Before defining what “freelance monotheist” is, I
would like to tell you a
little about Karen Armstrong’s spiritual adventure. Well, Karen is a former nun
in one of Rome catholic churches in England. In a very young age, 17 years old,
Karen decided to be a nun in the church. In contrast to the mainstream at that
time when Britons especially in Birmingham were extremely secular, they didn’t
care about religion, became materialists and even put money as “god”, Karen
sank her life into religious obedience in 14th September 1962. Seven years later, she surprisingly
took a decision to stop her carrier as a nun and tried to be a common people.
That was because of bad experience at church, stiff regulation, seniority,
and some systems that were not constructive. Moreover, she didn’t find “God” in
every liturgy for seven years. Next, she went to Oxford University and took
English literature as her discipline. Unfortunately, being academician was not
better than being nun; she failed in thesis assignment, fired from campus and
got some diseases including epilepsy.
In short, Karen didn’t believe in god anymore, she
thought that religion is a constitution that has been created by human, and the
idea of god is only the result of neurosis so called neuro-theology,
because she saw billion scientists in her environment that didn’t
believe in god and how a
billion people killed each other in the name of god. Obviously, she
assumed that religions are ignorance and problem. But, her live changed when
she decided to examine the same thing that exists in every single religion. She
observed holy books and she came to the conclusion that every religion pray to one “God”
and teach the good things. Karen finally wrote his work in a book titled “a
history of god”. The work of “a history of God” was the starting point where she climbed
out of the darkness and she returned to be a believer.
Now, Karen believes in God, she feels close to god
more than she did in the past. But now she doesn’t declare
herself as a Muslim, Christian, Jew or other terms for believer, she becomes a
freelance monotheist. “Freelance Monotheist” means a person who believes in god
without bounding on specific religion.
However, God for those who involve in one religion
believed that the only one way to experience the spirituality is by dealing
with religious liturgy. For example Muslims believe that the right path to go is Islam.
Being Muslims automatically people follow what Allah regulates in holy Qur’an
and avoid what Allah forbids to do. As a consequence, Muslim must pray to Allah
through the way prophet Muhammad do and instructed in strong Hadist.
To be frank, I myself don’t have enough knowledge to
criticize the idea of freelance monotheist because it deals with philosophical
understanding, deep contemplation and complex research. Someone must take a
long journey among religious diversity, think out of subjectivity, pray in a
way other believer does in order to experience the ecstasy. But religion has
been part of
my life since I was born in the Islamic traditional environment, so religion
cannot be separated from spirituality, because they come together and construct
my understandings about God, human and universe.
In conclusion, claiming that Karen is right or wrong
is not my authority but her work to make world better where people can live
together and respect each other in what she call ”global community” by inviting people to build mutual
understanding through the “golden rule” should be appreciated.
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