Karen Armstrong

For the operatic soprano, please see Karan Armstrong.

Karen Armstrong (b. November 14 1944 in Wildmoor, Worcestershire, England) is an author who writes on Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. Armstrong is a former nun, now a "freelance monotheist" ^[1]. She has advanced the theory that fundamentalist religion is a response to and product of modern culture. She was born into a family with Irish roots who, after her birth, moved to Bromsgrove and later to Birmingham. According to professor Juan Eduardo Campo, Karen Armstrong has been influential in conveying the more objective post-19th-century scholarship of Islam to a wide readership in Europe and North America.^[2]

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Life

From 1962 to 1969, Karen Armstrong was a nun in the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. This was a teaching order, and once she had advanced from postulant and novice to professed nun, she was sent to St Anne's College, Oxford University, where she studied English. Armstrong left the order during her course of study. After graduating, she embarked on a D. Phil. (still at Oxford) on Alfred, Lord Tennyson. She continued to work on it while later teaching at the University of London, but her thesis was rejected by an external examiner. She eventually left academia without completing her doctorate.

This period was marked by ill-health (Armstrong's life-long, but at that time undiagnosed, epilepsy as described in The Spiral Staircase (2004)) and her readjustment to outside life. In 1976, she became an English teacher at a girls' school in Dulwich, but her epilepsy caused her to miss too many school days, and she was asked to leave in 1981.

Armstrong published Through the Narrow Gate in 1982, which described the restricted and narrow life she experienced in the convent (and earned her the enmity of many British Catholics). In 1984 she was asked to write and present a documentary on the life of St. Paul. The research for the documentary made Armstrong look again at religion, despite having abandoned religious worship after she left the convent. She has since become a prolific writer on subjects touching on all of the three major monotheistic religions.

She is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar.

Armstrong has written a number of articles for The Guardian. Her latest book, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, was published in March 2006; a revision of her biography of Muhammad: A Prophet For Our Time, was published in October of 2006 by Harper Collins.

In 2006, she appeared on BBC Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs". She also made commentaries on the documentary, "The Fundamentalists". Armstrong was one of three winners of the TED Conference's TED prize in 2008.^[3]. In 2007, she was invited by Islamic Religious Council of Singapore to deliver "2007 MUIS Lecture" in Singapore ^[4].

Theory of religious fundamentalism

Armstrong has advanced a counter-intuitive theory of religious fundamentalism ^[5], key to understanding the movements as they emerged in the late fifteenth and twentieth centuries:

Central to her reading of history is the notion that premodern cultures possessed two complementary and indispensable ways of thinking, speaking and knowing: mythos and logos. Mythos was concerned with meaning; it "provided people with a context that made sense of their day-to-day lives; it directed their attention to the eternal and the universal" ^[6]. Logos, on the other hand, dealt with practical matters. It forged ahead, elaborating on old insights, mastering the environment, and creating fresh and new things. Armstrong argues that modern Western society has lost the sense of mythos and enshrined logos as its foundation. Mythical narratives and the rituals and meanings attached to them have ceded authority to that which is rational, pragmatic and scientific - but which does not assuage human pain or sorrow, and cannot answer questions about the ultimate value of human life. However, far from embarking on a wholesale rejection of the modern emphasis in favour of the old balance, the author contends, religious fundamentalists unwittingly turn the mythos of their faith into logos. Fundamentalism is a child of modernity, and fundamentalists are fundamentally modern.

Beliefs

Armstrong is a prolific scholar of religions and has written on a multitude of faiths. She described her personal religious beliefs in a C-Span interview in 2000 ^[7]:

Criticism

Armstrong has come under criticism from Efraim Karsh (head of Mediterranean Studies at King's College, University of London). Karsh criticizes her biography on Muhammad by asserting that it is revisionist and inaccurate.^[8] In a review of her book, Muhammad: A Prophet for our Time, Karsh calls Armstrong's treatment of Banu Qurayza tribe as "a travesty of the truth".

Bibliography

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)

• A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (1993)

• The End of Silence: Women and the Priesthood (1993)

• The English Mystics of the Fourteenth Century (1991)

• Muhammad: a Biography of the Prophet (1991)

• Holy War (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)

References

• Interview on the Brian Lehrer Show

• Interview with Robert Wright One of a series of interviews with influential philosophers and theologians on Slate.com's meaningoflife.tv (1hr 19min)

• Booknotes interview with Brian Lamb

• The freelance monotheism of Karen Armstrong — interview on American Public Media's Speaking of Faith

• Religion scholar Karen Armstrong — interview on National Public Radio (N.P.R.)'s Fresh Air From WHYY

• Bill Moyers interviews Karen Armstrong — transcript from Public Broadcasting Station (P.B.S.)'s NOW

• PBS' Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly Interview, "On America's Response to 9/11"

• Charlie Rose interview video

• Karen Armstrong speaks about her book, Prophet of Islam, (video)

• PBS interview with Armstrong

• David Weich interviews Armstrong at powells.com

• CBC Tapestry interview by Mary Hynes

Miscellaneous

• Brief synopsis of Armstrong's Buddha at smithsonianassociates.org

• Profile of Armstrong at islamfortoday.com

• Profile of Armstrong randomhouse.com

• We cannot afford to maintain these ancient prejudices against Islam — The Guardian piece regarding Pope Benedict's remark on Islam post 9-11