Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence
Karen Armstrong
It is the most persistent myth of our time: religion is the cause of all violence. But history suggests otherwise. Karen Armstrong, former Roman Catholic nun and one of our foremost scholars of religion, speaks out to disprove the link between religion and bloodshed.
* Religion is as old as humanity: Fields of Blood goes back to the Stone Age hunter-gatherers and traces religion through the centuries, from medieval crusaders to modern-day jihadists.
* The West today has a warped concept of religion: we regard faith as a personal and private matter, but for most of history faith has informed people’s entire outlook on life, and often been inseparable from politics.
* Humans undoubtedly have a natural propensity for aggression: the founders of the largest religions – Jesus, Buddha, the rabbis of early Judaism, the prophet Muhammad – aimed to curb violence and build a more peaceful and just society, but with our growing greed for money and wealth came collective violence and warfare.
* With the arrival of the modern all-powerful, secular state humanity’s destructive potential has begun to spiral out of control. Is humanity on the brink of destroying itself?
Fields of Blood is a celebration of the ancient religious ideas and movements that have promoted peace and reconciliation across millennia of civilization.
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About Karen Armstrong
Reviews for Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence
Ferdinand Mount
Spectator
Karen Armstrong is one of our most perceptive and thoughtful writers on religion... Consistently surprising and illuminating, Fields of Blood should be read by anyone interested in understanding the interaction of religion with violence in the modern world
John Gray
New Statesman
A fascinating and very accessible book... Fields of Blood is a must read for those who want to work for justice and peace.
Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies, University of Oxford Mind-boggling… we feel we are in the hands of an expert. Armstrong is doing us a great service
David Shariatmadari
Guardian
Elegant and powerful, erudite and accurate...dazzling in its breadth and historical detail
Washington Post
Riveting… Armstrong is one of our most erudite expositors of religion… a rare mix of cool-headed scholarship and impassioned concern
Sally Vickers
Observer
A powerful and important work of scholarship, synthesis and argument... It is also a remarkably pleasurable read
Peter Marshall
Literary Review
A magisterial debunking of the secularist tale
Nigel Baggar
Standpoint
A welcome counterblast... Excellent
Jonathan Wright
BBC History Magazine
Her view of religion is broad and deep, identifying it both with a universal need for meaning, and with the human desire for community
Ian Bell
Herald