Axial Opinions of Karen Armstrong

May 15, 2007

Over the weekend Emily and I picked up Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. The decision to read Armstrong stemmed from Emily listening to her in a radio interview on NPR and my own general guilt about not knowing anything about her except that she is popular among people who browse for books in the religion section. We began to read this book.. but I am not sure how long I will really be able to do this. (Emily thinks my reading style changes once I get annoyed at an author's opinions.. thereby, I think, lessening her pleasure in listening.)

This book looks at the period known as the Axial Age in which many of the world's great religious traditions came into being, ca. 400 BC. My interest is in her introduction to the book.. and in making clear the ways in which she is not an Old Roads scholar.

We can start with a look at the creation of a religious Golden Age:

But how can the sages of the Axial Age, who lived in such different circumstances, speak to our current condition? Why should we look to Confucius or the Buddha for help? Surely a study of this distant period can only be an exercise in spiritual archaeology, when what we need is to create a more innovative faith that reflects the realities of our own world. Yet, in fact, we have never surpassed the insights of the Axial Age. In times of spiritual and social crisis, men and women have constantly turned back to this period for guidance. [xvi-xvii]

Armstrong sets up a false choices: dead spiritual archaeology or modern religious innovation. Her answer to that false choice appears to be a return to the living faith of the Axial Age, whose insights "have never been surpassed". So if we were to graph this on a historical chart we would see a great spiritual peak in the 4th century and then subsequent religious actions that fall away from that Axial Age ideal. I am in agreement that something interesting happens in the world at this period.. a certain abstraction of religious concepts that allowed for the creation of larger religious blocs. But that does not mean that this time period should be set up as some kind of canon for religious people.

What is so wrong with "spiritual archaeology"? I find this a great phrase for the approach to religion that is being developed here at Old Roads. The word "archaeology" is helpful because it implies that the study of religion should bring with it material aspects of culture. The phrase also pushes us to establish some distance between ourselves and earlier cultures. It will never be immediately clear how the beliefs and practices of earlier cultures can be affirmed and applied in a much later time. That difficulty is never apparent in the writing of Armstrong.

A couple of pages later Armstrong provides another helpful quotation:

The consensus of the Axial Age is an eloquent testimony to the unanimity of the spiritual quest of the human race. The Axial peoples all found that the compassionate ethic worked. All the great traditions that were created at this time are in agreement about the supreme importance of charity and benevolence, and this tells us something important about our humanity. [xix]

Old Roads takes the opposite approach to religion. Our fascination is in the differences.. and the way a spiritual metaphor such as "quest" does not apply to all traditions. People conceive of themselves and their lives in ways that are quite different and efforts to say that we all share a common ethical or spiritual approach to life are wastes of time.. because they erase what is valuable in those traditions.

So why is Armstrong so popular among those that browse the religion section? She affirms what we want to believe about the world. Namely, that religions and their adherents are nice and that the same wisdom is to be found in all traditions.