PBS- The Buddha

PBS aired a new documentary on the Buddha, narrated by Richard Gere, earlier this month and I missed it the first time around. Luckily someone has posted the entire 2 hour program on Youtube. So if you're interested watch it while it's still available. I'm sure PBS will serve a take down notice to Youtube soon so it won't be up for long.



The Buddha is the first of three religious documentaries which will air this year, the other two being God in America (airing in October) which I wrote briefly upon last week and The Calling (To be announced) a documentary following Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Americans who decided to enter the clergy. I love religious documentaries, especially those which encourages inter and intra faith dialog. Of course if you happen to miss any of these you can always purchase them at the PBS store.

She Who Dies with the Most Toys, Still Dies...

Just finished watching this report on Joyce Meyers and her success as a televangelist.



At first I didn't know how to respond. The questions asked by Cynthia McFadden were straightforward: if you've been blessed by all this success why not give more? Meyers replied "I can't run the rest of this if we give all of it away." Of course you need some funding to keep a ministry or charity afloat but what Joyce Meyers appears to be saying is that because SHE has suffered and has worked hard to help other people SHE deserves prosperity, a reward.

Don't we all?

But that's not how it works. God does not sprinkle blessing on some based on their loyalty and praise, if not humanity would have the system figured out by now and we would all be flying on private jets (I agree, it's too physically demanding to go through the hassle of flying commercial ). What bothered me wasn't the fact that she was justifying that $14 million out of $100 million is enough, but that it seems she truly believes what she's saying. What does this say about those who've worked hard their entire lives and get squat? Have they've been too greedy paying the rent or putting their kids through college while living in a run down trailer park? Or maybe their faith isn't strong enough? Maybe the secret formula to success is

Ironclad faith+ a troubled past+ the willingness to give to God= God showering with blessings with interest.

Now, I'm not poking fun at Meyers traumatic history but it sickens me when prosperity preachers (which she is a prosperity preacher regardless if she scoffs at the term) like her, Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, and the other Tele-send-in-your-life-savings-Supervangelists feed off the poor and needy to line their own pockets by convincing the viewers that if you DON'T give to God (and his messengers) He can't bless you.

But then I have to be careful now don't I? I'm falling into the same trap Meyers has fallen into by failing to help my fellow man. I could justify my lack of giving by saying we don't have the money to give, we have school loans to pay off, we just bought a house, and the list goes on and on. But the point of this article isn't to shame those living comfortably (although we should feel grateful if not a bit of shame) to give to the needy but to remind ourselves that even if we gave all, our two mites, the world would not come crashing down, we would not starve to death. But there are those already in that state of absolute dire needy. To those on the verge of death, TV shows and Books about celebrating yourself are beyond superfluous, they're scornful.

On Christianity and Religious Tolerance

"Those who believe the Ten Commandments is the basis for American jurisprudence are no less adamant than Moses in insisting that there be "no other Gods" before the God of the Bible. The modern idea that formed as a result of more and more immigrants coming to America and bringing their non-Christian religious traditions along with them (and worse than that, some would argue, popularizing them here) that all religious belief systems deserve equal respect really was not the "original intent" (as they call it) of our Founders." Doug B. from Groping the Elephant.

Doug has a great post today on Christianity in America and the paradoxical themes of freedom (in this case religious freedom) and the intolerance and exclusivity of the Christian faith. This is exactly the kind of topic I hope the PBS documentary God in America I wrote about on Thursday will at least briefly mention when it airs in October. How then does the average Bible believin', freedom lovin' American reconcile the two without blowing a circuit? Outside of not giving it much thought or establishing the beliefs in God and the Bible as superseding the universal rights of being human I can't see any other way around it. The rights and beliefs of others more than likely loses out in this battle whenever personal faith is challenged. This is because personal faith is so closely tied to our identity that any attack on the faith is a personal strike against us. This is insanity! And this is why I've departed from Mainstream Christianity to a very Liberal expression of Christianity (if I even continue to call myself a Christian at all is a topic I've written about in the past and something I will touch upon again in the near future). I do not see suppressing the universal rights of our neighbor just to secure my own sense of security in divisive and exclusive beliefs as the core of being Christian. Tolerance is not a Christian ideal but it is a human ideal. At the very least we should be progressing forward and not just meeting the status quo of the Founding Fathers. We should be more loving than Jesus, more compassionate than our scripture, and far surpass the original intent of our very human, and very fallible Founding Fathers.

PBS- God In America

PBS to air new 6 hour documentary this fall entitled God in America. The program will air over a span of three nights on October 11, 12, and 13 covering the history and impact of faith on the American landscape.



