Religious Nobel Laureates Now More Common

Of the last nine individuals awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the Dalai Lama is the third religious figure to win.

Mother Teresa, the ethnic Albanian nun born in Yugoslavia who works with the poorest of the poor in India, won the prize in 1979. Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, the Anglican prelate who has vigorously opposed apartheid in South Africa, won in 1984.

Before 1979, it was uncommon for a prominent person in the religious field to receive the peace prize, which was first awarded in 1901.

“In the early years, they tended to award veteran peace activists and statesmen,” said Irwin Abrams, author of “The Nobel Peace Prize and the Laureates,” published last year.

“The first cleric named was Lutheran Archbishop Nathan Soderblom of Sweden, who preached Alfred Nobel’s funeral sermon in 1896,” said Abrams in a telephone interview.

Other Winners

Other ordained winners were Roman Catholic Father Dominique Pire of Belgium (1958), who worked with refugees, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (1964), the Baptist civil rights leader.

Among winners influential in religion but not ordained clerics were YMCA co-founder John R. Mott (1946), medical missionary Dr. Albert Schweitzer (1952) and Jewish author Elie Wiesel (1986). “Wiesel began his acceptance speech in Oslo that year with a prayer,” Abrams noted.

Organizations have been cited many times, including the United Nations peacekeeping force last year and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War four years ago. The only religious bodies to win were the Quakers--the 1947 award went jointly to the Friends Service Council in Britain and the American Friends Service Committee.