At a swift glance, the title of Karen Armstrong’s new book (the subtitle is in very small print) might mislead the casual observer into thinking that she has written a case for the existence of God; that she has unearthed some “proof” unaccountably overlooked by Anselm and Aquinas, or has triumphantly restated the Argument from Design in a way that will smite the enemies of religion as surely as Yahweh’s people smote the Midianites, the Canaanites and those unfortunately named Philistines.
Armstrong has done something far cleverer and more subtle than that, however. The alternative would have brought her on to a battlefield of her opponents’ choosing, the one on which Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris have pitched their tents. Those three, she writes, “insist that fundamentalism constitutes the essence and core of all religion”. In fact, she argues, it is “a defiantly unorthodox form of faith that frequently misrepresents the tradition it is trying to defend”.
Content from our partners
