Revaluations, II: H. A. L. Fisher, “Our New Religion”

Abstract

That the author of an important Education Act and a best-selling History of Europe should have had the inclination and energy to write a spirited study of Christian Science comes as a surprise to many. In spite of the fact that H. A. L. Fisher's Our New Religion (first published, London, 1929) was circulated after 1933 in the cheap and widely-read series of rationalist works, “The Thinker's Library”, this lively little volume still remains relatively unknown on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet Fisher's book has had its champions. His biographer, Mr. David Ogg, calls it “the best-written of all Fisher's books and one of the finest pieces of English which this century has yet produced.” And Professor Gilbert Murray declared of it that “Seldom can destructive criticism have been delivered with greater urbanity.” If there is an evident element of exaggeration in such statements, they do serve to draw attention to a book which ought not to be neglected by anyone who is interested in American studies.