Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

God In America

52 min video embedded:

[.. the Pueblo Indians had a beautiful concept of religion, the gentlemen early on, says
it well .. "all around" them .. "it is our religion" .. they greeted the Franciscan monks and
expected to be treated in kind .. then .. we all know what happened to the trusting Indians ..... ]

Fri 24 Feb 2012, 8pm

Since the days when the Puritan 'city on a hill' beckoned on the horizon of the New World, religious faith and belief have forged America's ideals, moulded its identity and shaped its sense of mission at home and abroad.

Inside the tumultuous 400-year history of the intersection of religion and public life in America.

This six-part series examines how religious dissidents helped shape the American concept of religious liberty and the controversial evolution of that ideal in the nation's courts and political arena; how religious freedom and waves of new immigrants and religious revivals fuelled competition in the religious marketplace; how movements for social reform – from abolition to civil rights – galvanised men and women to put their faith into political action; and how religious faith influenced conflicts from the American Revolution to the Cold War.

Interweaving documentary footage, historical dramatisation and interviews with religious historians, the six-part series is narrated by actor Campbell Scott and includes appearances by actors Michael Emerson (as John Winthrop), Chris Sarandon (as Abraham Lincoln) and Keith David (as Frederick Douglass), among others.

"The American story cannot be fully understood without understanding the country's religious history," says series executive producer Michael Sullivan. "By examining that history, God in America will offer viewers a fresh, revealing and challenging portrait of the country."

As God in America unfolds, it reveals the deep roots of American religious identity in the universal quest for liberty and individualism – ideas that played out in the unlikely political union between Thomas Jefferson and defiant Baptists to oppose the established church in Virginia and that were later embraced by free-wheeling Methodists and maverick Presbyterians.

Catholic and Jewish immigrants battled for religious liberty and expanded its meaning. In their quest for social reform, movements as different as civil rights and the religious right found authority and energy in their religious faith. The fight to define religious liberty fuelled struggles between America's secular and religious cultures on issues from evolution to school prayer, and American individualism and the country's experiment in religious liberty were the engine that made America the most religiously diverse nation on earth.

Episode 1 - A New Adam

The first episode 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 against religious dissenters from within his own ranks. And a new message of spiritual rebirth from evangelical preachers like George Whitefield swept through the American colonies, upending traditional religious authority and kindling a rebellious spirit that converged with the political upheaval of the American Revolution.

Episode 2 - A New Eden

The second episode considers the origins of America's experiment in religious liberty, examining how the unlikely alliance between evangelical Baptists and enlightenment figures such as Thomas Jefferson forged a new concept of religious freedom. In the competitive religious marketplace unleashed by this freedom, upstart denominations raced ahead of traditional faiths and a new wave of religious revivals swept thousands of converts into the evangelical fold and inspired a new gospel of social reform. In a fierce political struggle, Catholic immigrants, led by New York Archbishop John Hughes, challenged Protestant domination of public schools and protested the daily classroom practice of reading from the King James Bible.

Episode 3 - A Nation Reborn

The third episode explores how religion suffused the Civil War. As slavery split the nation in two, Northern abolitionists and Southern slave-holders 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. The president, who previously had put his faith in reason over revelation, embarked on a spiritual journey that transformed his ideas about God and the ultimate meaning of the war.

Episode 4 - A New Light

During the 19th century, the forces of modernity challenged traditional faith and drove a wedge between liberal and conservative believers. Bohemian immigrant Isaac Mayer Wise embraced change and established Reform Judaism in America while his opponents adhered to Old World traditions. In New York, Presbyterian biblical scholar Charles Briggs sought to wed his evangelical faith with modern biblical scholarship, leading to his trial for heresy. In the 1925 Scopes evolution trial, Christian fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan faced off against freethinker Clarence Darrow in a battle between scientific and religious truth.

Episode 5 - Soul of a Nation

Episode 5 explores the post-World War II era, when rising evangelist Billy Graham tried to inspire a religious revival that fused faith with patriotism in a Cold War battle with 'godless communism'. As Americans flocked in record numbers to houses of worship, non-believers and religious minorities appealed to the US Supreme Court to test the constitutionality of religious expression in public schools. And civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a modern-day prophet, calling upon the nation to honour both biblical teachings and the founders' democratic ideals of equal justice.

