Not only younger people with apparent disabilities, but also all those who manage to grow old — and everyone who loves a member of either group — will appreciate the ideas Belser set down in her book “Loving Our Own Bones,” which also won a National Jewish Book Award. In it, Belser uses disability theory and her own experience to rethink Biblical texts and rabbinic literature. The result is a rereading of Biblical characters such as Moses, Isaac, and Jacob, leading to an engaging analysis of ableism, and a refreshing political and social view of disability.

“Instead of grounding her work in the standard question of what the Jewish and Christian traditions say about disability, Belser asks how disability experience can serve as a ‘generative force,’ a ‘source of embodied knowledge’ about our spiritual lives,” said Grawemeyer Religion Award Director and Interim Dean of the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary Tyler Mayfield. “’Loving Our Own Bones’ and Rabbi Belser are worthy additions to our revered list of Grawemeyer winners.”

The first Grawemeyer Religion Award went to E.P. Sanders in 1990 for his provocative book “Jesus and Judaism.” Acclaimed author Marilynne Robinson won the 2006 Grawemeyer Religion Award for “Gilead“ – the only time a novel has won. Rabbi Belser also joins the company of distinguished professors Stephen L. Carter (“The Culture of Disbelief”) and Diana Eck (“Encountering God“) in winning the Grawemeyer Religion Award.

Charles Marsh, who won the 1998 Grawemeyer Award in Religion for “God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights,” later described the impact the prize had on his career: “The Grawemeyer Award encouraged me to imagine concrete strategies for integrating the lessons I had learned into the practices of academic teaching and research of a new generation. It inspired me to think creatively of ways I might encourage other scholars to make journeys of their own.”

Rabbi Belser will accept her award at a ceremony in Louisville on April 10.

About the Grawemeyer Awards

Each year the Grawemeyer Awards honor the power of creative ideas to improve our culture via music composition, education, religion, psychology, and world order. Business executive and family man H. Charles Grawemeyer established the awards in 1984 at the University of Louisville in collaboration with Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Academics and community members choose among nominees from around the world to ensure that each winning idea is relevant to society at large. The University of Louisville announces the winners in December and presents the awards at a ceremony the following April. Each award winner receives $100,000, which they may use, if they choose, to develop and accelerate the spread of their powerful ideas. Learn more at .

Theologians often dismiss those depictions of God in the Bible because they seem to clash with God’s image as an all-loving being, but an Episcopal priest with a different view has received the 2024 Grawemeyer Award in Religion for helping explain the paradox.

The Rev. Charles Halton, associate rector of Christ Church Cathedral in Lexington, Ky., won the prize for ideas set forth in his 2021 “A Human-Shaped God: Theology of an Embodied God.” He argues that embracing God as a deity with human qualities can bring us closer to God and inspire us to become better people.

“We are, like God, to move from a place of exclusion and anger-fueled violence to a life of inclusion, radical forgiveness and compassion,” he said. “This is the path God is on. If we are not on it too, we are not imitating God.”

As an example, Halton cites the Old Testament story of how God floods Earth, destroying everything except Noah’s Ark. Later, God feels regret and creates a rainbow in the sky.

“Many Bible accounts are springboards for theological imagination that help us see God in constructive ways,” he said. “As humans, we too lash out in anger, but we also learn to forgive.”

explores “an underappreciated view of God that exists in the Bible but is absent from most Eurocentric theology,” said Tyler Mayfield, who directs the religion award. “His approach is original, thought-provoking and offers new opportunities for understanding the biblical God.”

Halton taught Old Testament and Semitic languages at seminary and college levels for nearly a decade. He holds a doctorate from Cincinnati’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Bible and ancient Near East studies and is an external affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, London.

The University of Louisville and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary jointly give the religion prize.

Recipients of next year’s were named this week pending formal approval by trustees at both institutions. The $100,000 prizes also honor seminal ideas in music, world order, psychology and education. Winners will visit Louisville in the spring to accept their awards and give free talks on their winning ideas.

