>> examines the role of religion in the 21st century now here is religion professor elain pagels. [inaudible conversations] good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen please take your seat. the next session is about to

begin. thank you. welcome. again i know many of you have been here with us at the miami book fair since early this morning. some of you have been here since last sunday when the book fair began, and it is a pleasure to welcome you to our 35th edition of the miami book fair here at the miami dade college. for those of you that know miami dade college very well, you do know that miami dade college has an open door. we are serving 165,000 students, and we are truly proud of every single one of our students. each of whom has a story of your validating each and every day that they arere with us. following that, our students,

faculty, staff are among the hundreds of volunteers at miami book fair every single year. a long with members of the community and youngsters from the school system that i'm sure you've seen in all of the corners and books and crannies of the miami book fair helping, supporting, directing, escorting and truly making this event miami book fair special. many thanks to all of our volunteers. [applause] i also want to recognize what i've been doing all day but truly there is thanks to give to our sponsor. the group foundation, the knight

foundation, only chil so many ce together and understand the value ofth miami book fair, the value of reading and literacy and the corporations and organizations to support the book fair. again to our friends many thanks to you, and just wonderful to see so many of you that have been here with us at the miami book fair and miami dade college throughout the years. please turn off your devices so that we can enjoy the program. as you know, there is a microphone in the middle file that you can use during the q&a. and a session. i would ask that you post your questions and then take a seat so that others may have that opportunity. welcome everyone, again. today at this time, we are

honored to have the ten in conversation with pbs jeffrey brown. let's welcome them to the table. [applause] just a little bit about our guests. as you know, she's a preeminent professor. the professor of religion at princeton university, she was awarded the rockefeller guggenheim and macarthur fellowship in three consecutive years. [applause]

she is the author of gospels beyond belief and revelation why religion, ael personal story is her most recent book. why is religion stuff around in the 21st century. why do so many people still believe pax we are going to hear from her alive and direct in a few moments. she is in conversationon with jeffrey brown. [applause] the senior correspondent for pbs news hour and also the author of a portrait collection. let's welcome again our guest. [applause] >> thank you very much.

i hope a little of that applause means that there are some "news hour" viewers out there. i just had to say that because we are on c-span. anyway, thank you for having me and for doing this. >> i'm happy to be here. >> we will talk for about 20 minutes or so and then open up because i know he will have a lot of questions. -able to readpe the book. you have and probably haven't pe going to talk to, talk about why you did it, what you were thinking. let's start there. you are well known for the scholarly books. this is something very didifferent. >> it's definitely different. it's something i thought i would never do. the books of course our history and i love to do that. some people say history is toast and i thought i love toast. [laughter]eo but it wasn't just that.

this book came out of some very personal experiences and also the awareness and the questions are part of a spiritual question i can't help it they just are. i've wanted to write in a different way how i connect with the work i do and how it is a kind of yoga for all the issues i've been encountering. >> you and i were talking about this a little earlier. the word memoir you don't love the word or -- >> i didn't want to write just about got. that's the question a lot of people get, why do you do that.

that is a question that i've been asking myself since i startestarted and especially bei grew up in a family that was culturally promised and if not religious. my father had given it all up for darwin when he went to college when he found something that was better than presbyterianism. so i was told religion would die out asas soon as people were educated to know something about science and of course that hasn't happened. i've wouldn't say that it's a matter of people believing things, but these traditions still engage us in a way whether we believe in them as some sort of a dogmatic way or not. >> i was surprised to learn -- and a lot of the readers and clearly your father was surprised when you first found religion through attending a talk by billy graham from the billy graham crusade born again at the age of 15.

>> yes.s. ithe was great. i didn't expect that. i happened to go to san francisco with a group of friends after high school. therything in san francisco would be more interesting than faifair i was living in palo al. i didn't know what i was getting into. 18,000 people packed into a stadium and a very intense, passionate, good looking teacher talkinglo about america in ways nobody ever talked about it that i had heard. and then talking about being born again, you could have a new life. at 14, that's irresistible. at least it was for me, it's a great age for conversion but also the emotional power of that experience into the thousands of people in the choir it was like an opening, the imagination opens up the sky if you've are e in a different world. that's whater it felt like as lg as i was in that group. >> you fell out of that group.

