[6] The subjects of her essays span numerous topics, including the relationship between religion and science, US history, nuclear pollution, John Calvin, and contemporary American politics.

[7][8][9] Her brother is the art historian David Summers, who dedicated his book Vision, Reflection, and Desire in Western Painting to her.

[18] In 2009, she held a Dwight H. Terry Lectureship at Yale University, where she delivered a series of talks titled Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self.

[20] The Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library has acquired the papers of writer and essayist Marilynne Robinson.

"[22] On June 26, 2015, President Barack Obama quoted Robinson in his eulogy for Clementa C. Pinckney of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

In speaking about "an open heart," Obama said: "[w]hat a friend of mine, the writer Marilynne Robinson, calls 'that reservoir of goodness, beyond, and of another kind, that we are able to do each other in the ordinary cause of things.

'"[23] In November 2015, The New York Review of Books published a two-part conversation between Obama and Robinson, covering topics in American history and the role of faith in society.

[24][25] Robinson was raised as a Presbyterian and later became a Congregationalist, worshipping and sometimes preaching at the Congregational United Church of Christ in Iowa City.

[26][27] Her Congregationalism and her interest in the ideas of John Calvin have been important in many of her novels, including Gilead, which centers on the life and theological concerns of a fictional Congregationalist minister.