The Freelance Monotheism of Karen Armstrong
For those of you not familiar with this radio program, it's one I highly recommend. It deals with questions about comparative religion, contemporary social and political issues, all in a compassionate, open-minded intellectual way.
I first read Karen Armstrong about 8 years ago in college... The History of God: The 4,000 year quest of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. It introduced me to the compelling world of comparative religious history... how much alike we are in the search for God and meaning in the world... and how much we can learn from each other. Here's some excerpts from the recent interview that I found to be wonderful (extracted from the weekly newsletter of the show):
On becoming a student and scholar of religions:
"Early on I had a great gift. I was reading a very scholarly and wonderful book about Islam in three volumes, and I lit upon a footnote that explained in very dry academic language what a religious historian was supposed to do. He — I think they assumed it would be a he rather than a she — was supposed to practice what was called 'the science of compassion.' Now science is used here in the sense of scientia, 'knowledge.' So it was a knowledge acquired by compassion. And compassion, of course, doesn't mean feeling sorry for people, pitying people. Compassion, com-pas-sion, means 'to feel with.'
"And in this little footnote, the author said that you must not lead the discussion of a religious idea or a theology or a personality such as Muhammad without being able to find out what lay at the root of this, not to dismiss these ideas out of hand from a superior viewpoint of post-enlightenment, Western rationalism, but to divest yourself of that rationalistic outlook and enter the minds of these mystics and sages and poets and keep on asking, 'But why? But why?' And filling up with scholarly knowledge the background until you come to the point where you can imagine yourself feeling the same, or believing the same as them until basically the intellectual idea learns to reverberate with you personally."
On the essence of religious experience and ideas:
Theology, I think, should be like poetry, a work like the Qur'an.
"Now a poet spends a great deal of time listening to his unconscious and slowly calling up a poem word by word, phrase by phrase, until something beautiful is brought forth, we hope, into the world, that changes people's perceptions. And we respond to a poem emotionally. And I think we should take as great a care when we write our theology as we would if we were writing such a poem, instead of just trotting out an orthodox formula, or an orthodox definition of God, or a catechism answer. So that when people listen to a theological idea, they [should] feel as touched as when they read a great poem by, say, Milton or Dante.
"And we should take as great care with our religious rituals as if we were putting on a great performance at a theater, because that ritual was originally designed to lead us to transcendence, instead of just sort of mechanically going through motions of our various rites and ceremonies. [We should be] trying to make them into something absolutely beautiful and inspiring, because I do see religion as a kind of art form."
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