NEWS FEATURE: PBS special focuses on search for God in America

c. 1996 Religion News Service (RNS)-Whenever Hugh Hewitt interviewed religious leaders on his California-based PBS television program, the phone switchboard lit up with responses from viewers. He knew he was on to something.”The people who move the world are the people who believe,”said Hewitt, co-host of”Life & Times,”a public affairs show on KCET-TV, the PBS […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(RNS)-Whenever Hugh Hewitt interviewed religious leaders on his California-based PBS television program, the phone switchboard lit up with responses from viewers.

He knew he was on to something.”The people who move the world are the people who believe,”said Hewitt, co-host of”Life & Times,”a public affairs show on KCET-TV, the PBS affiliate in Los Angeles.


Hewitt, a Catholic-turned-Presbyterian, recommended that PBS air a similar offering on a national scale.

The result:”Searching for God in America,”a four-part series of one-on-one interviews by Hewitt with religious luminaries ranging from African Methodist Episcopal pastor Cecil Murray to Eastern College President Roberta Hestenes to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader.

The programs will air at various times on PBS markets across the country, beginning June 30. Many stations are scheduled to air two half-hour interviews back-to-back on July 5, 12, 19 and 26. (Check local listings for program dates and times.)

The series ranges across the religious spectrum, including viewpoints representing the Catholic, Mormon, Muslim and Jewish faiths.

Those interviewed also include the Rev. Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk who founded the Contemplative Outreach prayer movement, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an Islamic scholar who devotes his time to explaining Islam to Westerners.

Hewitt, a self-described evangelical member of the Presbyterian Church (USA), said he came away from the interviews with a consensus that living a life of faith is hard work.”Rigor is a mark of authenticity,”said Hewitt.”All of these individuals believe that you don’t get into a communion with God sitting in your chair three minutes a day. You’ve got to work. You’ve got to study. You’ve got to stay within the tradition.” Hewitt’s work, though condensed to half-hour videos, ranged from 75 minutes with the Dalai Lama to three hours with Elder Neal Maxwell of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The transcripts of the televised interviews are reproduced in a companion volume edited by Hewitt called”Searching for God in America”($27.99, Word Publishing).

The book also features 100 selections on belief from religious and not-so religious people in American history.”H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain are not believers but they’re … awfully good writers on the subject of belief,”said Hewitt, a lawyer who served as assistant White House counsel during the Reagan administration.

The first program features Hewitt’s interviews with Prison Fellowship Ministries founder Charles W. Colson and Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of”When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” Both interviews delve into the religious figures’ personal experiences and tests of faith.


Kushner talks about how his faith was shaken when he learned that his son had a rare genetic disease. He had thought he’d had a contract with God through which he was rewarded for his religious obedience with health, a happy marriage and a good job.”The day we found out about Aaron’s incurable sickness, I thought God had defaulted on his half of the contract,”Kushner confides.”I didn’t know if I could continue as a rabbi, where every Sabbath morning I officiated a service where somebody else’s little boy would be celebrated for growing up and knowing that my son would never grow up.” Kushner, whose son died at age 14, came to grips with his faith crisis by resolving that God did not want his son to have this”genetic accident.”He said he realized that he and his wife needed God’s strength to face the death of their child.”I believe in a God who does not send the tragedy but who sends the incredible grace to deal with the tragedy,”he said.

Hewitt said the interviews with Kushner and Colson-who spent seven months in jail for his role in the Watergate scandal-show that”the authentic experience of religion is usually tied to hardship.””It’s through suffering and it’s through tragedy and it’s through hardship, I think, that faith becomes truly real,”he said.

Hewitt discusses thorny topics, such as biblical interpretation and the significance of the millennium, with his interviewees.

Asked about the book of Genesis’ account of Adam and Eve, Kushner gives a blunt response:”I do not believe that the human race started with two full-grown Hebrew-speaking adults and a talking snake,”said Kushner.”I think this is a story about what it means to be human.” The Rev. Cecil Murray, a former Air Force pilot who has led the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles through riots, earthquakes and fires, spoke with Hewitt about the approaching millennium, a time of special symbolism for some Christians.”The millennium is now,”said Murray,”I don’t think it is God that is destroying us. I think we are destroying ourselves. I think God wants to save us, but God can’t do anymore with us than we can do with ourselves.” Series producer Martin Burns said he chose not to take the advice of some acquaintances, who thought the series should include an agnostic or some other religiously skeptical person.”We wanted this series to talk with people who had spent their lives devoted to finding some meaning, who had spent their lives in faith, and could explain that to the rest of us,”said Burns, the senior producer at KCET-TV.

Burns, who describes himself as a lapsed Methodist, said the production team purposely chose people who were”genuinely searching”in their faith, but not necessarily religious officials.”This was an opportunity to talk to people who devoted their lives to this issue and we could come along and in a sense scrape some of the great lessons … they’d learned and present them to other people for consideration, for contemplation, for maybe even inspiration.”

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