Stonehill Faculty Member Recognized for Literary Excellence

Professor of Religious Studies & Theology Mark S.M. Scott’s The Beauty of Souls: Aesthetic Encounters with Marilynne Robinson has received a 2026 Book Award from The Word Guild, which celebrates literary excellence among Canadian Christian authors. The work was honored in the “General Non-Fiction—Culture & Contemporary Issues” category.

“I am grateful for the recognition,” Scott said. “I have always been deeply passionate about the craftsmanship of writing and Robinson’s celebrated novels were a wonderful canvas to work with.”

Published in 2025 by Fortress Press, The Beauty of Souls guides readers through the complexity of the spiritual life in critical and creative dialogue with Robinson’s signature works. Scott’s book explores themes of perception, contemplation, growth, loss, brokenness, wonder and redemption. In a review, Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Harvard University’s Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church, praised the work’s integration of literary analysis and spirituality.

“Scott’s The Beauty of Souls presents a carefully insightful and intricately comprehensive close reading of all Marilynne Robinson’s novels,” Potts said. “For this alone it deserves praise. But The Beauty of Souls is more than just a literary analysis: it is also a spiritually attentive and deeply compassionate theology of human personhood and divine beauty.”

Scott was first introduced to Robinson’s novels while serving as a teaching assistant at Harvard College.

“I instantly connected with them and recognized their nascent spirituality,” he said. “Through the years I taught seminars on her writings and saw how her characters and stories spiritually activate readers and raise perennial theological questions. Robinson’s most devout readers tend to be relational, spiritually curious and highly sensitive to beauty.”

Scott wrote The Beauty of Souls in part as a love letter to her readers. 

“I hope it provides a helpful hermeneutical lens for her readers and that they find it spiritually enriching,” he noted.

Scott joined the Stonehill community in 2022. His previous publications include two other academic monographs, Pathways in Theodicy: An Introduction to the Problem of Evil (published in 2025 by Fortress Press) and Journey Back to God: Origen on the Problem of Evil (published in 2012 by Oxford University Press). His scholarship has also been featured in publications like Religious Studies and Theology, Christianity & Literature and Journal of Religion, among others.