The board of directors of Theological Horizons is pleased to announce THE 2021 LOUISE & RICHARD GOODWIN PRIZES FOR EXCELLENCE IN THEOLOGICAL WRITING
A $2,500 prize has been awarded to Clare Kemmerer (Yale Institute of Sacred Music) for the essay, "Sisters in Complicity: Anti-Judaism at a Late Medieval Convent.”
Abstract: Building upon the frameworks developed by Stephanie Jones-Rogers and Elizabeth McRae which centralize the role of women in perpetuating racial violence and discrimination, this paper expands their application to the racial and religious persecution of Jews in late medieval Europe. Offering a case-study of a medieval German convent, this paper seeks to complicate both the study of medieval racial politics and that of medieval women religious. Using artistic, economic and written evidence from the fourteenth-century life at Kloster Lüne, this paper explores the ways that class, gender, and religion allowed the nuns to uniquely participate in a culture of anti-Judaism.
A $1,000 prize has been awarded to Ryan Duerr (University of Dayton) for the essay, “Eco-Lutheranism and the Hidden God.”
Abstract: Recently, Lutheran theologians have started using Martin Luther’s theologia crucis to construct a uniquely Lutheran approach to eco-theology. While Luther’s theologia crucis has, indeed, proven useful in this regard, it has also been used to promulgate an ecological ethic which advocates the alleviation of nature’s suffering in such a way that ignores the scientific consensus concerning the necessity of predation, pain, and struggle for the overall health of biotic systems. In order to correct this trend, I argued that eco-Lutherans ought recover Luther’s notion of God hidden “behind” revelation in order to complement their emphasis on God hidden “in” revelation.
A $500 prize has been awarded to Chengyuan (Rene) Guo (Yale Divinity School) for the essay, “A New Realism: First Generation Chinese American Theology of Liminal Complicity.”
Abstract: In the context of COVID pandemic and Sino-American strategic competitions, Chinese Americans have been singled out by our kin and racialized as contagion. However, Chinese American Christians from the PRC should not be considered as pure victims of racism in this Thucydidean circumstance because we are also complicit with perpetuating oppression against other weaker groups. This essay explores liminal complicity as a theological alternatives to liberation and reconciliation, which prioritizes our endless entanglements with structures of violence. This essay develops a new approach to Christian realism that bypasses the danger of liberation-themed grammar and the oppressed/oppressor binary in the Chinese American context.
We are deeply encouraged to see young scholars of such promise and commitment and we offer our warm congratulations to all who participated in this year’s competition.
Karen Wright Marsh | Executive Director, Theological Horizons