Hearing��her son ask those questions and seeing Black Lives Matter protests erupt nationwide after George Floyd’s death led theologian Kelly Brown Douglas to write “Resurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter.”

On Dec. 9, she was named winner of the 2023 Grawemeyer Award in Religion for the book’s ideas.

, dean of Union Theological Seminary’s Episcopal Divinity School in New York City and a canon theologian at Washington Cathedral, is one of the first Black female Episcopal priests in the United States and the first Black person to head an Episcopal Church-affiliated educational institution.

In “,” she shows how a “white way of knowing” came to dominate America through an anti-Black narrative tracing back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle. She also cites examples of how the bias persists today, from the refusal to dismantle Confederate monuments to attempts to discredit The 1619 Project, an effort to reframe U.S. history starting from the year the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia.

While recognizing the prolonged suffering of Black people raises deep questions about the credibility of Christianity, she argues that faith, not despair, is the best hope for assuring Black lives are valued in the future.

“Douglas takes us on a captivating, painful journey with personal and erudite reflections on America’s corrupted soul,” said Tyler Mayfield, religion award director. “Her insights are lucid and disturbing. Her remedies are bold and constructive. May we find the courage to walk into the future she envisions for us all.”

Douglas, who has doctor of philosophy and master of divinity degrees, has been a faculty member at Edward Waters College, Howard University and Goucher College. She has written five books, including “Sexuality and the Black Church” in which she addresses homophobia from a womanist perspective. Orbis Books published her Grawemeyer Award-winning book in 2021.

The University of Louisville and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary jointly give the religion prize. Recipients of next year’s s were named Dec. 5-9 pending formal approval by trustees at both institutions.

The $100,000 prizes also honor seminal ideas in music, world order, psychology and education. Winners will visit Louisville in the spring to accept their awards and give free talks on their winning ideas.

Duncan Ryuken Williams, a religion professor who directs the Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture at the University of Southern California, won the prize for ideas set forth in “American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War,” his 2019 book published by Harvard University Press.

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government forcibly relocated more than 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry and imprisoned them in detention camps on U.S. soil. Two-thirds were practicing Buddhists.

Some were sent to live in former fairgrounds where stables were hastily converted into living quarters. Others were crowded into dwellings of tarpaper-roofed, Army-style bunkers. Many lost their homes, farms and businesses along with their possessions.

As reviewed diaries and other records of their stay in the camps, he learned Buddhists continued to worship even in confinement. One family celebrated Buddha’s birthday by pouring coffee over a carrot carved in his likeness when they could not perform the traditional ritual of pouring tea over a Buddha statue.

“Their imprisonment became a way to discover freedom, a liberation that the Buddha himself attained only after embarking on a spiritual journey filled with obstacles and hardships,” he said.

The Buddhists’ steadfast devotion to faith in such conditions showed it was possible to be both Buddhist and American and helped launch a less sectarian form of the religion in the United States, Williams found.

“Williams’ work opens the way for a discussion that values religious inclusion over exclusion,” said Tyler Mayfield, who directs the Grawemeyer religion award. “He shows how Japanese Americans living in a time of great adversity broadened our nation’s vision of religious freedom.”

The University of Louisville and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary jointly give the religion prize.

Recipients of next year’s s were named this week pending formal approval by university and seminary trustees. The $100,000 prizes also honor seminal ideas in music, world order, psychology and education. Winners will visit Louisville in April to accept their awards and give free talks on the winning ideas.

“It gives me great pleasure to announce Marion Hambrick as the new executive director of the Grawemeyer Awards. Dr. Hambrick comes highly recommended by his colleagues and peers, and we are grateful for his willingness to accept the role,” said UofL Provost Lori Stewart Gonzalez.��“The Grawemeyer Awards pay intentional and profound tribute to the power of creative ideas and the impact a single idea can have on the world.��I am confident Dr. Hambrick has the intellectual acumen and motivation to continue advancing Charles Grawemeyer’s vision of inspiring, honoring and nurturing achievements in ,��,��, ���Ի���.”

