ASCH Prizes - 2026

The American Society of Church History fosters and honors outstanding scholarship through five prestigious prizes.

For information about the prize nomination process, see the bottom of this page.

The Philip Schaff Prize

This prize annually honors the best book in the history of Christianity by a North American scholar published in the prior calendar year. The Schaff Prize comes with a cash prize of $5,000.

Thomas Tweed (University of Notre Dame), Religion in the Lands That Became America: A New History (Yale University Press, 2025).

Schaff Prize Finalist:

Susan Juster, A Common Grave: Being Catholic in English America (University of North Carolina Press, 2025)


The Albert C. Outler Prize

The Albert C. Outler Prize annually honors the best book, published in the prior calendar year, that illumines the diversity of global Christianity, issues of Christian unity and disunity (doctrinal, cultural, institutional), and/or the interactions between Christianity and other religions, in any period and area of the history of Christianity. The Brewer Prize comes with a cash award of $2,500.

Asunción Lavrin (Arizona State University), Men of God: Mendicant Orders in Colonial Mexico (University of Nebraska Press, 2025).

The Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize

The Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize annually honors outstanding scholarship in the history of Christianity by a first-time author. The Brewer Prize comes with a cash award of $2,500.

Jesse Zexi Sun (Belmont University), Salvation and Revolution: A Twentieth Century Odyssey of the Chinese Protestant Mind (Oxford University Press, 2025). 

Brewer Prize Finalists:

Daniel E. An, Fear of God: Practicing Emotion in Late Antique Monasticism (University of California Press, 2025)

Aram Sarkisian, Orthodoxy on the Line: Russian Orthodox Christians and Labor Migration in the Progressive Era (NYU Press, 2025)


The Sidney E. Mead Prize

The Sidney E. Mead Prize is granted to an advanced graduate student or recent PhD for the best unpublished article stemming from dissertation research that contributes significantly to its field and to the history of Christianity more broadly. The Mead Prize comes with a $500 cash award and publication in Church History.

Yucheng Bai (Fuller Theological Seminary), "American City on a Chinese Hill”

The Jane Dempsey Douglass Prize

The Jane Dempsey Douglass Prize honors the best essay on women in the history of Christianity published in the previous calendar year. The Douglass Prize comes with a cash award of $500 and is awarded every other year. Check back next year for the 2027 winner.

Prize Nomination Process

Eligibility

  • All works must be nominated in order to be eligible for ASCH prizes. Authors may nominate their own works.
  • All nominees must be active, dues-paying members of the ASCH in order to have their work reviewed by the Research and Prize Committee.
  • Books, essays, and articles may only be nominated once for these awards; nominations will not be accepted in successive years. Please read the prize criteria carefully before nominating a work for that prize.

How To Nominate a Work For Consideration by the Research and Prize Committee

  • Nomination procedures for the 2027 prizes will be announced via email and posted on this website in March of 2027. Check back for details!

Review Process

  • Nominations will be acknowledged by email by either the Office of the Executive Secretary or the Senior Assistant to the Editors.
  • Shortly after the deadline for each prize nomination, the Executive Secretary will contact the presses that published works under consideration, with a list of addresses to which to send the works.

NOTE: DO NOT SHIP ANY BOOKS TO ASCH PRIOR TO RECEIVING A LIST OF SHIPPING ADDRESSES FROM THE EXECUTIVE SECRETARY'S OFFICE. BOOKS SHIPPED PRIOR TO THIS SOLICITATION WILL NEED TO BE RE-SENT BY THEIR PUBLISHERS.