The Rev. Arthur Peacocke, a Church of England priest and theologian who holds a doctorate in physical biochemistry, will receive the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, one of the world's largest monetary awards.
The selection of the 76-year-old Dr. Peacocke, who has long been prominent as a writer and speaker advocating dialogue between scientists and theologians, was announced in a news conference yesterday at the United Nations Church Center in Manhattan. The annual award is worth £700,000, about $1 million.
The new laureate received his doctoral degree from Oxford University in 1948 and embarked on a career as a biochemist, working among research scientists discovering the structure of DNA.
After several years he began studying theology, and in 1971 received a bachelor of divinity degree and was ordained a priest. Later he began teaching biochemistry and theology at Cambridge University. In 1984, he founded a center for the study of religious beliefs in relation to science, at Oxford, where he became the only member of the theology faculty also to hold a science doctorate.
Dr. Peacocke has written several books on science and religion, among them ''Paths From Science Towards God,'' to be published in April by Oneworld, a British publisher. In it, he argues that scientific discoveries open ''fresh vistas on God for human perception and life'' and that Christian theology ought to welcome such challenges as vital stimulation for theology itself.
Indeed, he writes, if Christianity is to be more evangelical and its belief system widely respected as ''a vehicle of public truth,'' churches will have to be open to an understanding of the world as shaped by science.
In an interview, Dr. Peacocke said he regarded science and religion as intertwined. ''One strand is the search for intelligibility,'' he said of science. ''The other strand is the search for meaning.''
He said he viewed discoveries related to biological evolution as a boon to religious belief, not a threat. What Darwin put forward and others have elaborated on, he said, allows believers to argue that God is a continuing, intimately involved presence in the world's progressing creation. That, he said, counters a belief common among the deists of an earlier era that God, having created the world, then had no more to do with it.
Dr. Peacocke will receive the prize in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace on May 9, with a public event at London's Guildhall the next day.
The Templeton Prize was established in 1972 by the American-born philanthropist Sir John Templeton. It was intended to recognize work related to religion, as the Nobel Prizes honor work in the sciences and the humanities. The winner is selected by an independent panel of nine judges, drawn from five religious traditions.
Dr. Peacocke said that he had not decided exactly what to do with the prize money but that he wanted it to help young scholars eager ''to engage themselves in the dialogue between science and theology.''