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CNN will explore the rising influence of religion around the world in a three-day, six-hour special beginning Tuesday as faith progressively plays a more prominent role in U.S. politics and sectarian violence in the Middle East threatens to tear the region asunder.
Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, will delve into the world of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim zealots to investigate the global phenomenon of religious influence within politics.
“The rise of religious influence within politics is a global phenomenon. How nations and individuals integrate religious and political expression is perhaps the most compelling challenge of our time,” said Amanpour, according to U.S. News & World Report.
“At the very violent extreme – global security is at stake. In the United States, understanding the impact of religion upon electoral politics is very timely. The political parties and presidential candidates are actively courting faith leaders and their constituencies for their votes,” explained Amanpour.
The veteran international reporter spent eight months working on the special which will be shown in two-hour segments Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 9 p.m. EDT. She traveled to the Netherlands, Egypt, Iran, Israel, the occupied West Bank, the United Kingdom, and several states within the United States to put together the special.
Included in the Christian segment on Thursday is an interview with the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, which turned out to be his last interview before his death in May.
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“We’re talking about the [members] of these three faiths who feel that they have a direct line to God and that religion needs to be brought from the personal into the public sphere,” Amanpour said, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The award-winning war reporter was raised in Tehran, Iran, by a Catholic mother and Muslim father. She was educated in Iran, England and the United States and is now based in London where she lives with her Jewish American husband James Rubin – former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State.
“I’ve lived my personal life in a multiethnic, multifaith, multicultural environment,” said Amanpour, “and I’ve spent my professional life dealing with the opposite, (covering) wars based on divisions among faiths.”
The series will examine Jews who believe they are the chosen people and that Israel and the occupied West Bank is their Promised Land. It will also look at U.S. Zionists and their support of Israel and the Jewish people.
For the Muslim segment, Amanpour will travel to Iran and study the roots of martyrdom.
The final segment on Thursday is on Christian conservatives.
“I had never inquired into the nuts and bolts of how Christian conservatives operate here in the U.S.,” she admits.
“We tend to look at them like some exotic subspecies, while they’re actually a huge segment of the population here. They have huge impact, and we can’t afford to treat them as a sort of loony fringe. I think that’s quite clear.”
Amanpour concludes by drawing commonality between Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalists:
“The ‘warrior’ within each religion view modern society as too permissive, oversexualized and corrupt. Their solution is to restore morality and values to our culture by returning religion to the center of public life,” she said, according to U.S News & World Report. “While there is no equivalence being drawn between them, they do have in common the determined belief that only they have a direct line to God and the unique ability to interpret His truth.”
