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.

The Genius of George Bernard Shaw is a criticism of George Bernard Shaw’s work that explores his art, aesthetics, philosophy, and revolutionary ideas. Shaw wrote his plays raising and dealing with the problems of individuals, families, society, nations, and the world. It is occasionally stated that Shaw’s support for totalitarianism grew out of his frustration with nineteenth-century liberalism, which ineffectually culminated in a disastrous world war. Yet, close analysis to two of Shaw’s Major Critical Essays from the 1890s shows that even then Shaw expressed a desire for a ruthless man of action unencumbered by the burden of conscience to come on the scene and establish a new world order, to initiate the utopian epoch. Indeed, further analysis of a number of plays from before the war shows the impulse to be persistent and undeniable. Shaw hated disorder, and he wanted to see society managed efficiently by a small caste of technocratic experts who were at the same time, in Karl Popper’s memorable phrase, utopian social engineers. He had very little confidence in the average man and woman, who could not work mentally at the same speed? as the Fabian executive committee, his ideal of what a ruling caste would look like. Shaw’s ideal society, what I am calling his utopian vision, resembles Plato’s ideal city or Comte’s Religion of Humanity more than any society that has presumably ever existed on earth. This need for absolute order and control found many means of expression in both his life and work and was intricately bound up with his longing for perfection. This book is useful for world teachers, students, and research scholars in English in schools, colleges, universities all over the world.

Why do individuals and groups hold distinctive theological views? Why do these beliefs change? In what ways do theological interpretations influence concepts of spiritual and political justice? How and why do these concepts of justice affect policy preferences held by religious liberals and conservatives? Much has recently been written about the relationship between power, conservative politics, and evangelical religious groups, but very little attention has been paid to so-called "progressive" religious groups among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews and their relationship to political thought and action. This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary work, ideal for use in college courses on religion and social issues, explores the impact of theological interpretations about God, the individual, society, church, and government on attitudes toward procedural and distributive justice. Major issues revolve around civil liberties, sexual choice, gender equality, world peace, prison reform, and income distribution

This volume serves to fill a lacuna in the literature of the analytic philosophy of religion by relating key philosophical themes to broader aspects of the humanities, such as visual art, literature, and pop culture studies. The essays here range from discussions of the nature of art and religious experience, to the role of art in religious dialogue, and the function of narrative in religious discourse, as well as cultural media and artistic and phenomenological experience.

What do we owe our children? In a world of increasing moral relativism, the immutable values of faith, family, country, and honor can feel like fleeting memories of a bygone era. The lessons of our forefathers can be overshadowed by the easy answers of a culture obsessed with 'the moment.' Are these easy answers the path to eternal happiness? Are we providing our children with the wisdom they need to live a successful life? For those willing to ask these questions, God provides the answers, from the golf course to the boardroom to the homestead.Hardest Is Best.