Karen Armstrong , (born November 14, 1944) is an English writer and an Irish Catholic descendant known for his books on comparative religion. As a former Roman Catholic religious sister, he went from a conservative Christian faith to a more liberal and mystical Christian religion. He attended St Anne's College, Oxford, while at a monastery and majored in English. He became disillusioned and abandoned the monastery in 1969. His work focused on the commonalities of the major religions, such as the importance of compassion and the Golden Rule.
Armstrong received a US $ 100,000 TED Prize in February 2008. He used the occasion to call for the creation of a Charter of Compassion , which was inaugurated the following year.
Video Karen Armstrong
Kehidupan awal
Armstrong was born in Wildmoor, Worcestershire, into an Irish ancestral family who, after his birth, moved to Bromsgrove and then to Birmingham. In 1962, at the age of 18, he became a member of the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus, the congregation of teachers, where he remained for seven years. Armstrong claimed he suffered physical and psychological violence at the monastery; according to an article in The Guardian newspaper, "Armstrong was required to kill his flesh with a whip and wear a thorny chains on his arm.When he spoke not in turn, he claimed that he was forced to sew a pedal machine without a needle for two Sunday. "
After he advanced from postulants and novices to a recognized nun, he enrolled at St. Anne's College, Oxford, to study English. Armstrong left his order in 1969 while still a student at Oxford. After graduating with First Greeting, he initiated a DPhil on the Tennyson poet. According to Armstrong, he wrote his dissertation on topics approved by the university committee. However, it fails by an external examiner on the grounds that the topic is inappropriate. Armstrong did not formally protest this decision, nor did he start a new topic but instead ignored the hope of an academic career. He reported that this period in his life was characterized by ill health coming from his lifetime but, at the time, still undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy.
Around this time he was staying with Jenifer and Herbert Hart, caring for their disabled son, as told in his memoir The Spiral Staircase .
Maps Karen Armstrong
Careers
In 1976, Armstrong took an English teaching job at James Allen's Girls' School in Dulwich while working on memoirs of the monastic experience. It was published in 1982 as Through the Narrow Gate for excellent reviews. That year he started a new career as an independent writer and broadcast announcer. In 1984, the British Channel Four commissioned him to write and present a documentary about the life of St. Paul, The First Christian , a project involving a trip to the Holy Land to retrace the steps of the saint. Armstrong describes this visit as a "breakthrough experience" that defies previous assumptions and inspires almost all subsequent work. In the History of God: Quest 4,000 Years of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (1993), he traces the evolution of three major monotheistic traditions from their early beginnings in the Middle East to the present day. and also discuss Hinduism and Buddhism. As a guide of "characters" in his approach, Armstrong acknowledges (in Spiral Staircase and elsewhere) the late Canadian theologian Wilfred Cantwell Smith, a Protestant minister, and Jesuit father Bernard Lonergan. In 1996, he published Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths .
Armstrong The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Tradition (2006) continues the theme discussed in A History of God and examines the emergence and codification of the world's major religions during the so-called Axial Age identified by Karl Jaspers. In the year of its publication, Armstrong was invited to choose eight of his favorite records for BBC Radio's Discs Island Discs program. She has made several appearances on television, including on the Rageh Omaar program The Life of Muhammad. He was an advisor for the PBS documentary that aired, the award-winning Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet (2002), produced by the Unity Productions Foundation.
In 2007, the Singapore Islamic Religious Council invited Armstrong to deliver the MUIS Lecture.
Armstrong is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars and laypeople trying to investigate the historical basics of Christianity. He has written many articles for The Guardian and for other publications. He is a key adviser in the popular PBS Bill Moyers series on religion, has spoken to members of the United States Congress, and is one of three scholars to speak at the first UN session on religion. He is the vice president of the British Epilepsy Association, otherwise known as Epilepsy Action.
Armstrong, who has taught at Leo Baeck College, a rabbinical college and Jewish educational center located in North London, said he was deeply inspired by the Jewish tradition's emphasis on practice and belief: "I say that religion is not about believing things. about what you are doing.This is ethical alchemy.This is about behaving in a way that transforms you, which gives you the impression of holiness and sanctity. "He argues that religious fundamentalism is not only a response to, but a contemporary cultural product and for this reason concludes that "We urgently need to make compassion a force to clear, luminous and dynamic in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination, to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down the boundaries of political, dogmatic, ideological and religius.yang birth from our deep interdependence, compassion is very important g for human relations and humanity are fulfilled.This is the path to enlightenment, and indispensable for a just creation. economy and a peaceful global community. "
Awarded TED $ 100,000 in February 2008, Armstrong called for the compilation of the Charter of Compassion, in the spirit of the Golden Rule, to identify shared moral priorities across religious traditions, to foster a global understanding and a world of peace. It was presented in Washington, D.C. in November 2009. Signatories include Queen Noor Jordan, Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Paul Simon.
