Karen Armstrong spent seven years in the Society of the Holy Child Jesus
during the 1960s and later wrote a tell-all book, "Through the Narrow
Gate" (St. Martin's Press, 1982) that bemoaned the restrictive life. (The
frightened nuns did not know the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 had ended for
several weeks; they were not allowed to inquire about the outside world.)
Armstrong is still hearing about the book: "Catholics in England hate me.
They've sent me excrement in the mail." Readers who have followed her
lately are learning her more optimistic ideas about what Islam, Judaism and
Christianity have in common with A History of God (Ballantine, 1993), Jerusalem:
One City, Three Faiths (Knopf, 1996) and The Battle for God (Knopf,
2000) which all focus on what unites the three great monotheist faiths.
Armstrong teaches Christianity at London's Leo Baeck College for the Study of
Judaism. It was her first trip to Jerusalem in 1983 that piqued her interest in
commonality among faiths. "I got back a sense of what faith is all
about." At the time she was an atheist who was "wearied" by
religion and "worn out by years of struggle." Born a Roman Catholic in
the countryside near Birmingham, England, in 1945, she gave up on religion after
her time in the convent. "I was suicidal," she said of life in her
late 20s. "I didn't know how to live apart from that regimented way of
life."
With an undergraduate degree in literature from Oxford University, she began
teaching 19th and 20th century literature at the University of London and worked
on a PhD. Three years later, her dissertation was rejected. Without it, she did
not qualify to teach at the university level and took a job as head of the
English department at a girls' school in London. Not long afterward, she was
diagnosed with epilepsy. "After six years at the school I was asked to
leave, but nicely," she said. "My early life is a complete
catastrophe. It all worked out for the best."
She left the school in 1982 and began working on television documentaries. The
story that took her to Jerusalem set her on a new career path and changed her
earlier impressions about God. She went from atheist to "freelance
monotheist" but has never returned to the Catholic Church or joined any
other.
Since her writing career took off, Armstrong's communion with God occurs in the
library, where she spends up to three years researching her books, which are as
densely packed with detail as her conversations. "I get my spirituality in
study," she said. "The Jews say it happens, sometimes, studying the
Torah."
Armstrong says, "It's inevitable that people turn to more than one
religious tradition for inspiration," she said. "It's part of
globalization." She recently read from the Buddhist canon of teachings for
her next book. "Religion is like a raft," she said, explaining the
Buddha's view of it. "Once you get across the river, moor the raft and go
on. Don't lug it with you if you don't need it anymore." She knows that
mode of travel: Leave one raft behind to pick up the next just ahead.
She is the author of numerous books on religious affairs which have been
translated into forty languages. She is also the author of three television
documentaries and took part in Bill Moyers’s television series Genesis.
Since September 11, 2001, she has been a frequent contributor to conferences,
panels, newspapers, periodicals, and throughout the media on both sides of the
Atlantic on the subject of Islam.
In 2005 she published A Short History of Myth, the first volume in an ambitious project undertaken by Canongate Books to retell the great myths of the world - a project that they estimate will take 30 years to complete.
In 2006 she published The Great Transformation, and is now rewriting her biography of the prophet Mohammed. When asked about this project, during an interview on New York Public Radio in 2006 she said, ' "I have rewritten my biography of the prophet Mohammed, based on the latest research - he was not a warrior, but he found himself, like many of the Axial Age sages, in a violent society and he eventually brought peace to the region by practicing a daring policy of non-violence worthy of Ghandi. He stopped the violence and went into Mecca unarmed and forced the Meccans to negotiate with him accepting terms that his followers thought were disgraceful."
Copyright BookBrowse 2006
This biography was last updated on 04/01/2004.
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