凯伦·阿姆斯特朗博士是一位英国作家，对比较宗教和伊斯兰教很感兴趣。她写了许多关于宗教问题的书籍，包括：上帝的历史、上帝的战斗、圣战、伊斯兰教：简史、大转变、和别的。她很快将出版另一本英文书，标题为：血场：宗教与暴力史。我还写了两个故事：穿过窄门和螺旋楼梯。她的作品已被翻译成五十多种语言。
凯伦博士曾三次向美国国会议员发表演讲，为美国国务院和国防部的政策制定者讲课，参加世界经济论坛，是联合国不同文明联盟大使，并多次在美国发表演讲穆斯林国家，尤其是巴基斯坦、马来西亚、新加坡、土耳其和印度尼西亚。
2007 年，埃及政府授予她一枚勋章，以表彰她在爱资哈尔的赞助下为伊斯兰教服务所做的努力，她是第一位获得该勋章的外国人。 2009 年，她获得了富兰克林和埃莉诺·罗斯福研究所颁发的宗教自由四项自由奖章，以及 2009 年蒂宾根大学的 Leopold Lukas 博士奖。2013 年，她是第一个获得由英国学院表彰她在发展世界文化之间的关系方面所做的努力。2014 年亚特兰大纪念社区建设者甘地/金/池田奖。她是大英博物馆馆长和皇家文学院院士。
2008 年 2 月，她因对《慈悲宪章》(www.charterforcompassion.org) 的远见而获得 TED 奖，该奖项由来自世界六大信仰的一群杰出思想家编写，旨在将慈悲的思维和同情心恢复到道德上。和政治生活。慈悲宪章正在世界各地的许多国家、城市、学校和宗教团体中创造性地和现实地实施。
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions pdf 凯伦阿姆斯特朗
In the ninth century BCE, the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity to the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Later generations further developed these initial insights, but we have never grown beyond them. Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for example, were all secondary flowerings of the original Israelite vision. Now, in The Great Transformation, Karen Armstrong reveals how the sages of this pivotal “Axial Age” can speak clearly and helpfully to the violence and desperation that we experience in our own times. Armstrong traces the development of the Axial Age chronologically, examining the contributions of such figures as the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the mystics of the Upanishads, Mencius, and Euripides. All of the Axial Age faiths began in principled and visceral recoil from the unprecedented violence of their time. Despite some differences of emphasis, there was a remarkable consensus in their call for an abandonment of selfishness and a spirituality of compassion. With regard to dealing with fear, despair, hatred, rage, and violence, the Axial sages gave their people and give us, Armstrong says, two important pieces of advice: first there must be personal responsibility and self-criticism, and it must be followed by practical, effective action. In her introduction and concluding chapter, Armstrong urges us to consider how these spiritualities challenge the way we are religious today. In our various institutions, we sometimes seem to be attempting to create exactly the kind of religion that Axial sages and prophets had hoped to eliminate. We often equate faith with doctrinal conformity, but the traditions of the Axial Age were not about dogma. All insisted on the primacy of compassion even in the midst of suffering. In each Axial Age case, a disciplined revulsion from violence and hatred proved to be the major catalyst of spiritual change.