About the Author

Elaine Pagels is a preeminent academic whose impressive scholarship has earned her international respect. The Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University, Pagels was awarded the Rockefeller, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Fellowships in three consecutive years. She is the author of The Gnostic Gospels, Beyond Belief, and Revelations.

Reviews

"In this compelling, honest, and learned memoir, Elaine Pagels, who has arguably done more than any other scholar of her time to shed light on the complex origins of Christianity for popular audiences, takes us inside her own life in a stirring and illuminating effort to explain religion's enduring appeal. This is a powerful book about the most powerful of forces." - Jon Meacham, author of The Soul of America
"In this compelling, honest, and learned memoir, Elaine Pagels, takes us inside her own life in a stirring and illuminating effort to explain religion's enduring appeal. This is a powerful book about the most powerful of forces." - Jon Meacham, author of The Soul of America
"A minimalist work of great majesty, akin to a shimmering Agnes Martin painting, whose stripped-down aesthetic allows light to pour forth from her canvas." - New York Times Book Review
"An intimate, evocative memoir." - Ron Charles, Washington Post
"Lucid, inspiring personal testimony." - National Book Review, "5 Hot Books"
"Both fascinating and heart-wrenching, Pagels's highly personal account presents behind-the-scenes glimpses into the inner workings of a brilliant scholar's mind." - Library Journal
"Searing and wise. . . . tender and wrenching, sketched with exquisite detail." - Boston Globe
"Looks back on a rich life of learning, writing, loving, seeking truth and, inevitably, suffering. . . achingly beautiful . . . Readers of all faiths and none can learn from her brilliance and courage." - Dallas Morning News
"You don't have to be religious yourself to enjoy her thought-provoking work." - Bustle
"In clear, unsparing prose, Pagels enmeshes personal mourning, scholarly rigor, and one of the smartest modern testaments to the consolations as well as the inadequacies of spirituality. A small revolution in memoir to match the one she led in theology decades ago." - New York magazine
"A wide-ranging work of cultural reflection and a brisk tour of the most exciting religion scholarship over the past 40 years. . . . Pagels is as fearless as she is candid." - Washington Post
"Pagels unpacks the relevance of religion in the twenty-first century--how religious traditions continue to shape the way we understand ourselves and the world and provide a framework for facing our most painful losses." - Lion's Roar
"Elaine Pagels has written an extraordinary memoir of loss, spiritual struggle, illumination and insight--emotionally heartrending, intellectually exciting, a model of what a memoir should be. The reader will feel that she has been taken on a spiritual quest into unforeseen regions, with astonishing revelations and a promise of more to come." - Joyce Carol Oates
"Elaine Pagels has written an extraordinary memoir of loss, spiritual struggle, illumination and insight--emotionally heartrending, intellectually exciting, a model of what a memoir should be." - Joyce Carol Oates
"This is a magnificent, searing, soul-affirming memoir in which Elaine Pagels shines the bright light of her brilliant mind on the most essential of human dilemmas: how do we go on in the face of immeasurable loss? How do we wrest meaning from whatever life hands us? I came away from this book transformed, grateful, and feeling less solitary in the chaos, the beauty, the terror of this world." - Dani Shapiro
"A magnificent, searing, soul-affirming memoir. Pagels shines the bright light of her brilliant mind on the most essential of human dilemmas: how do we go on in the face of immeasurable loss? I came away from this book transformed." - Dani Shapiro
"With characteristic intelligence and wisdom, Elaine Pagels lays bare her own life-shattering losses, offering up the possibility that suffering might afford each of us membership in a profoundly connected human--and cosmic--community. Why Religion? is a revelation and an immense consolation." - Tracy K. Smith, Poet Laureate of the United States
"Pagels has done it again, but more personally. The scholar's tale of loving, grieving, enduring, and searching will grab readers at the outset and never let them go. A memorable story unforgettably told." - Madeleine Albright, author of Fascism: A Warning
"Elaine Pagels' study of new gospels and revelations challenged our understanding of ancient Christianity. In this mesmerizing memoir, we see how she was also grappling with devastating loss and struggling within to find "the light that never fails," even in deepest anger and guilt, grief and desolation. A must read." - Karen L. King, Hollis Professor Divinity, Harvard University
"Beautiful . . . Pagels treats readers to the examined life behind her intellectual feats with extreme grace and depth. This luminous memoir strips religion to its elementary particles: love, suffering, and mystery." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Engaging both head and heart . . . this brilliant book . . . stimulates intellectual curiosity and thought while giving equal weight to Pagel's emotional life." - Booklist (starred review)
"A raw and often moving autobiography . . . The story of her grief . . . will touch all. A meaningful tale of pain and hope on the edges of faith." - Kirkus