Religion documentaries
Leaving Amish Paradise
What happens when you take a culture that’s shunned the modern world and force it to live in the 21st century?
The Amish travel by horse and buggy and dress as their forebears did when they landed in America 300 years ago. Countless rules prevent them from using electric lights, radio, TV and mobile phones.
This documentary follows two Amish families struggling to get to grips with modernity.
Did Darwin Kill God?
If evolution is incompatible with God, why is its father, Charles Darwin, buried in Westminster Abbey – one of the most famous religious sites in the world?
Noted atheist Richard Dawkins insists you can’t have both, but as theologian Conor Cunningham discovers in this BBC documentary on religion and evolution, Christianity and science haven’t always been at war. Is there really blood on Darwin’s hands?
It’s a murder case that will never go cold.
Divine Women
Why is the role of women in religion so controversial and has it always been that way? Award winning historian Bettany Hughes explores the complex attitudes towards women and religion, from 10,000 BC to the present day, in this enthralling BBC history documentary.
Watch Divine Women and other great history documentaries on BBC Select. Restrictions apply*.
The status of females and faith continues to be a contentious subject. But it wasn’t always this way. In the past, women were often powerful players in the act of worship, from the very birth of organized religion. Join Bettany Hughes on a journey across the world and throughout history the explore hidden and sometimes controversial history of women in religion.
A History of Christianity
In this illuminating BBC documentary series, Diarmaid MacCulloch, one of the world’s leading historians, reveals the genesis of Christianity and explores what it means to be a Christian.
Along the way he unearths surprising facts about the religion, including how it started and the development of ideas surrounding God and Jesus. Can looking at Christianity’s past reveal clues about its future?
Mars Uncovered: Ancient God of War
Classicist Bettany Hughes investigates the enduring relationship between violence and worship by following the trail, through time, of the ancient god of war: Mars.
In this BBC history documentary, Bettany asks if celebrating war is a way of bringing societies together by creating ‘them’ and ‘us’ and how Romans, and later Christian crusaders, justified bloodshed. But can war ever be justified?