Hambrick served as the director of the Grawemeyer Award in ����ֱ�� from 2017 to 2020. The Grawemeyer Awards are presented annually by UofL and the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. By creating these awards, UofL alumnus����found a way to inspire, honor and nurture scholarly achievement.

Hambrick earned his BA in finance from Transylvania University in 1995, his MBA in finance from the University of Kentucky in 1996 and his PhD in educational leadership and organizational development with an emphasis in sport administration from UofL in 2010.

His teaching areas focus on financial principles in sports and conducting doctoral seminars in sport administration research. His research interests are centered on social network analysis in sports and recreational sport participation.

He was presented with the Red and Black Award for outstanding advising and instruction in 2010 and 2012 and was a UofL Faculty Favorite nominee in 2013 and 2015. Hambrick is a member of the North American Society for Sport Management and is lead or co-author of articles published in journals such as Managing Sport and Leisure, Sport Management Review, Journal of Sport Behavior and others.

Hambrick succeeds Charles Leonard, who retired from UofL in November.

UofL presents the annual prizes for innovative ideas and works in music composition, world order, psychology and education and gives a religion prize jointly with the seminary. Award recipients will be named at 10 a.m. EST on the following dates:

• Music Composition, Dec. 6
• Ideas Improving World Order, Dec. 7
• Psychology, Dec. 8
• ����ֱ��, Dec. 9
• Religion, Dec. 10

All recipients will be asked to visit Louisville in April to accept their $100,000 prizes and give free talks about their winning ideas.

Charles Grawemeyer, a UofL graduate, former seminary trustee and philanthropist, set up the awards program in 1984 to recognize the power of creative thought and underscore the impact a single idea can have on the world. He also asked that laypeople be involved in award selection to ensure broad understanding of the winning ideas.

That’s the recipe for the 2021 Grawemeyer Awards celebration, set for 7 p.m., Thursday, April 15. Usually held as a gala banquet, the 2021 celebration will be livestreamed via .

Announced in December 2019, the Grawemeyer Award winners for 2020 are being honored in 2021 following the cancellation of their award banquet last year. Because of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the winners will be honored in a remote ceremony that will give them the opportunity to discuss the work that led to their awards.

By creating these awards,��UofL alumnus H. Charles Grawemeyer��found a way to inspire, honor and nurture achievements in��music composition, education, religion, psychology and ideas improving world order.��

The livestreamed event will be hosted by UofL Grawemeyer Award Director Charles Leonard and will feature recorded remarks from UofL President Neeli Bendapudi and Louisville Seminary President Alton Pollard III. The seminary co-presents the award in religion with UofL.

Speaking live will be the 2021 winners:

• , a San Diego composer who won the music composition award for his orchestral work evoking the threat climate change poses to humanity
• , an American University professor who won the world order award for his book challenging the United Nations to rethink how it handles environmental problems
• , a King’s College, London, behavioral geneticist, who won the psychology award for explaining how DNA influences how we work with the world around us
• , of Harvard University’s Graduate School of ����ֱ�� and High Tech High Graduate School of ����ֱ��, which is linked with a network of diverse charter schools in San Diego, respectively, who co-won the education award for their study of how to encourage deeper learning in U.S. high schools
• , a Willamette University professor who won the religion award for showing how an early Christian creed urging human solidarity applies in modern life

For additional information, visit the Grawemeyer Awards website.

Those ideas earned their creators 2019 , $100,000 prizes recognizing how powerful concepts can change the world. Award recipients were named Dec. 3-7.

The winners are:

• , music composition, for writing the non-traditional concerto “Nomaden”
• , ideas improving world order, for designing a framework to help nations expand human rights
• , for developing a theory explaining how drug addiction works in the brain
• , for explaining how white Protestant dominance of U.S. politics and culture is ending

“As is so often the case, our award recipients have addressed important issues of the day in a highly creative manner,” said Charles Leonard, Grawemeyer Awards executive director.

