Religion

by Karen Armstrong

‘Because "God" is infinite, nobody can have the last word’

What is this thing, religion, supposedly the cause of bloodshed and warring for centuries? What is ‘God’ and do we need ‘Him’ in our modern world? Karen Armstrong looks again at these questions in a refreshing and startling way. God is not to be ‘believed in’ as a child believes in Santa Claus; religion is not a story to be proven true or false, but a discipline akin to music or art that answers a deeply human need, and can teach us to discover new capacities of mind and heart.

Selected from A Case for God, Fields of Blood and The Lost Art of Scripture

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human

Also in the Vintage Minis 'Great Ideas' series:
Art by Simon Schama
Science by Ian McEwan

Genres: Nonfiction, Religion

128 pages, Paperback

Published October 3, 2019

About the author

Karen Armstrong is a British author and commentator of Irish Catholic descent known for her books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic religious sister, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and mystical Christian faith. She attended St Anne's College, Oxford, while in the convent and graduated in English. She left the convent in 1969. Her work focuses on commonalities of the major religions, such as the importance of compassion and the Golden Rule.
Armstrong received the US$100,000 TED Prize in February 2008. She used that occasion to call for the creation of a Charter for Compassion, which was unveiled the following year.

Reviews

[Hestia Istiviani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read in English but this review is in Bahasa Indonesia

"Religion is a practical discipline that teaches us to discover new capacities of mind and heart. It is no use magisterially weighing up the teachings of religion to judge their truth or falsehood, before embarking on a religious way of life."

Aku besar dengan melihat ayahku membaca buku-buku Karen Armstrong. Masih lekat diingatanku betapa ayahku setiap sore bisa menyicil membaca Perang Suci, salah satu buku Armstrong yang diterjemahkan ke dalam bahasa Indonesia. Sayangnya, apa yang aku lihat belum cukup banyak memotivasiku untuk segera membaca tulisan Armstrong. Bukunya yang tebal menjadi salah satu alasan mengapa aku tidak menyegerakan membacanya. Padahal, ayah dan ibuku bilang, Armstrong adalah penutur yang baik, yang berusaha membahas segala sesuatu dari beragam aspek sehingga mengajak pembaca untuk menjadi kritis juga.

Kemarin, ketika akan berangkat ke Ubud untuk perhelatan Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, Religions by Karen Armstrong terpampang menggoda di gerai Periplus Terminal 2 Bandara Soekarno-Hatta. Memanggil-manggil dan meminta untuk aku baca. Dengan harganya yang hanya Rp71.000 saja (dibandingkan dengan harga di Kinokuniya yang Rp77.000), aku tidak pakai pikir panjang. Langsung saja ku bawa ke kasir untuk melegalkan kepemilikan Religions ini.

Beberapa lembar pertama dari Religions ternyata berhasil membawaku tersenyum. Bukan karena tulisannya yang lucu, melainkan bisa menjadi pemantik untuk informasi dan pengetahuan yang telah aku miliki di kepala berkat pembacaan sebelumnya (Sapiens-nya Harari dan Identity-nya Fukuyama). Armstrong membuka pembahasan mengenai agama (atau sesuatu yang manusia yakini) dengan tulisan yang membuat aku ingin berdiskusi dengan ayahku di rumah: agama dan keyakinin bisa dibahas secara sains dan logika.

"Religion was only possible when people were 'stirred by question of their own existance and can hear the claim that the text makes.'"

Religions by Karen Armstrong dibagi menjadi 4 bab yang semuanya merupakan penggalan dari buku-buku Armstrong (A Case for God, Fields of Blood, The Lost Art of Scripture): What is Religion?; God and Man; God and Knowledge; Death of God. Sesuai dengan judul babnya, masing-masing memang fokus. Memudahkan pembaca memahami apa yang menjadi perhatian Armstrong.

Serial Vintage Minis ini sangat bisa dijadikan bahan perkenalan untuk mereka yang masih ragu dengan penulis-penulis ternama.

[Ayu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buku-buku Karen Armstrong sudah lama banget diterjemahkan dan beredar di toko buku, judul-judulnya --menurut saya-- sangat menggugah dan bikin penasaran. Beruntung saya ketemu versi ringkas dari buku-buku Karen Armstrong tersebut.

Buku Religion terbitan Vintage ini merupakan penggalan dari beberapa buku penulis. Berisi 4 bab yang mengisahkan perjalanan dari 'Agama' mulai dari apa itu sesungguhnya agama dan tuhan, bagaimana agama itu lahir dan berkembang di masyarakat, narasi yang cukup panjang antara agama dan pengetahuan, hingga kematian tuhan.

Latar belakang penulis yang pernah menghabiskan tujuh tahun hidunya sebagai Roman Catholic Nun, yang lalu ditinggalkan untuk menjadi seorang full-time writer dan brodcaster membuat buku ini terasa seimbang. Penulis memberikan opini dari segi religius berdasarkan pengalaman tapi juga diiringi dengan fakta yang dihasilkan dari pengamatan dan risetnya.

[melmarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buku ini perkenalan yang sempurna bagi aku yang sudah lama ingin baca tulisan Karen Armstrong, tapi selalu terintimidasi dengan ketebalan buku dan topik yang berat.

[eva · Rating 1 out of 5]

dnf at about halfway through.
i really wanted to enjoy this because it is a topic i am genuinely very interested in, but i just could not get into this. it was incredibly dry and boring, which i suppose is to be expected from nonfiction, but still disappointing.
i feel that i was sucked into these long tangents that didn't go anywhere and were pretty unnecessary or not relevant. i also think the passages selected for this were not well chosen, they didn't feel completely relevant or well curated.
overall, disappointing. maybe i would have liked this more had i picked it up at a different time.

[Tasnim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This delightful edition of the Vintage Mini series rewrote my understanding of and reignited my empathy towards religion.

The book contains clearly explained origins of the words and descriptors associated with religion, including the word 'religion' itself. Who knew that there was so much misunderstanding and misuse of semantics around this concept. The book cites a great deal of historic events that help explain some of the successes, the failures, the controversies and injustice that people of religious and secular/non-religious beliefs have gone through in human history. I tend to shy away from books that touch on this as no matter which side the writer is on, the writing tends to be biased at best, manipulative at worst. Reading the first page before deciding to purchase it, I could see right away that the intentions were sincere. And now that I have finished the book, I can safely say that I think Armstrong's writing is very fair and, indeed as I thought before, immensely sincere.

One message I'm happy to carry with me from reading this book is that religion is as much a coping mechanism that humans have used in the face of life's complexities as much as music, art and science is. Like these three things, it is a truth-seeking medium. And in 'Religion' you will find, as you might expect, that all truth-seeking mediums are extremely interconnected with one another.

[Krizztina]

Co moja skola potrebuje je povinne citanie tohto namiesto Valsskej skoly

[Lucynell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book 30


Religion
Karen Armstrong
2019


5/5


My favourite theologians are not even theologians. One is a novelist and a creative writing teacher, and Karen Armstrong does something close to history of religion. Her approach is precisely what the discussion is missing because our take on religion has devolved to its primitive condition. Our talks about the subject would shock a Middle Ages scholar, Jew, Muslim, or Christian. What Karen Armstrong is doing probably better than anyone else right now is reintroduce ideas and ways of thinking from the past, why and how they all but disappeared, and explain the current trends. This is a small collection of her writings. It's still occasionally difficult but overall much easier to read than her other books, all of which, like this one, are essential reading to anyone with even a passing interest on the subject.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

When we know, choose and love other beings in this world, we have to go outside ourselves; when we try to get beyond all particular beings, we move towards what lies beyond words, concepts and categories. That mystery, which defies description, is God.

[🌶 peppersocks 🧦 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reflections and lessons learned:
“The rules of a board game sound obscure, unnecessarily complicated and dull until you start to play”

I should be religious as three key factors in life for me are empathy, pathos and justice. Also I struggle with the notion of the start of consciousness, so religion should give me a comforting backstory as it were. There seems to be a poetic turn to the scriptures and I love anything with obvious life lessons and moral tales.

...But, it’s a topic that I can see so many flaws in it being a part of modern society and something that’s made me feel enraged on occasions when it’s simply applied as an excuse to not have to tolerate others, so in that basis, I’m out. That anyone could believe that their truth is the only possible truth, without questioning or listening, sums up a lot of the indignation from both sides. This books tackles it all really well though. The justification behind fundamentalism spelled out made me consider it in a different light. This covers the philosophy vs science vs faith and beliefs. I’ve previously dabbled with Dawkins and Hitchens on this subject and whilst I wouldn’t rush out for another book by Armstrong (topic rather than writing style) I feel comforted to know that if I ever did have a crisis of non faith, there would be wise words for me to turn to. In the meantime I can leave people to continue to respect others that do have a sense of all this comforted in their lives

“We learn how to swim or dance without being able to explain precisely how it is done. We recognise a friend’s face without being able to specify exactly what it is that we recognise. Our perception of the external world is not a mechanical, straightforward absorption of data.”

[Marina · Rating 3 out of 5]

** Books 08 - 2020 **

This books is for accomplish Tsundoku Books Challenge 2020

3,2 of 5 stars!

This books divided into four chapters and all of them parts of Karen's Armstrong books such as The Case for God, The Lost Art of Scripture, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence. It is interesting since she talked about what is religion? and the curious one why religion is became dead?

I thought this books is quite difficult to understand since we just know only a glimpse of her books and i remembered had her books with title Sejarah Tuhan: Kisah 4000 Tahun Pencarian Tuhan dalam Agama-Agama Manusia that unfortunately is one of my books collection that got into Jakarta's flood in New year 2020 :'((

Thankyou Kinokuniya Plaza Senayan!

