“Exploring the tracks of the world religions”

From personal experience I know all the dark sides of the religions, of the Christian as well as of the other religions. To this day, religion has played a disastrous role in many a conflict, especially right here in Jerusalem.

From personal experience, however, I also know the bright sides of the religions. Instead of inciting to strife and hatred, they can foster peace and reconciliation, also right here in Jerusalem.

I have had the opportunity to follow the traces of the religions around the world throughout the many thousand years of their history,

• traces that can lead to peace,
• traces that can lead to a more humane way of living, and
• traces of a common basic ethic among persons of different religions.

Men and women from all of the religions know too little of each other. In particular, they know too little about what is common to all religious and ethical traditions.

Nevertheless, it is not my intention here merely to inform, i.e. to present neutral documentary films reporting about the religions in cool objectivity and emotional distance.

By the same token, however, I am not here to missionize, i.e. to produce a film promoting the merits of any one religion or of some new world religion of my own creation.

No, I want to provide you with orientation about many things that may be strange or unknown to you and to challenge you to reflect anew about the significance of the great religions for the future of mankind. I invite you to join me and my team in following the traces of the religions through the ages and across the continents.

Naturally, we have had to make choices in the course of our journey. But we did not do so arbitrarily. We said to ourselves, it must be possible

• to speak objectively and yet personally,
• to report historical facts exactly and yet address current problems,
• to concentrate upon each religion as such and yet call attention to universal relationships.

We want to enable you, the viewers, to experience something of the fascination, indeed the beauty of the religions – not in blind devotion, but in critical sympathy. For this reason, we present to you, in this sevenfold film series, not just one single religion, but the whole spectrum of the world’s religions.

We begin with the ethnic religions, especially as they can be found today in Australia and Africa. Then we take up the seven world religions belonging to the three major religious currents found on this earth:

• the wisdom religions of Chinese origin: Confucianism and Daoism;
• the mystical religions of Indian origin: Hinduism and Buddhism;
• the prophetic religions of Near Eastern origin: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.