Heart and Soul

By BBC World ServiceReligion & Spirituality

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Heart and Soul episodes

July 06, 2019 Religion and climate change in Nairobi
For the BBC World Service, Nairobi based journalist and broadcaster Ciru Muriuki brings together young people of different faiths, together with a live audience, at the National Museum in Nairobi, Kenya, to hear what people want from their religious leaders and hear how faith motivates their activism.
We’ll hear from young people in Kenya who are putting themselves on the front lines of the battle to save the planet. Some are helping farmers and communities find sustainable ways to earn income; others are picking plastic out of the sea and marching to get attention from those in power. Some say their faith compels them to protect wildlife and care for all living beings; others say energies would be better put into forcing high polluting countries to change their ways while in Kenya the focus should be on development, education and relieving poverty.
In a continent that is experiencing the effects of climate change disproportionately compared to many parts of the world, how should religious leaders of every faith be mobilizing their communities?
Producer: Louise Clarke-Rowbotham
Photo: Hundreds of people with placards take part in demonstration in Nairobi calling for climate change justice for Africa.
Credit: SIMON MAINA/AFP/Getty Images
50 min
July 05, 2019 Rebuilding Notre Dame
In the hours after the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral, French President Macron said France would rebuild Notre Dame to be “more beautiful than ever".
In the days that followed, some of Frances wealthiest people promised millions of Euros to ensure that actually happened.
But the fire has awoken this country. Even some atheists have suddenly realised what this means to its Christian heritage. The French word is ‘patrimoine’ from ‘patres’ – fathers and ‘monere’ memory, the memory of our fathers.
The fire at Notre Dame shook France, but does the desire to restore it show a new affinity with religion or a chance for the country to restore some civic pride? John asks whether this has been a wake-up call for France’s church and new hope for a revival of the "faith of our fathers".
Produced and Presented by John Laurenson
Photo: Tourists taking pictures and selfies at Notre Dame Cathedral
Credit: Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images.
28 min
June 28, 2019 Football and belief for Egypt's Copts
Mina Bendary is a good footballer, once thought to be one of the better players in Egypt. As his country hosts the African Cup of Nations, Mina won’t be involved because, he believes, he is a Coptic Christian.
Egypt are attempting to win AFCON with a team that is made up of Muslims. Perhaps, because Copts only make up only 10% of Egypt’s population, the lack of Copts in this year’s squad might be pure coincidence. But Mina says that discrimination against Copts in the country’s national sport is no secret.
Shaimaa Khalil travels back to her home city of Alexandria to meet Mina, as well as other Christians who tell her of the discrimination they have suffered trying to make it in football. In some cases she hears they have even been told to change their names to something more Muslim sounding.
But the authorities disagree, saying that no one is discriminated against and that if Copts are not making it, that is because they do not have the right attitude.
Presenter: Shaimaa Khalil
Production: Helen Roberts, Moussa Zarif
Image: Shaimaa Khalil/BBC
28 min
June 07, 2019 The wind phone
When an earthquake and tsunami struck Japan in 2011, 30ft (9.14m) waves obliterated coastal communities. The small town of Otsuchi lost everything including 2000 residents.
One resident, Itaru Sasaki, was already grieving his cousin before the tsunami hit. He had the idea of nestling an old phone booth on the windy hill at the bottom of his garden which overlooked the Pacific Ocean. This would be a place he could go to speak to his cousin - a place where his words could ‘be carried on the wind.’ The white, glass-paned booth holds an old disconnected rotary phone. He called it his Wind Phone.
In the aftermath of the terrible tsunami, as word of the phone spread, it became a pilgrimage site for those who had lost loved ones. In the sanctuary of the booth they would dial old phone numbers and talk to their loved ones.
Interpreter and journalist Miwako Ozawa visited Otsuchi in the weeks after the tsunami. In this programme she returns for the first time since 2011 to visit the phone and find out how it has helped people to cope with their grief.
We meet some of those who regularly visit the phone and we hear their stories and listen in to their phone calls. In many ways the wind phone typifies a very Japanese relationship with nature and death and with the invisible forces that connect us all. As the residents of Otsuchi face the slow progress of rebuilding their town and the frightening reality of future extreme weather, the wind phone is a reminder of those losses that won’t be forgotten.
Presenter: Miwako Ozawa
Producer: Sarah Cuddon
(Photo: The wind phone)
27 min
May 31, 2019 A female rabbi in training
Miriam Camerini is in training. It’s a three year course, and at the end of it, if she is successful, she will become one of the world's first female Orthodox Jewish rabbis. Ever since she was a child, Judaism has been part of her life, and now she has immersed herself further in her faith to eventually be able to lead prayers and call herself a rabbi. Rabbis in Orthodox Judaism have been men, and Miriam tells us about her journey so far.
In Milan, Miriam introduces Geoff Bird to some of the other people who are helping her and why influences from outside Judaism are as important to her preparation, and how she favours some of the more traditional laws of Judaism, even those that may seem on the outside to be misogynistic.
We join her as she immerses herself in the Torah at a Yeshiva in Jerusalem, learning what her fellow male students think about sharing their studies with a woman. Miriam is also a theatre actress, and we hear how it has played a big part in the way she understands her faith.
Presenter: Miriam Camerini
Producer: Geoff Bird
28 min
May 17, 2019 Kaka'i: Our fight to survive
Farhad al-Kake tells the story of his people, the Kaka'i of Iraqi Kurdistan, whose faith has put them under threat from Islamic fundamentalists. Persecution has made them secretive about their beliefs and practices, but for the first time they tell of the danger they face – how places of worship have been destroyed and believers kidnapped, attacked and murdered by Isis, who hold the Kaka'i’s egalitarian, peaceful religion to be a ‘false cult’. Despite the danger, we hear how the Kaka'i are holding on to their faith on the frontline.
(Photo: Kaka'i women on rugs. Credit: Farhad al-Kake)
29 min
May 03, 2019 Beauty and belief: The story of a Brooklyn salon
For Heart and Soul, American journalist Noor Wazwaz takes us into the private world of New York’s first hijab-friendly hair and beauty salon.
Based in Brooklyn, Le'Jemalik - which means For Your Beauty in Arabic - is owned and run by Yemeni-American Huda Quhshi. A hair and beauty expert with an entrepreneurial spirit, it’s been Huda’s life-long ambition to create a beautiful, bright, enclosed women-only space where clients can let their hair down, in every sense of the word.
Modesty is the order of the day for Muslim women here in the salon, and opinions vary on just how much makeup can be worn in public. But one thing is agreed: religious modesty and a desire to be beautiful can and do go together.
We meet bridesmaids getting dolled up for their big day, hard-working mums and fashion students in need of pampering. Listening on conversations, we discover how religion and culture shape Muslim women's views about beauty and fashion. Some beauty treatments are considered haram - or forbidden by Islamic law - but there are workarounds such as halal brows and halal nail polish.
Image: A beautician at work (Credit: Joy Ernanny)
27 min
April 26, 2019 Pick up your stretcher and walk!
Like many disabled people, Damon Rose is regularly approached by Christians who want to pray for him to be healed. Would-be healers claim they’re simply doing what Jesus himself did and what he instructed his followers to do. They may mean well, but the experience can leave disabled people feeling judged as ‘faulty’ and in need of repair. Is this really what Christianity teaches about disability? In this programme, Damon (a blind journalist and open-minded non-believer) investigates different Christian approaches to disability, combining cutting-edge theology with personal stories of faith, hope and human frailty. He joins a group of Christians as they offer healing on the street, attends a healing service and meets the disabled Christians carving out a new ‘theology of disability’.
Interviewees include:
Lyndall Bywater, a Christian writer and prayer leader in the United Kingdom
Jonathan Conrathe, founder of Mission 24 – a Christian ministry that works with churches all over the world
Becky Tyler, who preached at the Greenbelt Christian festival
Candida Moss, the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham
Rev Zoe Hemming, vicar of St Andrews Church in the village of Aston in Shropshire, England.
If you would like to contact BBC Ouch please email [email protected]
(Image: Damon on the tube, Credit: Sarah Dousse)
27 min
April 19, 2019 New York Stations of the Cross
For Easter weekend Rosie Dawson joins a group of the faithful in New York as they follow a very different Stations of the Cross - a series that bears witness to the scourge of sex trafficking - a modern form of slavery - that every year traps thousands of young girls and women in the city. It marks the start of a campaign against hugely controversial plans to make New York the first state in America to completely decriminalise the sex industry.
Rosie travels New York’s Via Dolorosa (The Way of Tears) that trafficked girls and women in New York often find themselves taking. Reverend Adrian Dannhauser is the guide on this alternative journey.
"If we legalise the industry we will go back to the days of the '70s when you had lines of African-American women lined up in Times Square like slaves on an auction block."
Rosie joins the pilgrims at the bus station and at JFK airport, the gateway into the US for so many women trafficked from abroad. We take in the notorious motel where men pimp the women they control. And finally a human trafficking intervention court, which recognises that those arrested on prostitution charges are likely to be victims of sex trafficking, violence and trauma.
Producer: Rosie Dawson
(Photo: Rosie Dawson)
28 min
April 05, 2019 Fork in the Road - Two journeys out of violence
In the final part of Fork in the Road, Jane Little meets two more people who have been through similar life changing experiences, but have had their faith affected in different ways.
Jahaziel and Guvna B are both rappers, and products of the housing estates of London. They have both seen street violence, friends hurt, and witnessed the decaying effect on the lives of young black men.
Jahaziel was one of the biggest selling Christian rappers, but now he has left his faith. He tells Jane how he just couldn’t regurgitate the ideas that he had been fed since he was a boy, and how his fans turned on him when he turned his back on Christianity.
Guvna B grew up in a similar gang-ruled neighbourhood of London. He now shares his strong Christian faith through his own music, winning a MOBO in 2010. Jane hears how his music is his relationship with God.
After hearing their individual stories of growing up amid gang violence, Jane brings them together to discuss how, despite those similar circumstances, they have taken different paths in faith.
Produced and presented by Jane Little
Image: Jane Little/BBC
28 min

About Heart and Soul

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Heart and Soul is a weekly half-hour programme that has the scope and understanding to explore different experiences of spirituality from around the world.