Karen Armstrong has 9 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 37 ratings. The most-rated is Muhammad.
Muhammad
Summary
From the best-selling author of Islam: A Short History comes an important addition to the Eminent Lives book series. A former Roman Catholic nun and winner of a Muslim Public Affairs Council Media Award, Karen Armstrong shows how Muhammad's life can teach us a great deal about our world. More is known about Muhammad than any other major religion founder, yet he remains mysterious. Born in 570 CE, he spent six decades spreading his message of peace and compassion. Yet for many people today, their knowledge of Muhammad is rife with misconceptions and misinformation, often fueled by bigotry. Armstrong sets the record straight, shattering the myth that Islam is a religion of cruelty and violence. One of the world's leading religious experts, Armstrong is a deeply respected voice in the continuous struggle for interfaith understanding. Her cogent assessment of Muhammad's genius and insightful summary of his authentic beliefs are priceless in this modern world troubled by religious extremism and intolerance.
©2006 Karen Armstrong (P)2007 RECORDED BOOKS
The Future of God
Summary
What does tomorrow hold for the way we worship God? In The Future of God, Karen Armstrong guides us through a bewildering landscape, over many centuries and civilizations, to show how our concept of God has evolved with the passage of time. Armstrong suggests ways that prayer, imagination, and silence can help everyone on the spiritual path today enter the mystery within our depths and recognize God in ourselves and others. The Future of God is an inspiring event that takes us to the past, present, and future of our deepest spiritual yearnings.
©2009 Karen Armstrong (P)2009 Karen Armstrong
Buddha
Summary
This rich, timely, and highly original portrait of the Buddha explores both the archetypal religious icon and Buddha the man. In lucid and compelling prose, Armstrong brings to life the Buddha's quest, from his renunciation of his privileged life to the discovery of a truth that he believed would utterly transform human beings and enable them to live at peace in the midst of life's suffering. Buddha also expands to focus and meditate on the culture and history of the time, as well as the Buddha's place in the spiritual history of humanity, and the special relevance of his teachings to our own society as we again face a crisis of faith.
©2001 Karen Armstrong (P)2001 Books on Tape, Inc.
The Lost Art of Scripture
Summary
Today, the Quran is used by some to justify war and acts of terrorism, the Torah to deny Palestinians the right to live in the Land of Israel, and the Bible to condemn homosexuality and contraception. The significance of Scripture may not be immediately obvious in our secular world, but its misunderstanding is perhaps the root cause of many of today's controversies. In this timely and important audiobook, one of the most trusted and admired writers on the world of faith examines the meaning of Scripture. The sacred texts have been co-opted by fundamentalists, who insist that they must be taken literally, and by others who interpret Scripture to bolster their own prejudices. These texts are seen to prescribe ethical norms and codes of behavior that are divinely ordained: They are believed to contain eternal truths. But as Karen Armstrong shows in this chronicle of the development and significance of major religions, such a narrow, peculiar reading of Scripture is a relatively recent, modern phenomenon. For most of their history, the world's religious traditions have regarded these texts as tools that enable the individual to connect with the divine, to experience a different level of consciousness, and to help them engage with the world in more meaningful and compassionate ways. At a time of intolerance and mutual incomprehension, The Lost Art of Scripture shines fresh light on the world's major religions to help us build bridges between faiths and rediscover a creative and spiritual engagement with holy texts.
©2019 Karen Armstrong (P)2019 Random House Audio
The Bible
Summary
As the work at the heart of Christianity, the Bible is the spiritual guide for one out of every three people in the world. It is also the world's most widely distributed book, having been translated into over 2,000 languages, as well as the world's best-selling book, year after year. But the Bible is a complex work with a complicated and obscure history. Made up of 66 "books" written by various authors and divided into two testaments, its contents have changed over the centuries. The Bible has been transformed by translation and, through interpretation, has developed manifold meanings to various religions, denominations, and sects. In this seminal account, acclaimed historian Karen Armstrong discusses the conception, gestation, and life of history's most powerful book. Armstrong analyzes the social and political situation in which oral history turned into written scripture, how this all-pervasive scripture was collected into one work, and how it became accepted as Christianity's sacred text. She explores how scripture came to be read for information and how, in the 19th century, historical criticism of the Bible caused greater fear than Darwinism. The Bible: A Biography is a brilliant, captivating book, crucial in an age of declining faith and rising fundamentalism.
