Cliff's Book Notes

Why Religion? 

by Elaine Pagels

This is not a story about a conventional path to conventional religious beliefs.  

This is the personal story of how one of the world’s leading historians of religion, the daughter of an atheist, went to a Billy Graham crusade at age 15 and committed her life to Christ, only to soon after reject evangelical Christianity, but who then used her groundbreaking religious scholarship, and support from Trappist monks, to fight off the grief that overwhelmed her following the death of her high school boyfriend in a car crash (the same car crash survived by Jerry Garcia who later named his band “The Grateful Dead”), the death of her five year old son, and then 18 months later the death of her husband after he fell 1,000 feet while on a hike.