it examines the role of religion in the 21st century in her book why religion. she spoke at the 19th annual book festival in washington, d.c.. [applause] good afternoon. i'm the chairman of the national endowment for the humanities and on behalf of my colleagues, i want to welcome you to the pavilion we have funded. before we start, could we just acknowledge the wonderful work the library of congress and the staff. [applause] it is my honor to have you been with us for this special session. i know you know a lot about her books and achievements but i

still want to make sure to highlight a number of planes from her biography. she's a professor of religion at princeton university. she holds a phd from harvard and is a recipient of the macarthur fellowship which is commonly known as a genius fellowship and she was awarded the national humanities medal in 2015 and this is the highest award the federal government gives in to does our agency that nominates those individuals to the president. broadly supported by the humanities for the endowment especially that discovered in 1945 and out of that group of

scholarship and the author of the commercially successful books including of course which won the national book award and book critics circle award. beyond that leave the gospel of thomas. it continues to pursue research and interest and antiquity. here though we are talking about a different become a more personal book, why religion. i might begin with the question that many of us, people of fai faith, what was your experience? >> first i want to say thank you to you and the other people at the national endowment.

[applause] it's not the kind of history that i've done before but twice and iwhysomebody to study the hf religion. >> absolutely. a lot of people talk about how to reconcile science and religion and i would like to hear your insights on whether they may overlap.

>> in my family we arose from these ferocious family for darwin. nobody would bother with religion, so he was kind of shocked when i started to become fascinated by this field. he was a physicist when i met him and i said to him why don't you do something that has impact in the real world and stay with elementary particles. we were each fascinated to find something fundamental about our lives and human culture and about the world.

so many people in this country have imagined it was to be taken literally fail to see that it's not meant that way at all, that these are symbolic systems that they think about hope and imagination. for those who do interpret it that these extra works over. >> this book starts in a place

that surprises some of my critics. where do we know about it, how did it start. i was amazed to discover there were file cabinets full of gospels i never heard of. we realize they were written very early like the other gospels and the testament. they were the good of gospels and the bad gospels and they are not bad at all.

they claim to teac teach what js taughwith jesustalk publicly whs talking to crowds of people. the gospel of thomas, philip, mary magdalene said that jesus taught privately to certain people that he felt were at a deeper spiritual level. just as any first century rabbi like jesus if you read in greek there is a testament when they see teacher of course the word is rabbi. if they talk the way others did, he would have taught one way to the large congregation and another to the private disciples had another teach that.

again this area of funding supporthe fundingsupported the s and also the dead sea scrolls are a piece of that sum a few things were going on. it would be a very difficult message to here an hear and thes pushed back in the scholarly community. also you were a young female scholar. i remember one of my professors, i spent a year from oxford and he said you are ruining the review on the gospel.

women are very gullible, they have better judgment. they read that in the new testament. it seems to me the major difference is that the gospels of the new testament all suggest that jesus is enormously unique and important that is the whole point. what struck me when i read the book if you bring forth what is within you what you bring forth will save you.

what you do not bring forth will destroy you and i thought you just have to believe that. it just happens to be true. they used a similar statement in the life you say may be your own but it's also important the other part of the book talks about the creation of the book and you talk about the book of genesis. that is a mythology of folklore. you make the point that it's

practical. tell us what you mean by that. >> people like my father who grew up with christianity in certain kinds and other people say it is just silly old stori stories. it was when i was in east africa i met the minister about the stories of his own tribe they were very practical. it's about what men and women do. the genesis story is also very

practical. it talks about why we die and men and women and gender and sort of what's right. that is important to understand as a particular cultural pattern and we don't have to accept their values. but thinking about them as enormously exciting. >> why it would have been an important summing up the great scholarly career as you talk about your personal life and construction of the did you write it from a place of loss, loss of your younger son and your husband a year later.

i wonder if you are comfortable talking about that. >> it's interesting you have to sort of be careful with what you say sometimes. the talking with a friend she wrote a beautiful poem and there is a beautiful poem that says it

is so amazing. she said it happened to me, something like that. i had this experience. she said it is the last one and i said really. people have experiences that we can't explain. i'm sure many people here know what i'm talking about.

we had a slip on the concrete floor but i couldn't think at all and i was there by myself through the morning and i think that there was a circle of women and i recognized only one of them who had been a professor of theology. they were there in the room with me. i felt very peaceful after that. so the next morning i wrote a note to my friend and said.

i have a sister praying for you and i said i had no idea. so, who knows what happened. i can't explain it. i just knew what happened and that is the kind of experience i am talking about. so now she's really off the deep end. that is just what happens to people. it is part of the kind of experience from which religious tradition is told. >> sometimes in the humanities they think it is all about scholarship and we can't put ourselves and what i like about

this is how we put the two together and you create these beautiful moments of your son or husband or lives together, lives of the mind, joy, fear, anxiety. .. >> so many of us are familiar

with christian traditions that become a creed but these are like what people have how as their culture like transitions from birth and adolescence. traditions in marriage and death. how do that go toward hope they have so many other functions so i hope, i imagine

but it is a different kind of reality to me. >> you use that word hope in the book and you used it here but a lot of people that you say that may create meaning so what exactly do you mean by that? and then we will turn to the audience of people want to start setting up. >> so one thing that we wrote