>> i did. >> many ways and reading your story, you were a child of those times, you are like many people trying a lot of different things. and by the way, one of the terms he won't go into the story, but one of difference in her early years happens to be a friend namedd jerry garcia of the grateful dead. he appears inhe this story so yu are trying a lot of different things and you have an immediate love for music and the arts into this sense of religion is something tog learn about. when you tell us in the book you apply to graduate school with what is it like four or five different subjects you had in mind? >> thing i decided that was the next planxt i applied to five

different field i think it was english at columbia, art history at nyu, social thought at brandeis coming at harvard had a doctor will put them on the study of religionad you could do hitend to come into buddhism. that is what i finally opted for into account to ditka sounded fascinating. >> but for somebody that was so open to all these other possibilities. >> because of the emotional power of that experience i was curious about what hit me forat years earlier when i had an encounter with a powerful religious group was it christianity, what was it about that and you know, it's so much about the music from the poetry, the passion, the imagination

whatever journey to painting and music and poetry that is all part of it. >> the question on the title of the book that runs through the book, "wide religion." it's fair when you are in school and they're especially when you meet the man who would become your husband, who was a scientist. and she's the one who says to you play in the world religion? >> why not something that has an impact on the world. [laughter] i thought why elementary particle physics. you can see them. [laughter] if you believe in them. no, i'm joking. we like each other very much quite apart from subjects. [laughter] but it's. a challenge i was asking myself because i'm not so elch an advocate for religion. i'm not saying you should be this way or that or engage inha

it. so many people i know do fine without any connection without any religious tradition per se. people who are artists and poets and theater people and musicians, all kinds of people, scientists, people who work for the community. they may or may not engage in those things but for me it was the emotional power of the language. like poetry, it's very powerful. i think about marianne moore who's has problems areth imaginy gardens with real toads in them and i think that is what religions are, too. there are some human realities in all of those imaginary gardens. >> but you know so much in our society is about -- and i kept thinking about this in your book -- so much of it is about saying one can accept religion or if we

put religionne over here, we pik music over here, religion over here, science over here, they don't meet for many people, but they clearly do for you. >> yes, they did. and i realize also growin realip in a family of scientists and then having married one which was unusual, that idea that they are antithetical to each other is so out of date. it's a real 19th century stuff because they address completely different questions. for example, maybe i shouldn't name names but somebody like steven weinberg at the university of texas won a nobel prize in physics and says the more we know about the universe we know it is meaningless and my husband used to laugh at this, yeah right. quantum physics doesn't say that. einstein says the more we know about the universe, the more we

know about and intelligent energy. so, they are very different and people that try to jump from one to another in a way like that, if really miss is what science and religion are. i'm not an advocate for it because there's plenty of liabilities in these religious traditions in the way they can limit people and harm people. i think we need to be aware of that, too. ..be >> by year later the death of your husband who we have been talking about. the death of your son, he was born with a rare illness, so

from the moment he was born in this sense you had to deal the possibility of losing him. >> he was our only biological child. he was born with a heart problem. but the people at the hospital in new york and learn how to repair hurts like that. they did a great job. it is only two years later we are told that he had pulmonary hypertension which is an extremely where illness from which people die usually at the age of six or seven, or sometimes in their 20s. they said there is no treatment and no cure. >> and then he did die at the age of six. >> yes. you write very powerfully and movingly about what that was like. i want to ask you, what was it like to go back and write it? was it hard?

>> it was nearly impossible. it would have been impossible for about 25 years after it happened. this is more like 28 years. then, it became kind of necessary which i did not expect. if i were to write about it, why publish it. that was something i was not sure i would ever do. >> you wrote without being sure you would put this out to the world. >> absolutely. it is too personal. but then, sometimes as we get older some things that you live through and put behind you because they are too painful to engage you have to go back to. that's what happened. i had to go back to it. it was very hard. hardest thing i have ever written. but it comes from a place of a certain perspective on things that we don't think we can survive.

>> the death of a child is not something we talk about much. >> what you discover, people know about it is that they will tell you that it happened to them. i learned how many people who had that experience don't talk about it. or just say yes, my child i and people back away. like noah. i would now say, what happened. because i can talk about it now. that's very helpful. one of the things i was thinking about and i decided, why not. why not write about it. and publish it. i do think that there are many people who had that experience for whom this could be useful. i hope. >> a year later, your husband died in a rock climbing

accident. by that time you had adopted two young children. you had to go on yourself. but, you had to figure out how to do that not only as a person, as anybody would. but you were someone who had looked at the teachings of grief in life and mortality. how people have dealt with that through the centuries. >> yes. after our son died i didn't want to grip the rest of my life thinking your children are going to high school, getting married in my child died when he was six. we adopted two children because we needed children just as much as those children needed parents. that was an important part of my life. the book is dedicated to them now in their late 20s. >> were did you look to for

