“World-Healing Wisdom: Karen Armstrong’s Vision for a Compassionate Future” by Nadia Colburn

The author of more than 20 books, Armstrong has been called “arguably the most lucid, wide-ranging and consistently interesting religion writer today.” Her perspective has been shaped by her life. At the age of 17, she entered a Catholic convent. Six years later, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, she left, wanting nothing more to do with religion. She spent the next 13 years absorbed in secular life, first as an academic and then as a secondary school literature teacher in England. Her first book, Through the Narrow Gate: A Memoir of Spiritual Discovery, was first published in 1981 and chronicles her difficult time in the nunnery and her departure from it. The book launched her as a popular critic of established religion.

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