Taking Religion Seriously

by Charles Murray

Overview

“Millions are like me when it comes to religion: well-educated and successful people for whom religion has been irrelevant,” Charles Murray writes. “For them, I think I have a story worth telling.” Taking Religion Seriously is Murray’s autobiographical account of the decades-long evolution in his stance toward the idea of God in general and Christianity in particular. He argues that religion is something that can be approached as an intellectual exercise. His account moves from the improbable physics of the Big Bang to recent discoveries about the nature of consciousness, from evolutionary psychology to hypotheses about a universal Moral Law. His exploration of Christianity delves into the authorship of the Gospels, the reliability of biblical texts, and the scholarship surrounding the resurrection story. Murray, the author of Coming Apart and coauthor of The Bell Curve, does not write as an expert. He acknowledges that those taking religion seriously for the first time, like himself, must grapple with topics and ideas that defy intellectual mastery. In this book, Murray offers his personal example of intellectual struggle toward religion. “Maybe God needs a way to reach overeducated agnostics and that’s what I stumbled into,” he writes. “It’s a more arid process than divine revelation but it has been rewarding. And, if you’re like me, it’s the only game in town.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781641774857
Publisher:	Encounter Books
Publication date:	10/14/2025
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

CHARLES MURRAY is a policy analyst educated at Harvard and MIT. He first came to national attention in 1984 with the publication of Losing Ground, which changed the national conversation about the reforms of the Sixties and their aftermath. His best-selling 1994 book, The Bell Curve, coauthored with Richard Herrnstein, argued that the increasing role of intelligence over the twentieth century was transforming America’s social structure. In 2012, Coming Apart documented the growing divide between a new lower class and a new upper class that foreshadowed the political polarization of the 2016 election. His other books include In Pursuit (1988), Human Accomplishment (2003), Human Diversity (2020), and Facing Reality (2021). He is currently the Hayek Emeritus Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Editorial Reviews

Charles Murray is a man who has repeatedly done the intellectual work that others do not want to do.

–WILFRED M. MCCLAY, Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History, Hillsdale College

There are few, if any, bolder policy intellectuals than Charles Murray…. He has done more to provoke serious debate on subjects ranging from welfare to IQ than any of the million or so members of American academe.

–THE ECONOMIST

 

Arguably the most consequential social scientist alive.

–JONAH GOLDBERG, editor-in-chief, The Dispatch

Charles Murray’s social science is sometimes provocative, usually controversial, and always significant to the national debate.

–ROBERT VERBRUGGEN, fellow, The Manhattan Institute

Charles Murray will infuriate people. But if they read carefully, he will also make them think.

–KEN AULETTA, New Yorker journalist and author of The Underclass

From the Publisher