The Battle For God by Karen Armstrong (Book Review from mainstream newspaper)
Therion Ware
The Battle for God
By Karen Armstrong
Harper Collins £19.99
<http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0002555239> £13.99
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679435972/> $19.25
Review By A. N. Wilson.
From Daily Mail, Fri 14 April 2000, p60
(it was ocr'd, so there may be errors in the transcription).
THE SPECTRE of religious fundamentalism haunts our world, and most of
us are not merely terrified, but puzzled by it. How can human beings
in the 21st century allow themselves to be trapped inside such
extraordinary mind-sets?
We watch, maybe, a group of Jewish 'settlers' in Hebron making
murderous trouble among the population of this wholly Arab town and
are completely baffled by their claim that the Bible 'entitles' them
to be there.
Or we follow with amazement as, once more, the fanatics of Iranian
Islam pronounce that a British-Indian novelist, whom everyone here
finds totally unreadable, must die because his novel has offended the
holiest tenets of the Koran.
Or we see American Protestants prepared to kill people who do not
share their views of abortion.
How can such things be? We need a patient guide here; one who
understands the religious impulse; and one with a modem sensibility
who understands why these fundamentalists scare the modern liberal
West.
Karen Armstrong is this guide. Her new book is just what Westerners
need at this junction in history.
It does not condescend to the 'fundamentalists'. Indeed, in its broad
historical sweep, going right back to the late I5th century, it offers
a sympathetic explanation of how religious people come to feel
embattled by the advance of the modern.
In Karen Armstrong's view there are basically two means of explaining
the world to ourselves, the means of what she calls mythos and the
means of logos.
In the pre-modern conservative world, people were able to use the
devices of ritual and myth as ways of coming to terms with human
anxieties.
Mythos only 'explained' the world in an intuitive way. The old Greek
bishop Gregory of Nyssa did not think that doctrines such as the Holy
Trinity were 'literally true' - rather, he said, they were 'terms that
we use' to talk about what can't really be talked about.
Then the world outlook changes. Beyond that, with the dawn of science,
men and women start to try to explain things - in Karen Armstrong's
word - by means of logos.
YOU HAVE Newton writing a book which solemnly denies the Trinity as if
it were a scientific theory. The only God worth war shipping, thinks
Newton, is one who can be proved by Reason.
Many men and women in the West, since Newton, have decided to discard
the 'mythical' way of looking at the world altogether, and in so doing
have felt they must discard religious belief.
The fundamentalist, whether Jew, Moslem or Christian, is, Karen
Armstrong argues, one who feels ghettoised by the march of the modem,
but makes the mistake of thinking that the mythical can provide the
same kind of certainty as the logical.
The book, which begins in the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella, plunges
us by its midway stage ~to the hotbed of modern fundamentalism and the
figures who so alarm and puzzle us in the news.
Armstrong is particularly wise in her analysis of the economic and
political origins of many of these theologies of rage and hate, as she
terms them.
She observes, for example, the way in which 'extremist' Moslem
positions often came about as a result of Western colonialism. She is
also convincing on the way that American intervention in the Gulf
fuelled support for Ayatollah Khomeini.
She gives us an encyclopaedic wealth of religious mania in these pages
so it will seem churlish in a reviewer to ask for more.
But there is one very striking omission from this work from the pen of
an ex-Holy Child nun.
She does not discuss the position of the Roman Catholic Church, or its
early 20th century war against what it called Modernism (i.e. the
attempt to reconcile faith and modern knowledge), nor the position of
that church today, Over 2,000 years, Catholicism, broadly understood,
has provided just such a fusion of 'myth' and 'logic' that Armstrong
seems to long for - and to find - in other faiths.
BUT IT seems odd that she has spent so much time reading about the
semi-lunatic views of a lot of very stupid American Bible-bashers and
has not examined the question which must have haunted her own life -
whether Western humanity can legitimately keep alive its chief
religious institution without committing intellectual suicide.
In a moving afterward, Armstrong says: 'We cannot be religious in the
same way as our ancestors.' True, surely. But given the fact that
some, perhaps most, human beings retain some religious impulse, where
does this leave the'1argest group of worldwide Christians? She says
that the 'theo1ogy of hate' is a distortion of Judaism - true. But she
does not address the more difficult question of how you can absorb the
Jewish myth without absorbing some of its violence.
