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...

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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: In this program, philosopher and theologian Conor Cunningham argues that only extremist viewpoints-Creationism and ultra-Darwinism-make evolution and religion mutually exclusive. Experts from across the gamut of opinions frame the debate and trace its origins, including Father Gregory Tatum of the Ecole Biblique; University of Oxford historian Pietro Corsi; Darwin scholar Nick Spencer, author...

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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010

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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...

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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....

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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005

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Summary: In the 21st-century landscape of shopping malls and skyscrapers, capitalism appears irreligious-but beneath its secular veneer lie theological principles born in the 1500s. This program examines the rise of the Protestant work ethic and the religious foundations of Western industry; it also reveals a Protestant consciousness at the heart of social activism and the opposition to extreme...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009

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Summary: Those who wish to pursue a life of pure reason are often attracted to the movement known as secular humanism. This program explores the movement by presenting several humanist inquiries, including: How and why do religions develop? Can morality exist without religion? Is there a humanist narrative that can take the place of myth? How can public policy become truly rational? The film features...

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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

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Summary: No religions have proved more combative than Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, despite the fact that they share the same deity-or perhaps because of it. In this program, renowned biblical scholar and religious historian Othmar Keel sheds light on topics such as the volatile historical and cultural contexts in which the Old Testament originated; the protracted struggle of monotheism for...

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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007

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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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Laozi

Summary: Most people know Ursula K. Le Guin for her extraordinary science fiction and fantasy writing. Fewer know just how pervasive Taoist themes are to so much of her work. And in Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, we are treated to Le Guin's unique take on Taoist philosophy's founding classic. Reflecting more than forty years of Le Guin's personal study and contemplation, her rendering of the text is a brilliant...

Format: text

Publisher / Publication Date: Shambhala 2019

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Summary: Although Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to a church door, his action sparked a political upheaval as well as a religious one. This program examines the rise of the Protestant movement in Europe and its link to revolution, civil war, and modern incarnations of radical and conservative politics. Studying the theology Luther crafted at Wartburg Castle and his confrontations with papal and...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009

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Summary: Beginning at the Gargas Caves, France-humankind's first house of worship?-this program seeks to understand why our ancestors began to believe in one or more divinities and how, through the ages, different cultures have expressed that belief. Great mysteries such as death and nature are considered as factors in the evolution of religious faith as Robert Winston, archaeologist Jean Clottes, The...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

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Summary: This program summarizes and distills what we have learned about the great religions in this series. Smith's lifetime of experience and study helps him to go beyond the differences between each tradition. He shows how the cultivation of virtues valued by all religions-intelligence, compassion, creativity, truth, beauty, and goodness-can lead to transcendence. In the many faces of God he has...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007

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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: 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: In works such as Someone to Run With and Death as a Way of Life, David Grossman has movingly depicted the realities of living in the Holy Land. Bill Moyers converses with Grossman about his most recent work, The Lion's Honey-a retelling of the Biblical story of Samson with parallels to today's Middle East conflicts and the mind-set of those who inflict violence in the name of faith.

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

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Summary: It is not a religion in itself-rather, Hinduism is more of a family of faiths that focus on God in different ways. Nevertheless, the majority of Hindu traditions share the same colorful festivals, reverence for sacred animals, and scriptural use of Sanskrit. This program sifts through perspectives from four practitioners of the Hindu faith who discuss both unified and divergent ways in which...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

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Summary: By 500 A.D., Christianity had begun its rise as the dominant religion of Europe. Skeptical philosophical beliefs were effectively silenced, and the Roman Catholic Church was on its way to becoming a power that would endure unchallenged for a millennium.until the Scientific Revolution. But as Jonathan Miller points out in this program, schisms within the Church-subsequently exacerbated by Deists...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007

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Summary: One of North America's most prominent practitioners of Buddhist monasticism, Ani Pema Chodron has written extensively on Buddhist principles in the context of everyday living. Bill Moyers talks with the author of When Things Fall Apart, The Places That Scare You, and No Time to Lose about ideas and teachings that have special significance for western Buddhists-and will resonate with...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

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