Episode 6 - Of God and Caesar

The final episode of God in America brings the series into the present day, exploring the religious and political aspirations of conservative evangelicals' moral crusade over divisive social issues like abortion and gay marriage. Their embrace of presidential politics would end in disappointment and questions about the mixing of religion and politics.

Across America, the religious marketplace expanded as new waves of immigrants from Asia, the Middle East and Latin America made the United States the most religiously diverse nation on earth. In the 2008 presidential election, the re-emergence of a religious voice in the Democratic Party brought the country to a new plateau in its struggle to reconcile faith with politics. God in America closes with reflections on the role of faith in the public life of the country, from the ongoing quest for religious liberty to the enduring idea of America as the 'city on a hill' envisioned by the Puritans nearly 400 years ago.

http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/program/883/

Shucks .. missed the first episode last Friday .. oh well .. time really does slip by .. shucks .. did anyone here see it?

God in America, PBS: US TV review

PBS’s extraordinary six-hour documentary God in America is a dense, information-packed
production spanning 400 years of the New World’s efforts to create its own brands of religion.



By Rachel Ray, in Washington

10:55PM BST 08 Oct 2010

3 Comments [.. the 3rd one ..]

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God_Thor_Incarnate

10/09/2010 10:56 AM

Garghhh, more sky pixie worshipping nonsense.

Leave it out, please
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[sheeezzz, c'mon, Thor, you had your day .. i'm looking forward to it .. :)]

God in America, a co-production of the award winning shows American Experience and FRONTLINE, takes viewers from the mid-1600s to present times in explaining how Americans have always demanded and consequently developed their owns brands of religion and spirituality.

In a New World, religion would have a new face or more accurately, many new faces. Set against the gorgeous vistas of northern New Mexico, God in America opens with the first major struggle against state-enforced religion by the Spanish conquistadors and their priests.

In the mid-1660s, after 10 years of dealing with the Spanish Empire’s presence in North America, the Pueblo Indians became wary of the more than 40 Catholic churches that had been built on their land. The Indian “conversions” the priests so proudly reported were no more than polite observations or add-ons to the Pueblos who had been guided by their own spiritual traditions for more than 1000 years.

And when 45 of their leaders were jailed in Santa Fe as sorcerers, followed by the hanging of three and the public flogging of one, they decided to act. The 1680 Pueblo revolt left one-half of the priests murdered and within 10 days the Spaniards had fled.

Back in the eastern colony of Massachusetts, where Puritans sought to "purify" the Anglican Church, renegade Anne Hutchinson refused to accept the edicts of social conformity handed down by powerful Governor Winthrop. Even though she and her family were banished from the colony, her ideas about a one-to-one relationship with God that required no intermediaries or rituals were spreading like wildfire.

In 1740, Oxford student George Whitfield hit America’s preaching circuit with his rebirthing philosophy that would become known among Protestants as being born again. Protestant denominations flourished in America and Thomas Jefferson’s influence brought about the First Amendment to the US Constitution which abolished preferential government funding for any religion, now referred to as the separation of church and state.

In America, the individual’s power over his or her own religious experience signaled the end of the old aristocratic order and the rise of the voice of conscience against the state.

Using dramatic re-enactments, interviews with prominent religion scholars, documentary footage, and photographs, God in America goes on to look at how religious belief shaped the origins of the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln’s actions. Later on, Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise advocated a new reform Judaism that adopted ancient traditions to modern American culture. The battle over modernity peaked in the 1925 trial of John Scopes, a Dayton, Tennessee teacher arrested for teaching evolution.

In the post-war era, at the same time the Supreme Court handed down controversial decisions that required government actions to have secular purposes, new religious energy fueled the Cold War fight against “Godless Communism” and energised the Civil Rights movement.

The series ends with an exploration of the political aspirations of the religious right and the re-emergence of a religious voice in the Democratic Party.

God in America is a meticulous, thoughtful, and provocative production. It is a must-see for anyone who wants to understand the motivations and actions behind America’s relentless quest for religious freedom that began almost 400 years ago.

God in America airs October 11-13 at 9 p.m. ET on PBS.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8052281/God-in-America-PBS-US-TV-review.html