Experience & Religion

by Nicholas Mosley

"Religion," this book begins, "is a mistrusted word now," and Nicholas Mosley, in this engaging meditation, seeks to repair that trust. Rather than trying to convince or compel the reader to accept his beliefs, he describes how religion functions in the modern world. Elsewhere, Mosley has written, "There is a subject nowadays which is taboo in the way that sexuality was once taboo, which is to talk about life as if it had any meaning." In this book, he describes religion as the source of that meaning. Despair is the fashionable attitude, but it is one Mosley, here and in his many novels, rejects in favor of a cautious optimism. He writes not to persuade, but to explain a worldview that is refreshing for the hope and intelligence it contains.

156 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Nicholas Mosley was educated at Eton and Oxford. He served in Italy during World War II, and published his first novel, Spaces of the Dark, in 1951. His book Hopeful Monsters won the 1990 Whitbread Award.

Mosley was the author of several works of nonfiction, most notably the autobiography Efforts at Truth and a biography of his father, Sir Oswald Mosley, entitled Rules of the Game/Beyond the Pale.

Reviews

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book's saving grace is that you can simply ignore everything you don't like (Mosley's ridiculously simplistic understanding of history, his homophobia, his overuse of parentheses) and still come away from the text with a refreshed view of the world. You know that a book called Experience & Religion is worth something when you find yourself connecting the author's ideas to actual experience. I'm sure that any work of pop-psych can be made to relate to The Dark Knight but I was pleased nonetheless.