Karen Armstrong

the 4000-year quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

A history of God

The author of The History of God and In the Beginning: A New Reading of Genesis offers a useful, well-written introduction to mythology from the Paleolithic period to the "Great Western Transformation" that used science to discredit myth. Reprint.

A Short History of Myth

Evaluates the role of religion in history and the modern world, stating that today's expressions of faith are considerably removed from those of previous generations while arguing that an increased awareness of past insights may help to build a faith that speaks to an increasingly polarized society.

The Case for God

Traces the history of Islam, from the flight of Muhammad and the founding of the first mosques to the development of the modern Muslim state, and examines its present beliefs and practices.

A Short History

Islam

A portrait of the Buddha explores his identities both as an archetypal religious icon and as a man, chronicling his journey from his decision to leave a life of ease and power to his attainment of spiritual enlightenment.

Buddha

The author relates her decision to leave her convent after failing to find religious fulfillment, her struggles with depression and epilepsy, her realization of her calling, and her career working with sacred texts.

My Climb Out of Darkness

The Spiral Staircase

This vivid and detailed biography strips away centuries of distortion and myth and presents a balanced view of the man whose religion continues to dramatically affect the course of history.

Muhammad

Today the Quran is used by some to justify war and acts of terrorism, the Torah to deny Palestinians the right to live in the Land of Israel, and the Bible to condemn homosexuality and contraception. The significance of Scripture may not be immediately obvious in our secular world but its misunderstanding is perhaps the root cause of many of today's controversies. In this timely and important book, one of the most trusted and admired writers on the world of faith examines the meaning of Scripture. The sacred texts have been coopted by fundamentalists, who insist that they must be taken literally, and others who interpret Scripture to bolster their own prejudices. They are seen to prescribe ethical norms and codes of behavior that are divinely ordained--they are believed to contain eternal truths. But as Karen Armstrong shows in this chronicle of the development and significance of major religions, this narrow, peculiar reading of scripture is a relatively recent, modern phenomenon. For most of their history, the world's religious traditions have regarded these texts as tools for the individual to connect with the divine, to experience a different level of consciousness and to help them engage with the world in more meaningful and compassionate ways. At a time of intolerance and mutual incomprehension, The Lost Art of Scripture shines fresh light on the world's major religions to help us build bridges between faiths and rediscover a creative and spiritual engagement with holy texts.

Rescuing the Sacred Texts

The Lost Art of Scripture

From the renowned and bestselling author of A History of God, a sweeping exploration of religion's connection to violence. For the first time in American history, religious self-identification is on the decline. Some have cited a perception that began to grow after September 11: that faith in general is a source of aggression, intolerance and divisiveness--something bad for society. But how accurate is that view? And does it apply equally to all faiths? In these troubled times, we risk basing decisions of real and dangerous consequence on mistaken understandings of the faiths subscribed around us, in our immediate community as well as globally. And so, with her deep learning and sympathetic understanding, Karen Armstrong examines the impulse toward violence in each of the world's great religions. The comparative approach is new: while there have been plenty of books on jihad or the Crusades, this book lays the Christian and the Islamic way of war side by side, along with those of Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Daoism and Judaism. Each of these faiths arose in agrarian societies with plenty of motivation for violence: landowners had to lord it over peasants and warfare was essential to increase one's landholdings, the only real source of wealth before the great age of trade and commerce. In each context, it fell to the priestly class to legitimize the actions of the state. And so the martial ethos became bound up with the sacred. At the same time, however, their ideologies developed that ran counter to the warrior code: around sages, prophets and mystics. Within each tradition there grew up communities that represented a protest against the injustice and violence endemic to agrarian society. This book explores the symbiosis of these 2 impulses and its development as these confessional faiths came of age. The aggression of secularism has often damaged religion and pushed it into a violent mode. But modernity has also been spectacularly violent, and so Armstrong goes on to show how and in what measure religions, in their relative maturity, came to absorb modern belligerence--and what hope there might be for peace among believers in our time.

Religion and the History of Violence

Fields of Blood

Examines the origins of the religious traditions of the world during the ninth century B.C.E. in four distinct regions--Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece.

The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions

The Great Transformation

Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life

Since the beginning of time, humankind has looked upon nature and seen the divine. In the writings of the great thinkers across religions, the natural world inspires everything from fear to awe to tranquil contemplation; God, or however one defined the sublime, was present in everything. Yet today, even as we admire a tree or take in a striking landscape, we rarely see nature as sacred.

In this short but deeply powerful book, the bestselling historian of religion Karen Armstrong re-sacralizes nature for modern times. Drawing on her vast knowledge of the world's religious traditions, she vividly describes nature's central place in spirituality across the centuries. In bringing this age-old wisdom to life, Armstrong shows modern readers how to rediscover nature's potency and form a connection to something greater than ourselves.

Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World

Sacred Nature

A Biography (Books That Changed the World)

The Bible

A stirring account of the life of Paul, who brought Christianity to the Jews, by the most popular writer on religion in the English-speaking world, Karen Armstrong, author ofThe History of God, which has been translated into thirty languages

The Apostle We Love to Hate

St. Paul

حقول الدم

The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World

Holy War

Islam, Hristiyanlik ve Yahudiligin 4000 Yillik Tarihi

Tanrinin Tarihi

The award-winning author of A History of God shares practical recommendations for promoting world peace by cultivating one's intrinsic tendencies for compassion, outlining a program for achieving mindfulness and engaging in acts of kindness.

Karen Armstrong

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