Why Religion?: A Personal Story

Ecco, 2018. First Edition. Hardcover. Like New/Fine. 1x6x8. In the wake of great personal tragedy, National Book Award winner and New York Times bestselling author Elaine Pagels reflects on the persistence and nature of belief and why religion matters. Why does religion still exist in the twenty-first century? And why do so many people—even, and especially, those who challenge religion—continue to argue about the questions it raises? What purpose does it serve in our lives? These questions took on a new urgency for Pagels when she was dealing with unimaginable loss: the death of her young son, followed a year later by the shocking loss of her husband. Here she interweaves her personal story with the work that she loves—illuminating how, for better and worse, religious traditions have shaped how we understand ourselves; how we relate to one another; and, most important, how we get through our most difficult challenges. In the process, Pagels opens up unexpected ways of understanding this stubbornly persistent aspect of our culture. A provocative and deeply moving memoir from one of the most compelling religious thinkers at work today, Why Religion? explores the spiritual dimension of human experience. Pagels received Princeton University's Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities for, as one nominator wrote, "her ability to show readers that the ancient texts she studies are concerned with the great questions of human existence though they may discuss them in mythological or theological language very different from our own." Elaine Pagels, is an American historian of religion and the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Pagels was awarded a 2015 National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama and received Princeton's Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities in 2012.