The science and faith communities don’t often find themselves in agreement. But Lawrence I. Morris, an engineer turned technologist, entrepreneur, and theologian, has written a book that’s getting attention from both sides of that historically contentious divide.
His debut work, “A World Connected Within the Bounds of Interpretation,” recently won the 2025 Evergreen Award for Best New Author in the United States and hit best-selling status during its Kindle release on Amazon. The book tackles something most writers avoid: trying to reconcile data-driven scientific reasoning with faith-based spirituality without alienating either camp.
An Unlikely Path to Thought Leadership
Morris’s background reads like an academic achievement scorecard. He graduated valedictorian from his Louisiana high school and earned a full-ride scholarship to Columbia University, where he took on one of the school’s most demanding programs: Chemical Engineering. He later completed an MBA at what he describes as America’s top finance school, NYU Stern School of Business, and built a successful technology and entrepreneurship career that helped him reach self-made millionaire status.
That trajectory from humble Louisiana beginnings to Ivy League halls and corporate success gives Morris a perspective that shapes his theological and scientific writing. He’s an African American professional who has navigated elite academic spaces while maintaining connections to his roots and developing his own theological framework.
Finding an Audience at the Intersection
Morris is targeting Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X readers, demographics that polls suggest are increasingly interested in spirituality but skeptical of traditional religious institutions. His approach to faith-based inquiry weaves together memoir, career insights, and personal theological research in a way that addresses conflicts arising from different life experiences and belief systems.
The book’s structure breaks down what Morris identifies as “established historical, spiritual, and scientific boundaries” that often keep people talking past each other rather than to each other. It’s a framework that seems to be resonating: the Evergreen Award judges recognized it, and Amazon buyers have pushed it into best-seller territory.
What Comes Next
Morris isn’t treating this as a one-off project. He’s planning at least one more book, this time with a more autobiographical bent that will detail the specific experiences and circumstances of his upbringing that informed his first work. It’s the kind of origin story that could deepen readers’ understanding of how someone moves from small-town Louisiana to Columbia’s engineering program to writing about the intersection of science and spirituality.
Whether Morris can truly establish himself as a thought leader in this space remains to be seen. But in a cultural moment when many people are looking for ways to hold both empirical evidence and spiritual meaning in their hands at the same time, he’s offering something that at least some readers find valuable.