Awards
In 1999, Armstrong received the Media Citizens Affairs Media Award.
Armstrong was honored by the New York Open Center in 2004 for his "deep understanding of the religious tradition and its relationship with the divine."
He received his honorary degree as Doctor of Letters by Aston University in 2006.
In May 2008 he was awarded the Awards of Freedom Award by the Roosevelt Institute, one of four medals presented annually to men and women whose achievements have demonstrated a commitment to the Four Freedoms proclaimed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 as important to democracy. : freedom of speech and worship, freedom from desire and from fear. The agency stated that Armstrong has become "a significant voice, seeking common understanding in times of turmoil, confrontation, and violence among religious groups." He quotes "his personal dedication to the ideal that peace can be found in religious understanding, for his teachings of compassion, and his appreciation of the sources of positive spirituality."
She has also received the 2008 TED Prize.
In 2009 he was awarded the Dr. Leopold Lucas by the University of TÃÆ'¼bingen.
Armstrong was awarded the 2011 National Internationalklopedin Prize of Knowledge "for his work that has long provided knowledge to others about the importance of religion for mankind and, in particular, to demonstrate the similarity between religions, through a series of award-winning books and lectures, reaching out as a voice that makes peace at the moment world events are becoming increasingly linked to religion. "
On May 12, 2010, he was appointed Honorary Doctorate by Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario).
On November 30, 2011 (St Andrew's Day), Armstrong was appointed Doctor of Letters by the University of Saint Andrews.
In 2013, he was awarded the Nayef Al-Rodhan Award for a Global Cultural Understanding by the British Academy "in recognition of his work body that has made a significant contribution to understanding the overlapping elements and similarities in different cultures and religions".
On June 3, 2014, he became honorary doctor of honor by McGill University.
In 2017 Armstrong was awarded the Princess of Asturias in recognition of his research on world religions.
Acceptance
Armstrong has been called the "distinguished and prolific historian of religion" by The Washington Post and is described as "the most obvious, broad and consistently interesting religious author of the day". Juan Eduardo Campo, author of the Encyclopedia of World Religions (2009), including Armstrong among a group of scholars who he considered presently "more or less objective" (as opposed to polemic) views of Islam and its origins to the wider public in Europe and North America. After the September 11 attacks, he was in great demand as a lecturer, pleading for interfaith dialogue.
New Atheist Activist Sam Harris criticized Armstrong's "docile" view of Islam, arguing that "Islam, as understood and practiced by a large number of world Muslims, is in conflict with civil society." Harris is also very critical of Armstrong's "religious apology" about Islamic fundamentalism, which accuses him and the like-minded political experts. Armstrong also drew criticism from evangelical and apologetic Christian philosopher William Lane Craig. In Craig's response to the debate between Armstrong and the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins published in the Sept. 12, 2009, issue of The Wall Street Journal, Craig criticized Armstrong's "anti-realist" view of God's claims, especially him. the assertion that "'God' is only a symbol pointing beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence." Craig argues that Armstrong's view of God as indescribable is "self-contradictory" and "logically incoherent". Craig also denied Armstrong's characterization of the early Christian religious outlook.
In 2014, Armstrong commented on Bill Maher's comedic criticism about Islam by telling Salon that this is the kind of talk that leads to concentration camps in Europe.This is the kind of thing that people say about Jews in Europe.1930 and 40s in Europe, Maher responds to Armstrong's comments by saying Vanity Fair, "It is beyond ignorance, the Jews do not oppress anyone, no 5,000 militant Jewish groups do not do study the treatment of women around the world and find that Jews are under it.There are no 10 Jewish states in the world that make gay people die just for being gay.This is ridiculous. "After that Armstrong repeated his criticism of Maher by saying The New York Times, "My problem with some of today's Islamic critics is that their criticisms are inaccurate, fair, or uninformed.I believe they do not mean this, but in the 1930s and 40s in Europe, we learned how dangerous and ultimately damaging this kind of discourse. "
Work
Books
Journal article
See also
- Abrahamic religions
- Interfaith Dialogue
References
External links
- Creator Highlight in Random House
- Profile on islamfortoday.com
- Charter for Compassion, charterforcompassion.org
- Karen Armstrong at IMDb
- An interview with Karen Armstrong about "The Bible", readthespirit.com
- The reason of faith Ode magazine, 2009 .
- Articles by Karen Armstrong at blog 5 Estate, fifthestate.co.uk
- Audio and video
- Karen Armstrong at TED
- My intention: The Charter for Compassion (TED2008)
- Let's revive the Golden Rule (TEDGlobal 2009)
- Audio: Karen Armstrong in a conversation at the BBC World Service discussion program Forum , BBC.co.uk
- Appearance in C-SPAN
- Book Notes an interview with Armstrong on Islam: A Brief History , September 22, 2000.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments