ISSR Annual Book Prize
The ISSR 2026 Book Prize on Science and Religion nomination period is now closed. We thank all who submitted nominations. Only those authors selected for advancement in the prize will be contacted. More information on the Prize can be found below.
General
The International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) is pleased to continue an annual international Book Prize for exceptional texts written in the field of science and religion. This Prize originated from the generous support of the Templeton World Charity Foundation.
The intention of the Prize is to understand ‘religion’ broadly and to seek excellence in both content and communication. We will seek to reward books that make a major contribution to the field, especially if they have the potential to take the field into new directions. We expect that three books will be selected each year, with one suitable for a general audience (‘the public’), one for an academic audience, and one for a professional audience (e.g. ministers/pastors, or school teachers).
Each year, there will be three prizes for the winning books presented to the winning authors at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). The prizes will be announced publicly and awarded at an ISSR reception at that year’s meeting, and the winners will each receive a £500.00 award (split if two authors).
Eligibility
Books nominated must have a publication date of the past two years (2024-2025 for the 2026 Prize). Books may be written in any language. Self-nominations are welcome. Edited collections and books written by more than two authors will not be eligible.
Call for Nominations
The Call for Nominations begins on 02 January of each year, and all nominations are due by no later than 01 March. Please note that physical copies of nominated texts are required for any books that proceed to the long-list. Copies are to be mailed to each of the members of the Judging Committee and Administration no later than 01 April, with the copies arriving no later than 01 May.
Nominations can be made to execassist@issr.org.uk. Please include the book title, author name, and a link to the publisher page for the book. If nominated by an author or a publisher, a PDF e-copy of the book is strongly encouraged to be included with the nomination email.
2025 Winners
Congratulations to the 2025 Book Prize Winners. You can read the full announcement by clicking here.
This year’s prizes were awarded to:
In the academic category, the prize goes to Emily Qureshi-Hurst for Salvation in the Block Universe: Time, Tillich, and Transformation (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
Qureshi-Hurst investigates a particularly challenging and under-explored issue on the interface of science and theology, i.e. how the “block universe” theory of time can be reconciled with a Christian understanding of personal salvation. She provides a very clear exposition of the block universe; she then turns to Paul Tillich for a theological account of personal salvation and discusses how that should be interpreted; and finally argues that the two can be reconciled. These are complex matters, but the book is written with exceptional clarity and lucidity.
In the category of books for a general readership, the prize goes to Francis Collins for The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith and Trust (Little Brown & Worthy Books, 2024).
Collins is one of the most influential contemporary biomedical scientists, having served as director of the international Human Genome Project and the US National Institutes of Health. Here he draws on four sources of wisdom: truth, science, faith and trust, and argues that they work best together. His own personal wisdom is fully apparent in this beautifully written book of guidance on how to find a road to wisdom amid the manifold problems of our time.
In the category of books for professionals and educators, the prize goes to Beth Singler for Religion and Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction (Routledge, 2024).
There is currently both much excitement, but also widespread social concern, about AI, including how it relates to religion. In this dispassionate and informative book, Singler approaches the relationship between the two as a social scientist, and examines their complex “entanglements”, including rejection, adoption, and adaptation. She has provided a much-needed educational resource on one of the hottest current topics on the interface of religion and science.
Honourable mentions go to: Thought Experiments, Science, and Theology, by Yiftach Fehige (Brill, 2024), and Playing God: Science, Religion and the Future of Humanity, by Nick Spencer and Hannah Waite (SPCK, 2024)
Previous Winners
2024
– In the academic category – Peter N. Jordan for Naturalism in the Christian Imagination: Providence and Causality in Early Modern England. Cambridge University Press, 2022.
– In the category for a general readership – Philip Goff for Why? The Purpose of the Universe. Oxford University Press, 2023.
– In the category for professionals and educators – Nicholas Spencer for Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science & Religion. OneWorld, 2023.
2023
o In the academic category—the prize goes to Jonathan Topham for Reading the Book of Nature: How Eight Bestsellers Reconnected Christianity and the Sciences on the Eve of the Victorian Age. University of Chicago Press, 2022.
o In the general readership category—the prize goes to Andrew Briggs and Michael Reiss for Human Flourishing: Scientific Insight and Spiritual Wisdom in Uncertain Times. Oxford University Press, 2021.
o In the category for professionals and educators—the prize goes to Donovan O Schaefer for Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin. Duke University Press, 2022.
2022
o In the academic category—the prize goes to Shoaib Ahmed Malik for Islam and Evolution: Al-Ghazali and the Modern Evolutionary Paradigm (Routledge).
o In the general readership category—the prize goes to John Lardas Modern for Neuromatic, or A Particular History of Religion and the Brain (University of Chicago Press).
o In the category for professionals and educators—the prize goes to Calvin Mercer and Tracy Trothen for Religion and the Technological Future: An Introduction to Biohacking, Artificial Intelligence and Transhumanism (Palgrave Macmillan).
2021
Tom Aetchner – Media and Science-Religion Conflict (Routledge, 2020)
Ariel Glucklich – The Joy of Religion: Exploring the Nature of Pleasure in the Spiritual Life (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
James W Jones – Living Religion: Embodiment, Theology and the Possibility of a Spiritual Sense (Oxford University Press, 2019)
2020
Agustin Fuentes – Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being (Yale University Press, 2019)
Silke Gülker – Transzendenz in der Wissenschaft. Studien in der Stammzellforschung in Deutschland und in den USA (Ergon, 2019)
Christopher White – Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Dimensions (Harvard University Press, 2018)