RELIGION AS WE KNOW IT: An Origin Story

How has the concept of religion been developed in the West? How might that concept frame and change what a religion means? How has Christian scholarship and history developed and how has this led to secularisation? Jack Miles connects Christian scholarship with Jewish developments and to a lesser extent Islamic developments and his closing section on religion and science and how it makes sense of our lives is very insightful and moving. How did our forebears begin to think about religion as a distinct domain, separate from other activities that were once inseparable from it? Starting at the birth of Christianity, a religion inextricably bound to Western thought, Jack Miles reveals how the West's 'common sense' understanding of religion emerged and then changed as insular Europe discovered the rest of the world. The story continues today in the hearts of individual religions and irreligious men and women. He draws on a remarkable wealth of sources across time and place in his short and sweet book. 152pp, paperback.