©2007 Karen Armstrong (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.
St. Paul: The Apostle We Love to Hate
Summary
St. Paul is known throughout the world as the first Christian writer, authoring fourteen of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament. But as Karen Armstrong demonstrates in St. Paul: The Apostle We Love to Hate, he also exerted a more significant influence on the spread of Christianity throughout the world than any other figure in history. It was Paul who established the first Christian churches in Europe and Asia in the first century, Paul who transformed a minor sect into the largest religion produced by Western civilization, and Paul who advanced the revolutionary idea that Christ could serve as a model for the possibility of transcendence. While we know little about some aspects of the life of St. Paul - his upbringing, the details of his death - his dramatic vision of God on the road to Damascus is one of the most powerful stories in the history of Christianity, and the life that followed forever changed the course of history.
©2015 Karen Armstrong. (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Islam
Summary
Best-selling author and renowned religious scholar Karen Armstrong presents a concise and articulate history of Islam, the world's fastest-growing faith. Beginning with the Prophet Muhammad's flight from Medina and concluding with an examination of modern Islamic practices and concerns, Armstrong delivers an unbiased overview. She contends that no religion is more feared and misunderstood by the Western world as Islam, and firmly challenges the notion that these two civilizations are on a collision course.
©2002 Karen Armstrong
Jerusalem
Summary
"Splendid... Eminently sane and patient... Essential reading for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike." (The Washington Post) Venerated for millennia by three faiths, torn by irreconcilable conflict, conquered, rebuilt, and mourned for again and again, Jerusalem is a sacred city whose very sacredness has engendered terrible tragedy. In this fascinating volume, Karen Armstrong, author of the highly praised A History of God, traces the history of how Jews, Christians, and Muslims have all laid claim to Jerusalem as their holy place, and how three radically different concepts of holiness have shaped and scarred the city for thousands of years. Armstrong unfolds a complex story of spiritual upheaval and political transformation - from King David's capital to an administrative outpost of the Roman Empire, from the cosmopolitan city sanctified by Christ to the spiritual center conquered and glorified by Muslims, from the gleaming prize of European Crusaders to the bullet-ridden symbol of the present-day Arab-Israeli conflict. Written with grace and clarity, the product of years of meticulous research, Jerusalem combines the pageant of history with the profundity of searching spiritual analysis. Like Karen Armstrong's A History of God, Jerusalem is a book for the ages. "The best serious, accessible history of the most spiritually important city in the world." (The Baltimore Sun) "A work of impressive sweep and grandeur." (Los Angeles Times Book Review)
©1997 Karen Armstrong (P)2020 Random House Audio
The Battle for God
Summary
In the late 20th century, fundamentalism has emerged as one of the most powerful forces at work in the world, contesting the dominance of modern secular values and threatening peace and harmony around the globe. Yet it remains incomprehensible to a large number of people. In The Battle for God, Karen Armstrong brilliantly and sympathetically shows us how and why fundamentalist groups came into existence and what they yearn to accomplish. We see the West in the 16th century beginning to create an entirely new kind of civilization, which brought in its wake change in every aspect of life - often painful and violent, even if liberating. Armstrong argues that one of the things that changed most was religion. People could no longer think about or experience the divine in the same way; they had to develop new forms of faith to fit their new circumstances. Armstrong characterizes fundamentalism as one of these new ways of being religious that have emerged in every major faith tradition. Focusing on Protestant fundamentalism in the United States, Jewish fundamentalism in Israel, and Muslim fundamentalism in Egypt and Iran, she examines the ways in which these movements, while not monolithic, have each sprung from a dread of modernity - often in response to assault (sometimes unwitting, sometimes intentional) by the mainstream society. Armstrong sees fundamentalist groups as complex, innovative, and modern - rather than as throwbacks to the past - but contends that they have failed in religious terms. Maintaining that fundamentalism often exists in symbiotic relationship with an aggressive modernity, each impelling the other on to greater excess, she suggests compassion as a way to defuse what is now an intensifying conflict.
©2000 Karen Armstrong (P)2020 Random House Audio