God's Warriors on CNN

[Batman]

This looks like it's going to be a very informative series. I can't help thinking though that CNN may just be showing the extremists from the world's largest three religions. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Watch for this:
----------------------
August 21, 2007 at 9:00 PM
CNN - GOD'S WARRIORS - JEWISH WARRIORS

August 22, 2007 at 9:00 PM
CNN - GOD'S WARRIORS - MUSLIM WARRIORS

August 23, 2007 at 9:00 PM
CNN - GOD'S WARRIORS - CHRISTIAN WARRIORS

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALShttp://www.cnn.com/S

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CNN’s Six-Hour God’s Warriors TV Event Examines Religion, Power and Politics

Christiane Amanpour Reports for Worldwide Documentary Series Airing over Three Nights Beginning Aug. 21

CNN will premiere a six-hour television event across its U.S. and international networks in August on the impact of the rise of religious fundamentalism as a powerful political force in three faiths: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour traveled the world to report CNN Presents: God’s Warriors. The U.S.premiere airs Tuesday, Aug. 21, through Thursday, Aug. 23, from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. each night (ET/PT).

“God’s Warriors is an investigation of religion, at a time when religious activism is a signature cultural phenomenon of our times,” said Mark Nelson, vice president and senior executive producer for CNN Productions. “This project’s global scope is ideally suited for the skills of someone with as impressive of a journalistic pedigree as our own Christiane Amanpour.”

For this documentary, Amanpour reports that during the last 30 years, each faith has exploded into a powerful political force, comprised of followers – “God’s warriors” – who share a deep dissatisfaction with modern society, and a fierce determination to place God and religion back into daily life and to the seats of power. Their political and cultural struggles to save the world from what they view as secular materialism, greed and sexual corruption have caused anger, division and fear.

“There are millions of people around the world who feel that their faith is being ignored – pushed aside – and they are certain they know how to make the world right,” Amanpour says. “We cannot and should not ignore them. And, with this report, we’ve tried to explain them.”

[...]

About the Documentary Series God’s Warriors

The God’s Warriors series includes interviews with former President Jimmy Carter, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Noa Rothman and Kamal el-Said Habib, a reformed Islamic jihadist who was part of the violent militant group that assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

A companion Web site to God’s Warriors offers users show excerpts from the documentary, an audio podcast and an exclusive video diary that goes behind-the-scenes with producers as they traveled in Europe, North America, Africa and the Middle East for principle filming. This online content will be available at http://www.CNN.com/godswarriors. The podcast will also be available for download from iTunes.

The managing editor of God’s Warriors is Kathy Slobogin. Andy Segal, Michael Mocklar and Ken Shiffman are senior producers; Cliff Hackel and Dave Timko are director/editor/producers; Brian Rokus, Jen Christensen and Julie O'Neill are producers. Jody Gottlieb is the executive director of CNN Productions.

Christiane Amanpour has reported on crises from many of the world’s hotspots and war zones. Her assignments also include exclusive interviews with world leaders on the human consequences of natural disasters and global politics. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the coveted Paul White Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Association, two George Foster Peabody Awards, a Courage in Journalism Award and a number of Emmys and duPont awards. She is a member of the board of directors for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

CNN Worldwide, a division of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner Company, is the most trusted source for news and information. Its reach extends to nine cable and satellite television networks; one private place-based network; two radio networks; wireless devices around the world; CNN Digital Network, the No. 1 network of news Web sites in the United States; CNN Newsource, the world’s most extensively syndicated news service; and strategic international partnerships within both television and the digital media.

Images and multimedia press content are available at http://www.cnn.com/godswarriorsopk.

[GenX]

Here's my prediction:

The Jewish Warrior will look like the crazy old uncle locked away in the attic.

The Muslim warrior will look like the misunderstood person with a bit of a mean streak.

The Christian warrior will look like the bumbling fool who cant chew gum and walk at the same time.

CNN will NOT give a non-biased view.

I won't watch it, so let me know how my predictions pan out.

[Batman]

Okay for some strange reason the links given above are not working now. They did earlier today when I first got this information in my mail box. I'm guessing CNN is still working on it since the series is a few days away. Check back later. When I saw it earlier today there were video clips, photos and interviews already posted.

