2008 – Margaret Farley “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics” 2008 – Margaret Farley Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual EthicsA Yale scholar who says justice is an essential part of sexual ethics has won the 2008 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Margaret Farley, a professor emerita of Christian ethics at Yale […]
A North Carolina scholar has earned the 2007 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion for his memoir analyzing the social and spiritual effects of a racially motivated murder in his hometown. In his 2004 book, “Blood Done Sign My Name,” Timothy Tyson tells the story of the killing of a young black man, Henry Marrow, by […]
“Gilead,” a book by Marilynne Robinson that earned this year’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, also has claimed the 2006 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion. It is the first time a novel has won the Grawemeyer religion prize, which is given jointly by Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the University of Louisville. Described as “profoundly […]
The 2005 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion has been given to University of Notre Dame professor George M. Marsden for his masterful biography of colonial preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards, entitled “Jonathan Edwards: A Life”(Yale University Press, 2003). Edwards was considered by many to be the first great American religious thinker during the pivotal period […]
“For too long, the pages of history have been stained by blood shed in the name of God,” states London’s Chief Rabbi, Professor Jonathan Sacks, in his book, “The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations.” “Allied to weapons of mass destruction, extremist religious attitudes threaten the very security of life on […]
Why do religious people commit violence in the name of their God, victimizing and terrorizing innocents? Sociology professor Mark Juergensmeyer offers a timely study of religious terrorism and “cultures of violence” which give rise to it in his book, “Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence.” The director of the […]
Is there any hope of embracing our enemies? Of opening the door to reconciliation? Yale University theologian Miroslav Volf argues in his book “Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation” that exclusion of people who are alien or different is among the most intractable problems in the world today. Volf’s exploration […]
It might come as a shock to learn how many things the Bible doesn’t actually say. Do we suppose that the serpent in the Garden of Eden was “Satan,” or that Adam and Eve’s sin marked humanity’s “fall?” Then why, when we search the pages of the Bible, can we not find a clear word […]
The eve of a new millennium brings with it concerns about “the end times,” judgment, death and the afterlife. German theologian Jürgen Moltmann, however, looks toward the last days with optimism rather than dread. That message of hope, delivered through his book “The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology,” has earned Moltmann the 2000 Louisville Grawemeyer […]
The violent struggle over civil rights in 1964 Mississippi shows what happens when God’s will is interpreted through radically different filters of beliefs. In his book “God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights,” Charles Marsh takes an in-depth look at one historical moment when those beliefs clashed violently. Marsh’s work has earned the […]