‘A Dialogue About Religion’ (Not Politics)

When Bill Moyers was a boy growing up in eastern Texas, he learned about the Book of Genesis through Biblical trading cards for children. “I can still recall the drawing of Noah and the Ark,” the journalist reflected. “It was Mr. and Mrs. Noah on the Ark, the happy family of animals, the rainbow in the distance. ... The stories were sanitized for children, and that’s how many of us learned about the Bible.”

“In fact,” Moyers said, “when you read the story of Noah in the Bible, it’s about a God who becomes so angry--or saddened--by the corruption of the world that he destroys the world, including innocent children. The story raises important questions about the unpredictability of God, the fate of innocents and what it means to be a survivor.”

Those questions and others that come from the familiar stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abraham and Isaac in the first book of the Bible are debated with joy and vigor in “Genesis: A Living Conversation,” Moyers’ new 10-part PBS series, premiering Wednesday.

In what may be the ultimate “talking heads” show on the ultimate subject, a group of scholars, theologians, teachers and artists examine the Genesis stories for what they reveal about God and man.

“All of the great themes in our lives are in these stories,” said the 62-year-old Moyers, who was ordained as a Baptist minister before he became a journalist. “The people in the Bible rage at each other and at God, they have sibling rivalry, they lust after other people’s wives, they hurt, they grieve.”

Based on a Genesis seminar started by Rabbi Burton Visotsky at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, each episode of the series begins with a dramatic reading of the story under examination by either Alfre Woodard or Mandy Patinkin. Then the issues raised in the story are discussed by Moyers, Visotsky and a revolving group of participants that includes scholars in Christianity, Judaism and Islam and others such as novelist Mary Gordon and painter Hugh O’Donnell.

The mix can lead to surprising moments--O’Donnell comparing God to a creative artist; a Muslim and a Christian disagreeing about the character of Abraham; women and men of several faiths debating the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden.

The aim, Moyers said, “is to have a dialogue about religion that does not require people to surrender their own deeply held beliefs in order to engage in ecumenical talk.”

There are evangelical Christians and some nonbelievers in the series, Moyers said, but no fundamentalist Christians. “I talked to some fundamentalists about being in the series, but they wanted to debate creationism vs. evolution, and abortion--and they didn’t really think there was anything more to say” about how the world was created. Moyers said he doesn’t know how fundamentalists will react to the series.

Although he said he was first drawn to the original Genesis seminar as simply a good story to tell, Moyers said that he hopes the TV series will help “de-politicize” religion in this country.

“There are a lot of people, including yours truly, who are fed up with the religious right having dominated the religious discourse in this country for the past 20 years, with the complicity of the media,” Moyers said. “Ralph Reed has turned the Christian Coalition into the Tammany Hall of Republican politics. Everything the religious right has done has been treated as news by the media, and it sometimes seems as if religion is just one more special-interest group in Washington, like the National Association of Manufacturers.

“There are many other voices among the religious community, and I believe most people do not want to politicize or polemicize their beliefs,” Moyers continued. “But there’s been almost no religious discussion on television in recent years. The religion shows the broadcast networks used to do years ago in the ‘Sunday-morning ghetto’ have been replaced by the Sunday-morning talk shows about politics.”

It took Moyers six years to raise the funds for “Genesis,” in part, he believes, because “religion had been so marginalized on television that it was hard for people to visualize what we wanted to do.”

That may change. The TV series--which is coming at a time of renewed interest in Genesis, as evidenced in several new books--is accompanied by a book-length transcript of the show’s discussions and a separate study guide meant to promote discussion among viewers. A coalition of about 100 religious organizations is encouraging local groups to organize their own Genesis seminars in connection with the series.

Moyers, who has gone back and forth between commercial television and PBS over the years, had signed with NBC early in 1995 to do commentary on “NBC Nightly News,” but shortly thereafter he had a recurrence of symptoms that had led to heart surgery the previous year and chose not to continue. “My cardiologist and I didn’t think I should have those kind of daily deadlines,” he explained.

Today, Moyers said, his health is excellent. But he’s limiting his NBC work to hosting “Internight,” a live talk show on NBC’s cable-news channel, MSNBC, and instead is concentrating on PBS.

“At this stage in my life, I want to do my own projects. ... [My] Joseph Campbell series got minuscule ratings when it first aired, but 20 million people eventually saw it. I believe public television should unplug itself from the Nielsen ratings. We can serve niche audiences and have a real impact on people’s thinking about a subject.”

The first two hours of “Genesis”--the first dealing with Cain and Abel, the second with the creation--air 8-10 p.m. Wednesday on KCET. Subsequent installments will air Thursdays at 10 p.m.