Bernard Shaw on Religion

George Bernard Shaw

Feb 2016 · Rosetta Books

About this ebook

From the Nobel Prize–winning playwright behind Pygmalion and Saint Joan, a collection of his critical writings on religion.

The Critical Shaw: On Religion is a comprehensive selection of renowned Irish playwright and Nobel Laureate Bernard Shaw’s pronouncements—many of them deliberately inflammatory—on all facets of religion and belief: on Christianity and the Church; on various religions, among them Protestantism, Catholicism, Quakerism, Christian Science, Fundamentalism, Calvinism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam; on atheism and agnosticism, atonement and salvation; the crucifixion, the resurrection, transubstantiation, and the Immaculate Conception; on the Bible, the Ten Commandments, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church. And much more. In speeches, essays, and prefaces, Shaw relentlessly scrutinized and critiqued scores of religions—only to find most of their doctrines in need of exhaustive reform. And yet, in keeping with his many other paradoxes, though Shaw was fond of calling himself an atheist, he nonetheless recognized the importance, indeed the necessity, of religion.

The Critical Shaw series brings together, in five volumes and from a wide range of sources, selections from Bernard Shaw’s voluminous writings on topics that exercised him for the whole of his professional career: Literature, Music, Politics, Religion, and Theater. The volumes are edited by leading Shaw scholars, and all include an introduction, a chronology of Shaw’s life and works, annotated texts, and a bibliography. The series editor is L.W. Conolly, literary adviser to the Shaw Estate and former president of the International Shaw Society.

About the author

Acclaimed Irish playwright and Nobel laureate Bernard Shaw has left an indelible mark on Western theatre, culture, and politics. Over the course of his life, he wrote more than sixty plays that addressed prevailing social problems through comedy. Shaw was also a prolific essayist and lecturer on politics, economics and sociological subjects, and was eventually awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work that is marked by its use of stunning satire to encapsulate humanity.

Michel W. Pharand is general editor of SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies. He is author of Bernard Shaw and the French (2000), editor of Bernard Shaw and His Publishers (2009), and advisory editor to Palgrave Macmillan’s book series Bernard Shaw and his Contemporaries.