coming to, is it coming to terms, coping with the grief. >> is not even coming to terms. it's allowing the experience to come out of the blackhole that trauma can inflict. it is part of the way the brain protects itself. it was like a place i could never look into. it was too dark. then, i had to. i do find that has helped a lot. >> but you went back to religious texts. the ancient question of what kind of god allows this to happen. >> i don't think god allows it or doesn't allow it. i just don't think about god that way. but i did wonder how people can go on and survive. these traditions are partly

designed to move us toward hope. that's what they do. they do that often very well with the music, the poetry and order rituals. the practices. so by the way, at the time these things happen when our son died and even more, the terrible loss of my husband, we were 22 years insufferable. i wasn't sitting around thinking about god. i was devastated. i was absolutely devastated. it's only much later that i thought about satan. i thought satan, yeah i could get mad at satan. i'm not angry at god. and then i started to write a book about satan and it turned into a book about christian anti-semitism. i wasn't looking for that. that was surprising. i found the work became a yoga. it's what keeps you going.

both being critical of it and being deeply engaged by. >> what else did you learn about grief? does one get past it? do we have this idea of closure in our society? i can see your response. but tell us. >> somebody said to me not too long ago, how did you ever get over it? and i said what makes you think i'm over it. you get through it. and you can go on and you can go on to other relationships and love other children and love other men and lovers, and so forth. it's not that you can't move beyond it. this book is part of that process and speaking about that process of moving on. but i think you can get through it. it's not ever over.

i'm sure anybody who's had that experience knows that. >> you just said that you 25 plus years to write about it. in the writing, did that help in the end were did it change the way you think about the experience in the grief and loss? >> it mostly changed the way i feel about it. when the feelings are bottled up that long, it kind of released a lot of emotion. it was a very hard thing to do. it took seven years. it's a really short book area but it took seven years to write it. yes, it helps more how i feel about it i didn't think about it much because you can't think much about those things. >> we are talking about divisions of science and religion. you think about our culture today politically, all kinds of ways, so divided. sometimes around religion.

people who believe and follow certain traditions and that affects the way they look at our politics. people who perhaps do not. what you see? what role does religion play in our divided culture today? >> i don't think of it primarily is what you believe. belief is particularly important to christians more than two muslims are people of other traditions. judaism is a matter of to what degree do you practice. i don't think about what i believe very much. i do think that these stories, the stories of adam and eve which most of us don't believe, i won't ask for a vote. i don't believe that literally, at all. but those stories carry the values of a culture. that's what i realized when my husband and i went to southern sudan and looking at the

creation stories from a friend of mine who had worked a book about it. we realize these are way cultures transmit their attitudes about sexuality, gender, death, work come about what's worth living for and how people die. and those values are so deep in the way that we look at sexuality in terms of our laws and politics. the way we think about human beings in nature. are we separate from it are we part of it, those creation stories have all those messages encoded. i think we need to know what those are. some we met except i don't accept that anymore. it's a matter of cultural self-knowledge. >> but if i push you and say so, what do you believe. >> i believe a lot of things.

i believe my car will start. but that's because it usually does. i think we believe on the basis of experience. i believe people can get through things they cannot imagine they can survive. at least that's what happened to me. i'm glad i know it now. i don't mean i can get through anything, who knows. but that was a surprise. in the way that people have. i was never dealing with violence with his son or daughter killed by guns or drunk drivers are war or any of the terrible things that happened to so many people. and yet there are ways that people come i will not say find meaning, because we do not just find it there on the ground i think people create meaning by taking actions that matter to

changed circumstances. >> but then, how this is almost like going back to basics giving your title. >> how do you define religion. >> i try not to. it is so hard. what is religion. i guess i'm thinking about empirically about collections of writings, of stories, of ancient creation stories, poems poems rituals prayers, chance, music, that's what i think of when i think of christian and jewish tradition. the huge collection and that's why you can't just say are you a christian someone stood up and asked me raise do you believe

jesus is the son of god and i said i wasn't sure what he was getting at. i said what you mean by that. he looked puzzled. and i thought he say are you a member of my club or do you know the secret handshake. >> but people do define themselves as i'm a christian i'm a jew, muslim and that means something very specific to them in terms of what they believe in. do they believe in god or certain practices. >> i'm not claiming to be neutral on that. i find that very familiar. i participate in it and there are many things i love about it and some that i don't. so i feel rooted in that. that matters, particularly the values of it. after her son died a said i

don't think i believe in anything at that. there were deep values about the connectedness of human beings way we need to treat each other's as a human species that are part of those traditions that i feel deeply about. >> i'm going to ask you one more question. part of the story is this intellectual voyage. when you are first became known to the world it was what became known as the gnostic gospels which changed the story. and it made the whole history of religion messier in some ways. >> you also write about how hard the reception was at the time.

