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13 Episodes 1977 - 1977
Episode 1
51 mins
Beginning with the followers of an itinerant preacher in a backwater of the Roman Empire, Christianity became Rome's religion with astonishing speed.
Episode 2
The 1130-year span of the Byzantine Empire is the background for a look at Christianity's spread; the development of monasticism, initiated by St. Anthony; the fall of Constantinople to the Turks; and Moscow's subsequent claim to the title of the "third Rome."
Episode 3
After waves of barbarians swept through the Roman Empire, Charlemagne struck a deal with Pope Leo III to establish both religious and political stability.
Episode 4
Constantly living in the shadow of death, medieval Christians turned to relics to temper God's judgment and built mighty cathedrals to glorify Him.
Episode 5
Jews, Christians, and Muslims hold sacred not only some of the same scriptures, but also some of the same sites, which they've fought over for centuries.
Episode 6
Leading up to the Renaissance, as many as three popes simultaneously claimed spiritual and political authority--while dissidents decried their corruption.
Episode 7
Martin Luther's reformist ideas threatened to wreak theological and political havoc, but soon his acolytes had exported Protestant concepts all over Europe.
Episode 8
In the 16th century, as Spain expanded Christianity into the New World, the Catholic Church countered the Reformation with its elite "shock troops," the Jesuits.
Episode 9
Many Protestants persecuted breakaway sects as vigorously as the Catholic Church has attacked heretics. But when some victims sought refuge in America, they too turned tyrannical.
Episode 10
George Whitefield and John Wesley injected emotion into a faith that had become rational, genteel, and--for too many Christians--boring and irrelevant.
Episode 11
By the 19th century, Europe had begun to export its own brand of commerce and Christianity to Africa, while industrialized urban poverty choked religion at home.
Episode 12
It took the Vatican two centuries to accept a heliocentric universe. But science proved only one threat to faith, and change often sparked a fundamentalist reaction.
Episode 13
Ironically, Christianity survived--even thrived--in Communist Russia and Poland, while Communism exerted itself in nominally Catholic Italy.