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 the texts that survive, 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.”
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Taking Religion Seriously
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Publication Details
Hardcover / 200 pages
ISBN: 9781641774857
Available: 10/14/2025
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About the Author
Charles Murray is the Hayek Emeritus Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He first came to national attention in 1984 with the publication of Losing Ground, followed by The Bell Curve in 1994 and Coming Apart in 2012. He lives with his wife in Burkittsville, Maryland.
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This book is a learned essay at the intersection of politics, philosophy, and religion. It is first and foremost a diagnosis and critique of the secular religion of our time, humanitarianism, or the “religion of humanity.”
The intellectual and political elite of the West is nowadays taking for granted that religion, in particular Christianity, is a cultural vestige, a primitive form of knowledge, a consolation for the poor minded, an obstacle to coexistence. In all influential environments, the widespread watchword is “We are all secular” or “We are all post-religious.”
In the course of his illustrious career, Michael Novak has written several prize-winning books on theology and philosophy. In On Two Wings he has created a profound mediation on American history, and on human nature and destiny as well.
In Christianity on Trial, Vincent Carroll and David Shiflett do not shrink from confronting the tragedies that have been perpetrated throughout the ages in the name of Christianity. But they argue that the current indulgence of anti-Christian rhetoric in our culture not only involves bad taste, but tunnel vision and willful historical illiteracy as well.
Religious faith is under assault. In books, movies, and on television, secular critics are attacking religion and the religious with ever-increasing intensity. These “new atheists” typically repeat a two-part mantra: They claim that only an idiot could believe in God, and that idiots who do so have been responsible for most of the hate and violence that have plagued humanity.
As the West turns on its religious and cultural traditions, it is succumbing to the ‘soft totalitarianism’ of irrational, relativist ideals. With the Islamists intent on returning the free world to the 7th century, it seems western civilization is no longer willing or able to defend modernity and rationalism.
