Philosophy & Religion

Are there more similarities than differences between the five major religions of the world? Where do interfaith comparisons lead? Should students concentrate instead on the unique aspects of each religion? This program features interviews with clergy and laypeople deeply committed to either Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism. Viewers will encounter the powerful qualities of each faith and the reasons why believers look to them for guidance, comfort, and hope. Specific topics include the search for a spiritual path; the foundations of faith; life after death; religious experience; good and evil; the spirit in daily life; and belief in one God. A Discovery Channel Production. (60 minutes)

On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, 1,800 delegates gathered at the Congress of World Religions in Montreal to spend a week in ecumenical dialogue. This program captures the wisdom of attendees who, speaking from the podium or offstage, address topics ranging from widespread religious fanaticism, the destabilizing action/reaction spiral of violence, and the misuse of religion for political ends to defusing alienation through acceptance, fighting the radical poverty that polarizes communities, and nurturing understanding through greater awareness of the oneness of humankind. Participants include Congress President Arvind Sharma; Rabbi David Rosen; religious mythologist Karen Armstrong; the University of Montreal's Patrice Brodeur; George Washington University's Seyyed Hossein Nasr; Yifa, recipient of the UN's Outstanding Women in Buddhism Award; Harvard Divinity School's Harvey Cox; Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, founder of the Art of Living Foundation; Deepak Chopra, president of the Alliance for a New Humanity; Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi; and Huston Smith, philosopher of world religions. (30 minutes)

When it comes to public policy on when, if ever, it is acceptable to take a human life, Americans have shown strongly mixed feelings. This timely two-part series seeks to understand this ambivalence and to point the way toward an ethic of life that all Americans can live with. Guests include representatives of the Institute for Integrated Social Analysis, the Family Life/Respect Life Office of the Archdiocese of New York, the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding, and others. 2-part series, 29 minutes each.

While some belief systems view life on Earth as cyclical, Christianity sees it as linear, with an ending distinguished by cataclysm, resurrection, and divine judgment. This program maps out the spread of the New Testament concept of apocalypse from the days of Paul through the 20th century and addresses the impact of apocalypticism on history. The genesis of monotheism and attempts by Thomas More and others to envision and even implement utopian societies are presented as well. (44 minutes)

If religion is viewed as a finger pointing at the moon," then preoccupation with that finger-rites, rituals, rules-can actually be an obstacle to spiritual experience. This program considers the idea that religion is a means to sanctity, not an end in itself; the importance, in a time of rising global threat levels, of dissolving strictly sectarian conceptions of God; the profound unanimity of the religious quest; approaches to connecting with one's own inherent divinity; and the influence of personal and cultural mythology, as defined by Joseph Campbell. Participants include retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong; James Forbes Jr., of New York City's Riverside Church; author and futurist Peter Russell; religious mythologist Karen Armstrong; Sister Joan Chittister; Diana Eck, of The Pluralism Project at Harvard University; Harvard Divinity School's Harvey Cox; Robert Bellah, of U. C. Berkeley; Rabbi David Rosen; Huston Smith, philosopher of world religions; and Buddhist scholar and translator B. Alan Wallace. (28 minutes)"

When it comes to situations involving life and death, the United States is strongly polarized. Liberals commonly support the legality of abortion as a private matter of personal choice but condemn the death penalty as inhumane, while conservatives often support execution as a form of justice but denounce abortion as legalized murder. How did these points of view become a part of the ideologies of the left and the right? This program traces the development of political stances on life-and-death issues, exposing the lack of a consistent life ethic in mainstream American politics. (29 minutes)

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 contemplated, Huston Smith sees no conflict. He believes them all to be windows on the same transcendent truths. All wisdom traditions ultimately make the same claim, that everything emanates from an absolute perfection. The DVD version of this program also includes a special video introduction by Mr. Moyers. (56 minutes)

