To mark the 500th anniversary idea of Reformation which spilt Christianity, Heart and Soul investigates the role of women in disrupting the status quo and challenging the traditions in three of the main religions that have been preserved, in many cases, for centuries. In this first programme, Samira Ahmed is in Copenhagen, Denmark, to explore whether Islam will ever properly embrace the idea that women can become Imams, prayer leaders, give sermons and offer guidance to both men and women. Copen...
Oct 15, 2017•27 min
Unlike Christianity and Judaism, Islam is not recognised in Italy. There are only eight officially recognised mosques and that is despite being home to the fourth largest Muslim population in Europe. The recent government crackdown on the estimated 2,000 makeshift ‘garage’ mosques across Italy has led to mass protests. The government have introduced a new ‘National Pact for an Italian Islam' but Muslims in Italy argue it’s not enough, the government though claims, it is a step forward in the rec...
Oct 01, 2017•27 min
Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country. There are hundreds of indigenous faiths, practised for centuries. They are not recognised by the State and are viewed as unbelievers. Rebecca Henschke travels through some of the world’s last remaining rainforest to meet the Orang Rimba – people of the jungle. She meets those who are trying to preserve their nomadic way of life and those who, after losing their forest, are being forced by the state to convert. To read more and see Rebecca's report...
Sep 27, 2017•27 min
For Martin Luther, music, with its power to move emotions, was an “inexpressible miracle” second only to Theology. When people engage in music, said Luther, singing in four or five parts, it is like a “square dance in heaven.” For Heart and Soul, The Rev Lucy Winkett, Anglican priest, singer and Bach enthusiast, takes a musical tour of the Reformation. The programme opens in the Georgenkirche in Eisenach, Germany, where Bach was baptised and both Luther and he were choirboys, separated by two ce...
Sep 17, 2017•26 min
Climate change and security concerns are threatening one of Buddhism's most sacred sites. The Bodhi Tree, in northern India, is believed to be descended from the actual tree under which Buddha gained enlightenment, the tree came under attack from suspected Islamist terrorists in 2013. Several bombs exploded around the temple, and there are fears that security is not tight enough prevent a similar attack in the future. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims visit from around the globe every year, but ...
Aug 18, 2017•27 min
On the night the Grenfell Tower fire began on 14 June 2017, the mosques and churches which encircle the tower block in Kensington, West London, provided bases for vital relief work. It was Ramadan so many Muslim faithful were returning from prayers when the fire started, and they were able to alert residents and help people get out of the burning building. In the hours and days that followed, in one of the richest areas of one of the wealthiest cities in the world, people of all religions were m...
Aug 14, 2017•27 min
Christianity has been part of Jamaica for 500 years and it’s said there is a church on every corner. Christian worship is conducted from the King James bible in antiquated English rather than the native Jamaican patois. But the number of people - especially young people - actually going to traditional churches is falling. The answer, some believe, would be to translate the King James bible into the local Jamaican language, offering a uniquely Jamaican version that appeals to ordinary people. How...
Aug 06, 2017•27 min
In March 2017, a High Court Judge in Pakistan made the dramatic declaration that “blasphemers are terrorists.” The declaration is just one part of a growing national campaign to make disbelief socially, publicly and morally not just unacceptable, but one that allows Pakistani people the right to attack those who doubt the importance of Islam. Websites offer a satirical take on Islam and challenge the notion that Pakistan is an Islamic Republic, but the government replied with adverts in national...
Jul 31, 2017•27 min
The YouTube generation are re-inventing Kirtan, an ancient form of Sikh worship. Kirtan, the devotional singing of the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, has traditionally been accompanied by tabla or harmonium. Today, a new generation of Sikhs are uploading their own style of Kirtan to the global diaspora. Nina Robinson meets Kirtan artists Manika Kaur from Dubai and Violinder from San Francisco. With millions of views on their respective YouTube channels, these musicians are pushing bounda...
Jul 31, 2017•27 min
In the long summer, as they enjoy the 22 hours of daylight in the Arctic town of Vadso, Norway, Sami singers and young reindeer herders share their ancient beliefs and culture. The Sami tradition is that the land, sea, animals and plants are sacred. The gods and spirits within them have been worshiped for thousands of years but today’s young Sami are addressing the effects of climate change, pollution and population growth on their spiritual landscape. The Sami’s wordless spiritual songs – Yoik ...
