Isaac Barnes May is a student at Yale Law School. He is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and earned his PhD in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.

Isaac Barnes May skilfully weaves biography and history to show how a group of radical theological thinkers, confronted with religious doubt, found existential meaning and social hope, even at the boundaries of belief. May charts the despair that Christians and Jews in the early twentieth century felt at the loss of religious certainty, as well as the persistence and passion of their struggles to keep the faith, pointing toward a profound reconsideration of the sources of the self and social progress in an increasingly non-theistic America. This brilliant historical narrative speaks to the present era with an undeniable urgency.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction1. Putting Away Childish Things2. Scientists and Mystics3. Why Be a Jew?4. Outgrowing the Past5. The Boundary with Godless Religion 6. Fruits Not Roots7. Legalizing God-Optional ReligionEpilogue

Isaac Barnes May is a student at Yale Law School. He is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and earned his PhD in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.

Isaac Barnes May skilfully weaves biography and history to show how a group of radical theological thinkers, confronted with religious doubt, found existential meaning and social hope, even at the boundaries of belief. May charts the despair that Christians and Jews in the early twentieth century felt at the loss of religious certainty, as well as the persistence and passion of their struggles to keep the faith, pointing toward a profound reconsideration of the sources of the self and social progress in an increasingly non-theistic America. This brilliant historical narrative speaks to the present era with an undeniable urgency.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction1. Putting Away Childish Things2. Scientists and Mystics3. Why Be a Jew?4. Outgrowing the Past5. The Boundary with Godless Religion 6. Fruits Not Roots7. Legalizing God-Optional ReligionEpilogue

Isaac Barnes May is a student at Yale Law School. He is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and earned his PhD in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.

Isaac Barnes May skilfully weaves biography and history to show how a group of radical theological thinkers, confronted with religious doubt, found existential meaning and social hope, even at the boundaries of belief. May charts the despair that Christians and Jews in the early twentieth century felt at the loss of religious certainty, as well as the persistence and passion of their struggles to keep the faith, pointing toward a profound reconsideration of the sources of the self and social progress in an increasingly non-theistic America. This brilliant historical narrative speaks to the present era with an undeniable urgency.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction1. Putting Away Childish Things2. Scientists and Mystics3. Why Be a Jew?4. Outgrowing the Past5. The Boundary with Godless Religion 6. Fruits Not Roots7. Legalizing God-Optional ReligionEpilogue