For the seventh year, the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) has continued to run the ISSR Book Prize, which began with a generous donation from the Templeton World Charity Foundation. The Prize was established to understand ‘religion’ and ‘science’ broadly and to seek excellence in both content and communication. We aim to reward books from the past two years that make a major contribution to the field, especially those with the potential to take it in new directions. We offer prizes for one book in each of three categories: (1) suitable for a general audience (‘the public’); (2) for an academic audience; and (3) for a professional audience (e.g. ministers/pastors or school teachers).
For 2026, ISSR is pleased to award the following prizes:
In the category for a general readership, the prize goes to the late Helen De Cruz for Wonderstruck: How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We Think (2024), published by Princeton University Press. Helen was the Danforth Chair in the Humanities at Saint Louis University. In successive chapters, she examines the role of awe and wonder in philosophy, psychology, technology, and science, and how they might transform the world. It is a clever, polymathic book, but also immensely engaging and readable. It is very sad that this was her last completed book, and by awarding her a posthumous prize for it, ISSR is pleased to honour her for all she gave to the field of science and religion throughout her career.
The academic category prize goes to Peter Harrison, Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy at the University of Queensland, Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, Australia, for his book Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age (2024), published by Cambridge University Press. Peter is a former Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion and Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre at the University of Oxford. Some New World is his most ambitious book to date: brilliant, full of detailed research and acute new insights. In The Territories of Science and Religion, Peter drew our attention to how much the concepts of religion and science have shifted over the centuries, and in this book, he examines the concepts of ‘belief’ and the ‘supernatural’, which have also shifted significantly.
In the professionals and educators category, the prize goes to Timothy Middleton for Witnessing a Wounded World: A Theology of Ecological Trauma (2025), published by Fordham University Press. Tim is a Tutorial Fellow in Theology at Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford. He approaches ecological suffering through the lens of trauma theology, asking what kind of traumas arise from climate change, and focuses mainly on three: to communication, to flesh, and to time. He then draws on ideas about deep incarnation to develop a theological account of this ecological trauma. The book is scholarly, insightful, passionate, and committed to beginning a conversation on witnessing the world as wounded by trauma.
The ISSR book prize aims to catalyze transformation in the field and spark innovation by identifying the best new books on science and religion. The field is diverse and growing, and the 2026 Prize continues to demonstrate its vitality. We salute the prize-winning authors and the many others whose nominated books were outstanding.
We hope to make discussions of the prize-winning books available on our YouTube channel in the coming months. For updates, please subscribe to the ISSR YouTube channel. The judging of books was undertaken by a diverse panel appointed by the Trustees of the International Society for Science and Religion.
