Before
defining what “freelance monotheist” is, I would like to tell you 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 in the 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 what a billion scientists in her environment that didn’t believe
in god, on the contrary what a billion people who 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 entitled “a history of god”. The work of “a history of
God” was the starting point she climbed out of the darkness and she returned to
be a believer.
Now, Karen believes in God, she feels
closed to god more than she did in the past. But now she doesn’t declare
herself as a Muslim, Christian, and 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 instruct 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 living in 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 building mutual understanding through the
“golden rule” should be appreciated. 
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