"God In America" On PBS

There is going to be an interesting show coming to PBS titled “God In America”. From what I can gather, it is going to be a show about the misunderstandings between the religious and the non-religious, and the different religions in America.

I couldn’t embed the trailer form the PBS site, so here is the link.

I am going to have to watch this for a few reasons. First, it has Ben Linus from Lost in it. Second, I think that PBS is going to give the most critical view of the subject outside of the atheist community, so the chances of this being a religious handjob are smaller, but not out of the realm of possibility. Finally, it didn’t look like Barbara Bradley Haggerty had anything to do with it.

There was one part that really piqued my interest:

... it also involves the story of the attempts to convert Native Americans to Christianity. That's not just one story, says Marini, because different groups of Native Americans reacted differently. The general response from the indigenous peoples, says Marini, was passive resistance in the east, sometimes violent resistance in the west, and conversion and acceptance in the south, in what is now Mexico.

I think that is something that really overlooked in our history. Admittedly, I don’t know much about this subject either. Hopefully this will be a good introduction to the attempts to convert the native population.

The show will run in 3 two hour segments on October 11-13, 2010 on your local PBS station