FOR RELEASE: Tuesday, April 17, 2018
2018 Templeton Prize Laureate to be announced on Wednesday, June 27
48th winner of £1.1 million annual prize for spiritual progress
Event: Announcement of the 2018 Templeton Prize Laureate
Date: Wednesday, June 27, 6:00 AM EDT (Philadelphia) / 10:00 hours GMT
Venue: Online at www.templetonprize.org; via email to journalists; Twitter via @TempletonPrize; #TempletonPrize2018
The winner of the 2018 Templeton Prize will be announced on Wednesday, June 27 at 6:00 AM EDT (Philadelphia) / 10:00 hours GMT, online at www.templetonprize.org, via email to journalists, and on Twitter via @TempletonPrize.
Valued at 1.1 million British pounds, the Templeton Prize is one of the world’s largest annual individual awards.
The Prize, which will be formally awarded at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, November 13, annually honors a person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works.
Established in 1972 by the late global investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton, the Templeton Prize is a cornerstone of the John Templeton Foundation’s international efforts to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the deepest and most profound questions facing humankind. The Foundation supports research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution, and emergence to creativity, forgiveness, and free will.
“Sir John created the Templeton Prize when he realized that many of his friends and colleagues thought of religion as uninteresting and old-fashioned, or perhaps even obsolete,” says Heather Templeton Dill, President of the John Templeton Foundation. “He decided that a prize to single out people who were responsible for, in his words, the ‘marvelous new things going on in religion,’ would help them become more well known, not so much for their own benefit, but for the benefit of people who might be inspired by them.”
The 2018 Laureate will join a group of 47 Prize recipients including Mother Teresa, who received the inaugural award in 1973, the Dalai Lama (2012), and Archbishop Desmond Tutu (2013). The 2017 Laureate was the American philosopher Alvin Plantinga, whose half century of rigorous scholarship made theism – the belief in a divine reality or god – a serious option within the academy. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, was recognized for his work in 2016 after spending decades bringing spiritual insight to the public conversation. Canadian philosopher and theologian Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche, an international network of communities where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together as peers, received the Prize in 2015.
Press materials on the 2018 Templeton Prize Laureate will be available prior to the announcement with a strict embargo of Wednesday, June 27, 6:00 AM EDT (Philadelphia) / 10:00 hours GMT. Contact:
Don Lehr, The Nolan/Lehr Group, Media Relations and Public Affairs Consultant for the Templeton Prize
tel: +1.212.967.8200 mob: +1.917.304.4058 email: dblehr@cs.com.
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