Diploma lecture 2012-13

Diploma Lecture 2012

Neil Oliver continues his journey through the world of Ancient Britain as he encounters an age of cosmological priests and some of the greatest monuments of the Stone Age, including Stonehenge itself. This is a time of elite travellers, who were inventing the very idea of Heaven itself.

Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch - one of the world's leading historians - reveals the origins of Christianity and explores what it means to be a Christian

Diarmaid MacCulloch explores the extraordinary rise of Roman Catholic Church.

Diarmaid MacCulloch examines the concept of scepticism in Western Christianity.

Diarmaid MacCulloch explores Eastern Orthodox Christianity's fight for survival.

Diarmaid MacCulloch looks at the Reformation and its attack on the Catholic Church.

The Bible describes how Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed in a storm of fire and brimstone. Could the inspiration for this story come from a natural apocalypse around the Dead Sea in the Middle East?

Just how did the Devil get inside our heads? And who put him there? For Halloween, award-winning comedy writer and performer Andy Hamilton (creator and star of Radio 4's acclaimed infernal comedy Old Harry's Game) explores just who the devil Satan is, where he comes from and what he has been up to all this time.

Pete Owen Jones presents the definitive guide to faith on earth, with eighty rituals across six continents in the space of a year

One year, six continents, 80 rituals - smoking babies, naked men festivals, cargo cults and serpent-handling. From Taoism in China to a Voodoo mass in West Africa, Pete Owen Jones presents the definitive guide to faith on earth.

Pete Owen Jones's epic journey exploring the world's beliefs continues in the Middle East, where he encounters an unknown side to a land scarred by religious strife.

Pete Owen Jones's adventures continue as he embarks on the American leg of his religious odyssey to find out why, when it comes to ritual, anything goes.

After examining 49 faiths, Pete Owen Jones journeys from the Nepalese Himalayas to the south of India to make sense of the mystery of Indian religions, including the transmigration of the soul, karma, the pantheon of gods and the high regard for gurus.

Leading British writer Howard Jacobson, a Jew himself, examines the origins and consequences of Christian belief. He argues that although Christianity originated in devout Judaism, for Jews it has been, for the most part, a calamity.

Acclaimed war correspondent Rageh Omaar examines the effect the Crusades have on the world today. In the West, the Crusades are a chapter of Christian history that has little impact on our everyday lives, but in the Middle East many believe that the Crusades are happening again.

There are some who believe that Darwin\'s theory of evolution has weakened religion, fuelled in part by Richard Dawkins\' publishing phenomenon The God Delusion. Conor Cunningham argues that nothing could be further from the truth.

On the third anniversary of the 7/7 London Bombings, political commentator and journalist Peter Oborne investigates whether these attacks and the fear of terrorism has fuelled the rise of violence, intolerance and hatred against British Muslims

Dispatches goes undercover to investigate allegations that teachers regularly assault young children in some of the 2,000 Muslim schools in Britain run by Islamic organisations.

Dispatches investigates a fundamentalist Islamic group headquartered in Britain, and its claims to have placed its \'brothers\' in positions of political power here.

Dr Tony Spawforth investigates the religion founded by the Pharaoh Akhenaten.

Using newly-released files, concealed by the KGB in Moscow and held in archives for nearly 50 years, the programme exposes the events behind the planning and building of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Professor Gerald Fleming, a researcher into Nazi war crimes and architect Robert van Pelt, investigate these files and reveal evidence which shows how German civilian engineers and Bauhaus-trained architects deliberately colluded with the SS to plan the genocide.

As Albert Einstein lay on his deathbed, he asked only for his glasses, his writing implements and his latest equations. He knew he was dying, yet he continued his work. In those final hours of his life, while fading in and out of consciousness, he was working on what he hoped would be his greatest work of all. It was a project of monumental complexity. It was a project that he hoped would unlock the mind of God.

It is said that once, the mighty King Solomon ruled an empire that stretched across the ancient world. According to Biblical lore, at the height of his powers he built the ‘First Temple’, the most magnificent building of its day, bedecked in gold, to house the Ark of the Covenant

In this programme, divided into short chapters for use in the classroom, Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch explores what it means to be English and what has shaped English identity.

The first in a three-part series in which Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of church history at Oxford University and presenter of the award-winning BBC series A History of Christianity, explores both what it means to be English and what has shaped English identity.

Professor MacCulloch challenges the commonly held assumption that the English have a long and glorious tradition of tolerance. Rather, history shows that until recently the English were among the least tolerant peoples in the world.