[Alan Nesbit · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't usually write reviews of books but I decided that it was only fair to do so having rated it with one star.

There are aspects of the book - the historical review of how the meaning of religion has changed over time, and how religion has been coopted by fundamentalists to underpin their perspectives in a challenging world - that are genuinely interesting. However, I always had the sense that this was done with the intention validating the author's own beliefs.

I can't avoid the coclusion that this is classic 'god of the gaps' stuff. Towards the end, the author writes 'All faith systems have been at pains to show that the ultimate [...] lies beyond the reach of words and concepts.' She dismisses the experienced religion millions of people over many centuries and many societies as wrong because the very personalisation of deities misses the unknowable essence of 'the ultimate.' Really?! As an athiest, I don't see how 'the ultimate' needs to be the subject of an extension of more traditional religious understanding.

For me, this book is primarily of interest from a socialogical point of view: why do people invest so much time and energy chasing something that 'lies beyond the reach of words and concepts'?

[Carl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful sampler of Karen Armstrong’s intimidatingly lengthier books. In this short book, she writes with clarity and a gracious generality, talking about nuanced and usually jargonous topics in more accessible language. But this book, simply titled “Religion,” actually is “Religion… in the Western World.” It’s a good refresher of the religious history of the Abrahamic ruling class and Global North, but I learned nothing valuable in terms of cross-cultural, Indigenous, or non-Western knowledge. I know I really shouldn’t expect much from a 100-page book, but I’m no longer interested in perusing the longer ones. This was enough Westernized education for a while.

[Elliot Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating exploration of what Religion is, was, and could be in the grander scope of humanity. Mythos v Logos, tales of lost dogma, it has it all. Not what I was expecting when I picked it up, but chuffed with it on a whole.

[Jeremi Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very mixed. Seems like the choice of chapters didn’t help readability, still manages to make some very interesting points though.

[Terence Beney · Rating 5 out of 5]

How wonderful to read a necessary voice in the world.

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mythos and logos, and how one came to dominate the other. And why we need religion.

[Rohan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought provoking insight into the depths of modern theology and the historical events that have led us into our current societal relationship with faith.

[Katarina Nia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ini buku Karen Armstrong pertama yang saya baca. Sebagai seorang pembaca yang berminat pada bidang sosial, agama, dan budaya, Religion menjadi bahan belajar baru bagi saya. Buku ini bakal cocok bagi kalian yang belum yakin untuk baca karya Armstrong yang super tebal. Butuh waktu agak lama bagi saya untuk menyerap intisari yang disampaikan Armstrong. Namun pada intinya, ia ingin menekankan bahwa konsep Tuhan tak dapat dijabarkan secara tepat dan akurat oleh manusia karena pada dasarnya Ia memiliki kemampuan jauh melebihi indra yang kita miliki.

Agama menurut Armstrong adalah tentang "doing" bukan "thinking". Seseorang yang benar-benar teguh dalam mempraktikkan cinta kasih akan menemukan kedamaian dan juga meraih "higher self". Saya teringat pada TED-Talk Armstrong dimana ia berbicara tentang The Golden Rule. Dan menurut saya, poin Armstrong tepat.

Saya juga tertohok oleh tulisannya, terutama ketika ia berbicara bahwa manusia pada saat ini tergila-gila dengan "certainty" (kepastian). Mereka ingin mencari yang pasti dan konsep abstrak pun tak dapat diterima. Pesan Armstrong yang saya simpan dalam hati dan pikiran adalah bahwa kita sebagai manusia harus mencintai "ketidakpastian" dan hal-hal yang tak dapat dijabarkan dalam kata-kata. Terkadang beberapa pengalaman hidup, sensasi tertentu pun tak dapat kita jelaskan. Hal-hal ini seharusnya pun kita cintai, termasuk pertanyaan-pertanyaan tentang Tuhan; apa definisi Tuhan, apakah Tuhan ada, dan pertanyaan lainnya. Ini merupakan pengalaman membaca saya yang menyenangkan karena Armstrong dalam tulisannya tak hanya memberikan opini, namun ia juga memberikan hasil riset dan juga peristiwa sejarah yang menarik untuk ditelusuri.

[Katie Lawlor · Rating 2 out of 5]

“The Holocaust survivor and Nobel prize winner Elie Wiesel believed that God died in Auschwitz. During his first night in the camp, he had watched the black smoke curling into the sky from the crematorium where the bodies of his mother and sister were being consumed. ‘Never shall I forget those moments’, he wrote years later, ‘which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.’ He relates how one day the Gestapo hanged a child with the face of a ‘sad-eyed angel’, who was silent and almost calm as he climbed the gallows. It took the child nearly an hour to die in front of the thousands of spectators who were forced to watch. Behind Wiesel, one of the prisoners muttered: ‘Where is God? Where is He?’ And Wiesel heard a voice within him saying in response: ‘Where is He? Here He is - He is hanging here on this gallows.’”

[Istiningdyah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wrap-Up review