Films with: Atkins, Charles

Church and state

Second in a ten-part series which addresses the emergence of worldviews that integrate scientific inquiry and spiritual insights while exploring the convergence of a wide range of religious traditions.This episode looks at the separation of church and state, which 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. Participants include Boston University's Stephen Prothero; Diana Eck, of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University; Robert Bellah, of U.C. Berkeley; retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong ; Princeton University's Robert Wuthnow; and the Reverend Peter Gomes, of the Memorial Church of Harvard University.

DVD 7524

Ground of being approaches to conceptualizing God /

Speaking primarily from the Christian point of view, this program explores the personal and therefore subjective nature of conceptualizing God, the broadening of religious discourse in the area of the more abstract aspects of numinous experience, and the perceived necessity of getting beyond both a fundamentalist reaction to the evolving theological discourse and a secular humanist dismissal of all religion in order to establish a sense of humankind's spiritual place in the 21st-century cosmos.

DVD 7498