In Philadelphia, husband and wife George and Mimi Limbach sit down in an old warehouse with 15 men who have recently been released from prison. Surrounding them are hundreds of old computers, which these former inmates will soon recycle as part of a rehabilitation programme underpinned by the couples Christian faith. They feel by offering these former offenders work they are keeping true to values such as forgiveness, love and second chances. “No one is here to judge. We are all on the same leve...
Jun 19, 2020•27 min
In this final programme of a special Heart and Soul series for the BBC World Service, the journalist John McCarthy brings back together those who have been sharing reflections and insights on faith during the Coronavirus crisis. We hear how they’re coping now. How have their attitudes to rituals, compassion, solitude and community, changed in the last six weeks? What are their personal thoughts on moving forward, and through, this pandemic, now that many countries have lifted, or have left, lock...
Jun 12, 2020•27 min
A man finds himself by chance in the country he fled as a political prisoner as the virus spreads and he is trapped. An atheist looking for peace in lockdown. A writer looking for a way to stay united with her community. Very different people, with very different beliefs, united in prayer. In a special Heart and Soul series for the BBC World Service, amidst the Coronavirus pandemic, the journalist John McCarthy brings together reflections from people of faith around the world. In this fifth prog...
Jun 05, 2020•27 min
In this fourth programme of a special Heart and Soul series for the BBC World Service, amidst a global pandemic of Coronavirus, the journalist John McCarthy hears how the notion of community has changed as many people continue to be denied the chance to gather for religious practice. Across the world the way people live their daily lives has radically altered. What new communities are emerging? Whether online, in our family or households, or simply a new relationship with neighbours, we hear ref...
May 29, 2020•27 min
In a special Heart and Soul series for the BBC World Service, amidst a global pandemic of Coronavirus, the journalist John McCarthy brings together reflections from people of faith around the world. In this third programme, John hears how isolation and solitude can be an opportunity to develop a deeper spiritual practice. When the mind throws up challenges – doubt, fear – what comfort and opportunities does faith provide? Solitude is often sought after and even craved by many people of faith, bu...
May 22, 2020•28 min
As coronavirus crisis unfolds, with its confusion and heartbreak, John McCarthy brings together reflections from people around the world. In this programme he hears stories of compassion. Most religions teach that compassion is what allows us to understand the suffering of others, but you need no faith to give or receive it. Compassion nurtures kindness and charity, both sorely needed now. We hear from Bernard Gabbott, an Anglican minister in rural Australia. His community has suffered years of ...
May 15, 2020•27 min
Rituals are at the heart of many religions, they are vital to the practice of faith giving structure, comfort and focus. The best-selling Indian writer Amish Tripathi sees daily yoga practice as central to his Hindu faith. He loves the calm and balance it brings. But with the virus bringing fear of respiratory problems he newly appreciates the breathing techniques which ease anxiety. Miriam Camerini is an Italian trainee Rabbi who is stranded in Canada, unable to travel home. She is heartbroken ...
May 08, 2020•28 min
Joshua Wong has been the poster boy of the Hong Kong democracy movement for over five years, despite being only 23 years old. An evangelical Christian, he continues to do what he sees as the right thing in his fight against Beijing’s influence, despite the personal hardship involved. Mike Wooldridge hears from Joshua, and about concerns in the Hong Kong church around the actions of some of his followers. (Photo: Joushua Wong)
May 01, 2020•28 min
Senegalese twins Marieme and Ndeye were born sharing much of their bodies, and doctors advised that an attempt to separate them would be fatal for Marieme. But Marieme’s heart condition put both twins in danger. Mike Wooldridge hears from Ibrahima, now in the UK, who had to face an impossible dilemma - whether his daughters should be separated. (Photo: Ibrahima with Marieme and Ndeye)
Apr 24, 2020•28 min
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought religious practice to a halt in much of the world. Religious leaders, a large part of whose life’s work is to get people to come to church, mosque or synagogue are urging them to stay away. The church, defined by Jesus as wherever people gather together in God’s name, has been suspended. The gestures that carry much of the meaning of the faith – for Christians, the exchange of the Pax Christi, for example, or the taking of Holy Communion – were banned in many co...
