Producers: Governors State University

This class takes on three of the most important and challenging issues regarding religion, today: religion and violence, religion and science, and religion and spirituality. In this class, we try to track some of the changes that have spawned our unsettling times as we look to a future in which scientific knowledge and spiritual insight can form a partnership.

Analyzes the use of symbols, describes different types of symbolic activity, and observes how symbols play a key role in all human cultural activity, including religion. The class also explores Civil Religion, a form of myth that validates the social order. Key questions are posed about American myths, the “liturgical cycle” of American holidays, and other related issues.

Offers perhaps the clearest view of the relationship between myth and ritual through an examination of primal religion – the worldview of approximately 200 million people. Thomas Drift, a Native American from the Ojibwa nation, discusses the basic characteristics of primal religion, the features of a primal religious worldview, ritual techniques, and the relationship between ritual practices and spirituality in Native American cultures.

Features Cynthia Jones and Patricia Storm, co-founders of the ritual-magic group Diana’s Grove. Myth, magic, ritual, and experience are all part of the recovery of primal religion, a spirituality that is earth-centered as opposed to heaven-centered. Cynthia and Patricia discuss ritual-magic, Wicca, and neo-paganism. They also offer insights into what motivated them to establish Diana’s Grove.

Calls upon Christianity to help illuminate the doctrinal dimension. This introductory program to the doctrinal dimension stresses the inter-relationship of the six dimensions. The lesson explores traditional Christian doctrines, the relationship between certain sacred Bible texts, and Christian doctrinal interpretation.

Explores the religious doctrines that define religious beliefs and practices. The class takes a look at existing tensions between believers of differing doctrines through an examination of basic Christian fundamentals, Protestant sects in Israel, and the biblical book of “Revelations.”

Explores key class themes such as the religious process, the pervasiveness of religion, seeker style, boundary questions, rites of passage, and the many types of religious experience. The lesson delves into the motivations that compel students to study at the Ramtha School of Enlightenment, a provocative new age center in Yelm, Washington.

Probes how profound life questions arising out of the experiential dimension find answers in the great myths and paradigm-laden narratives of the world’s religions. Also discussed are the ways in which these answers shape religious activity among believers. Feature interviews include a Hindu describing the “Myth of the Ganges River,” a Christian fundamentalist discussing the importance of the baptism ritual, and a discourse on death as a religious motivator in the Jerusalem graveyards above the Holy City.

Describes the three great myths in the Torah-creation, liberation, and the making of the covenant on Sinai-that undergird and inspire all Jewish religious activity. Features an explanation of the Talmud by Dr. Lorberbaum of the Hartman Institute, and an interview with a Hasidic Jew conducted at the Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem.