The Lost Art of Scripture

Description

‘An amazingly wide-ranging book, showing that the world’s religious texts can be a force for good today’ – John Barton, author of A History of the Bible

In our increasingly secular world, holy texts are at best seen as irrelevant, and at worst as an excuse to incite violence, hatred and division. The Quran, the Torah and the Bible are often employed selectively to underwrite arbitrary and subjective views. They are believed to be divinely ordained; they are claimed to contain eternal truths.

But as Karen Armstrong, a world authority on religious affairs, shows in this fascinating journey through millennia of history, this narrow reading of scripture is a relatively recent phenomenon. Armstrong argues that only by rediscovering an open engagement with their holy texts will the world’s religions be able to curtail arrogance and intolerance. And if scripture is used to engage with the world in more meaningful and compassionate ways, we will find that it still has a great deal to teach us.

Reviews

“Karen Armstrong has written an amazingly wide-ranging book, showing that the world’s religious texts can be a force for good today, rather than a cause of conflict. The scale of her knowledge never ceases to astonish”– John Barton, author of A History of the Bible

“A triumph… Karen Armstrong is one of our great commentators on the sacred. In this book she explores the sacred texts with a scholar’s eye and an illuminating clarity suggesting how much their wisdom and lasting power are still needed today” – Salley Vickers

“The Lost Art of Scripture] takes us on a glorious journey… Armstrong is the most articulate and generous-hearted exegete of religion writing in English at the present time” – AN Wilson, New Statesman

“Rich and wide-ranging… [The Lost Art of Scripture] makes a fascinating read… a treasure chest of social and religious history. Armstrong’s lucid prose makes her many-stranded story remarkably straightforward to follow… a learned and stimulating book” – Teresa Morgan, Tablet

“A remarkable book by a remarkable writer… the author’s mission is urgent in the light of the uses to which the world’s scriptures are sometimes put” – Rev Dr Neil Richardson, Methodist Recorder

“The Lost Art of Scripture… exhibits [Armstrong’s] well-known and admired characteristics as a writer: an ability to be both authoritative on all the major faiths…a reasoned insistence that religion today is misunderstood, as much by the religious as by their critics; and a passionate appeal to our fractious and fractured world to embrace religion’s core message…compassion and respect for others”– Peter Stanford, Sunday Times

“Magisterial … a dazzling accomplishment, a reflection of an encyclopaedic knowledge of comparative religion and of a wisdom about spirituality in the human species” – New York Times Book Review

“Exhilarating, challenging and curiously comforting… [The Lost Art of Scripture has] been written not only with intellectual rigour and an accessible turn of phrase, but also with love” – Lucy Winkett, Prospect

“One of our best living writers on religion” – Financial Times 

“Magisterial… A dazzling accomplishment” – New York Times

“Glorious… Armstrong is the most articulate and generous-hearted exegete of religion writing in English at the present time” – A.N. Wilson, New Statesman

Author Biography

Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous other books on religious affairs-including A History of God, The Battle for God, Holy War, Islam, Buddha, and The Great Transformation-and two memoirs, Through the Narrow Gate and The Spiral Staircase. Her work has been translated into forty-five languages. She has addressed members of the U.S. Congress on three occasions; 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 and is currently working with TED on a major international project to launch and propagate a Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public and crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, to be signed in the fall of 2009 by a thousand religious and secular leaders. She lives in London.