Rare, great Doc TV
On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week, CNN broadcast 6 hours of powerful documentary television.
The series, which will be repeated this weekend, and which I encourage you to see, is called "God's Warriors." The narration and interviews are by Christiane Amanpour, CNN's leading foreign correspondent, who travelled the world to assemble this report.
Tuesday, we met God's Warriors - The Jews. Wednesday, Islam and last night, Christians. Frankly, I don't know who was more frightening.
Three enormous and powerful groups, each of whom believes utterly in the truths it has found in one Good Book (Torah, Koran, New Testament), each detesting the other, each armed to the teeth and marching according to God's will.
I am a Jew, and I found all three episodes equally difficult to watch.
Aside from the huge questions of survival, the last question that remained for me was this:
Can we live a moral life without a Good Book?
I believe we can, but it is challenging and heretical to most of the world.
2 comments:
David, thanks for the heads up. If people miss these specific programs they can go down to their local video store/rental place and pick up the fascinating documentary feature, "Jesus Camp", which follows a group of young Christians being indoctrinated (spiritually and politically) by adult evangelical leaders. Various scenes featuring the children, their parents, and the leaders show an often disturbing tendency towards blind faith in right-wing political leaders, and naivity or outright ignorance about many important issues facing the world at this time. One scene, however, provided a weird sort of comic relief, showing young evangelicals being given a pep talk and advice by a not-yet-disgraced-at-the-time-of-filming Rev. Ted Haggard. Featured throughout the film, acting as a counterbalance, is a radio talk show host who discusses with his audience the disturbing increase in political power gained in recent years by Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. "Jesus Camp" is well worth seeing.
One other thing. Is it just my belief, or do others also feel that the best feature films being released these days are documentaries?
I agree, the documentaries were very well done and very powerful. I am not a believer and in fact I find the certainty of the religious difficult to comprehend -- as Bill Maher put it, we need more doubters. We can most definitely live a good life without a Good Book, in fact much of what is done in the name of religion is far from "good". I am not sure if I felt uncomfortable watching the documentaries, perhaps angry at the arrogance of people who are so sure they have all the answers. Angry at people who are willing to kill others, and themselves, because they know they are right. Angry at the way religion is used for political gain. I would like to watch this series again -- it was very informing.
Post a Comment