“From shedding new light on opioid addiction to charting a vast political and cultural change, from improving the well-being of people worldwide to welcoming diverse cultures into Western classical music, all of their ideas have potential to enrich our lives.”

UofL presents the annual prizes in music, world order, psychology and education and gives the religion prize jointly with Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

No education award was given this year because “jurors could not single out an idea likely to advance our field in a highly significant way,” said Marion Hambrick, an associate professor in UofL’s College of ����ֱ�� and Human Development, who directs the award.

The late Charles Grawemeyer, a UofL graduate and former seminary trustee, set up the awards in 1984 to underscore the impact a single idea can have on the world. He also asked that laypeople be involved in selecting the awards to ensure broad understanding of the winning ideas.

All of the Grawemeyer Award recipients will visit Louisville in April to give free, public talks on their winning ideas.

The students had filtered slowly into the room that morning to participate in an exercise similar to those that McAvoy and her colleague, Diana Hess, observed taking place in high school classrooms in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. Their 4-year study of 35 teachers and their 1,000-plus students was the basis for the book, “The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic ����ֱ��,” which earned Hess and McAvoy the 2017 Grawemeyer Award in ����ֱ��.

A seemingly simple fill-in-the-blank exercise, “When I think about American politics I feel ________ because ________,” kindled discussion among the Central High students and, under Hess and McAvoy’s guidance, grew into a lively debate that cleared the early morning brain fog and spurred the school’s library media specialist, Lynn Reynolds, to effuse, “You have opposing views and you didn’t get mad! You listened to the different sides … You’ll be active citizens. You’ll be the example.”

Hope for a better tomorrow and the belief that ideas have the power to change the world prompted H. Charles Grawemeyer to establish in 1984 the awards program that bears his name. Since then, more than $14 million has been awarded to 148 winners across five fields: music composition, political science, education, religion and psychology.

The 2017 honorees — Hess, McAvoy, Andrew Norman, Dana Burde, Gary Dorrien and Marsha Linehan — recently visited the University of Louisville and to discuss their award-winning ideas. ��

Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy – ����ֱ��

The civil exchange of ideas and opinions that led at Central High School demonstrated to students and onlookers alike that tackling controversial subjects in the classroom need not be taboo. “Our idea is that schools are a very good place to teach young people how to participate politically,” said Hess. ��

McAvoy added that when teachers encourage conversations about difficult political issues, “it is time well-spent in the classroom, that students really enjoy it, that it makes them more interested in politics, [and] they leave the class with a deeper knowledge of democracy …”

View photos from and the .

View video of .

View the video news story about the .

Andrew Norman – Music Composition

“‘Play’ is a universe that I created. It has a bunch of rules that determine how musicians interact with each other and the different ways they can control each other,” said of his award-winning, 47-minute orchestral work. “It’s an exploration of those ideas, control and how people react to them and then, ultimately, how a group of people might actually break through a system of rules or controls and create something new.”

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project performed the premiere of “Play” in 2013.�� Since then, the piece, which Norman said he’s rewritten “three or four times now,” has received considerable attention and critical acclaim, including a Grammy Award nomination.

Norman also outlined the distinction between listening to a recording of “Play” versus experiencing the piece being performed live. “To be there with the musicians as they’re actually making it and seeing them physically is really what this piece is about.”

Local audiences will have the opportunity next April to immerse themselves in Norman’s musical universe when the Louisville Orchestra performs “Play” as part of its Festival of American Music.

View photos from .

Dana Burde – Ideas Improving World Order

earned the 2017 World Order award for analyzing the relationship between education and political violence in Afghanistan, where she’s conducted research for more than a decade. Her 2014 book, “Schools for Conflict or for Peace in Afghanistan” traces how foreign-backed funding for education can either undermine or support state-building and peacebuilding. ��

“Our U.S. government funded a curriculum to develop jihad literacy in the 1980s. And we did that because we thought it was critically important to undermine the Soviets who were occupying Afghanistan,” said Burde. “These textbooks cultivated a link — a very strong link — between religion and violence.”

Burde’s award-winning work also highlights positive outcomes of foreign aid and the power of good quality curricula and accessible, community-based schools. “Thoughtful aid that responds to important needs and social services can be very effective and much of our aid in Afghanistan has been, I would argue.”

View photos from .

Gary Dorrien – Religion

Beginning in the late 1800s and continuing through the early 20th century, progressive Christian leaders in North America advocated the Church’s responsibility to deal with the earthly matters of human rights and equality. This religious social-reform movement is known as the Social Gospel and has been widely — and incompletely — documented. ����

“I have long had this belief that the most important part of the story of the American Social Gospel and its enormous influence in American life, in politics, in society, in religion has just not been told because mostly it gets told as though it’s mostly white people and their institutions, and their ecumenical movement and their churches … that ends up dominating the narrative,” said , whose 2015 book, “The New Abolition: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel,” earned him the 2017 religion award, which is presented jointly by UofL and the .

Dorrien details the history of the Black Social Gospel and how it became a critical forerunner of the civil rights movement. “The greatest story we have in this country is the story of Martin Luther King Jr., and his formation, and his impact on society…” he said. “I hope it is an okay book, but I know it’s on a great subject.”

View photos from .

Marsha Linehan – Psychology

“My goal was to treat people who were high risk for suicide and difficult to treat,” said psychology winner . “I was looking to get people, essentially, out of hell.”

Linehan’s goal was achieved through her trial-and-error development of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), which research has shown to be effective for conditions previously considered untreatable, including chronic suicidality and borderline personality disorder. DBT teaches patients new behavioral skills to balance acceptance and change, and was the first psychotherapy to incorporate the practice of mindfulness — being fully aware in the present moment and developing a nonjudgmental attitude — as an essential component.

“A lot of the treatment, not all of it but a lot of it, is training people how to change their own behavior to change their own lives,” said Linehan. “And the goal of the entire treatment is how to build a life that you experience as worth living.”

View photos from .

The Grawemeyer Awards have been a longstanding tradition at the University of Louisville, created to honor those who have impacted the world with just a single idea. UofL graduate, former Louisville Seminary trustee, and philanthropist Charles Grawemeyer founded the awards program in 1984 to pay tribute to the power of creative thought.

The awards draw nominations from all over the world, recognizing pioneers in five fields – Music Composition, Ideas Improving World Order, ����ֱ��, Religion and Psychology. Past winners have included those who have studied the promise of public education in America, developed potential treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder, sought ways to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East, explored why Christianity has failed in its attempts to heal racial divides, and used native, traditional music to pay tribute to victims of Cambodian genocide.

The list includes Aaron Beck, considered to be the founder of cognitive therapy, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development. This year’s honorees and their ideas loom just as large. Their stories are featured below.

Music Composition

Andrew Norman, a Los Angeles-based composer of orchestral, chamber and vocal music, wrote “Play” for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, which premiered the piece in 2013 and released a recording on its own label. In three movements, “Play,” this year’s winner of the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, explores the relationship of choice and chance, freewill and control.

The piece investigates the ways musicians in an orchestra can play with, against, or apart from one another; and maps concepts from the world of video gaming onto traditional symphonic structures to tell a fractured narrative of power, manipulation, deceit and, ultimately, cooperation.��

“‘Play’ combines brilliant orchestration, which is at once wildly inventive and idiomatic, with a terrific and convincing musical shape based on a relatively small amount of musical source material,” said Award Director Marc Satterwhite. “It ranges effortlessly from brash to intimate and holds the listener’s interest for all of its 47 minutes — no small feat in these days of shortened attention spans.” ��

“Play” has also been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and Norman was recently named Musical America’s 2017 Composer of the Year.

Ideas Improving World Order

Dana Burde’s 2014 book, “Schools for Conflict or for Peace in Afghanistan,” explores the influence foreign-backed funding for education has on war-torn countries and how such aid affects humanitarian and peace-building efforts. Because of her analysis on this topic, Burde, an associate professor of international education at NYU, is this year’s winner of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.

