Newsletter Special: The Compassionate Religious Humanism of Karen Armstrong
David Shasha
The Compassionate Religious Humanism of Karen Armstrong
I recently posted a review of the new Karen Armstrong book The Lost Art of Scripture by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. It happens that Dr. Armstrong’s new book on Scriptural interpretation comes at a propitious moment in my own studies of Jewish and Christian atavistic primitivism, with all their primordial negations of the Open Text of Midrash which has been wisely articulated in the pluralistic literary hermeneutics of Post-Modernism:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/grfD1_Pchf8
Sadly, we are now seeing a very aggressive resurgence of literalism coming from the Religious Right and its various witting and unwitting academic apologists, as well as from the New Atheists; all of whom have joined together, as Kristof notes in his perceptive review, in undermining the rich interpretive history of Scripture in our religious traditions.
Armstrong has recently given a talk at the Library of Congress in Washington which was broadcast on C-Span’s Book TV:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?466110-1/the-lost-art-scripture
It provides a brief précis of the new book, acting as an important response to the twisted atavism of the literalists, and as a capsule review of her many brilliant books: Most famously, there was the surprise 1993 mega best-seller A History of God which was bookended by the bold The Battle for God in 2000. The former provided an excellent overview of the three monotheistic faiths, while the latter showed how those faiths became combative towards each other.
Particularly important was the attention she paid to European Christian Imperialism in the Modern era and how it served to undermine an older and more tolerant culture in the Middle East as marked by the Andalusian Convivencia that has been expertly presented by the late Maria Rosa Menocal, who, like Armstrong, was a popularizer of important historical and religious ideas:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/CAiejYQJCRA
This balanced multicultural approach remains the hallmark of Armstrong’s voluminous and accessible work.
Other important books reflecting this compassionate Religious Humanism was her study of the Crusades in Holy War (1988); an excellent ecumenical work on Jerusalem (1997); a primer on Islam (2000) and a biography of Muhammad (1991), along with a number of books on religious violence and personal spirituality.
When watching the lecture, it became clear to me that it was necessary to go back in time and collect all the articles from the SHU written by Armstrong and my reviews of some of her excellent books.
The first time I included an Armstrong article was way back in SHU 23!
Looking afresh at the old articles, it becomes ever clearer that Armstrong is the most important scholar of comparative religion in our time and a voice of rare integrity in our ever-deteriorating civilization.
While many pompous academics are jealous of her success and write off her books to “popularization” with its implied superficiality, for those of us who are completely flummoxed by contemporary religious scholarship and the manner in which it has served to further inflame tribal divides rather than calming them down in the name of compassion and ecumenism, they are manna from heaven.
Indeed, looking at the work of this great scholar and public intellectual – a person who writes books that real people actually read, we see the true heir of the great George Foot Moore of Harvard:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/u0Q6hy3Hpvo
Moore wrote and taught at a very different moment in our culture, and Armstrong has done him one better by earnestly reaching out to an ever more diffuse audience as it is currently situated in a very fractured intellectual marketplace of ideas.
In her Library of Congress lecture it was highly significant that she drove home two of the most important points in traditional Jewish culture: the rise of Midrash and the Religious Humanism of Maimonides.
She referred frequently to Midrash as a mode of re-reading Scripture and how it expanded meaning in the old texts, but also served to make the past relevant to the present; something that is completely alien to the current crop of atavistic literalists.
Her pointed reference to Thomas Aquinas and God’s unknowability is straight out of Maimonides and his apophatic theology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology#Judaism
With her characteristic lucidity and ingratiating manner, Armstrong has been able to make complex ideas simple without ever undermining their profundity. She is currently working in the UN Alliance of Civilizations dealing with religious extremism around the world. In addition, she was awarded the TED prize in 2008 for her many contributions to religious studies and her role in the Charter for Compassion.
As can be seen in this special newsletter, her work has dealt with issues stemming from the 9/11 crisis, as well as connecting that crisis to the West’s poor understanding of Islam and the many prejudices that have accrued over time which has brought mutual antagonism and violence.
Armstrong is a tireless champion of Religious Humanism and the place of tolerance and compassion in our lives. Her role as an interpreter of the major world religions has been salutary, as her books and articles seek to foster dialogue and mutual understanding between the different groups.
In her lecture she returned often to the point that there is a common moral core to those religions, and a dogged insistence that the past be made relevant to the present. At many moments in the talk she went back to the Midrashic tradition as a means to highlight this critical point.
Along with this collection of her articles, I have added my reviews of her books The Great Transformation (2006), The Bible (2007), and The Case for God (2009). These magisterial works effectively sum up her many years of study, providing comprehensive introductions to our religious traditions.
The special newsletter closes with the aforementioned Nicholas Kristof’s review of The Lost Art of Scripture; a book that will surely serve to help the lay reader understand the exegetical traditions of the major religions and how the hermeneutical factor has so deeply informed how we understand those Scriptures.
Karen Armstrong is one of the most important of our current public intellectuals, and for those of us who continue to insist on the necessity of Religious Humanism as a means to make our civilization more reflective, compassionate, and knowing, her substantial catalog of books has been a truly vital part of our pedagogy.
David Shasha
The Curse of the Infidel
By: Karen Armstrong
Faith and Freedom
By: Karen Armstrong
Kill the Scapegoat: We Need to Abandon Blame and Accept Collective Responsibility
By: Karen Armstrong
Root Out this Sinister Cultural Flaw
By: Karen Armstrong
Bush’s Fondness for Fundamentalism is Courting Disaster at Home and Abroad
By: Karen Armstrong
We Cannot Afford to Maintain These Ancient Prejudices Against Islam
By: Karen Armstrong
Review Essay: Balancing the Prophet
By: Karen Armstrong
An Inability to Tolerate Islam Contradicts Western Values
By: Karen Armstrong
Calling all Religions to Compassion
By: Karen Armstrong
The Hope of Sufism
By: Karen Armstrong
This Season has Meaning for All
By: Karen Armstrong
Book Review: The Norton Anthology of World Religions on Judaism, Islam, and Christianity
By: Karen Armstrong
Review Essay: Finding the True Worth of Religion in an Age of War and Anxiety
By: David Shasha
Review Essay: Making the Bible Intelligible in the Tempest of Modern Life
By: David Shasha
Review Essay: Is There God in Our Future?
By: David Shasha
Book Review: What is the Meaning of Sacred Texts?
By: Nicholas Kristof