Analysis of creed advocating solidarity wins religion award
A religious scholar who explained how one of Christianity’s earliest creeds still applies to contemporary life has earned the 2020 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion.
Stephen J. Patterson, a professor of religious and ethical studies at Willamette University, won the award for ideas he set forth in “The Forgotten Creed: Christianity’s Original Struggle against Bigotry, Racism and Sexism.” Oxford University Press published the book in 2018.
In his work, Patterson explores the significance of a baptismal creed adapted in a letter by the apostle Paul to the Galatians in the New Testament (3:26 and 28): “For you are all children of God in the Spirit; there is no Jew or Greek; there is no slave or free; there is no male and female, for you are all one in the Spirit.”