This program examines the structure and major tenets of these four eastern religious philosophies. The role of the spiritual master in Hinduism is defined, and the belief in transcendental power and a multitude of deities is explained. The history of Buddhism is traced from the 6th century BC. Reincarnation and nonviolence are discussed as major beliefs. Chinese Taoism, especially its stress on the equilibrium of forces, is examined. Shintoism, a Japanese religion, is presented as a form of animism in which nature is composed of a multitude of deities: the kami. Shintoism's coexistence in Japan with Buddhism is explained as follows: Shintoism is in charge of birth and marriage; Buddhism is in charge of death." (54 minutes)"

Traditional monotheistic religions are characterized by a hierarchical model in which a paternalistic deity, assisted by ascended saints and angelic beings, oversees the unfolding drama of life on Earth. This program questions the suitability of that model to the challenges of the 21st century as it presents the idea that humankind should step forward to accept greater responsibility for its own actions while becoming more attuned to the transpersonal creative energies at play in the universe. Participants include Sister Joan Chittister; retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong; James Forbes Jr., of New York City's Riverside Church; Boston University's Stephen Prothero; the Reverend Scotty McLennan, Dean for Religious Life at Stanford University; and B. Alan Wallace, of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies. (28 minutes)

Many Latinos in the American Southwest wear amulets and perform certain practices different from their fellow Latino Catholics-and are discovering only now, to their great amazement, that they are descended from Jews who chose conversion rather than death at the time of the great expulsion from Spain in 1492. This program looks at remnants of what was once the great Jewish civilization in Spain: the artifacts, which were Christianized or destroyed, and the people, many of whom continued to practice elements of the religion and folklore of Judaism and for most of whom the memory of Jewishness has long since been extinguished. (50 minutes)

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 in Aesthetics." Columbia University's Arthur Danto and Princeton University's Alexander Nehamas offer keen insights into the interactions between artist, artwork, and audience as they have evolved over the centuries. (51 minutes)"

Part one of this program features the sacking of Rome and introduces Augustine of Hippo and his The City of God, which examines the Church's uneasy relationship with human frailty and worldliness, as piety became identified with self-denial and celibacy was viewed as central to the pursuit of perfection. Part two tracks the spread of Christianity to Ireland and its establishment in Britain and northern Europe by Celtic monks, who had formulated the concept of penance and the culture of pilgrimage. However, it was not the Christianity of Saint Patrick, but of Rome, that succeeded in dominating Britain. (48 minutes)

The path Steven Rockefeller has taken on his intellectual and spiritual journey would very likely surprise his great-grandfather, the tycoon John D. Rockefeller, Sr. A convert to Buddhism, Steven Rockefeller has been teaching Religion at Middlebury College in Vermont for almost 20 years. Centering on what he calls the democratic reconstruction of religion," Rockefeller has steeped himself in the writings of Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Dewey. In this program with Bill Moyers, Steven Rockefeller discusses his idea that the time has come to reconsider America as a "spiritual democracy." "The greatest single moral failing of many religious traditions," says Rockefeller, "is their inability to teach their followers to respect people of a different tradition the same way they respect people of their own tradition." (30 minutes)"

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 Harvard University; the Interfaith Center at the Presidio; Inter-Faith Ministries, in Wichita; and the United Religions Initiative, in San Francisco. Participants include Diana Eck, Director of The Pluralism Project; the Reverend Paul Chaffee, Director of the Interfaith Center at the Presidio; the Reverend Sam Muyskens, Executive Director of Inter-Faith Ministries; religious mythologist Karen Armstrong; Rabbi David Rosen; and George Washington University's Seyyed Hossein Nasr. (28 minutes)

Bryan Magee-world-renowned author and professor-and Sir Isaiah Berlin, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and biographer of Karl Marx, answer fundamental questions such as What is philosophy?" "Why does it matter?" and "Why should anybody be interested in it today?" A BBC Production. (46 minutes)"