1) The galaxy is moving away from us. This is most like the classic Doppler effect, but because of the high relative velocities involved, time dilation needs to be taken into account to model the red shift accurately, thus at least special relativity should be used.
2) The light travels through space with different curvature. For example, light originating near a very massive star will red shift when moving away from that star because it moves into less curved space. General relativity is needed to explain this effect.
3) The light travels through expanding space. For very distant galaxies this becomes the dominating factor of red shift, as we see an amount of red shift directly corresponding to their distance from earth. General relativity also explains this effect.