Karen Armstrong Religion Analysis

Karen Armstrong, a former Roman Catholic sister, was sure that the West was simply pretending to be tolerant and liberal towards other cultures and religions and yet at the same time were extremely ignorant. So, Armstrong went out to help solve misunderstandings of other cultures and religions. Most recently, she has claimed that religion is not simply a belief. Rather, she views religion as a specific type of art. More specifically, Armstrong compared religion to poetry, which, like religion, must be focused on and studied for lengthy periods to be properly understood. In other words, Armstrong conveyed that religion is rooted in traditions and rituals. It is through traditions and rituals that the religion grows and forms, yet also changes …show more content…
For example, Armstrong references shamanism, which has to do with being connected to nature and protecting Earth. A Shaman, in any given society, has animal guardians and talks to “beasts that are revered as messengers of higher powers” (4). In this society, hunting is a religious ritual in which hunters are strained by the idea of slaughtering animals. To alleviate this uneasiness, they implement guidelines and rules. For instance, they have a myth that a God, which they call the Animal Master, often sends “flocks from the lower world to be” hunted because the “hunters promised to perform the rites that will give them posthumous life” (4). Here, Armstrong would argue that it is the religious ritual the hunters perform that hones in on their religion. They are not religious because they believe in the Animal God, but rather they are religious because of their traditions and rituals that makes them continue to believe in the Animal God. Furthermore, a tribe in the Kalahari Desert called the Bushmen rely on small weapons because of the lack of wood in the area. To rectify this, the Bushmen put poison on their weapons, specifically arrows, that kill the animals very slowly. The Bushmen stay with their prey, “crying when it cries and participating symbolically in its death throes” (4). This ritual is a promise they make, as they feel troubled when killing another living being. Here it is important to point out the importance of animal sacrifice, which can be considered a central idea of many religions in the premodern world. The idea of animal sacrifice was important because it was a ritual that honored an animal that was sacrificed for the well-being of humankind. Armstrong continues to point out that from the very beginning of time, it seemed that religion was based in the understanding “of the tragic fact that life depends upon the