Includes bibliographical references (pages 181-198) and index.

"In a modern scientific age, many intellectuals assume that one cannot be a religious and a thinking person at the same time. W.H. Auden's life and art stand as an eloquent example of the joining of the two, a modern instance of how thought and faith can nourish each other. The poet's faith expanded the horizons of his mind as well as his heart, and his formidable intelligence, in turn, probed the nature and limits of his Christian belief, animating his continuous quest not only to believe still, but also to believe again, a process that he saw as essential to faith." "Moving between biographical essay and readings of Auden's poems, Arthur Kirsch, a leading Auden scholar, offers the first book-length study of the profound relationship between Auden's faith and art. He considers how Auden's religious faith helped him to come to terms with himself as an artist and a man, including his homosexuality, and shows in detail how his faith informs, and is often the explicit subject of, his poetry and prose. Kirsch discusses the poet's boyhood religious experience and the works he wrote before emigrating to the United States as well as his formal return to the Anglican Communion at the beginning of World War II. He then focuses on Auden's criticism and on neglected and underestimated works of the poet's later years." "Auden and Christianity will appeal to readers interested in religious thought as well as to those interested in Auden's life and art."--Jacket.

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