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New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson, who teaches at Emory University's Candler School of Theology, has won the 2011 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion, worth $100,000, for his book Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity, published in 2009. Proposing a new framework for analyzing Christian origins, Johnson wrote that Christians, Jews and pagans of ancient Rome and Greece shared many ways of being religious despite their distinctive beliefs. Johnson's approach was "powerfully illuminating, not only for historical study but also for interfaith relations today," said award director Susan Garrett, professor of New Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
Jane Shaw, an Anglican scholar and priest who has taught in England and the United States, was installed November 6 as the eighth dean of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral. Shaw, 47, who lives in the city with her partner, Sarah Ogilvie, succeeds Alan Jones, who served as cathedral dean from 1984 to 2009. An announcement said the Episcopal cathedral "courageously embraces innovation and open-minded conversation, where inclusion is expected and people of all faiths are welcomed." Shaw, who earned an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School and a doctorate in history from the University of California at Berkeley, taught history and theology at the University of Oxford in England for 16 years and later served as dean of divinity at New College, Oxford.
