William John Grassie (born May 3, 1957) is an activist for numerous causes, including

nonviolence Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosoph ...

and a freeze on

nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

,WILLIAM ROBBINS, June 9, 1982, The New York Times
KROL ASSESSES POSITION IN DISARMAMENT MOVEMENT
Accessed Aug. 27, 2013, quote= ... William Grassie ... a Philadelphia Quaker .. a director of the Pennsylvania Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze... reform of science education,David O'Reilly, February 19, 1996, Philadelphia Inquirer
Looking For The Tao In Science Classrooms The Templeton Foundation Gives Grants To Colleges With Ideas. Several In The Area Were Recipients.
Accessed Aug. 27, 2013, quote= ...lecturer William Grassie's portable computer can flash color images of living cells and space shots of Earth ... and greater dialogue between

science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

and

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

.David O'Reilly, February 18, 2002, Philadelphia Inquirer
Center thinks religion and science can say much to each other
Accessed Aug. 27, 2013, quote= ... William Grassie, Metanexus' executive director and vice president, ... He is the executive director of

Metanexus Institute The Metanexus Institute is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1997 to explore scientific and philosophical questions. The institute has organized the exchange of ideas through conferences, and published books. History With the help of Peter ...

, an organization which worked closely with the

John Templeton Foundation The John Templeton Foundation (Templeton Foundation) is a philanthropic organization that reflects the ideas of its founder, John Templeton, who became wealthy via a career as a contrarian investor, and wanted to support progress in religious an ...

to promote "dialogue and interactive syntheses between religion and the sciences internationally."

Early years

Grassie was born in

Wilmington, Delaware Wilmington ( Lenape: ''Paxahakink /'' ''Pakehakink)'' is the largest city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish settlement in North America. It lies at the confluence of the Christina ...

and attended

Middlebury College Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college in Middlebury, Vermont. Founded in 1800 by Congregationalists, Middlebury was the first operating college or university in Vermont. The college currently enrolls 2,858 undergraduates from all ...

. He is member of the

Quakers Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abil ...

Social activism

In 1980 in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, he promoted

nuclear disarmament Nuclear may refer to: Physics Relating to the Atomic nucleus, nucleus of the atom: *Nuclear engineering *Nuclear physics *Nuclear power *Nuclear reactor *Nuclear weapon *Nuclear medicine *Radiation therapy *Nuclear warfare Mathematics *Nuclear ...

via the Friends Peace Committee, where he helped to found the

Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign Peace Action is a peace organization whose focus is on preventing the deployment of nuclear weapons in space, thwarting weapons sales to countries with human rights violations, and promoting a new United States foreign policy based on common secu ...

. Grassie was arrested in several non-violent

civil disobedience Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be called "civil". Hen ...

actions and was a symbolic war tax resister. Grassie and David Falls, another employee of the Religious Society of Friends, a Quaker organization, refused to pay federal taxes on the grounds that it would support nuclear war, but a judge ruled, in a civil suit by the

IRS The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax ...

in 1990, that the church was obliged to enforce levies against the salaries of the two employees.Jim Smith, December 21, 1990, Philadelphia Inquirer

Accessed Aug. 27, 2013, quote= ... The ruling stemmed from two civil cases filed in 1988 by the IRS against the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the area's 13,000-member Quaker organization. A statement by the Friends Quaker religious organization followed: In 1987 and 1988, Grassie worked as a community organizer in Southwest

Germantown, Philadelphia Germantown (Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Deitscheschteddel'') is an area in Northwest Philadelphia. Founded by German, Quaker, and Mennonite families in 1683 as an independent borough, it was absorbed into Philadelphia in 1854. The area, which is about ...

, and organized the "Three Hundred Anniversary Celebration of the Germantown Protest Against Slavery" in commemoration of the first European protest against slavery in the New World (1688). The project was designed as a community development initiative and helped catalyze a community revitalization project now known as "Freedom Square".Jan Gehorsan, Associated Press, March 15, 1998
Ill-Fated Anti-Slavery Document Focus of Week's Activities
Accessed Aug. 27, 2013, quote=You could call it a failure,'' since slavery continued for nearly two more centuries, said the event's coordinator, William Grassie.

Academia

Grassie earned a Ph.D. in comparative religion from

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then called Ba ...

in 1994, and served as an assistant professor in its ''Intellectual Heritage Program''.

Metanexus

The Philadelphia Center for Religions and Science was founded in 1998, and it changed its name in 2000 to the "Metanexus Institute on Religion and Science" to reflect its international reach. In 2011 the organization shortened its name to simply

and is now based in New York City. The organization originally promoted dialog between religion and science, but now "promotes scientifically rigorous and philosophically open-ended explorations of foundational questions" through engagement with

Big History Big History is an academic discipline which examines history from the Big Bang to the present. Big History resists specialization, and searches for universal patterns or trends. It examines long time frames using a multidisciplinary approach ...

Books

*
Applied Big History: A Guide for Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Other Living Things
', Mexanexus Imprints, 2018. *
The New Sciences of Religion: Exploring Spirituality from the Outside In and Bottom Up
', New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. *
Politics by Other Means: Science and Religion in the 21st Century
', Philadelphia: Metanexus, 2010. *
H+/-: Transhumanism and Its Critics
', Philadelphia: Metanexus, 2011 (edited with Gregory Hansell). *
Advanced Methodologies in the Scientific Study of Religious and Spiritual Phenomena
', Philadelphia: Metanexus 2010 (edited).

References