Emphasizing religious commonality and denouncing fundamentalism, theologian Karen Armstrong spoke Wednesday night to a near-capacity ground floor in the Union Theater at the Memorial Union.
Armstrong's speech focused largely on religion's increasing importance in secular society, especially in the United States, which she cited as the second-most religious country in the world after India.
The Wisconsin Union Directorate's Distinguished Lecture Series sponsored the speech.
Author of international bestseller \The History of God"" and a slew of other religious non-fiction books about the Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths, Armstrong promoted patience and understanding as the keys to both cooperation among the faiths and successful foreign policy.
""If you are asking people to bake a cake and you show them a picture of a fabulous, fluffy, victorious fudge ... and the people don't have only fresh eggs, but only powdered eggs, and they don't have flour, but only rice, and they don't have a proper oven, they're not going to make the lovely cake in the cookbook,"" Armstrong said.
""Different kinds of ingredients [and] different kinds of conditions are going into the modern cakes of some of these countries,"" she added.
She also singularly denounced fundamentalism, extending her metaphor by explaining that fundamentalists only baked cakes with ingredients they were familiar with.
""Every single fundamentalist movement that I have studied-in Judaism, in Islam, in Christianity- is rooted in profound fear,"" she said. ""Every one of these movements is convinced that modern secular society wants to wipe out religion.""
Audience members reacted favorably to Armstrong's speech. In addition to conducting a brief question and answer session after the speech, Armstrong attended a reception afterward and signed books.
""I thought it was terrific that she posed so much understanding, [describing] what other religions think, as opposed to what we hear,"" said Drew Mosley, a sixth-year UW pharmacy student.
UW-Madison sophomore and DLS member Jonathan Atwell, who welcomed the audience, agreed.
""Her international perspective was important even without her religious perspective. She has a deep understanding of how various religions interact, and how they're related explains why we find ourselves at this point in history,"" he said.
