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: 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: 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: In this TEDTalk, philosopher and scientist Daniel Dennett calls for religion - all religion - to be taught in schools so it can be addressed as a natural phenomenon. He then takes on Rick Warren's book The Purpose Driven Life, disputing its claim that to be moral, one must deny evolution. Dennett sums up his recent work with this statement: "You might say it's about the reverse engineering of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: If God exists, why is there so much suffering? What happens after you die? Does God hear our prayers? In this program a panel of teens pose the hard questions to a Catholic pilgrimage leader, a Sufi Muslim practitioner, and an Anglican minister as together they examine the relationship between the physical world and the spiritual. The group find areas of agreement between Christianity and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: For more than a millennium Western civilization looked to the Church for answers to questions about life’s meaning. But for many, acceptance of ecclesiastical doctrine wasn’t enough. This program traces the roots of modern religious skepticism back over 400 years to examine both the unraveling and the endurance of Christian belief. It explores challenges to established theologies in the ideas...
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: 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...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: It is a philosophy that seeks to replace religion with rites of passage based on compassion and rationality. Despite its overarching goals, Humanism divides into several groups-from hedonism to secularism. This program delineates viewpoints from five articulate humanist proponents who, through thoughtful explanations, evoke the multifaceted landscape of Humanist thought. Participants include...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: What do modern art, a symphony, and a documentary film have in common? They all require aesthetic considerations. This program presents the ideas of key figures in the shaping and understanding of aesthetics-from Plato, Francis Hutcheson, and Kant to Leon Battista Alberti, Stendhal, and Tolstoy-and addresses pivotal writings, including Aristotle's Poetics and Morris Weitz's "The Role of Theory...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: In a religious context, America's motto E Pluribus Unum-Out of Many, One-means not a merging of belief systems, but a joining together of such systems into an interfaith community that honors doctrinal differences while promoting mutual understanding through dialogue and collaboration. This program surveys America's increasingly pluralistic spiritual landscape via The Pluralism Project at...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: The separation of church and state represents one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy. While some contend that the United States needs to return to its roots as a "Christian nation," others point out that the Founding Fathers crafted a system specifically designed to guard against any form of state-sanctioned religion. After reviewing the substance of the debates that took...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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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...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: The Five Pillars of Islam-belief in one God, praying five times a day, fasting, giving to charity, and going on pilgrimage-guide all Muslims. But cultural and political influences have shaped the observance of the faith in various ways from country to country. This program explores the beliefs of four Islamic leaders and scholars who communicate penetrating insights and observations on the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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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: 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: Huston Smith has devoted his life to study of the ineffable experience. This program opens windows of understanding into the renowned mystic philosopher's unceasing quest for truth about the ultimate nature of reality as he shares the story of his early decades: growing up in China in a missionary family, preparation for a career in the ministry, the "aha!" moment in college that redirected him...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: This program explores three major areas of philosophical inquiry into religion: religious epistemology, or the exploration of the rational grounds for religious beliefs and, in particular, the existence of God; the metaphysics of religion, which inquires into the nature of God; and theodicy, which examines the philosophical implications of the presence of evil in the world. Commentary by Alvin...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Does science explain the world, or does it simply describe it? Can science ever be truly objective? What is the boundary between science and non-science? Does nature have laws? This program seeks to answer questions such as these through the insights of Princeton University's Daniel Garber; Hilary Putnam, of Harvard University; and Barry Loewer, of Rutgers University. Ranging from the Physics...
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: 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: At the end of the 19th century, socialism was an idyllic dream among intellectuals. Sixty years later it had become a reality for much of the world. This program describes the expansion of socialist and Communist rule into Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and western Europe-showing the weaknesses that developed in the practice of socialism even as it reached the apex of its popularity....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Transitioning from ancient Jewish narratives to the emergence of the Jesus story, this program follows theologian Robert Beckford as he studies the authorship of the Gospels and subsequent New Testament books. Beckford's itinerary stretches from Jerusalem and Bethlehem to the Turkish ruins of Ephesus, then westward to Rome, London, and Bible-Belt America-underscoring the textual evolution that...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007