God on Trial

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Description

For more than a millennium Western civilization looked to the Church for answers to questions about life's meaning. But for many, acceptance of ecclesiastical doctrine wasn't enough. This program traces the roots of modern religious skepticism back over 400 years to examine both the unraveling and the endurance of Christian belief. It explores challenges to established theologies in the ideas of Spinoza, Newton, and Voltaire and in the ideals of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the Victorian era and considers erosion of faith in the 20th century caused by the impact of World War I and political totalitarianism. The video goes to Auschwitz, the Vatican, and St. Martin-in-the-Fields to consider how the Holocaust, the Second Vatican Council, and late-20th-century social change further weakened Church authority in the West, even as Christian congregations grow elsewhere around the world.