I guess I'll have to check back later too.

[Batman]

Okay. I just copied and pasted this link:

http://www.CNN.com/godswarriors

For some reason you don't get the page byjust clicking on it.

[GenX]

So, who watched this? any reports?

I'll bet it was a hatchet job.

[T_wolfe]

I watched some the first night it was on....it was not what I thought it would be like.....some stuff was pretty interesting, cant say for the rest of the series, maybe they will show it again......

[Batman]

I was really gung-ho on this which is why I posted it in the first place. Trouble is when it came on I was so busy with other things, I forgot to watch it! I had planned on taping the whole series so I could refer to it and comment on it later but I forgot. Anyway, My son watched the last part on Christians and told me that they are repeating it tonight. Not sure what time.

My son asked me if we could buy videos of the series so I looked up on the web but came up empty so I wrote CNN and this is the reply I got:
----------------
Thank you for contacting CNN.
Voxant, http://www.voxant.com, is offering a "buy 2 DVDs get one free" deal for
"God's Warriors." For all three it would be $59.90 plus shipping. Please
call 866.681.NEWS or email fulfillment@voxant.com to place an order.

Thanks for your interest and keep your browser pointed to
http://www.cnn.com

Sincerely,

CNN Public Information - kepi
-----------------

Well that's a little rich for my blood and for 60 bucks, you're not getting anything for 'free', so if my son wants it that bad he's going to have to get a job and buy it himself! ha ha :-)

[adigirl]

You would think they would make it more affordable if it is information they are so gung-ho on getting out.

[T_wolfe]

there is an encore presentation of it again.....friday, saturyday 25th, sunday 26th....

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/gods.warriors/

[GenX]

For several weeks CNN has been hyping their miniseries God’s Warriors as an “unprecedented six-hour television event.” The series dedicates two hours each to “God’s Jewish Warriors,” “God’s Muslim Warriors,” and “God’s Christian Warriors.” Prior to the first airing, CNN invited several bloggers to preview a few clips from the series and to submit a question for Christiane Amanpour to be answered during a special webcast.

The three clips provided by CNN each highlighted one of the “fundamentalist” branches of the three Abrahamic faiths: the segment on Jews focused on theocratic Israeli settlers, including the man who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin; the segment on Muslims focused on theocratic British students, including the London subway bombers; the segment on Christians focused on Jerry Falwell and Liberty University.

I asked Amanpour if the juxtaposition could be viewed as guilt by association, equating Falwell with religious fanatics who are driven to murder. Her response was that the intention was to “look at the totality of the spectrum [of religious political involvement], from the violent to the legitimate.” She reiterated that the producers had no intention of creating a “moral equivalency” least of all “in the tactics used.”

Much of the criticism leveled against the series so far has focused on this perceived equivalence of American Christians with suicide bombers and political assassins. But this misses a broader point. The producers of the series are not merely attempting to establish a moral equivalency, but rather promoting an equivalency of ideology. According to their narrative, Falwell, the “religious Right,” and other conservative Christians may not be violent, but like the fundamentalist Jews and Muslims they are attempting to establish a theocracy.

Theocracy, which literally means “rule by the deity,” is the name given to political regimes that claim to represent God on earth both directly and immediately. The role of the theocratic leader is to play the role of both priest and king, implementing and enforcing divine laws.

The term was first used by the Jewish historian Josephus to describe the way the Jews lived under the direct government of God himself. In ancient Israel everyone was a direct subject of Jehovah, who ruled over all and communicated through the prophets. This arrangement was short-lived, and the Jews eventually rejected theocratic rule in favor of an earthly king. While the sovereign did not always enforce all of the laws of the former theocracy, he retained the authority given to him “by God.” During the medieval era a similar version of this concept was adopted by the Roman Catholic Church. The church instituted a form of Caesaropapism — a political system in which the head of the state is also the head of the church and supreme judge in religious matters.

Yet even though the concept of theocracy has its roots in Jewish, Catholic, and even Islamic history, the term has somehow become associated with conservative Protestant Christianity. Part of it can be explained as a result of a misunderstanding of the relationship evangelicals have toward both the church and state.

