In our modern world, religion has come to have very specific connotations - most of which are frustrating at best and appalling at their worst. Fundamentalism and self-righteousness the world over has wrested the power of religion as an art of challenge and mystery and co-opted it into a weapon of violence and oppression. As a self-professed “mystic”, I often can see peoples’ eyes glaze over as I mention my faith. I suddenly gain the image of a crystal healer, an anti-vaxxer or a New Age chakra-aligning hippie. Putting me in the “woo-woo camp”, as it were, has always been preferable to placing me in a fundamentalist camp - but there is space in between new age ethereality and tribalism. In this book, Karen Armstrong traces the long history of faith, and argues that contrary to popular opinion, we need to engage with the mysteries of faith now more than ever.

If you have read much of her other works, you will find quite a bit of intersection in this that may read as redundancy - much of the later chapters discusses literalism and fundamentalism, which is more deeply discussed in The Battle for God . Regardless, the work was deeply moving in many places, and provided insights both into the variability of human encounters with the numinous, and also the surprising consistency within varying traditions. Armstrong argues that the core of religious experience is expanding our empathy through understanding our one-ness with the world and with our fellow man, and encountering the spark of impossible wonder that life carries. The wrestling, struggling, existential dance of pressing up against this wonder is not bound by creed and dogma - far from it. In fact, scripture has always transformed to respond to the problems of the day; it is only recently that they have been seen as inert. That dynamism and deep yearning for unity is what needs to be cultivated as we increasingly see the effects of isolated, myopic thought - both secular and religious - manifested in the world around us. 3 stars for the material, and another star for the extensive and fascinating bibliography I will doubtless be pulling from for a long time to come.