Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong OBE FRSLis a British author and commentator known for her books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic religious sister, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and mystical Christian faith. She attended St Anne's College, Oxford, while in the convent and majored in English. She became disillusioned and left the convent in 1969. She first rose to prominence in 1993 with her book A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth14 November 1944
Religion is a practical discipline and in the 17th century in the West, we turned it onto a head trip. But it's like dancing, or swimming, or driving, which you can't learn by texts. You have to get into the car and learn how to manipulate the vehicle.
A theology should be like poetry, which takes us to the end of what words and thoughts can do.
And so, one of the reasons why I started my Charter for Compassion, was to bring the Golden Rule back to the center of religion and morality and not put other's secondary goals, less demand goals, into the forefront
Ever since the Crusades, when Christians from western Europe were fighting holy wars against Muslims in the near east, western people have often perceived Islam as a violent and intolerant faith - even though when this prejudice took root Islam had a better record of tolerance than Christianity.
When you feel compassion, you dethrone yourself from the centre of the world.
You put yourself in the receptive frame of mind with which we approach music or poetry, which you can measure the difference on a neurological scanner.
Buddhists talk about nirvana in very much the same terms as monotheists describe God.
I have nothing maternal in me, and men want to be mothered a lot of the time.
Today mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute; we often dismiss it as irrational and self-indulgent. But the imagination is also the faculty that has enabled scientists to bring new knowledge to light and to invent technology that has made us immeasurably more effective.
Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept.