This post requires Silverlight. It's free, small and reliable. If you are viewing this article in a feed reader, you may need to visit the original post. Get Silverlight...

Update: The video should be working now. Sorry for the delay.

What’s the best way to introduce more people to the Christian faith; stand on a street corner shouting about eternal damnation and how Jesus loves us all, or living a life like Christ, letting people see your Christianity through your actions? Is there a point in locking yourself away from the world in order to contemplate God? Does religion out of its setting make us uncomfortable? Why is there a link between religious belief and mental illness? Can people heal the sick and speak in tongues?

All these questions and more were dealt with in a BBC TV series aired about one year ago called “Am I normal?” in an episode called ‘spirituality’. Dr Tanya Byron explored what some consider the fine line between religious devotion and psychiatric disorder. She saw what happens when rational scientists try to analyse religious phenomena like speaking in tongues and hearing voices. And she considered the beliefs of faith healers who claim miracles happen, and those who believe they can cast out the malevolent spirits of the dead from within the living.

Unfortunately, the programme isn’t available on iPlayer and hasn’t been broadcast on telly since. Luckily, I have a copy I recorded last year. I’d love to make it all available online, but I don’t want to anger the copyright police.

Carmelite Monastery visit

There was plenty of interesting stuff in there about other faiths and other manifestations of faith, however it’s the Catholic stuff that we’re concerned about. The doctor visits a Carmelite monastery and ends up chatting to an older and a younger nun. It’s interesting hearing their experiences, have a watch:

It may take a while to load, please be patient... it's worth the wait! It's a high-quality clip, that's all. For some reason I couldn’t get an Adobe Flash player clip to work, so you’ll need Microsoft Silverlight instead. It’s a free download that brings desktop experiences to the web. More and more sites are using Silverlight, so install it now to be ahead of the crowd!

There’s one thing I must dispute with the younger nun in the clip, faith is an intellectual thing. Saint Anselm’s most famous dictum is “fides quaerens intellectum”; faith seeks understanding. It’s not enough to believe in God blindly, we must always be trying to reason his existence because it’s in our nature to do so.

I’m not too sure about her comments about the power of prayer either, she said that the power of prayer can make impossible things happen. However, prayer without action is toothless. There’s no point praying for exam success if you’re not going to study.

I’m not going to make any other comments about this clip, I’ll leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions from it. I wish I could upload the rest!

Embed the video

To embed the video above in your own blog or website, copy the following code:

Conditions of use
Because the BBC is a British company, the use of their content is subject to British fair dealing laws, rather than the US fair use laws. The two are not the same. You may only embed this video if...

• Your blog or site does not serve adverts or require a fee for content.
• You are providing a commentary to accomapny this, either a review or critique.
• You agree not to modify the code given above, except for applying styles. So, you may edit the style attributes but must keep the links intact.

Other uses may violate international copyright laws; the copyright police will eat your children and burn your house to the ground! Consider linking to this post for other uses.

Labels: britain, commentary, multimedia, religious life