Editing Patrick White (section)

=== Religion ===
White was raised an Anglican but stated, "I… went through my youth believing in nothing but my own ego."{{Sfnp|Marr|1991|p=284}} In late 1951, he experienced a religious conversion:<blockquote>If I say I had no religious tendencies between adolescence and ''The Tree of Man'', it's because I was sufficiently vain and egotistical to feel one can ignore certain realities. (I think the turning point came during a season of unending rain at Castle Hill when I fell flat on my back one day in the mud and starting cursing a God I had convinced myself didn't exist. My personal scheme of things until then at once seemed too foolish to continue holding.){{Sfnp|Kiernan|1980|p=5}}</blockquote>As the 1950s progressed, White became disillusioned with the Anglican church and his religious beliefs became more eclectic.{{Sfnp|Marr|1991|pp=357-58, 451-52}} He once described himself as a "lapsed Anglican egotist agnostic pantheist occultist existentialist would-be though failed Christian Australian."<ref name=":02">{{Cite web |date=2012-05-28 |title=Patrick White and unprofessed faith |url=https://www.abc.net.au/religion/patrick-white-and-unprofessed-faith/10100516 |access-date=2024-06-13 |website=ABC Religion & Ethics |language=en-AU}}</ref> White stated in 1981 that he did not call himself a Christian because he could not follow Christ's injunction to forgive.<ref name=":02" /> In 1969, however, he had affirmed the importance of religion in his work: "Religion. Yes, that's behind all my books. What I am interested in is the relationship between the blundering human being and God."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ralph |first=Iris |year=2006 |title=A Green Flaw in the Crystal Glass: Patrick White's Riders in the Chariot |url=https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/journal_contribution/A_Green_Flaw_in_the_Crystal_Glass_Patrick_White_s_Riders_in_the_Chariot/4996172/1 |journal=Colloquy |language=en |issue=12 |pages=28–42 |doi=10.4225/03/59211ef026a4b}}</ref>