From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: One day the Gestapo hanged a child.  … The child who, Wiesel recalled, had the face of a “sad-eyed angel,” was silent, lividly pale and almost calm as he ascended the gallows.  Behind Wiesel, one of the other prisoners asked: “Where […]

From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: To make such human, historical phenomena as Christian “Family Values,” “Islam,” or “the Holy Land” the focus of religious devotion is a new form of idolatry.  This type of belligerent righteousness has been a constant temptation to monotheists throughout the long […]

From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Today many people in the West would be dismayed if a leading theologian suggested that God was in some profound sense a product of the imagination.  Yet it should be obvious that the imagination is the chief religious faculty.  It has […]

From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Once the Bible begins to be interpreted literally instead of symbolically, the idea of its God becomes impossible.  To imagine a deity who is literally responsible for everything that happens on earth involves impossible contradictions.  The “God” of the Bible ceases […]

From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Although it is clearly culturally conditioned, this kind of “ascent” seems an incontrovertible fact of life.  However we choose to interpret it, people all over the world and in all phases of history have had this type of contemplative experience.  Monotheists […]

From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Yahweh began as a highly personalized deity with passionate human likes and dislikes. Later he became a symbol of transcendence, whose thoughts were not our thoughts and whose ways soared above our own as the heavens tower above the earth. The […]

From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: [T]he Christianity of the Angles, the Saxons, and the Franks was rudimentary.  They were aggressive and martial people and they wanted an aggressive religion… Soldier saints like St. George, St. Mercury and St. Demetrius figured more than God in their piety […]