What religion was George Bernard Shaw?

Answer 1

His family were Anglicans, and that is the tradition in which he was raised, though he regarded himself as an atheist until about 30 years of age after which he rejected Atheism and referred to himself as being a mystic.

Answer 2

Bernard Shaw's Inspiration- His Own Life.

To know what inspired George Bernard Shaw, the strange and out of the way things in his life need be just gone through. It is clear that it was his own life that inspired him. It is very interesting to watch that tiny ship sailing the tumultous seas.

Finding her husband unable to provide for the family, his mother, with her children moved permanently to London. There she supported her family by giving music lessons and singing at concerts. She had a good singing voice and remarkable skills in music. Shaw was schooled in London and there he grew up as an extraordinarily independent intellectual. He gained his love of music from his mother and her friends, which secured for him his first job as a musical critic in a London evening newspaper. Then he became a critic of plays, the essays written during which period were of very high quality and are still being read and praised. A few years later when he began writing plays, his love of music made his sentences rhythmically easy and pleasant to speak and hear. Even the very long speeches in plays like Man And Superman hold our attention due to their musical rhythm and fine diction.

Henry George, the author of Progress And Poverty was a very influential American economist who argued that national revenue should be raised by a single tax on land revenues, instead of levying numerous taxes on a variety of things. One day Shaw heard his lecture in a London city hall and at once joined the Fabian Society. Fabians condemned the blood-thirsty revolutions of the communists and believed that socialism could be achieved only through slow, steady and gradual changes. The Fabian Society was destined to powerfully influence the British society and politics during the next forty or fifty years. In the Fabian Society, Shaw came to be acquinted with Mrs. Annie Besant, an ardent supporter of the Indian Independence Movement. As a socialist, Shaw in the beginning believed that good laws could improve and increase human happiness. But as he grew older, he trusted less and less in the power of the Parliament. Good laws passed by a few do not necessarily make a good society, but good people certainly will make good laws. Good men and women are the first thing required in the making of a Good Society.

His contemporaries had many opportunities to observe Shaw as a controversialist and as a man of Victorian Vanity. According to them, Shaw had three phases in his life. First he was a musical critic, fabian socialist and novelist. Then world saw him as a writer of comedies in which he intended to lead the world to seriousness through his wits. During the third and last phase he appeared as a prophet, demanding equal admiration for St. Joan of Orleans and St. Joseph of Moscow. By that time he had lost all distinction between a kind christian and a cruel communist, which many of his contemporaries disliked.

Shaw led British Socialism away from Marx. Recent happenings in the Soviet Union prove that he was correct. He attacked the Victorian vanity and humbug with his own vanity and sharp wits. Social Democrats considered him as an incarnation of Satan. He fanned the flames whenever there was a dispute. In his verbal attacks he was merciless. In a lunch party given in honour of Bergson. the French philosopher, he attacked the very theories of Bergson, saying that, "Oh, my dear fellow, I understand your philosophy much better than you do!". When the Czechoslovakian President Masaryk visited London, he asked to see Shaw out of respect. Shaw went to him straight and lectured that the Czechoslovakian foreign policy was very wrong. And without waiting for an answer he stormed out! He could not hide his vanity and hatred like the true Victorians. He found the effort of hiding vanity wearisome and gave it up when he first burst upon the world. Acerbity and sharpness were his stamps.

Shaw believed that churches have strayed far from the teachings of Christ. But many things in his character had the force of a religion. Reading the works of the fampus English poet Shelley made him think that " animals are our fellow creatures, not to be slain for human food. At twenty five he became a vegetarian. He had a strong sense of the sacredness of the animal and human life. He had the purity of life and ate no flesh, drank no alcohol and smoked no tobacco. He was kind and generous to his fellows. He insisted that we have to leave the world a better place than we found it, and that the torch of life should be handed on to the future generations burning more brightly. In this sense he was more a christian than the Christ.

Like Gandhi, Shaw may be said to have been an anti scientific thinker. Like Count Leo Tolstoy, he believed that science can give no real account of Man. It is strange and universally known that this threesome remained vegetarians, hostile to vivisection, operation and modern medicine. Samuel Butler, the famous advocate of Creative Evolution was considered by Shaw as a sage. His words were gospels to him. Even Butler's jokes were taken seriously by Shaw. Both cruelly opposed Darwin. In personal life Shaw was a perfect man who opposed tyranny, blood-shed and cruelty. But as a religious revolutionary he was fierce and abominable. An admirable dual personality.

Shaw derived his great strength from vegetables. He was lucky in getting a very solicituous wife. We have the example of Xanthippe before us! She was very kind and attentive to him, followed him like a shadow anxious about his health and prepared hearty vegetarian meals for him. Even she was not spared! The household and the neighbourhood resounded with his sharp and witty comments about her ancestors.

Politics and journalism occupied Shaw till he was forty two. But soon he learned that politics was poly-tricks and journalism was literature in a hurry. Therefore he gave them up and took to creative literature. His earlier works were all focussed on genuine social evils such as prostitution, war and religious intolerence and revenge, which touched the lives of a very large number of people. Bernard Shaw did in English what Henrik Ibsen had been doing in Norwegian. The rich landlords of Victorian vanity considered him as an enemy. The communists considered him as an incarnation of Satan. But the poor began to consider him as a leader and champion of new ways of thought and intellectual freedom. He regarded Ruling as the highest art of all, and in his eyes, most political leaders were blunderers, insufficiently educated in this art. His works were enjoyable to the spectator as well as to the reader. He stands second only to Shakespeare among the English playwrights.

Yes, the more he lived, the more was he inspired by his life.

Answer 3

George Bernard Shaw was an agnostic. He did not adhere to any specific religion but rather questioned and criticized organized religion in his works.

Answer 4

Charles Bernard Shaw has written:

'Collective worship in the primary school'