disdained among your peers. i'm wondering, where does that stand now in terms of in the academy area in among historia historians, is that story more accepted now. >> yes, there are many stories there. that's a great question. i don't think it's a matter of just believing or not believing in something. but when you suddenly find secret gospels that the bishops censored 1600 years ago and burned and that some of them are wonderful, then you can think about it. a lot of people don't know that you can think about religion and feel about it. to me it's as you say it contains values and perceptions. this enables us to really think about it differently. yes, there are people today who will say though secret gospels

are part of a wider story. now we know so much more about christianity. it widely expanded our sense of jewish tradition. his weird apocalyptic tradition that others preach thousands of years ago. so i think most scholars that i know are very open to a much wider range. there are some mostly in departments of theology will say these are still garbage. we just stick to the ones that the church endorses and we stand at the nicene creed. i don't stand there anymore. >> why don't we open things up. i will ask if you have questions. please keep it to one actual question if you could.

thank you. >> i wish you would talk about the power of community from being a member of a religious organization. when i went through breast cancer my temple was so supportive it was amazing. i don't think i could've done so well without them. >> i'm glad you brought that up. i don't mean to think that i look in the abstract of this at all. the religious communities can be enormously powerful. some save my life. the trappist community in colorado, i go to a wonderful church with an extraordinary man with the priest was remarkable. other groups of many kinds. i'm so glad you brought that up.

>> reincarnation is commonly taught in the east. my understanding is at least at some.in its christian tradition the question is, when did it start and when did it end, and why? >> great question. i don't think we know the answer to all of that. i wrote my doctoral dissertation on origin who is in egyptian christian in the third century. he died in the year 250 and he speaks about being born in many galaxies. he uses the language of reincarnation. extraordinary, powerful christian thinker. that teaching was declared heresy in the fifth century after his death. as far as i know most christian

traditions have rejected it. i'm not sure why. >> i wanted to know if you had any ideas on church membership or even the relationship or religion to churches. we see many traditional christian denominations and religions like faith traditions shrinking in numbers. we see prosperity churches growing in number. if you had any ideas on. >> that's a good question. when i think about why religion, i'm not thinking about how many people go to churches because so many people who are exploring different ways of coming to terms with their life are not involved with churches at all.

or other religious groups either. i'm probably not the best person to ask. i would need to give that more thought. thank you. >> i would like to hear information about why it matters in human evolution. >> houston smith, why religion matters in the other one is? >> religion in human evolution. >> they are both very interesting writers. i have not looked at that book of roberts. he was at the university of california. houston smith was someone i have learned a lot from. i don't know what else to say. i appreciate those books, thank

you. >> would you say based on your training as a historian that there would be any of the religions that you see is most possible. >> would you say that based on your training as a historian that there would be any of the faith systems or any narratives that would seem to be the most plausible based on historical inquiry? if not, what would you say is ideal, if any? >> i don't know if there is one. these cultures have very different religions. when i read i can speak specifically but when i look at the way certain people in body

and articulate traditions they make complete sense to me. one is james cohen's recent book called the cross and "the lynching" tree. the christian theologian. i'm reading a book now by a buddhist mama who talks about his tradition in a way that is very powerful. i don't think we have one narrative for the human race. maybe when we get more unified as a global community that may emerge. do you think so? >> that's a good question. >> it's a question worth asking. >> just to sum it up i would say looking at it from an objective standpoint for as best as possible considering were on a mission. that's why i was pointing back to the historical to see if

there is any validity based in the records especially with regards to what you have studied. in any others in comparison to the validity of others. >> i think they are so rooted in particular tradition. take the story about the exodus. those traditions are so rooted in that history and muslim tradition is rooted in a very different history. i don't see how history as if it were abstract and not specific to this culture and that culture can do the work that you are asking about. >> think you. >> before we continue, because i have to be the timekeeper. we will go through the line here in the no more questions. >> after reading the gospel of

