Religion as We Know It: An Origin Story

A brief, beautiful invitation to the study of religion from a Pulitzer Prize winner

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. Finally, in a moving postscript, he shows how this very story continues today in the minds and hearts of individual religious or irreligious men and women.