Searching for God in Britain and Beyond: Reading Letters to Malcolm Muggeridge, 1966-1982

When writer and media personality Malcolm Muggeridge unexpectedly converted to Christianity in the 1960s, fans around the world flocked to his devotional writings and television programs about his spiritual journey. Because Muggeridge was critical of institutional Christianity and initially refused to join a church, he inspired a special affinity in those who were disillusioned with mainstream religious authority. Readers from around the world sent him deeply personal letters describing their spiritual and religious lives, revealing their anxieties, doubts, and hopes about the future of Christianity. In Searching for God in Britain and Beyond David Reagles draws on nearly two thousand of these remarkable fan letters to explore the thoughts and feelings of ordinary Christians in a time of cultural and religious upheaval. In these candid letters, Muggeridge’s correspondents wrestled with their experiences of faith and doubt, the value of institutional religion, uncertainties about permissiveness in society, the proper role of Christian social activism, and the forces of secularism. For these fans and skeptics alike, reading and writing were a vital means of working out their religious identities and convictions amid the supposed decline of Christendom. Searching for God in Britain and Beyond provides a rare and fascinating glimpse into the inner worlds of ordinary Christians in the 1960s and 1970s, revealing how the secularization of postwar society felt to average people.
Based on a close analysis of nearly 2,000 fan letters written to Malcolm Muggeridge after his conversion to Christianity, this book reconstructs the lived religion of ordinary people from a transnational perspective in the 1970s. These letters provide a glimpse into the experiences and concerns of Western Christians after the religious crisis of the 1960s.