thomas, i thought that a lot of the inscription and in the kingdom of heaven described very much like buddhism what we call nirvana. i was wondering if you could speak to that it also being a religion of experience rather than a faith. >> yes. that's an interesting. the gospel of thomas claims to be the secret teaching of jesus. when i read it. half of it is much like what you find in the new testament. half is very different. sounded to me a lot like buddhism. i thought it could be influenced by buddhism. i don't think a village rabbi like jesus went to india but the tradition did. he came back influenced by that. then i realized it's also deeply connected with jewish and

mystical thought. it could be the teaching of a first century rabbi like jesus, i don't know. it's an interesting question you raise. >> i lost my 26-year-old daughter last year. as an atheist myself, i'm wondering how you feel about the afterlife and how you feel about communicating with your son and your husband? >> that's an interesting question and a necessary one in those circumstances. i feel mixed about it. i had experiences i'll call them experiences i cannot explain. i assumed when my son died i was brought up as a rationalist to think, what steve jobs called lights out. but that's not the way it felt when he died. other things happen that surprised me. i write about them because i

thought hey, i don't know. i cannot explain them. but, they happen and they happen to a lot of people. so, i find myself open to that question. i don't know how to answer it. i'm still hoping there is something wonderful and we can see them again. but, i don't know. i hope so. >> my question is more personal. you talk about the time before you are able to write this book and also the you needed to, i think you said it was necessity but what was the thing that happened at that time in your life that made you say or that it organically came about. what was it that did that? >> you mean to read at that.? >> yes. >> i think both of my children were out of the house and i was teaching. there is finally time to

reflect. sometimes when he had events in the past that you just get out of your mind because they are too painful to encounter at the time, they come back. and they did. so, without a lot of hard emotional work i cannot just keep shoving them down. when i had more time to explore them in enough distance from it, more than 20 years is possible to engage it without as much terror. >> think you. >> thank you so much for being here. i have a million questions i could ask you but i'm going to do my best to bring it down to just one. >> both my parents and ministers

were raised in church. i lost my religion after college and found her to get a few years ago. i literally went through moment of grief that brought me back on the spiritual journey. along the way i found your book. i started learning about your work through another friend of mine. he completely changed my perspective. and widened it. so my question to you is when i think about the experience of early christians a multiplicity of the diversity, the mysteries that were part of that experience on how over time institutionalization of religion has stamped out like when i think of something like joseph campbell when he talks about the mysteries or mythologies and how they impact your life, i'm a millennial. in finding others like myself we are looking for meaning and answers outside of religion as we know it in terms of

institutional structures. but when i look at people doing more yogurt doing these what is your thought about this moment in history when you think about how do we do spirituality in a way that makes sense for our reality right now? >> that's a great question. what strikes me is that when i look at the history of christianity i read in this book a lot about the gospels. the one that i came down liking best in the new testament is mark. it has no easy answers and it sounds like the world we live in much more than the others sometimes do. there was a christian movement for 300 years before there was a creed. i think the stories you talk about are much more important than the doctrine.

when christianity becomes a set of doctrines, that's useful to construct a church that claims to have a monopoly on divine power but it doesn't speak to the issues you are raising. >> thank you. >> you talked about being in that place where you cannot look into the black hole and then he got to the place where you could and you said you described how you cannot push it down any longer. do you think is the same for everyone? that is part of a spiritual process? or is it only i just can't push it down longer. i know plenty of people who seem they can push it down forever. >> i don't think anything is the same for all people. that's why there's so many

different traditions and variations. i think some of us can push it down our whole lives. after these losses, i saw my husband's mother who was a wonderful mother who just going to pain and despair. i do not want to go that way. i think that's another way to go but that's not a way i wanted to go. so i wondered if there was an alternative to that. how do we maintain hope? >> i just have a simple question. why religion? >> that's a great question. i don't know. >> the answers read the book. >> if i could answer that in ten words i would not have written this book. because they think will we talk about religion is not one thing. it's a huge range of traditions

sending experiences. so that's why i cannot answer it in a simple way. >> thank you for all of the questions and for your attention. [applause] >> he lane will be signing her books across the hall if you want to pick up a copy.

>> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. today we bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court in public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. >> book tvs monthly in-depth program with author and journalist, david corn. he has authored or co-authored six books including all gross. the lives of george w. bush and most recently, russian roulette. the inside story of putin's war on america and the election of donald trump. >> david, you been in washington a long time. what's your take on the last two years?