Feuerbach was a phenomenon in time for proposing a naturalistic account of the development of religious faith that stood in opposition to the nascent tradition of Liberal Christianity. Today, he is really only remembered as a footnote to Marx on account of his "Theses on Feuerbach," but it undersells what you might get out of this work.

Firstly, this is a rare case where the first English translation of a piece of philosophy remains the undisputed best one, as it just so happened to be the work of George Eliot, and her prose does shine through.

A background in philosophy will help, but it isn't a work that is heavy on jargon and I do believe most people can get the gist of it with a little help from Google.

The premise, from my recollection, is fairly simple: God was first conceived as an outward projection of Man's highest ideals into the strange and confusing world outside him, and over the course of history our development and progress as a species has led us to gradually reclaim him and internalize those divine notions back into our subjective consciousness. It is an optimistic work, and Eliot's prose complements the philosophical maneuvering nicely, to the point where I would stop reading just to admire a sublime passage.