wfn.org | Lutheran Ethicist and Theologican Wins Grawemeyer Award

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ELCA NEWS SERVICE - NEWSBRIEF

June 2, 1997

LUTHERAN WINS GRAWEMEYER AWARD

Dr. Larry Rasmussen, a Lutheran ethicist and theologian, has won the
1997 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion, a $150,000 prize.
Rasmussen, a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is
the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological
Seminary, New York.  He was given the award for his book, "Earth
Community, Earth Ethics."  The book is a Christian perspective on
environmental ethics.  Christianity, Rasmussen writes, has not always
been an environment-friendly faith, and persons of all faiths should
be judged by their contributions to the well-being of the earth.
Rasmussen currently serves as a writer for the ELCA's Lutheran Ethics
Project, set to be published in early 1998.  The Grawemeyer Award is
given jointly by the Louisville (Ky.) Presbyterian Theological
Seminary and the University of Louisville.  It honors "insights into
the relationships among between human beings and the divine ways these
relationships may empower human beings to attain wholeness, integrity
and meaning," according to Dr. David Hester of Louisville Presbyterian
Theological Seminary.  Rasmussen dedicated his book to colleagues in
the Justice, Peace and Creation Unit of the World Council of Churches,
which he co-moderates.  "Earth Community, Earth Ethics" is published
by Orbis Books and WCC Publications.   Rasmussen is a member of the
American Academy of Religion and the Society of Christian Ethics and
is a board member of the International Bonhoeffer Society.  He has
taught at Union since 1986.  Rasmussen is a graduate of St. Olaf
College, Northfield, Minn., Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn., and
earned his doctorate at Union in 1970.

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