Jul 21, 2017•27 min
Stepping into the Micvah, the ritual pool, is the final stage of a convert's journey to Judaism. After a full body immersion they are officially Jewish. It is a one way street. Reminding a convert of their past lives or their transition is against Hasidic law. Natasha Serlin, born a Jew, meets the Curtis family, three members all on their own Journey to Judaism. From keeping kosher, memorising the Jewish calendar to learning Hebrew, they must prove themselves devout and observant. Natasha meets ...
Jul 09, 2017•26 min
Giving Death Back to the People is how Cara Mair describes her work as a funeral director. Her company, Arka Original Funerals, is part of a movement to de-industrialise, and re-personalise funerals in the UK. Cara began in the business as a freelance embalmer. But she doesn’t do that anymore. “It started to send me do-lally,” she says. When she was working here, there and everywhere as a freelance, she was often appalled by what she experienced - the conveyor belt of death, the disrespect shown...
Jun 23, 2017•27 min
They were a famous father-son team, perhaps the best known evangelical pastors in America. Tony and Bart Campolo spent decades preaching a gospel focused on serving the poor and the marginalised and Bart built a thriving inner city ministry, doing work for Christ. And then one day that all changed. He came off his bike at full speed and as he regained his health he realised that his faith had disappeared and he was no longer a Christian, but he still wanted to serve. Tony tells Jane Little about...
Jun 04, 2017•27 min
The Philippines is a devoutly religious country, with more than 86% of the population Roman Catholic – and it has huge drug problem. President Rodrigo Duterte, himself a Catholic, has been waging a controversial war on his country’s drugs problem since he took office in 2016. Rebecca Henschke explores the fall out President Duterte’s controversial war on drugs is having on both the Church and Catholics in the pews. She visits drug rehab and prevention centres which are part of the Sanlakbay prog...
Apr 07, 2017•27 min
The fastest growing religion in Iceland is Norse paganism. Floating in a hot spring, snow falling from the night sky, John Laurenson meets Teresa Drofn. A 25 year-old Heathen, Teresa describes her return to the religion of her Viking forebears as a renewal of a unique spiritual relationship with nature. A millennium after it was banned in exchange for Christianity, John explores why Icelanders are returning to the faith. At a ‘blot’, or sacred ceremony John hears a priestess read aloud from the ...
Mar 27, 2017•27 min
In Copenhagen, on an upmarket shopping street, above a burger joint, two female imams are leading Friday prayers. The Mariam mosque is the first female led mosque in Scandinavia and one of only a handful worldwide. Anna Holligan travels to Denmark to meet its founder and imaamah, Sherin Khanhan. In building a feminist mosque Sherin hopes to revolutionize the traditional role of an imam and challenge some of the traditional patriarchal structures in Islam. Sherin argues that promoting female imam...
Mar 19, 2017•27 min
The national motto of Indonesia is ‘Bhinneka Tunggal Ika’ - Unity In Diversity. It is the world’s largest Muslim majority country, but across its thousands of islands live more than 300 ethnic groups. Pancasila, the nation's founding philosophy, recited by school children every morning, proclaims unity in democracy, nationality and the belief in one god. However Indonesia's founding principles are being tested by a high profile blasphemy case. Jakarta’s first non-Muslim governor, Basuki “Ahok” T...
Feb 13, 2017•27 min
Ed Davey travels to Benin to attend the annual Voodoo Festival in Ouidah, encountering this ancient African religion in all its faith and fervour. As travellers’ tales go, Jafar Habib’s account of the annual Voodoo Festival in Benin in 2011 is quite extraordinary. Jafar – a biochemist by trade – told correspondent Ed Davey that he had witnessed a voodoo priest decapitate a woman before raising her severed head in front of a baying crowd and reattaching it to her body. Then she came back to life....
Feb 12, 2017•27 min
The Bahá'i faith is one of the youngest of the world's major religions. A faith without borders, most of the Bahá'is live outside of the birth place of the religion, Iran, where they are seen as heretics. After the Islamic revolution of 1979, overnight the rights of minorities were stifled. Many Bahá'is were incarcerated, tortured and evicted from their home country. Today, despite years of persecution, the Bahá'is have not only survived but thrived in the diaspora, with communities in 190 count...
Jan 15, 2017•27 min
Leaving the Orthodox Jewish community does not just mean forgoing your faith – it also means leaving a community, a life and in many cases your family. It can be so traumatic for many people that there are groups, set up to help people to distance themselves from the faith they feel encompasses every aspect of their lives. Daniel Gordon meets Hasidic Jews at different stages of the slow process of leaving their tight-knit religious community and joining mainstream society. Daniel will meet Maya,...
