Book on loss combines memoir with religious scholarship

Religion scholar Elaine Pagels’s spiritual journey, to put it mildly, has been more comprehensive than most people’s.

Raised moderately Methodist, she was born again with Billy Graham as a teenager, came to question the faith after a friend’s death, and then somehow found her way to becoming a religion scholar.

Along the way, she experienced deep tragedy in the death of her young son and then her husband — the grief over which sent her to the teachings of Trappist monks and ancient Hebrew and Christian texts.

Pagels has combined these two themes in a new book — part memoir, part biblical scholarship — called Why Religion?: A Personal Story.

You can listen to discuss it with Terry Gross on Fresh Air or read the transcript on NPR’s website.