On Being

Experts once predicted that as the world grew more modern, religion would decline. Precisely the opposite has proven true; religious movements are surging and driving "alternative globalizations" across the world. Two leading thinkers offer a penetrating view of how and why religion of all kinds is shaping the global economy and political order.

Politics driven by a religious agenda, Danforth says, is true neither to his understanding of Christian faith nor to the traditional values of the Republican party. This veteran politician speaks about the values that have helped him navigate the line between private faith and public life and his current concerns about religion in his own party and in the world.

An Iranian man sits on the ground after weekly Friday prayers at Tehran University in the Iranian capital, 02 June 2006. An Iranian cleric today dismissed US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's warning that the Islamic republic would incur 'great costs' if it rejected the latest international offer to curtail its nuclear programme. 'We are ready to pay a great cost to defend our ideals,' Hojatoleslam Ahmad Khatami said in his sermon at the main weekly Muslim prayers broadcast live on state radio.

Hurricane Katrina brought urban poverty in America into all of our living rooms. In this program, David Hilfiker tells the story of how poverty and racial isolation came to be in cities across America. He lives creatively and realistically with questions many of us began to ask in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Our culture's acrimonious debate on the morality of gay marriage has been framed in religious — largely conservative Christian — terms. We go behind the rhetoric to explore the human confusion, hopes, and fears this subject arouses. We'll name hard questions that these religious people on both sides of the issue are asking themselves, and that they would like to ask of others.

Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson once said that the program he helped create is, "utter simplicity which encases a complete mystery." Our guests reflect on the Twelve Steps and how they resonate in their personal stories and in Buddhist and Christian teachings.

A survivor of the Holocaust, in which he lost most of his family, Wiesel was a seminal chronicler of that event and its meaning. Wiesel shares some of his thoughts on modern-day Israel and Germany, his understanding of God, and his practice of prayer after the Holocaust.

The wildly popular novel turned movie reimagines the New Testament, in part, as a cover-up. What really happened in the fluid early years of Christianity? What is the truth about Mary Magdalene? We separate fact from fiction in the story's plot with two New Testament scholars who say that the story is simpler and much more interesting than conspiracy theories suggest.

Joel Hanson has schizophrenia and believes he is God. His parents reflect on living with their son and how they have learned to see mental illness, normalcy, and religion differently. Is there room in our culture to consider a schizophrenic personality as another form of human difference and diversity?

As Israel prepares for a critical election and Hamas forms a Palestinian cabinet, we explore the difficulty of reaching resolution in a land that its inhabitants, on both sides of the conflict, consider holy. Our guests in this two-part series, Israeli and Palestinian, identify deeply with the story and suffering of their own people. They are also individuals who from across tumultuous recent history have reached out to the other side. They find themselves embittered at the failure of the Oslo peace process, reeling from recent events, and uncertain about the future. We explore their unresolved questions and despair, and probe the deep longing for peace that remains within each of them and how they are imagining a future within new political realities.