Is the West experiencing a religious revival? Some say yes—or at least, that it needs one. Young generations have become spiritually bankrupt, they say, consumed by technology and social media, desperate for something bigger than themselves.

But how can religion compel the secular? Political scientist Charles Murray knows the answer better than most—because it happened to him. For much of his life, he explains in his new book, Taking Religion Seriously, out October 14, he was one of the “well-educated and successful people for whom religion has been irrelevant.”

But that’s changed. And in the following exclusive excerpt, Murray explains the very beginnings of his tiptoe toward religiosity. It all began, he says, in the early 2000s, with a series of nudges threatening to topple the secular catechisms he’d held all his life. —The Editors

I graduated from college in early June 1965 and flew to Hilo, Hawaii, for Peace Corps training the day after commencement. I left Hilo for my assignment with the Thai Ministry of Public Health’s Village Health and Sanitation Project in September. Except for a two-week visit home in 1968, I didn’t return to the U.S. until August 1970. In effect, I missed the years that Americans have in mind when they talk about “the ’60s.”

Over the course of those five years in Thailand, I got caught up in my generation’s attraction to transcendental meditation and set out to become enlightened or, failing that, reach some sort of meditative state. I tried, but it didn’t work. On those rare occasions when I came close to a meditative state, I could feel myself resisting. The idea of giving up that much of my autonomy scared me...