Overview

A nuanced exploration of the part religion plays in human life, past and present, from one of the foremost commentators on religion at work today. Moving from the Paleolithic Age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the great lengths to which humankind has gone in order to experience a sacred reality that it has called God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. Focusing especially on Christianity but including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Chinese spirituality, Armstrong examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time, when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. Why has God become incredible? Why is it that atheists and theists alike now think and speak about God in a way that deviates so profoundly from the thinking of our ancestors? Answering these questions with the same depth of knowledge and profound insight that have marked all of her acclaimed books, Armstrong makes clear how the changing face of the world has necessarily changed the importance of religion at both the societal and the individual level. And she makes a powerful, convincing argument for drawing on the insights of the past in order to build a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age.

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Reviews

Praise for Karen Armstrong's The Case for God <br> The time is ripe for a book like The Case for God, which wraps a rebuke to the more militant sort of atheism in an engaging survey of Western religious thought. <br>--Ross Douthat, The New York Times Book Review <br> Armstrong's argument is prescient, for it reflects the most important shifts occurring in the religious landscape. <br>--Lisa Miller, Newsweek <br> A thoughtful explanation, well-sourced and impressively rooted in the writings of theologians, philosophers, scholars and religious figures through the ages. . . . If Armstrong is out to bring respect to both reason and faith in the search of that transcendent meaning, she has done well. <br>--Repps Hudson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch <br> The Case for God is Armstrong's most concise and practical-minded book yet: a historical survey of hwo rather than what we believe, where we lost the knack of religion and what we need to do to get it back. <br>--Mic

Praise for Karen Armstrong's The Case for God The time is ripe for a book like The Case for God, which wraps a rebuke to the more militant sort of atheism in an engaging survey of Western religious thought. --Ross Douthat, The New York Times Book Review Armstrong's argument is prescient, for it reflects the most important shifts occurring in the religious landscape. --Lisa Miller, Newsweek A thoughtful explanation, well-sourced and impressively rooted in the writings of theologians, philosophers, scholars and religious figures through the ages. . . . If Armstrong is out to bring respect to both reason and faith in the search of that transcendent meaning, she has done well. --Repps Hudson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch The Case for God is Armstrong's most concise and practical-minded book yet: a historical survey of hwo rather than what we believe, where we lost the knack of religion and what we need to do to get it back. --Michael Brunton, Ode In over a dozen books [Armstrong] has delivered something people badly want: a way to acknowledge that faith can be taken seriously as a response to deep human yearnings without needing to subscribe to the formality of organized belief. -- The Economist The Case for God should be read slowly, and savored. --Karen R. Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer Armstrong's thesis is provocative, and her book illuminates a side of Christianity that has recently been overshadowed. --Margaret Quamme, Columbus Dispatch Armstrong is ambitious. The Case for God is an entire semester at college packed into a single book--a voluminous, dizzying intellectual history. . . . Reading The Case for God, I felt smarter. . . . A stimulating, hopeful work. After I finished it, I felt inspired, I stopped, and I looked up at the stars again. And I wondered what could be. --Susan Jane Gilman, NPR's All Things Considered Karen Arm

Author Information

"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."

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