Summary: From birth to death, in every country on the globe, for tens of thousands of years, the rhythm of human life has been accentuated by the practice of religious ritual. In this program adherents of three different faiths share their understanding of some common rites of passage: a rabbi explains the elements of a Jewish wedding, including some that date back to the book of Genesis; a minister...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: A self-proclaimed "freelance monotheist," Karen Armstrong is on a mission to bring compassion, the heart of religion, as she sees it, back into modern life. In this edition of the Journal, Bill Moyers sits down with Armstrong for a nuanced discussion of her Charter for Compassion initiative, a global call for all people-religious and non-religious alike-to apply the Golden Rule in their...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Martin Luther's most effective strike against the Church may have been his decision to marry. This program shows how Luther's radical choice and the Protestant movements of the 16th and 17th centuries transformed Western attitudes toward sex, love, marriage, gender roles, and family life. Viewers will learn about the contributions of several historical figures, including Thomas Cranmer's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Now identified mainly with Fundamentalism, the Evangelical movement that began in 18th-century Britain was an exuberant expression of Protestantism that quickly spread across the globe. What made it so compelling that slaves and slave-owners, the poor and the powerful alike, embraced it in America, Africa, and Asia? This program studies the cultural, theological, and political framework of the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: It has been called a gateway to eternal salvation and an incitement to holy war. It has unified peoples yet divided nations. Religion: would society be better off without it? That is the question in this Oxford Union-style debate as panelists make their case. Speakers for the motion underscore that rampant interfaith and intrafaith violence vastly outweighs any social benefits of religion and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: On July 16, 1054, a dramatic event occurred during the worship service in the Church of Hagia Sophia: a papal delegation delivered a document excommunicating the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the Patriarch promptly excommunicated the Pope in return. Known as The Great Schism, the act divided Eastern from Western Catholic Christianity. Going on location to the most venerated sites in the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: An opaque veil, gloved hands, and long black flowing garments-these are among the images that Westerners most commonly associate with Iranian women. In this program, National Geographic photographer Alexandra Avakian sets out to dispel long-held stereotypes as she ventures behind the veils of women in Iran, ultimately discovering a tough and spirited female community. The New York City native...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Raised with parental expectations that she become a Christian missionary, the teenaged Jeanette Winterson embarked instead upon a defiant journey of self-discovery-sparked by the books she smuggled into her bedroom. In this conversation with Bill Moyers, the author of Sexing the Cherry, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and Lighthousekeeping talks about Weight, her new version of the story of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program examines religious guidelines designed to regulate and add meaning to the sex lives of married couples of the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh faiths. Topics include when intercourse is permissible and when it should be avoided, whether it is sinful for men and women to use contraception, what type of genital contact is allowable, whether marital sex for non-procreative...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: In the Martin Amis novel London Fields, a cynical and disjointed society hurtles toward doomsday; in Amis's follow-up book, Time's Arrow, the narrative follows an absurdly reversed course-backward from the Holocaust to purity and innocence. Bill Moyers talks with Martin Amis about humanity's present condition and the ongoing conflict between fundamentalism and secular values.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: In this program, Jonathan Miller visits Ground Zero to consider the religious implications of 9/11. "Events such as this bring one face-to-face with the consequences, both social and political, of belief in the divine, the supernatural, the holy, the sacred, and the transcendent-ideas that I, like many others, find alien, uncongenial, and, to be frank, almost unintelligible," says Miller. He...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Hour three explores how religion suffused the Civil War. As slavery split the nation in two, Northern abolitionists and Southern slaveholders turned to the Bible to support their cause. Former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass condemned Christianity for sanctioning slavery. In the White House, Abraham Lincoln struggled to make sense of the war’s carnage and the death of his young son....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: The first hour of God in America explores the origins of America’s unique religious landscape - how the New World challenged and changed the faiths the first European settlers brought with them. In New Mexico, the spiritual rituals of the Pueblo Indians collided with the Catholic faith of Franciscan missionaries, ending in a bloody revolt. In New England, Puritan leader John Winthrop faced off...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: This program brings viewers to exceptional sacred sites throughout the Near East and Asia to trace the first expansion of Christianity from Jerusalem - which was not to Rome with Paul, but to Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Armenia, and Ethiopia. After the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD followers of Jesus fled to Asia Minor, establishing a thriving ecclesiastical community at least 100 years before...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Since the 1965 Immigration Act, the United States has emerged as the world's most religiously diverse country. The stories, perspectives, interviews, and images featured in this program culled from Religion & Ethics Newsweekly offer an opportunity for informed dialogue about encountering these religions, both ancient and new, and appreciating their complexity. In-depth segments filmed at...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: In 2005, a handful of Danish cartoons sparked a worldwide debate over freedom of expression-and the freedom to express religious outrage. Was a violent Islamic backlash against caricatures of the prophet Mohammed justified? Can democracy and fundamentalism coexist in the global community? This program travels to Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Qatar, and Turkey, as well as to France and Denmark, in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Is there a crisis of childhood caused by the consumer society and the mass media? "There is impatience in our culture for letting children be children," says Archbishop Rowan Williams, who cites lack of in-depth conversations between parents and children as the main cause for their vulnerability to advertising tactics. In this intriguing program, Archbishop Williams argues with children's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: During her spiritually charged Catholic childhood, Mary Gordon became fixated on the idea of martyrdom-and vestiges of that obsession remain in her life and work. Bill Moyers talks with the author of Final Payments, The Company of Women, and Pearl about the concept of martyrdom and its connection to rage and despair. Gordon also explores the negative implications of what she sees as two...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: An atmospheric physicist and a leading expert on global warming, Sir John Houghton speaks as a scientist and evangelical Christian. The author of Does God Play Dice? A Look at the Story of the Universe and The Search for God: Can Science Help? talks with Bill Moyers, explaining his belief that science and religion, rather than dividing society, can both work towards improving the human condition.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Fundamentalism may be on the rise, but the American interfaith movement is also alive and well. This Emmy-nominated documentary follows seven women-all leaders in Chicago's Christian, Jewish, or Muslim communities-who have gathered to share views, express fears and concerns about the post-9/11 world, and build bridges of peace between their faiths. Participants include the Rev. Willie T....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Diane Benscoter spent five years as a "Moonie" - an active member of Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. Now, having put the cult behind her, she searches for ways to combat radical ideologies and their potentially deadly consequences. In this TEDTalk, she shares an insider's view of the religious extremist's mentality and proposes a new way to think about today's most troubling...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: The Reformation was a period of rebellion, upheaval, and war - all sparked by one man whose revolt against church authority led to the creation of Protestantism and ultimately, to a reinvigoration of the Catholic faith. This program travels to churches in Europe, Britain, and Mexico to explore the key figures, philosophies, and movements of the Protestant Reformation. It looks at the issues...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: At the core of the Protestant Revolution was a new emphasis on exploring and questioning the natural world. This program shows how a religious upheaval that began a half-millennium ago led to the art, literature, and science of today's Western society. The film makes the case that a humanistic approach to art first grew out of the Protestant drive to remove images from European churches in the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: The capacity for awe in the face of the transcendent: that is how Paul Woodruff, one of America's foremost interpreters of Plato and other venerable thinkers of ancient Greece, defines reverence. In this program, Bill Moyers and the author of Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue examine this crucial yet frequently misunderstood and misapplied concept and its implications for the world today....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005