America as a spiritual democracy. Steven Rockefeller

Your Playlist:

Description

The path Steven Rockefeller has taken on his intellectual and spiritual journey would very likely surprise his great-grandfather, the tycoon John D. Rockefeller, Sr. A convert to Buddhism, Steven Rockefeller has been teaching Religion at Middlebury College in Vermont for almost 20 years. Centering on what he calls "the democratic reconstruction of religion," Rockefeller has steeped himself in the writings of Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Dewey. In this program with Bill Moyers, Steven Rockefeller discusses his idea that the time has come to reconsider America as a "spiritual democracy. "The greatest single moral failing of many religious traditions," says Rockefeller, "is their inability to teach their followers to respect people of a different tradition the same way they respect people of their own tradition."