[If this trailer gets taken down by PBS you can also see it here along with more information on the program.]
In my opinion, PBS has always done well on documentaries dealing with religion (I was set to see the Buddha but unfortunately had DVR issues and lost the recording). And from what I could tell from the trailer what they mean to cover is the collective faith of Americans and not exclusively America as a Christian nation, as Palin and friends have convinced themselves has always been since our Deist...err, I mean "Christian" slave-owning founders. I'm sure they'll cover the faith and beliefs of the founding fathers but I'm hoping they'll mention historical revisionism and the heroic painting of the Fathers as Bible-thumpin' Christians. I'm also excited to see that the program will also include Atheism and the growing Spiritual but Not Religious along with the political brawls over separation of Church and State.

What do we mean when we talk about God in America? There are many (see links above) who believe that the words 'God', 'faith', and 'religion' exclusively talk about Christianity, as if the words were interchangeable. Sorry kids, they're not. The problem with this narrow mentality is that if the nation were to accept prayer in school they would have to accept ALL forms of prayer in school (see link above). The fundamentalists would rejoice in the streets until their children come home from school chanting 'gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā'.

Parents: "Jason, where did you learn that demonic prayer."
Jason: "From my new friend at school. He's a Buddhist."
Parents: Gasp!

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

The issue of government funds supporting religious groups (and not to forget the Intelligent Design textbooks poorly disguised as science) is that it would have to be all or nothing. This was the issue the founders of the country faced: to discourage the elevation of any ONE group over the rest preventing the fracture of our diverse nation. Faith is integral in the lives of many Americans BUT when we enter into the public square we can not bludgeon everyone else with our faith, nor should we feel our faith suppressed in the public square (which it's not, especially if you're part of the majority faith. There is no such thing as "Christian persecution" in the States. You want to experience persecution, then go talk to the Arab Christians in the Middle East.). Jon Meacham's book, American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation is an excellent source which covers the struggle to create a religiously (but not spiritually) neutral public square. I highly recommend it to everyone, especially those who think the founding fathers were born-again Christians.

Returning to the topic, I hope God in America has time to cover the future of the American religious and spiritual landscape. Even with all of the current religious turmoil in the political and social arenas I feel we as a nation are slowly crawling out of the enveloping darkness of religious tribalism into a new era of enlightenment. Religious historian and author, Karen Armstrong states that we are currently in the second Axial Age, spanning from the era of Enlightenment to today. I don't believe we will ever collectively put spirituality behind us, nor do I think religion is leaving anytime soon (sorry Sam Harris). I don't buy into organized religion but I don't think that religion should disappear, we just need to rediscover our shared humanity. Can we remain religious as members of a 21st century society? Maybe, maybe not, either way there's a lot of baggage we'll have to leave behind.

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Oh by the way, for you Lost fans, did you notice Michael Emerson in the trailer banishing someone from a Puritan colony?

The Final Stretch...

This is it. I've got two weeks left of school before I finally graduate, I've been in school forever. Since it's crunch time there's going to be a flood of assignments turned in at the last minute by my fellow classmates. In both of my religious studies classes, American Spirituality and The Bible: Origin and Content, Rabbi Rami had us write three blog posts containing our thoughts and struggles with the reading material assigned to us over the semester. I chose to write about Ecclesiastes and Alan Watts intriguing little book entitled, er, The Book. I'm sure most of you have already read these so I encourage you to visit our class blogs and read the postings by some of my classmates.

The Bible: Origin and Content class blog is called Biblical Wisdom which covers a few of the wisdom books in Judaism and Christianity.

• Proverbs
• Job
  
• Ecclesiastes
• The Gospel of Thomas
• The Gospel of Truth (hopefully one of my classmates will be bold enough to write about it)
• The Gospel of John

The American Spirituality class blog is called, well, American Spirituality which covers books by contemporary spiritual gurus of America from the 50's to the present day.

• The Book By Alan Watts
• Remember Be Here Now by Ram Dass
• The First and Last Freedom by Krishnamurti
• The Silent Question: Meditating in the Stillness of Not-Knowing by Toni Packer
• And a few articles on guest speakers and other concepts brought up in class

I think I'm the only one in the class actually excited about the assignment since it's been dead (no dialog or comments by anyone other than myself) since the beginning of the semester. I'm hoping in this final stretch before the end of the semester we'll get some good dialog going, but I'm not keeping my hopes up. If you're interested take a look maybe leave a comment or two and let's see if we can get a conversation started.