Heart and Soul

At the darkest time of the year in Iceland scary creatures come out to play. Storyteller Andri Snaer Magnason used to be terrified by his grandmother's Christmas tales of Gryla, the hag who eats children, and her 13 troll sons - the Yule Lads - who would come down from the mountains looking for naughty children in the warmth of their homes. These dark lullabies partly hark back to a pre-Christian Christmas when the Norse gods dominated peoples’ lives.

Image: A pile of stones and a volcanic path, Credit: Getty Images

The lives of young Palestinian Christians are being transformed by this ancient spiritual art. At the heart of Bethlehem's old city sits the Bethlehem Icon Centre, a school training local Palestinian Christians to become icon painters - some of them to a professional standard. Unique in the Middle East, the school is best known for Our Lady of the Wall, a large-scale, striking image of the Virgin Mary painted onto the Israeli security barrier.

Image: A student at work on the icon of a saint, Credit: With kind permission of the Bethlehem Icon Centre

Charlottesville in the American state of Virginia, was thrust into the limelight in the late summer when white supremacists groups violently clashed with counter demonstrators

The city is Jane Little’s home town, and she will find that even before the events of the summer, religious leaders had been long been mobilizing against alt-right groups following two previous demonstrations. The tactics they are taught mirror those used by leaders of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s.

As the violence escalated in Charlottesville, clergy were called upon for help, in some cases even before the Police could arrive, often running straight into trouble. Sometimes a clergy presence would calm a situation but Jane will meet clergy who on that day suffered violent attacks.

She meets Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, pastor, activist, singer and the spiritual head of a movement of non-violent resistance, which he hopes to spread across the United States

Can a faith response though in reaction to the threat of violence between such polarised groups be enough?

Presenter: Jane Little

Pastor Daniel Habteys journey to becoming a church leader in the north of England has taken him through the toughest of tests.

In 2002 he fled persecution and imprisonment in his native Eritrea because of his Christian faith. After spending a fortnight crossing the Sahara Desert in the back of a pick-up truck, he, his wife and their baby daughter almost lost their lives while making the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean to Italy.

Now, he leads English and Eritrean worship at his church and offers practical, spiritual and emotional support to the many asylum seekers and refugees who pass through this West Yorkshire town. Refugees and worshippers share the impact Daniel has had on their community and faith.

Old Belief communities formed as a result of Russian Orthodox Church theological reforms of the 17th century.

After a period of torture and mass executions and unrecognised by the state, Old Believers were forced to go underground or move to unreachable parts of this vast country, where they lived independent of state and official church. The Revolution of 1917 led to a further exodus – even as far as Latin America.

Picture: Murachev family in Dersu village, Far East of Russia. Credit: PrimDiscovery/ Alexander Khitrov

Baktash Noori is a 23-year-old practising Muslim Mancunian YouTube vlogger. He lives just five minutes drive from the Manchester Arena where, six months ago, 22 people were killed by suicide bomber. In the days after the attack his parents were warning him to stay off the streets, worried that the colour of his skin and his faith would make him a target for attack. Instead Baktash took to the Manchester streets, blindfolded, with a cardboard sign inviting people to give him a hug. Scared of the reaction right up until the minute he covered his eyes, he says he did not receive a single negative comment. The video he posted has been viewed nearly a million times. He received 5,000 positive emails in three days and had to switch his phone off because his social media notifications were buzzing non-stop.

And they visit the Villa Road mosque in Oldham, fire bombed in the hours after the attack, to explore whether the ‘One Love’ response represents the real heart and soul of Manchester or is it a convenient veneer hiding the more unpalatable truth about our suspicions about Muslims and the knee-jerk association with terrorism.

Audrey Brown is in South Africa to meet Pastor Xola Skosana. After nearly 20 years of ministering to a congregation impoverished by the legacy of apartheid he has rejected his Christian faith. It is a controversial message and uncomfortable for many Christians, but it is a message which has tapped into a bigger narrative in this troubled country. We hear how Xola struggled with his faith, and why he no longer sees his faith in the white Jesus of the established church.

Mercy Amba-Oduoye is a true reformer; in fact in her native Ghana she embodies the phrase.

She is called the Mother of African Feminist Christian Theology and is globally recognised as the leader of a movement that has constantly challenged the male preconception of being ‘a good girl’ a phrase in Africa which means not questioning the established role and place of young women.

In the third programme in the special season on Heart and Soul focussing on reforming faith, Anne Soy travels to Accra, the Ghanaian capital, to meet Mercy to find out how she has channelled her faith to educate young Ghanaian women – and those in other parts of Africa - that many of the practices that have become part of life for women such as polygamy, marital rape or FGM have no theological basis.

Mercy, now well into her 80’s, will tell Anne that male-led faiths have allowed many of these practices to go unquestioned, and how she has given over her life to God to disrupt and challenge the deeply entrenched thinking and attitudes in countries where religious and spiritual leader have such an influence on society and culture

Presenter: Anne Soy

Image: Anne Soy

Dotted around London, in the concentrated areas where Orthodox Jews have made their home, groups of believers meet to pray and share their faith. Nothing unusual in that, but what make these gatherings significant are that women are leading the prayers, and they are sharing their celebration with men,

These prayer groups are called Partnership Minyans, and have become a symbol of a major shift in Judaism making many traditional believers extremely uncomfortable

With a panel in London, Emma Barnett asks what does this mean for this deeply traditional faith? Does this challenge to the structures of worship signal a new era of feminism with Orthodox Judaism?

In the second programme of our special series to mark the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation led by Martin Luther, which split the Catholic church, Emma leads a panel discussion from the JW3 centre in north London to meet the ‘reformers’ to explore how they want their faith to change its attitudes to women and those whose resistance to it is based on the centuries old deep teaching of their faith.

Presenter: Emma Barnett

To mark the 500th anniversary idea of Reformation which spilt Christianity, Heart and Soul investigates the role of women in disrupting the status quo and challenging the traditions in three of the main religions that have been preserved, in many cases, for centuries.

In this first programme, Samira Ahmed is in Copenhagen, Denmark, to explore whether Islam will ever properly embrace the idea that women can become Imams, prayer leaders, give sermons and offer guidance to both men and women.

Copenhagen is the home to Sherin Khankan who made headlines around the world for opening a Mosque that promised equal status for women and aimed to include gay Muslims within its community.

Opposition to the Mosque has been swift and vitriolic, a sign of the polarising argument that the scriptures simply do not support prayers led by a woman. Samira Ahmed is joined by Seyran Ates, the most controversial of female Imams, who tells her how she received death threats after she opened her ‘female-friendly’ Mosque in Berlin.

Many countries in northern Europe are experiencing a shift in their racial and religious landscape due to a new wave of migration, but against this backdrop are small but significant challenges to the idea that religious leaders have to always be men.

In Copenhagen, Samira heads a panel to ask whether this is a sustainable feminist challenge and the green shoots of a long term reform, or an ideal destined to fail in a faith where roles are very clearly defined.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

(Photo: Seyran Ates)