An Almighty argument

Internationally acclaimed spiritual scholar at Writers Fest discusses the modern world and G-O-D

Karen Armstrong is one of the world’s most popular and notable commentators on religious affairs. A sentence like this probably wouldn’t strike many of you, but what if I added to that the fact that she was appointed by Kofi Annan to take part in a United Nations initiative to address the rise in fundamentalism, what has been called the “clash of civilizations”? The fact that she has addressed major world political bodies, or been invited to speak throughout the Middle East on the subject of Islam? Or that in 2008, the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference awarded her the TED Prize, and is collaborating with her on a major international project to create a “Charter for Compassion” signed by every world faith?

Her latest work, The Case for God, examines the current conversation about religion in our world, and the vast difference between our simple grasp of theological ideas and practices and those of the pre-modern world, which were complex and deeply nuanced. “Despite our technological and scientific brilliance,” she told me, “our religious thinking is often remarkably undeveloped, and even primitive. And that’s probably because we concentrate so much on science and technology that we neglect the more intuitive aspects of our minds, and so we’ve lost the habit of thinking symbolically and mythically.”

“What we’re missing in religious terms is that we have forgotten what was common in the pre-modern world, which is that any idea we have of God is only an approximate knowledge,
that what we call God lies beyond anything we can think and know.”

Her work is written in the way that she herself speaks: clearly articulated, beautifully argued, occasionally imposing but in a manner that shows a person uninterested in platitudes. Where she is firm, and even short, you won’t find the sort of anger you’re used to in modern debate, but rather a solidity in knowledge that generates respect.

Her project isn’t about reintegrating the wisdom of the pre-modern world, but more about bringing back the practices of those societies. “It’s not just a matter of education, religion is also a matter of behaving ethically. All the world religions teach that we attain this peace and enlightenment that some call nirvana, and others call God, by living a compassionate life – that is that we dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and get beyond egotism.”

As seen in the Ottawa XPress – Oct. 08, 2009
http://www.ottawaxpress.ca/books/books.aspx?iIDArticle=18467