She assures us that the word 'jihad' in the Islamic tradition does not
really mean holy war, it means struggle. But poor old Christianity,
which has arguably been a more benign presence in the world, is only
represented here (in the modern chapters) by its nuttier American
representatives.
Armstrong treats all 'fundamentalisms' as similar whether the
colonising, aggressive fundamentalism of American Protestantism and
Judaism or the defensive fundamentalism of Islam. 'The modern world',
she writes, 'which seems so exciting to the liberal, seems godless,
drained of meaning, and even satanic to the fundamentalist.' This
makes me, for one, a fundamentalist, which I'm not. You can't go to
America and not see that Khomeini's description of it as the Great
Satan is, if anything, moderate. Could it not be that the
fundamentalists have got the right diagnosis of the world's ills, but
the wrong cure?
--
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- Attrib: Pauline Reage.
.......
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pan
<tw...@eac.video2cd.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>The Battle for God
>
>By Karen Armstrong
>
>Harper Collins £19.99
>
><http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0002555239> £13.99
><http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679435972/> $19.25
>
(snipping part of interesting review)
>But there is one very striking omission from this work from the pen of
>an ex-Holy Child nun.
>
>She does not discuss the position of the Roman Catholic Church, or its
>early 20th century war against what it called Modernism (i.e. the
>attempt to reconcile faith and modern knowledge), nor the position of
>that church today, Over 2,000 years, Catholicism, broadly understood,
>has provided just such a fusion of 'myth' and 'logic' that Armstrong
>seems to long for - and to find - in other faiths.
From reading Armstong's book 'A History of God', I gathered she is
no longer a fan of the RCC.
Perhaps she did not mention 'Modernism' in this particular book
because she does not consider the RCC a fundamentalist organization?
>
>BUT IT seems odd that she has spent so much time reading about the
>semi-lunatic views of a lot of very stupid American Bible-bashers and
>has not examined the question which must have haunted her own life -
>whether Western humanity can legitimately keep alive its chief
>religious institution without committing intellectual suicide.
>
>In a moving afterward, Armstrong says: 'We cannot be religious in the
>same way as our ancestors.' True, surely. But given the fact that
>some, perhaps most, human beings retain some religious impulse, where
>does this leave the'1argest group of worldwide Christians? She says
>that the 'theo1ogy of hate' is a distortion of Judaism - true.
> But she does not address the more difficult question of how you can
>absorb the Jewish myth without absorbing some of its violence.
Good point.
Of course you can interpret the Bible however you want to, including
not taking literally its description of a violent Jewish war-god.
But, then again,
if significant portions of the Bible are not to be taken literally
then why should anyone bother believing any of it?
>
>She assures us that the word 'jihad' in the Islamic tradition does not
>really mean holy war, it means struggle. But poor old Christianity,
>which has arguably been a more benign presence in the world,
Hmmm...
I'm not convinced of this.
>is only represented here (in the modern chapters)
>by its nuttier American representatives.
My guess would be that,
Armstrong assumes that the vast majority of her readers will know that
most Christians don't act like fundamentalists.
>
>Armstrong treats all 'fundamentalisms' as similar whether the
>colonising, aggressive fundamentalism of American Protestantism and
>Judaism or the defensive fundamentalism of Islam. 'The modern world',
>she writes, 'which seems so exciting to the liberal, seems godless,
>drained of meaning, and even satanic to the fundamentalist.' This
>makes me, for one, a fundamentalist, which I'm not. You can't go to
>America and not see that Khomeini's description of it as the Great
>Satan is, if anything, moderate.
I wonder what he meant by this?
>Could it not be that the
>fundamentalists have got the right diagnosis of the world's ills, but
>the wrong cure?
I doubt that they have the right diagnosis.
People throughout history have always thought that their present 'Age'
was 'going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket'.
sam sam
> >
> >By Karen Armstrong
> >
> >Harper Collins £19.99
I heard this lady on NPR the other day. Sounds like a
fundamentalist anti-christian. :-)
Therion Ware
in alt.atheism:
>> >The Battle for God
>> >
>> >By Karen Armstrong
>> >
>> >Harper Collins £19.99
>
>I heard this lady on NPR the other day. Sounds like a
>fundamentalist anti-christian. :-)
Which is fair going for an ex-nun.