The religion scholar Elaine Pagels introduced the world to the Gnostic Gospels, some of the earliest Christian texts that challenged the canonical stories in the Bible. She’s written eight books about the early church, but she’d rarely talked about the events that animated some of her best-known work: the deaths of her young son and husband.
25 years later, Elaine Pagels is ready to talk about how her own grief and loss shaped her religious imagination.