President Obama is awarding the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom to a couple of notable religious leaders. The Rev. Joseph Lowery and Archbishop Desmond Tutu will receive America’s highest civilian honor, along with 14 others who worked as “agents of change.”

“These outstanding men and women represent an incredible diversity of backgrounds,” President Obama said in a statement. “Each saw an imperfect world and set about improving it, often overcoming great obstacles along the way.”

Their official bios:

The Rev. Lowery has been a leader in the U.S. civil rights movement since the early 1950s. He helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott after Rosa Parks was denied a seat, and later co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a leading civil rights organization, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Lowery led the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. He is a minister in the United Methodist Church, and has continued to highlight important civil rights issues in the U.S. and worldwide, including apartheid in South Africa, since the 1960s.

Desmond Tutu is an Anglican Archbishop emeritus who was a leading anti-apartheid activist in South Africa. Widely regarded as “South

Africa’s moral conscience,” he served as the General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) from 1978 – 1985, where he led a formidable crusade in support of justice and racial reconciliation in South Africa. He received a Nobel Peace Prize for his work through SACC in 1984. Tutu was elected Archbishop of Cape Town in 1986, and the Chair of the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1995. He retired as Archbishop in 1996 and is currently Chair of the Elders.