Christ Church Cathedral

Introduction to the author
KAREN ARMSTRONG

Karen Armstrong was born November 14, 1944 in Wildmoor, Worcestershire. Her family is of Irish Roman Catholic extraction.

In her late teens she joined the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, a teaching order and was a religious from 1962 to 1969. Her order sent her to Saint Anne’s College, Oxford, to study English. Armstrong left the order while she was still an undergraduate. She suffered from ill-health and was eventually diagnosed with epilepsy. She describes this period of her life in her autobiography The Spiral Staircase (2004). After leaving the convent, she had great difficulty in adjusting to life in the outside world.  In Through the Narrow Gate (1982), she recounted her difficulties with convent life. 

In 1984 she was commissioned by the UK’s Channel Four to write and present a television documentary on the life of St. Paul.  In preparation for this project, she spent some time in Jerusalem where she encountered first-hand the three Abrahamic faiths.  This experience profoundly altered her attitude towards religion from which she had become increasingly estranged. In 1996 she published Jerusalem: One City; Three Faiths.   While teaching at the Leo Baeck rabbinic college in London, she also gained an appreciation for the Judaic tradition and its emphasis on religious practice.

Armstrong draws on the work of a vast  range of thinkers: Augustine, Anselm,  Aquinas; Charles Darwin,   Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud;  Friedrich Schleiermacher, Rudolf Bultmann,  Rudolph Otto, Mercia Eliade;  Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Karl Rahner,  Henri De Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar,  Paul Tillich; Emmanuel Levinas,  Jacques Derrida,  Gilles Deleuze; Thomas Kuhn, Stephen Jay Gould, Karl Popper; Jürgen Habermas, John Caputo,  Gianni Vattimo; Giambattista Vico  and Ludwig Wittgenstein.  She has also been influenced by Joseph Campbell and George Steiner.

Armstrong is widely regarded as an authority on Islam and fundamentalism. She has been consulted by both American and European governments. She has addressed the U.S. Congress on three occasions and has lectured to policy makers at the U.S. State Department.   She participated in the World Economic Forum in New York, Jordan and Davos.  She has addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., and New York.  She has also advised the Dutch parliament on the integration of Muslims in the European community.

Since 9/11 she has been recognized for her work on Islam and invited to speak in a number of Muslim countries. In 2007 she was awarded a medal by the Egyptian government for her services to Islam.  Also in 2007 she was invited by the Malaysian government to speak in Kuala Lumpur. She has lectured in Turkey and Pakistan as well.  

Armstrong was invited to give the 2007 MUIS Lecture in Singapore.[1]The MUIS Distinguished Visitors Programme is an annual series organized by the Islamic Council which brings together eminent statesmen, international leaders and thinkers. The title of her lecture was “The Role of Religion in the New Millennium.” It is available on the MUIS website.

Armstrong is the author of a number of books on comparative religion. She has written a book on the Buddha (2000), and two books on Muhammad, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet (1991) and Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time(2006). Her approach to world religions has been influenced by the Canadian scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith. She has written numerous articles for The Guardian and other publications. She was an advisor to Bill Moyers’ popular PBS series on religion. However, it was the publication of her highly successful A History of God (1993) that raised her to  prominence. In 2000 she published The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and   Islam.  Her more recent titles include A Short History of Myth (2005); The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions (2006); and The Bible. A Biography(2007). Her latest book The Case for God (2009 is perhaps her most accessible to date.

Armstrong is a Trustee of the British Museum and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Literature.  She has been the recipient of a number of honors and awards, including the TED Conference’s TED Prize in 2008.[2]   The TED Prize is given by an international conference of leading figures in the fields of design, entertainment and technology. Armstrong is currently working with TED on an international project to develop a Charter for Compassion, to which leading thinkers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam have contributed as well as representatives of Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism.  

Alain de Botton in his review of The Case for God in The Observer (2009/07/19) described Armstrong as one of the most intelligent contemporary writers on religion, along with Richard Holloway and Charles Taylor.