Lexington High School senior Vedant Saran has been named one of only 21 global winners of the prestigious John Locke Institute Global Essay Prize 2025, selected from over 63,000 submissions worldwide. Saran earned third place in the theology category for his essay on the prompt, “Why should the creator of a trillion galaxies become angry if you have sex with your boyfriend or eat bacon for breakfast?”

The annual John Locke Institute competition, based in Oxford, invites students to explore complex philosophical and ethical questions through critical thinking and original insight. Essays are judged by faculty from the Universities of Oxford and Princeton on “knowledge and understanding of the relevant material, the competent use of evidence, quality of argumentation, originality, structure, writing style, and persuasive force.” According to the Institute, “the very best essays are those capable of changing somebody’s mind.”

Saran’s essay stood out for its nuanced exploration of morality, cultural context and divine intention in a modern world. Beyond theology, he is deeply interested in linguistics and the philosophy of language. He hopes to study computational linguistics in college, combining analytical reasoning and technology to explore how language, meaning and human thought intersect.

Lexington High School senior Vedant Saran | Photo Credit: Mamata Banerjee

John Locke Institute’s info:

Web – https://www.johnlockeinstitute.com/essay-competition

Facebook page –  https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ZDuEcksyc/

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/p/DPy6WQpDSfa/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

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4 Comments

  1. I’d like to read the essay. I took a quick look at the contest website but I don’t see the essays published there. Can you post a link?

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