Lutheran Historical Society of the Mid-Atlantic Awards Biglerville Prize to Matthew Borrasso

The Lutheran Historical Society of the Mid-Atlantic announces that the Reverend Matthew Borrasso is the winner of this years awarding of the St. Paul, Biglerville Prize in American Lutheran History.  Barrosso has written a book entitled The Art of Exegesis: The Life and work of Martin Hans Franzmann (WIPF & Stock, 2019), which explores Franzmann’s contributions to biblical hermeneutics as these developed, and became a focal point of controversy, within the context of both the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod from the late 1920s through the mid-1970s.

The Biglerville Prize is awarded every two to three years by the Society to recently published works of mature scholarship in the field of the history of Lutheranism and Lutheran churches in America.  The award includes a sum of $3000, and the winner is invited to offer a presentation to the Society of their work.  The prize was established by St. Paul Lutheran Church in Biglerville, Pennsylvania in honor of the Reverend Frederick Weiser.

Borrasso is an ordained pastor in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and currently serves as pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Lexington Park, Maryland.  He holds graduate degrees from Northern Seminary, Concordia Seminary, and United Lutheran Seminary.  Borrasso previously served as pastor or Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church in Parkton, Maryland.

This year’s winning work, The Art of Exegesis: The Life and work of Martin Hans Franzmann is important not just because provides a biography the life of Franzmann, who is perhaps better known among Lutherans for the hymns he authored and his poetic expositions of Scripture, but also because it places Franzmann’s career in the context of larger trends in twentieth-century American Lutheranism, particularly in regards to how the topic of biblical inerrancy as it was approached within the church and its seminaries.  The Society awards the Biglerville Prize to Borrasso for his fine scholarship and his dedication to the study of Lutheran history.

The Lutheran Historical Society of the Mid-Atlantic is a non-profit organization with a mission to preserve, nurture, and encourage the understanding of and appreciation for Lutheran history in America broadly, but with particular interest in the Mid-Atlantic region.  For more information on the Society, please visit the following website:  www.lutheranhistoricalsociety.com