For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about the 2017 Templeton Prize Ceremony.
Since its inception in 1972, the Templeton Prize has usually been awarded in London, originally in private ceremonies at Buckingham Palace and more recently at the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square. On Sunday night, the ceremony embraced a new and different location — Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History — in a ceremony tailored to the life and career of its recipient, philosopher Alvin Plantinga.
Chicago is a few hours’ drive from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Plantinga earned his undergraduate degree and spent the formative early years of his academic career, and from Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana, where he taught for 28 years until his retirement in 2010. The ceremony drew hundreds of family members, former philosophy students, and alumni, in addition to friends of the John Templeton Foundation and distinguished religious and academic leaders.