NEWS

Sewanee, Tenn.—The Rev. Dr. Robert Hughes, professor of systematic theology and Norma and Olan Mills professor of divinity at the University of the South’s School of Theology, has been named the inaugural recipient of a major new award for scholarship in pneumatology, the study of the Holy Spirit.

The Poullart Libermann Award in Pneumatology, created by Duquesne University, honors “the individual who has made the most significant scholarly contribution to the area of pneumatology in the preceding five year period.”

Hughes was selected for the award based on his 2008 book, Beloved Dust: Tides of the Spirit in the Christian Life.

As recipient of the award, Hughes will give the 2010 Holy Spirit Lecture at Duquesne, and his book and other scholarly work will be the subject of a colloquium in the field of pneumatology. The annual Holy Spirit Lecture honorees are major theologians from the Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic traditions. Hughes’ Duquesne lecture will be published and distributed by the university. He will also receive a stipend and a medallion.

Beloved Dust takes a realistic and contemporary view of human being as entirely physical (dust) and then shows it immersed in three great tides of the Holy Spirit, the traditional threefold rhythm of conversion, transfiguration, and glory. In it, Hughes achieves an entirely new presentation of the traditional teaching in the light of contemporary knowledge and practice.

“There aren’t many breakthrough books [in neumatology],” says the Rev. Dr. Radu Bordeianu, director of the Holy Spirit Lecture and Colloquium. “He really did something amazing.” The reviewers’ recommendation for the award cited the book as “a major contribution to both the fields of spirituality and pneumatology, exploring the interrelationship between the two in freshly provocative and at times brilliant ways.”

Hughes joined the faculty at the School of Theology in 1977. Author of numerous articles appearing in journals such as the Anglican Theological Review, theSewanee Theological Review, and the St. Luke’s Journal of Theology, he also wrote “The Holy Spirit in Christian Spirituality” for The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality (2005).

Sewanee: The University of the South, familiarly known as Sewanee, comprises a nationally recognized College ofLiberal Arts and Sciences and a distinguished School of Theology serving the Episcopal Church. Located on 13,000 acres atop Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau, Sewanee enrolls 1,500 undergraduates and approximately 100 seminarians in master’s and doctoral programs. Sewanee is owned by 28 Episcopal dioceses, the only university so directly related to the Episcopal Church. For more information about Sewanee: The University of the South, visit www.sewanee.edu.