Apr 17, 2020•27 min
"Every time I tattoo someone, I feel the links of faith, blood and ink in an unbroken chain of thousands of pilgrims, going back hundreds of years" - Wassim Razoouk, 'The Jerusalem Tattooist'. For some, it's a kind of baptism. To others, it's a very personal souvenir. For everyone, it's an indelible mark of pilgrimage to one of the holiest places on Earth: the Old City of Jerusalem. For more than 500 years, Wassim Razzouk's family have been tattooing the pilgrims to Jerusalem. In this edition of...
Apr 10, 2020•27 min
Buddhist temple Wat Thamkrabok in Thailand has a worldwide reputation for its successful mix of ‘cold turkey’ and Buddhism in combating addiction. The treatment begins with a sacred Buddhist vow never to use drugs again. For five days, the ‘patients’ drink a strong herbal medicine that induces vomiting. No contact with the outside world is permitted. Through Buddhist teachings, the former addicts confront the bad habits that dominated their past lives and commit to building a life for themselves...
Apr 03, 2020•27 min
If you ask Cosmo the robot what faith he is, what does he answer? We’ll find out when we bring together young digital media users of different faiths to meet him at MediaCityUK at Salford in the UK. Sophia Smith-Galer has been exploring how digital technology is changing the ways we worship and her guests will give their thoughts on what she’s found during our #ReligionintheDigitalAge series, and what they think about the future of faith and technology. Presented by Sophia Smith-Galer Produced b...
Mar 27, 2020•27 min
Worshippers are gathering for a church service led by Pastor D.J Soto in Virginia in the USA. Many of them are at home or even in other countries. For DJ, this church is important for worshippers unable to attend a physical church, such as the disabled, the ostracised and the persecuted. VR technology is also teaching future generations about religious tolerance. Every year Jews and Holocaust survivors from across the world make a pilgrimage to Auschwitz in Poland. Alongside them is Karen Jungbl...
Mar 20, 2020•27 min
Digital journalist Sophia Smith-Galer hears from young faith influencers using social media to spread the word and meets an ex-Muslim who can talk online about losing her faith, but hasn’t told her family. Do you want to leave the evangelical church? There’s a subreddit for that. Do you want to find a practising Muslim spouse? Well, there are, at least,10 Facebook groups for that. For millions of us, social media is subverting the traditional ways we find like-minded people around the world. In ...
Mar 13, 2020•28 min
There are thousands of religious apps offering to help you worship in the right way. In the first of a new season exploring the digital world and the spiritual world, Sophia Smith Galer considers whether they’re a quick convenience, or a legitimate means of getting closer to your God, and asks if they are all really as pious as they seem? Search iTunes, Google Play or the App Store and you will find thousands of apps offering to help you practise your religion. And as our smart phones become mor...
Mar 06, 2020•28 min
Not many countries can boast of having a state Oracle. Tibet can, although the medium for their principal oracle – the Nechung – lives exiled from his native land in North India. Cambridge anthropologist and broadcaster David Sneath travels to Dharamsala to meet the medium of the present State Oracle of Tibet and explore the history and meaning of this remarkable institution. He examines the function and practice of an oracle in the 21st Century and considers how important his presence is for Ti...
Feb 28, 2020•27 min
Sarah, together with her father and brother, meets the bombers who killed her mother as she and her family attempt to understand how the men who carried it out could be followers of the same faith – and claim to carry out the act in the name of Islam. On her fifth birthday Sarah’s mother died from injuries sustained in a terrorist attack. She was the victim of a car bomb that exploded outside the Australian embassy in the Indonesian capital Jakarta in 2004. It was one of a series of bombings car...
Feb 21, 2020•27 min
“I am an expert bomb maker. I can make bombs in just five minutes; it’s easier than making a kite.” For Heart and Soul, Rebecca Henschke meets a bomber turned peacemaker as part of the Crossing Divides series on the BBC World Service. Ali Fauzi was a chief bomb-maker for Jemaah Islamiyah, a terror group with links to Al-Qaeda, responsible for Indonesia’s worst terrorist attack – the Bali bombing in 2002. His brothers carried out the bombing. Two of the brothers were executed, while another is be...
Feb 14, 2020•27 min
In just two years India has leapt up the table into the top ten of the most dangerous countries to be a Christian. At the same time, there’s a rise in an extreme version of Hinduism which is linked to the recently re-elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There are 65 million Christians in India, and they make up just over 2% of this vast country, but instead of being able to live and worship under the radar, in the last five years there’s been a huge increase in serious incidents against Christi...
