C.S. Lewis biographer Dr. Alan Jacobs received the 2006 John Pollock Award for Christian Biography Tuesday, Oct. 10, at Samford University.
The award, presented annually by Samford's Beeson Divinity School, recognized Jacobs' book, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis, as the most distinguished Christian biography of the past year.
Jacobs, a Birmingham native and former member of the city's 85th Street Baptist Church, is professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois. He is also the author of Shaming the Devil: Essays in Truthtelling, A Theology of Reading : The Hermeneutics of Love, A Visit to Vanity Fair and Other Moral Essays, Bad to the Bone: A Cultural History of Original Sin, and the forthcoming Life Genres: Persons in Narrative Theology.
A graduate of the University of Alabama, Jacobs holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.
The Pollock Award was established in 2001 to be an encouragement to others in the writing of Christian biography, said Beeson dean Dr. Timothy George. British writer Pollock is the author of more than 30 books on religion, the majority of them biographies of Christian leaders.
During a ceremony that was held as part of a Beeson chapel service, Jacobs received a bronze trophy in the shape of an open book with an inscribed passage from Hebrews.
The scripture, which advises remembrance of those "who have spoken unto you the word of God," symbolizes the meaning of the Pollock Award, noted George.
After the presentation, Jacobs gave a talk on scholar/Christian writer Lewis, who is best known for his children's series The Chronicles of Narnia.