about is the death of a child and one reason i wrote about it is because it happened with that pivotal and powerful experience. but i could not have wrote about that. it was years after i wrote that. and the death of my husband. so first of all it was necessary to write about that but then second i realized one of the things that happened when charles died particularly was that beside the grief and the devastation involved but

as a child you have primary obligation to keep the child alive. and if you can't do that for whatever reason it has nothing to do with you. you have done everything you ca can. then you feel guilty. or the day after it happened , if it has anything to do with you it would not happen that way. i said that's pretty optimistic. but then i realized in our cultural tradition and encourages guilt. so i wanted to write to other people who had tried to

dissolve the guilt on top of the other kinds of grief but it was also reinforced looking at the bible and then to marry a beautiful wife that she had an infant son so the child died and the infant died. because the parents were guilty of this transgression. so this is what they think would not happen so part of

that but then to criticize it and say and then to let go those parts of religious tradition those that have harmed people. they were invented. >> so after you lost your child was that harder?

out the standard tradition or those monasteries of the groups that matter to various points. but with the point of view of a parent who has lost a child. but in how you get through that experience day today. >> that's a good question. anyway that you possibly can.

but that was a kind of yoga in the struggle with the question and what we were talking about people say let's have such special lessons you say any lesson to me as were the child's life? that is completely the wrong way because people create that. i don't think they find it lying around.

>> there is a book about auschwitz but in that book he writes about the panic with unbelievable suffering said you don't own me but we can create to you and what for you to live through his creating. and that can be very personal.

so in that case is with my husband to say we didn't have children of our own so we adopted two children. we can't give what she could've given to her son to him so we adopted an infant daughter and infant son who are now in their thirties. and that was a way of finding me it didn't make my son less meaningful but it was a different way. so those mothers if they lose a child to a drunk driver or create mothers against drunk

driving or those who die by gunshot then they fight to gun violence. that that they mean that we do that. and these traditions are how you do that. >> one of the things is the whole history of religion. so where do you personally quick. >> i never had that option left off. [laughter]

but were i to understand them? sure. but i don't think our brains are quite equipped for that. without religion and the tradition.

and then in the church they say i don't believe that but every time they are scared they are in the church. so if it is the interpretation. >> that's a good question. i realize there is a lot of things they can't say i believe but in the world of the nicene creed but i do love these traditions.

and i say i am incredibly religious. [laughter] i love the worship and the sense of prayer. i spent time in a catholic monastery. in colorado with monks who had a deep sense of spirituality. they never asked me if i was catholic. they didn't. they knew i was a heretic. [laughter] but they were so present and spiritual people that if you think contemporary of prayer. >> so the original meaning they called it the way.

so it's not an end it is a path. so what i do is explore the history of tradition and explore it but i don't thank you can swallow all of christianity. if the liberal and conservative catholic if those christian scientist escapade lien or methodist or russian orthodox so many ways to do that i'm the kind of person who has to keep thinking and

it's something we can keep doing but in the church that i go to there is a lot about christian tradition with those attitudes that are two people that are not conforming to thousands of years ago and that is self-indulgent that christianity but it's a packed and i think it is a great one

i don't thank you have to believe it all. thank you. [laughter] [applause] >> my question is when you complicate the picture but then they think of something else.

and with that transition we don't have a shared vocabulary and with that christian language and with that christian languag language.

>> that's an important question and i think it is true. and what i care deeply about with that relationship to other people to care for people in need and if you look at a sports team it's about sharing and working together and cooperating and collaborating. so for some people it comes in that form. but it doesn't have to.

sometimes we can improve our own ritual and we do that to. but what i like about the secret tradition is they show what is lacking with that traditional christian tradition. and they said this is a completely different perspective about women that is not part of the ordinary tradition. but some embrace them and some don't. so do you want to create a ritual now i just ask everyone i meet. [laughter]

>> i love the question. there with a history of religion it shows a different way people have done that. so that we have hundreds of children in that culture understands and that has cultural traditions and with that particular event so

that's ways that people do that. so i encourage you to explain my - - explore some of that. so why the 21st century? i was told it would die out. it hasn't quite died out and the question is why not? so if you are not aware of the question, thank you. >>.

>> thank you very much and this is not a how-to book unfortunately. [laughter] [inaudible] but the text that i stumbled on in graduate school that speak about the event that's

about the experience and it's about as close to kabbalah which is the jewish tradition it's always done about 1000 or 1500 years later because they talk about a deeper level experience. but yes, we did go to those types of experiences and yes that is the type of work. somebody said that you don't answer the question. but that is my question it is the inspiration. [applause]

>> it is the book i'm doi and we been talking about that but also with those experiences and actually that was a black hole in space.

and with that to fully experience my life so the book is partly about the grief i didn't want to write about this. but what i wanted to write about and as you know that the supplies of what you cannot live through.

and with that certain perspective. [applause] >> thank you for reminding us that the mind is not separate from joy. please join me to think e-lane. [applause]

>> congratulations on this book it sounds like it is out there. and figure making a statement about we need to think about especially evangelical so congratulations. so let's try to situate i know weon