Everything about Karen Armstrong totally explained
» For the operatic soprano, please see Karan Armstrong.
Karen Armstrong (b.
November 14 1944 in Wildmoor,
Worcestershire) is a British author of numerous works on
comparative religion, who first rose to prominence with her highly successful
History of God. A former
Catholic nun, she asserts that "All the great traditions are saying the same thing in much the same way, despite their surface differences." They each have in common, she says, an emphasis upon the overriding importance of
compassion, as expressed by way of the
Golden Rule:
Do not do unto others as you wouldn't have done unto you.
Author of several books on the
Muslim tradition, she has, since
9/11, become much in demand on the US lecture circuit. In February 2008, Armstrong called for the drawing up of a Charter of Compassion, a global
interfaith initiative which, she announced, already enjoyed the support of the likes of
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the
United Nations. This period was marked by ill-health — the life-long but at the time undiagnosed
epilepsy revealed in her autobiography
The Spiral Staircase — as well as the difficult readjustment to outside life.
Career
In
1976, Armstrong became an English teacher at a girls' school in
Dulwich, but her illness caused so many days off work, that she was finally asked to leave in
1981. The following year she published
Through the Narrow Gate, a well-received account of her
convent agonies. Largely on the strength of this, in
1984, Armstrong was commissioned by the UK's
Channel Four to write and present a TV documentary on the life of
St. Paul. Now came what Armstrong regards as her breakthrough experience. The actuality of being in
Jerusalem, and the way it seemed to defy her prior assumptions — she'd become hostile to religion as such; indeed it was partly the reason she'd been hired in the first place — had the effect of transfiguring her attitude to the world's religious traditions. Armstrong describes in
The Spiral Staircase how all her work since has, in a sense, flowed from that comparatively brief period in Jerusalem. In
1996, she published
Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths.
The increasing interest in and debate surrounding the influence of
Islam has made Armstrong a popular speaker, causing some observers to credit her with being influential in conveying a "more objective" view of Islam to a wide public in Europe and North America.
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, was published in
March 2006, and a measure of her success came that same year when she achieved the very English accolade of being invited to choose her eight favourite records for
BBC Radio's "
Desert Island Discs" show.
In 2007, Armstrong was invited by the
Islamic Religious Council of Singapore to deliver the "2007 MUIS Lecture".
Armstrong is a fellow of the
Jesus Seminar. She has written numerous articles for
The Guardian and other publications. In 2008 Armstrong was one of three winners of the
TED Conference's TED Prize. Her TED Prize "wish": to initiate an international Charter for Compassion — to help restore the Golden Rule as central to religious practice and daily life throughout the world. However, Armstrong intends her Charter to only include people belonging to the three main Abrahamic faiths.
Religious position
Armstrong suggests that religious
Fundamentalism is, paradoxically, both a response to and a product of
contemporary culture. A major influence on Armstrong's whole approach to the world's religious traditions has been, as she implies in
The Spiral Staircase, the work of the Canadian scholar
Wilfred Cantwell Smith.
Criticism
The Israeli historian
Efraim Karsh, head of Mediterranean Studies at
King's College London, characterizes Armstrong's biography of Muhammad as "revisionist" and inaccurate. He calls her treatment of the controversial issue of the
Banu Qurayza tribe in her "a travesty of the truth". While Armstrong views Judaism and Christianity in the light of contemporary social norms, it's alleged, she tends to defend Islam by way of older criteria. Such critics assert that while she may criticize the Christian tradition over the limited role of women in the church, she tends to maintain a diplomatic silence when it comes to the condition of women in many Muslim societies.
An April 2005 article, by
Hugh Fitzgerald, in the
New English Review describes her scholarship as a theologian, and as a historian of religion, in these terms: "For Karen Armstrong history doesn't exist. It is putty in the hands of the person who writes about history. You use it to make a point, to do good as you see it.", and ..."she knows nothing about Islam (which doesn’t keep her from writing about it, endlessly)..." .
Bibliography
By Armstrong
Journal articles
- "Ambiguity and Remembrance: Individual and Collective Memory in Finland" (2000)
"The Holiness of Jerusalem: Asset or Burden?" (1998)
"Women, Tourism, Politics" (1977)
Books
The Bible: A Biography (2007)
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions (2006)
Muhammad: A Prophet For Our Time (2006)
A Short History of Myth (2005)
The Spiral Staircase (2004)
Faith After September 11th (2002)
The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (2000)
Buddha (2000)
Islam: A Short History (2000)
In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis (1996)
Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths (1996)
(1993)
The End of Silence: Women and the Priesthood (1993)
The English Mystics of the Fourteenth Century (1991)
(1991)
Holy War: The Crusades and their Impact on Today's World (1988)
The Gospel According to Woman: Christianity's Creation of the Sex War in the West (1986)
Tongues of Fire: An Anthology of Religious and Poetic Experience (1985)
Beginning the World (1983)
The First Christian: Saint Paul's Impact on Christianity (1983)
Through the Narrow Gate (1982)
About Armstrong
Campell, Debra Graceful Exits: Catholic Women and the art of departure Indiana University press ISBN 025334316
Further Information
Get more info on 'Karen Armstrong'.
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