Faith & Reason

Fellow Southern Baptist skeptic Bill Moyers will be back on television with a weekly exploration of "Faith & Reason," punching some of those current hot buttons ... What is prayer? Why do some kill in the name of religion? How should we talk about religion in public life? (Airing on UNC-TV, starting on Thurs., July 6th, 10 p.m., with Salman Rushdie, and every Thurs. thereafter for awhile, each program featuring another prominent author from a variety of religious backgrounds who professes a variety of religious attitudes).

Moyers is interviewed in the current Sojourners magazine (free registration required):

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...All over the world, the consequence of [the] collision between faith and reason is tragic.

Many writers today are threatened by repression, oppression, and persecution because of the strident claims to authority of fundamentalist religion. And, of course, as one of the writers says, the basic issue of religion is the basic issue of free speech -- if we're not free to write about religion and critique it without being subjected to persecution and oppression, then religion will never be tempered by how others see the world....

The fact that religion has become a weapon in political combat has robbed it of the deep mysterious profundity of language, and the effort to try to be more thoughtful about what we mean when we use the words "God," "faith," "hope," or "belief." It's just such a rich conversation that I felt I owed it to our viewers and to the country to try to hear religion in a way that you don't hear it discussed today....