Marlene Lang is author of "Listening for Change," published in 2024 by Pickwick. The former professional journalist and award-winning columnist is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Institute for Forgiveness and Reconciliation at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia.
From 2005-10, she penned her column for the SouthtownStar, part of Sun-Times Media. She has more than a decade of experience as a government newspaper reporter and an editor. As a county government reporter, she reported budget misrepresentations and efforts at a county prison to hide holding-cell tuberculosis exposures among immigration detainees. She covered the nuclear power industry up close as editor of Three Mile Island's hometown paper.
Her columns have taken up politics, civil liberties, and justice issues, served on "wry." Her prescient writing in this first career forewarned of the the erosion of checks and balances in the early years of the 21st century, and pointed at the dangers to human rights and dignity inherent in morphing incarceration and other public services to human beings into profit-making enterprises.
Her academic work focuses on the urgent need for the skill of listening, from one-on-one encounters to listening across historic cultural divides. Informed by her studies of religion as practice and spirituality as humans seeking wholeness, Lang finds effective listening with mind and heart at the center of life. Her studies are continually engaged in asking why we are not better listeners, and how we can learn to listen.
She earned her master of arts in spirituality in 2011 at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. Lang also holds a degree in philosophy from Millersville University of Pennsylvania.

Art and photography on this page are the work of Marlene Lang and may not be used without permission. Copyright by Marlene Lang 2025.