“I argue that instead of preventing conflict, U.S. aid to education in Afghanistan contributed to it — deliberately in the 1980s, with violence-infused, anti-Soviet curricula, and inadvertently in the 2000s, with misguided stabilization programs,” Burde wrote. “In both of these phases, education aid was subordinated to the political goals of strong states and used as a strategic tool — a situation made possible in part by humanitarians’ tendency to neglect education’s role in conflict.”����

Drawing on extensive research on the impact of U.S.-funded community-based education programs, Burde also makes a case for a sounder understanding of the role of education in state-building and recommends contributing to sustainable peace through expanded access to community-based education with neutral, quality curriculum. Her book was grounded in eight years of field research in Afghanistan and Pakistan and backed by two decades of work on education in countries affected by conflict.��

����ֱ��

Immigration. Gun control. Abortion. Gay rights. Religion. Are these and other polarizing topics too controversial to be discussed in today’s high school classrooms? According to Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy, co-winners of the 2017 Grawemeyer Award in ����ֱ��, teachers should encourage conversations about difficult issues. These discussions, they opine, help students understand diverse points of view and become more politically engaged adults.

Hess and McAvoy’s 2014 book, “The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic ����ֱ��,” explores the role of teachers in perpetuating serious political deliberation in schools. The book is based on a 4-year study of 35 teachers and their 1,000-plus students.

“Teachers are beginning to worry that all controversial topics are taboo,” said ����ֱ�� Award Director Marion Hambrick. “This timely book dispels that notion and provides tangible evidence that the classroom is an unusual political place where students can learn to carefully examine divisive issues.”

is dean of the School of ����ֱ�� at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and directs the Center for Ethics and ����ֱ�� at the same university.

Religion

In “The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel,” social ethicist Gary Dorrien describes the early history of the Black Social Gospel from its 19th-century founding to its close association in the 20th century with W.E.B. Du Bois. He offers a new perspective on modern Christianity and the civil rights era by delineating the tradition of social justice theology and activism that led to Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dorrien’s book earned him the 2017 Grawemeyer Award in Religion, given jointly by UofL and the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

“We urgently need this historical and theological account in our religious communities and public discourse,” said Tyler Mayfield, Faculty Director of the Grawemeyer Award in Religion and the A.B. Rhodes Associate Professor of Old Testament at Louisville Seminary. “Dorrien’s book highlights a disremembered part of American religious history, one that holds relevance for contemporary discussions about race and U.S. religion. His compelling narration of the Black Social Gospel as a profoundly religious tradition of thought and activism underscores the crucial connections among the Black Church, social Christianity, the creation of black institutions, and the struggle for freedom.”

Dorrien, an Episcopal priest, is a professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and professor of Religion at Columbia University.

Psychology

Marsha Linehan, a psychology professor at the University of Washington, developed Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which balances acceptance and commitment to change in treating mental illness, distinguishing it from previous standard interventions. Research shows DBT to be an effective treatment for conditions previously considered untreatable, such as borderline personality disorder.

Linehan’s work has earned her the 2017 Grawemeyer Award for Psychology. In developing DBT, she sought out difficult-to-treat, suicidal individuals and, by trial and error, created an effective intervention, which led to treatment for multiple disorders. She drew on her personal experiences — she acknowledged publicly in 2011 her own longtime struggle with high suicidality — and training as a spiritual director and Zen Master to develop an approach that taught patients how to regulate dysfunctional behaviors. The therapy relies on a toolkit of behavioral skills, including mindfulness practices, that were previously not common in mainstream psychology.

��“In addition to being considered the state-of-the-art treatment for chronically suicidal individuals, dialectical behavior therapy has been found to be effective for other behavioral disorders, including eating disorders, addiction, anxiety related disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression,” said Professor Woody Petry, award director.

All 2017 winners will present free lectures about their award-winning ideas when they visit Louisville in April to accept their $100,000 prizes.