Former Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks has been awarded the £1.1 million Templeton Prize for making an "exceptional contribution affirming life's spiritual dimension".
Lord Sacks, 67, who led the revival of Britain's Orthodox Jewish community during his service as Chief Rabbi from 1991 to 2013, follows in the footsteps of previous winners such as Mother Teresa, Billy Graham and the Dalai Lama. Last year's winner was Jean Vanier, a Christian philosopher who founded L'Arche, communities where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together.
The 2014 winner was Czech priest and philosopher Tomáš Halík, following Desmond Tutu, the former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, in 2013.
Lord Sacks, author of many books on religion and public life, took the opportunity provided by winning the award to speak out on his view that the export of western secularisation has sparked religious violence.
He said secularisation has failed to provide guidance on core issues of human identity, creating a vacuum being filled by religious fundamentalism that stokes hatred. The parallel rise of social media has engulfed an ever larger swath of the population, especially youth.
The solution, he argued, is to match the violence with "a message of love as powerful as the message being delivered by the preachers of hate."
Lord Sacks said: "It really has to speak to young people and we have to use the same social networking, the same technology as the extremists and we've got to do it as well and better than they do."
He added: "Religion, or more precisely, religions, should have a voice in the public conversation within the societies of the West, as to how to live, how to construct a social order, how to enhance human dignity, honour human life, and indeed protect life as a whole.
"Each religion, and each strand within each religion, will have to undertake this work, because if religion is not part of the solution it will assuredly be a large part of the problem as voices become ever more strident, and religious extremists ever more violent."
Central to his message is appreciation and respect for all faiths. He believes that recognising the values of each faith is the way to combat violence and terrorism.
In his most recent book, Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence, Rabbi Sacks writes: "Too often in the history of religion, people have killed in the name of the God of life, waged war in the name of the God of peace, hated in the name of the God of love and practiced cruelty in the name of the God of compassion. When this happens, God speaks, sometimes in a still, small voice almost inaudible beneath the clamor of those claiming to speak on his behalf. What he says at such times is: Not in My Name."
Jennifer Simpson, chair of the John Templeton Foundation board of trustees and granddaughter of the award's founder Sir John Templeton, said: "After 9/11, Rabbi Sacks saw the need for a response to the challenge posed by radicalization and extremism and he did so with dignity and grace. He saw the need for the strengthening of ethics in the marketplace long before the financial crisis.
"He has always been ahead of his time and, thanks to his leadership, the world can look to the future with hope, something we are very much in need of right now."
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton, who nominated Lord Sacks for the prize, said: "There are public intellectuals and religious leaders, but few who are both at the same time. There are academic scholars and popular communicators, but he is both, reaching out far beyond his own constituency through the spoken, written and broadcast word."
Lord Sacks was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005 and awarded a Life Peerage in the House of Lords in 2009. He and his wife Elaine have three children and eight grandchildren.
