Things: At the Intersection of Science and Theology, as well as God and the World: A Study in the Thought of Karl Barth and Alfred North Whitehead.
Greg studied comparative literature at U.C. Berkeley (his B.A.); theology and biblical studies at Princeton Theological Seminary (Master of Divinity degree); and the philosophy of religion, Christian doctrine, as well as science and religion at the Universities of Tübingen and Heidelberg and Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union (the latter where he received his Ph.D.).
Greg serves on advisory councils for the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion; Sinai and Synapses; BioLogos, and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.
He and his wife, Laura, live in Chico, California and have two emerging adult daughters. Besides hanging out with his family, he loves to bike, read, write, and drink good coffee.