I love Elaine Pagels!

So she is attracted to the inspiring (to her) transcendental language formulations of religion. I do not begrudge her finding a certain amount of comfort in those. You have to take comfort from wherever you can get it. I always found it a faux comfort but then the "language formulations" I am familiar with came from fundamentalism, and she left fundamentalism precisely because of the stridency and cruelty of those formulations ... because her friend who died was Jewish and therefore burning in hell. Now she has returned, not to fundamentalism, but to liberal Christianity.

This is not an uncommon path for some ... fundamentalism to atheism to theological liberalism of some kind. It was regarded by M Scott Peck, who wrote a lot on this topic, as the most common path of personal evolution, in fact -- although that was an anecdotal claim subject to self-selection of his own experience.

I wouldn't be adverse to some theologically liberal or post-Christian religious involvement (e.g., Episcopalian, Unitarian-Universalist) strictly for community, but it doesn't actually appeal to me and just isn't a priority. My wife, who grew up nominally UU, keeps talking about going to the local UU church (which accepts atheists without requiring some kind of creedal formulation) but it never happens or when it does, we're off-put by the cliquishness and, often, elitism that's rampant in those circles (whether straight-up social elitism or the belief that one is a superior form of human because of your beliefs). So I don't see it ever happening for us, and even then, it doesn't represent a return to theism in a form remotely like what would be accepted and approved by a fundamentalist. To them it is almost worse than unbelief because it's "wrong belief". In my case it would be purely lip service (if it was a creedal denomination like Episcopalianism) anyway.

Perversely my wife is now attracted to purely secular activities like social dancing anyway and if she coaxes my two left feet onto a dance floor somewhere it will, for all its silliness, be less silly than some religious formulation. At bottom we are social creatures and seek society. We are not trying to fill some god-shaped vacuum within ourselves. We are just trying to connect. If we can do that with a minimum of particular expectations and a minimum of cruft, I'm not opposed to it. As an introvert a little goes a long way, but other than that ... whatevs!