Karen Arrmstrong' gives an interview with the SF Chronicle 4/10/06 on her new book "The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions," which details the evolution of the major religious traditions in the Axial Age between 900 and 200 B.C., a time of upheaval when four different philosophies took shape -- Confucianism and Taoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in the Middle East and philosophical rationalism in Greece.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2006/04/10/findrelig.DTL

FINDING MY RELIGION: World-renowned religious scholar Karen Armstrong talks about today's religious conflicts and how the past can help

When people want to make sense of religion, they often turn to Karen Armstrong for answers. The 61-year-old former Roman Catholic nun, who is recognized as one of the world's great religious historians, has spent the last 17 years deconstructing the major faiths in scholarly but accessible books like "A History of God," "Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths" and "The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism."

You've often written about the fact that the world's major religions share a great deal in common, despite their differences. Why then do you think that Christianity, Judaism and Islam -- to name three of them -- have become so polarized?

There are several layers to that question. One of them is that this has less to do with religion than politics. For centuries, the Muslims were able to co-exist perfectly well with Jews and Christians in the Middle East. Spain is another obvious example of this co-existence. So it's not that there is an inherent tension between the faiths.

What we are seeing now in the Middle East and elsewhere is the result of politics. It's the result of war becoming endemic in certain regions. An originally secular conflict -- the Arab-Israeli conflict -- festers. It goes on and on, and religion gets sucked into the whole mess. When violence becomes imbedded in a region, then this affects everything. It affects your dreams, your fantasies and relationships, and your religion becomes violent, too.

But as you readily point out, all of the major religions are based on compassion and nonviolence. That's how they began. So what happened?

Of course, compassion is not always a popular virtue. Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity. And that becomes dangerous. Then you get a clash of warring egos.

You're referring to statements about Muslims?

Yes. I hear these things said about Islam being a wicked and violent religion -- and from people who are not necessarily on the Christian right. I'm embarrassed by those comments because it shows such ignorance.

In recent years, we've seen the ascendance of the religious right in this country. What do you make of that trend?

Well, it's just part of a worldwide trend, actually.

In more and more countries in the world, religion is coming to the fore. In the middle of the 20th century, it was generally assumed that secularism was the coming ideology and that religion would never again play a major role in world events. But it has. And Europe, which is still very adverse to religion, is beginning to look endearingly old-fashioned in its militant secularism.

More and more people, I think, are getting weary. Secularism has not fulfilled its promises. You know, in its short history it's had some catastrophes: Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein. This shows that secularism can be just as lethal as a religiously based tyranny.

I think these faiths -- for want of a better word -- these fundamentalist movements are all, as you say, rooted in fear. But there is also now a growing sense of triumph and power that they can make an impact on the political scene.

Do you think the blue state/red state divide exists in the way that it's often portrayed in the media?

Well, the media plays sort of a mischievous role in all of this. But it is true that -- not just in the United States but throughout the Middle East, and in Israel, too -- you have a huge gulf that exists between the liberal secularist, on the one hand, and the religious conservative on the other.

You have got a clash of two opposing notions of what is sacred. And that's very worrying in a society where you have a divide where people can't really speak to one another.

What's the alternative?

I think we've got to decode the fundamentalist imagery so that we learn to read these theologies. We need to see the fear and anxiety that lie behind a theology such as the rapture.

I mean, if you took the rapture scenario to a psychiatrist and said: "I'm having these dreams of the imminent destruction of the world, with huge battles and genocide at the end of time, vast massacres and the final reign of horror and the tribulation," a psychiatrist would say, "This is something deeply wrong here."

The fact that in the richest nation and the most powerful nation in the world, so many people adhere to this extraordinary fear-filled fantasy shows that there are all kinds of anxieties and this inchoate distress that we can't safely ignore.