Charles Murray’s Return to Faith

Taking Religion Seriously
by charles murray
encounter, 200 pages, $29.99

The academy is one of the most intellectually stultifying places in America, particularly those disciplines called the “soft sciences.” Despite presenting themselves as the apotheosis of open-minded inquiry and debate, soft-science departments at the vast majority of our nation’s colleges and universities are possessed of an aggressive, self-satisfied groupthink. Famed Harvard-educated political scientist Charles Murray knows this well: When he spoke at Middlebury College in 2017, students attempted to disrupt his remarks, and then physically assaulted him as he departed. 

Murray’s academic interests, on the other hand, have consistently evinced a willingness to dispassionately study some of the most controversial topics of our time—such as social welfare programs, IQ, and class—even when that research provokes allegations of racism. Now Murray, once an agnostic and skeptic, has brought his characteristic objective, evidence-based analysis to the topic of religion. In Taking Religion Seriously, an accessible, enlightening, and well-researched religious autobiography, Murray offers a strong rejoinder to our worryingly post-religious society.

Murray grew up Presbyterian, but abandoned religion as an undergraduate at Harvard. While serving in the Peace Corps in Thailand, he dabbled in Buddhist meditation, though it had little effect on him. Listening to classical music helped him realize the reality of different levels of human experience but little more. 

“I suffer from a perceptual deficit in spirituality,” Murray writes in a candid self-assessment. “But I have also not felt the God-sized hole in my life that the depths of despair often reveal. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a hole; just that I’ve been able to ignore it. And that, I think, explains a lot not only about me but about the unreflective secularism of our age.” Thus it was easy simply to accept as default the “secular catechism” he learned in the academy: The idea of a personal God is unscientific, and religions are a human invention, the “natural products of the fear of death.” 

Nonetheless, Murray’s reflections began trending toward God. He notes that many basic phenomena are so mathematically simple and ordered they seem to imply some sort of intelligent “orderer.” He discusses how the Big Bang confirms rather than undermines the Christian creation narrative. (This is why there was originally significant opposition to the theory.) And he was impressed by what is often called the “anthropic principle,” the seemingly perfect “fine-tuning” of our universe that, if slightly off, would have made life impossible (such as if gravity were even slightly stronger). Some have proposed the possibility of many universes; but there would need to be millions of universes for there to even be a reasonable chance that one would permit the development of life. “I live in a universe that was intentionally designed to permit the development of life,” Murray concludes.

Murray then moves on to explain how he came to believe in the soul, examining a body of work that he claims has demonstrated the statistical reality of psi phenomena—psychic or paranormal abilities such as telepathy or precognition—as well as the remarkable similarities of many people’s near-death experiences. It’s hard not to perceive this section as a little hokey, but Murray provides significant research justifying his willingness to accept the reality of such phenomena. He could also have reasoned his way to the human soul via the Aristotelian or Thomistic thesis that our ability to contemplate abstract, immaterial realities indicates that there must be an immaterial quality to our person. Indeed, he is certainly not ignorant of Aristotelian metaphysics: By the 1990s, he was willing to accept Aristotle’s (and Aquinas’s) conception of God as the unmoved mover, the efficient cause of all things in motion in our universe, including ourselves. 

Murray is on firmer ground in his second section, “Taking Christianity Seriously.” Through the work of scholars such as sociologist Rodney Stark, he discovered that Christianity was responsible for many of the qualities of Western civilization he held dear: centering the individual, promoting scientific study, and producing inspiringly beautiful art. Then, as has happened to many of us, he encountered C. S. Lewis, including the famous “trilemma.” That might have doomed him: “Mere Christianity engaged me in a mental dialogue with an excellent mind that accepted a Christian orthodoxy I had assumed could easily be dismissed.” 

Naturally, a hearty defense of Christian thinking demands a review of the historicity of the New Testament canon. Murray’s consideration of the chronological dating of the New Testament books revealed that many, if not most of them, were probably written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and even prior to the martyrdoms of Sts. Peter and Paul in the mid-60s. Even those well familiar with these debates will likely learn a thing or two from Murray’s careful consideration of the coherence of the Gospel narratives. For example, why did Jesus ask Philip where to buy bread to feed thousands of people in John 6:5? It probably has something to do with the fact that Luke 9:10 tells us the miracle happened in Bethsaida, where Philip is from. And if the Gospels are trustworthy, why discount Christ’s resurrection, which Murray observes is difficult to explain away in light of a panoply of historical evidence. 

For a book grounded in the importance of evidentiary research, Murray ends with some odd speculations. He postulates that God doesn’t send anyone to hell, but rather gives “perfect moral clarity about our lives when we die.” Thus, “if in life we have done great wrong without regret, in death our burden of guilt amounts to hell.” I don’t know where he got this fanciful theory, but it is certainly at odds with patristic discussions of hell. He writes: “Jesus wasn’t God. He was as much God as you can get into the human jar,” a bizarre theological formulation that would mean God is not simple but has parts, creating manifold theological problems Murray has not adequately considered. 

Nevertheless, Taking Religion Seriously is a well-deserved title for this little book, which represents an admirable attempt by one of the most interesting political scientists of the last half-century to work through a variety of popular objections to God and Christianity. I suppose the question is whether skeptics—and especially Murray’s detractors—are open-minded enough to read it.