Feb 10, 2020•27 min
Father Columba Stewart, a Benedictine monk from St Joseph's Abbey, Minnesota, travels to Timbuktu with a team of experts trying to persuade the Imams of the City's three great Mosques to allow them to digitise their highly endangered manuscript collections. These priceless cultural documents are filled with irreplaceable ancient wisdom. They are largely Islamic, but relate to all facets of life in the city over the last several hundred years. Many are straightforward copies of the Quran and the ...
Jan 31, 2020•28 min
In the first of two special programmes we meet Marc Michaels who has a rare skill. He’s keeping Jewish tradition alive. He is a Sofer, a scribe. It’s a dexterous skill that has been passed down for thousands of years. Scrolls are always hand written, otherwise they are not Kosher. Scrolls hold the sacred words of the Torah, God’s instructions to Moses and they form the basic tenets of the Jewish faith as well as playing a vital, symbolic role in the synagogue. But throughout their turbulent hist...
Jan 24, 2020•27 min
The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour is a rebuilt structure, a beacon for the resurgent Russian Orthodox Church and a stronghold of Patriarch Kirill who recently boasted that three new churches are built somewhere in Russia every day. Last year, there were 25 new churches in Moscow alone. Patriarch Kirill argues the country needs new churches to replace the ones destroyed under Communism. In the Soviet era, Lenin compared religion to venereal disease. Churches and monasteries were pulled down or ...
Jan 17, 2020•28 min
They tell stories of torture and punishment all because of their faith. Uighurs and other ethnic Muslims locked up and subjected to hours of brainwashing designed to rid them of them their faith. Human Rights Watch estimate there a million Muslims held in camps across China accusing the state of forced political indoctrination, and religious oppression. There are thousands of Muslims though who have managed to escape the camps to Kazakhstan. Rustam Qobil meets them to learn about their lives. He...
Jan 10, 2020•27 min
Three-thousand years ago, according to legend, a beautiful and wealthy queen embarked on a long journey to visit a celebrated king. He was King Solomon, and she was the Queen of Sheba. The Queen of Sheba is the great eastern muse, shifting shape, race, appearance, according to the beholder. She may be historical, or she may be mythical, but she is still world famous. In the Bible, she asks hard questions of King Solomon and leaves only after he gives her all that she desires. In the Koran, this ...
Jan 03, 2020•27 min
Christians in the UK are facing a huge crisis of faith, the numbers of people who say they are churchgoers is falling and the church is worried. Shari Vahl meets the Anglicans harnessing the power of sport to try and reconnect people with a faith many had chosen to forget. Churches in Norwich, a city in the east of England are challenging people’s ideas of what ‘a church’ is, setting up the Sports Factory to use football to bring people, particularly young men, to God. Shari meets 24 year old Ia...
Dec 30, 2019•27 min
The sounds of Christmas will come from Manchester as three choirs that represent the rich diversity of the city share the songs which say Christmas to them. Members of the choirs tell Keisha Thompson about their lives in the city in northern England and what it means to them to come together to sing Christmas songs Presenter: Keisha Thompson Producer: Neil Morrow
Dec 20, 2019•27 min
"And your Lord inspired the Bee, build your dwellings in hills, on trees, and in (human's) habitations." (Qur'an 16:68). The bee has its own Surah or Chapter in the Qu’ran, it is revered in the faith for its diligent hard work and production of life-giving honey. The prophet Muhammed spoke about bees and honey. 'The believer is like a bee; her food and deeds are pure and wherever she goes she neither causes destruction nor corruption'. For many Muslims bees are not just intelligent, they are als...
Dec 13, 2019•27 min
The Kartarpur Corridor crosses one of the most dangerous and contentious borders in the world, and is generally shut to travellers, but, hundreds of thousands of Sikhs have crossed it to mark the 550th birthday of Guru Nanak, the founder of their religion. The chance to visit the magnificent monument to him, is all down to a highly unusual level of diplomacy between India and Pakistan, all in the name of Sikhism, a religion which has always straddled the divisions between Hinduism and Islam. Nin...
Dec 06, 2019•27 min
Cambodia has been a Buddhist country since the 13th Century, apart from a period under the Khmer Rouge. Ninety-five per cent of the population identify as Buddhist. Journalist and blogger, Kounila Keo, brings together young people in Phnom Penh, to hear what they think of the way Buddhism is developing in South East Asia and what kind of Buddhism they want in their country. We have a panel of young Buddhists, together with a live audience, at Factory in Phnom Penh, to discuss issues such as viol...
Nov 30, 2019•51 min