There is no denying the existence of fringe conservative Christians who subscribe to dominionism and seek to have the nation governed by their peculiar understanding of biblical law. But their actual numbers are negligible and their political influence all but nonexistent. As a group, dominionists slightly outnumber black separatists, though they are dwarfed by the number of “blue state” secessionists. In contrast, more than half of American evangelicals are either Baptists or nondenominational — groups that don’t even want a centralized church government much less a central government controlled by the church.

Despite this obvious fact, the specter of theocracy continues to haunt the secular Left. “Bush gets mandate for theocracy,” cried the Village Voice’s James Ridgeway after the 2004 election. Writing in The Nation, Barbara Ehrenreich claimed that Bush’s faith-based welfare strategy “celebrates the downward spiral toward theocracy.” There is even a project called TheocracyWatch at Cornell University that focuses not on existing theocracies throughout the world but on “the pervasive role of the Religious Right in the U.S. government.” The misuse of the word has become so prevalent that I suspect that theocracy has become a code word for what legal scholar Eugene Volokh refers to as “trying to impose their religious dogma on the legal system.”

Indeed, this seems to be what Amanpour believes:

[I]n the Western and in the developed world, perhaps here in the 21st century we would have expected secularism and governance and politics to be what governs our daily lives,…We would not have expected, and perhaps we still don’t expect, religion to play such a real, present role in our daily lives, politics, and culture.

Amanpour’s dismay encapsulates the difference in perspective between people who believe that their faith informs all of life — including politics and culture — and those who believe religion should be kept secularly locked with the church, synagogue, or mosque. Amanpour and CNN have a peculiar, though increasingly common, view of liberal democracy: Everyone has a right to be heard — until they start listening to God.

— Joe Carter is the director of web communications at the Family Research Council and also blogs at the Evangelical Outpost.

I watched the Larry King episode the evening before the series started airing. His guests were Christian Anamanpour, A Jewish rep from the Wiesenthal Centre, a Moderate Muslim and 2 Christians, John MacArthur and some liberal person whose name I have forgotten.

I wondered from the start; why was it necessary to have both a conservative and a liberal Christian on the show, yet only two moderates from the Jewish and Muslim world?

The answer soon became clear. The program had to somehow create a tension between the liberal and conservative Christians in order to make Christianity seem as bad as the other two religions when it came to extremism. It was a setup. If I had been MacArthur, I would have refused to go on, knowing that I would be squaring off with a liberal Christian, while the Muslim and the Jew got a free ride.

[Light_Keeper]

I thought the series was extremly well done and non bias.
It was worth watching and truly seeing how all these relgions seem to be the same.
Why cant we let people believe in their own concept of GOD and what GOD really is to them.
I thought that a democracy, met freedom to practice any faith.
As for the extremist, they are found in all areas of life, not just religion and politics.

[quote] ]The way to disarm your enemy, is to make him/them your freind. [quote]
I forget you actually said this, but it sounds logical to me.

[Batman]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Light_Keeper</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
I thought the series was extremly well done and non bias.
It was worth watching and truly seeing how all these relgions seem to be the same.</div></div>

Ironically, this is the 'criticism' being put forth against the series. Devout followers of all three religions will tell you that they 'are not' the same at all and there are fundamental differences between them.

So as 'unbiased' as it may have 'seemed' it was in fact biased against religion in general by making them all 'seem' to be the same.

Okay now I'm just getting that from other critics because I didn't actually watch the series.

[GenX]

"...in this age of political correctness to single out one group for the sins of a large number of its members is considered unfair and perhaps even racist. So, instead, we are asked to pretend that there is an intrinsic connection, or even symmetry, between Christian, Jewish and Muslim extremists.

That was exactly the premise of a widely heralded three-part series on CNN last week. Titled God's Holy Warriors and fronted by famed international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, it was a tryptich across the globe to highlight the danger from Jewish, Muslim and Christian extremists, who are all given the same treatment and air-time in the guise of even-handedness.

Thus, by its very structure of equating the three different situations, the series was nothing short of a brazen lie. "

LINK