Jan 08, 2017•27 min
Dr Robert Beckford explores how cheating in sport conflicts with Christian principles. He asks how can an Olympic champion stand on the podium with a gold medal and then thank God in an interview if they have taken performance enhancing drugs? Can a footballer celebrate the penalty he has ‘won’ and then point to the sky in honour of God? In this edition of Heart and Soul, featuring Olympic medallist Ben Johnson, Robert explores what the Christianity has to say about fair play and whether by chea...
Jan 03, 2017•27 min
Every week Father Michael Pfleger takes to social media to share the number of people killed over the past few days in his city, Chicago. The numbers are almost always in double figures and many of the dead are young African-American men shot on the streets that surround his church, St Sabina’s, in the almost entirely black suburb of Auburn-Gresham. Rajini Vaidyanathan meets Father Pfleger after Sunday Mass, to explore with him why he has devoted his life’s work to trying to rid Auburn-Gresham o...
Dec 25, 2016•27 min
He is he says, on a mission from God, Robert Berman’s lifelong campaign for organ donation to be permissible under Jewish/Talmudic law – Halacha – is at the centre of an ongoing debate in Israel. Berman, a Harvard University graduate, is striving to change attitudes to the donating of organs and possibly redefine the strict and ancient definition of death. Berman has been referred to as “the murderer” as he continues to promote donor cards to this traditional community. Berman’s campaign has lef...
Dec 11, 2016•27 min
In the centre of Patan City in Nepal resides a living goddess, a child as young as four, chosen to host a deity of invincible feminine power. On her young shoulders rests the fate of the nation. Goddesses in many religious traditions around the world exist only in the spiritual realm, symbolised by statues and icons. But in Nepal they live and breathe and take the form of young girls – the kumari. For centuries Hindus and Buddhists across the Kathmandu Valley have worshiped these young Buddhist ...
Dec 04, 2016•27 min
Huge numbers of Gypsies and travellers across Europe now say they've joined a new movement called Light and Life. Those who join have given up on some parts of their lives that have become associated with being a Gypsy, such as drinking alcohol and fortune-telling, with many even abandoned their traditional Catholic faith. The Gypsy led, Pentecostal movement, has grown rapidly in the past 3 decades - it claims that up to 40% of British Gypsies worship within it, whether that’s actually true, the...
Nov 27, 2016•27 min
Donald Trump predicted that if he won the votes of America's evangelical Christians he would win the election, and he was right. A quarter of all voters count themselves as evangelical and 81% of them voted for Trump, despite the deep misgivings and public disagreements among Christian leaders over whether their conscience would allow them to endorse him. Jane Little speaks to four leading evangelical leaders about how they define evangelical Christianity, their hopes and misgivings for the Trum...
Nov 13, 2016•27 min
25 years ago this month Terry Waite returned to the UK after nearly five years of captivity in Beirut. During the violent and destabilising civil war in Lebanon he had been sent by the Church of England to negotiate for the release of several hostages – but he was kidnapped and imprisoned himself by Hezbollah militants. His capture made news around the world and for a long time there was no information on whether he was alive. During his years of solitary confinement, Terry’s courage and faith w...
Nov 06, 2016•27 min
Reading can be solitary, peaceful, a moment to be alone with your own thoughts, but it can also provide collective wisdom and shared experience. This week as part of the #LovetoRead season across the BBC, six religious leaders from around the world have chosen a single book that has a unique place in their spiritual lives, a non-religious text, but one that has enriched and informed their faith. We’ll hear from Ilyasah Shabazz, Sunni activist and daughter of Malcom X, London based Syrian Revd. N...
Oct 30, 2016•27 min
Right next to the city of Detroit, Michigan is Hamtramck, the first Muslim majority city in the United States. Just over 50% of the residents are immigrants from Bangladesh, Yemen and Bosnia. There are ten mosques in just over 2 square miles, as well as Islamic private schools. But only a few decades ago, the city was dominated by Polish immigrants with their Catholic churches and schools. Long before Donald Trump made Muslim immigration a focus of his election campaign, Hamtramck made internati...
Oct 26, 2016•27 min
David Baker is a practising and proud Jew. He is also gay and in the eyes of many of his fellow Jews the two cannot go together. He has had to wrestle with these two sides to his identity leading to many hours of praying and soul searching, exploring whether he could still remain within his faith. Just after the Orlando shootings in June he was invited to the Iftar, the fast breaking meal in Islam, alongside LGBT Muslims and it was there that he realised that Jews and Muslims have more in common...
Oct 16, 2016•27 min
