Karen Armstrong is a religion scholar and the author of numerous books on religious affairs. She has addressed members of the U.S. Congress; lectured to policy makers at the U.S. State Department; participated in the World Economic Forum in New York, Jordan, and Davos; addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and New York; is increasingly invited to speak in Muslim countries; and is now an ambassador for the UN Alliance of Civilizations. In February 2008 she was awarded the TED Prize, which she used to finance the launch and propagation of the Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public and crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.
Karen Armstrong
Fri, 11/12/2010 - 00:29
Topic(s):
Odyssey Members in ActionAuthor and scholar Karen Armstrong talks about the centrality of compassion to faith, and its challenge to us -- not a single "good deed for the day" but a 24/7 commitment to others. Armstrong, winner of the TED Prize, was interviewed by Odyssey Networks at The Charter for Compassion launch November 12, 2009, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
In awarding Karen Armstrong the TED Prize, the TED nonprofit (whose name originated from the words Technology, Entertainment, Design) wrote:
Karen Armstrong is one of the most provocative, original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world.
Armstrong is a former Roman Catholic nun who left a British convent to pursue a degree in modern literature at Oxford. In 1982 she wrote a book about her seven years in the convent, Through the Narrow Gate, that angered and challenged Catholics worldwide; her book The Spiral Staircase discusses her subsequent spiritual awakening after leaving the convent, when she began to develop her iconoclastic take on the great monotheistic religions.
She has written more than 20 books around the ideas of what Islam, Judaism and Christianity have in common, and around their effect on world events, including A History of God, Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today’s World, and The Bible: A Biography.
Her meditations on personal faith and religion (she calls herself a freelance monotheist) spark discussion — especially her take on fundamentalism, which she sees in a historical context, as an outgrowth of modern culture.
In the post-9/11 world, she is a powerful voice for ecumenical understanding.
