Of Faith and Tragedy
Dec 03, 2018
4 minutes
Review by B. D. McClay
WHY RELIGION? A PERSONAL STORY
BY ELAINE PAGELS
Ecco, 235 pp., $27.99
“WHY RELIGION, OF ALL THINGS?” a confident young physicist asks the young Elaine Hiesey, while she is pursuing her graduate studies at Harvard. “Why not something that has an impact in the real world?” His question is, for her, more than a little charged—he’s very handsome, she’s in love with him, and later, when they get married, she will become Elaine Pagels. But her future husband’s skepticism was not unusual. As Pagels makes clear in her new memoir, she’s been fielding this question from her peers ever since starting graduate school.
The daughter of a decidedly antireligious father,
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