RELIGION: BEYOND BELIEF
Broadcast starting week of December 19, 2006

Forty years ago, Time magazine posed the provocative question "Is God Dead?" on its cover. Today, Time and other leading news magazines and media organizations regularly report on the explosion of interest in religion and spirituality in America, and indeed, throughout the world. Polls show that nine out of ten Americans believe in God and nearly half attend a church, synagogue, mosque or other house of worship each week. What accounts for this new interest in time-honored religious practices and beliefs? And what is it that religion or spirituality provide in the first place?

Harvard University's Diana Eck opens the program with an overview of America's diverse religious landscape, which, though still dominated by Catholic and Protestant varieties of Christianity, now includes growing numbers of Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs and others who are changing the nation's religious fabric, creating new tensions and new opportunities. Producer Anya Bourg provides a report on three hospital chaplains (one Jewish, one Christian, and one Muslim) who find commonality in their work with sick patients, addressing an array of spiritual questions, offering prayers, and sometimes simply being present in the uncertainty of illness. Next, we explore the nature, origins, and social implications of religious traditions with world renowned British scholar (and former Catholic nun) Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God and other bestsellers. Sharing portions of her own fascinating spiritual journey, Armstrong argues that the world's major religions have many teachings in common and can be a means of bringing diverse peoples and cultures together, rather than tearing us apart.

Just months after the religiously motivated terrorist attacks in London, Wake Forest University's Charles Kimball, a Baptist minister specializing in Islam, helps us identify the warning signs and causes of religious extremism. In his book, When Religion Becomes Evil, Kimball argues that each of the world's religions has within it the corrective to religious abuse and manipulation such as led to 9/11 and the London attacks.

Dr. Michael Persinger, a professor of neuroscience in Ontario, Canada, uses a special electric-charged helmet to "recreate" spiritual experiences in the brain's of the people he studies. He argues that spiritual experience can be found---and seen---in the brain, and that, regardless of theological associations, it is good for treating depression and related mental and emotional illnesses. Joining him in the discussion with host Dr. Peter Kramer is Dr. Jerry Larsen, an ordained United Methodist Church minister and long-time student of neuroscience and religion. Larsen, who runs the California-based Center for the Study of Religion and the Brain, says that brain science can and should inform religious people about the nature of their spiritual experiences. In fact, Larsen believes that personal faith can be enhanced by an understanding of the role the brain plays in perceiving the divine.

Lest you think that religion and spirituality are exclusively the domain of the pious, the scholarly, or---heaven forbid---the extreme, the Black-Eyed Peas will remind you that these basic forms of human expression are found everywhere in our culture, including in rap music. The 2005 Grammy Award winners talk with The Infinite Mind's Bill Lichtenstein before a recent concert about spirituality, their desire to counter negative messages in popular music, and the need to build community. They also rap a few verses of their hit Where is the Love! Finally, commentator

John Hockenberry talks about his own experience with faith, growing up in two very different Christian traditions, then falling away from both, and coming back to church with his children as an adult. Now, he says, he distinctly recognizes the pull of religion, but not exactly what it is or where it comes from. That mystery, he believes, is at the heart of the experience itself, ever elusive but also ever present, like the woody smell of the old hymn books or the tall, spiny steeple high above.

Heard this week on The Infinite Mind:

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