>> abernethy: coming up: with a swing band and a borrowed cow, his friends take note of the retirement of harvard theologian harvey cox. and, it is called the yizkor requiem, music that bridges christian and jewish traditions in coming to terms with death. plus, jews observe yom kippur, their holiest day, with fasting and self examination.

captioning sponsored by the lilly endowment >> abernethy: welcome. i'm bob abernethy. it's good to have you with us. there was a flurry of diplomatic activity for the obama administration this week, and faith leaders were watching and commenting on all of it. the president was in new york, where the united nations general assembly began tackling issues of concern to many in the religious community, including nuclear proliferation and climate change.

in his speech to the assembly, the president said the u.s. was ready for a new era of global engagement. >> the interests of nations are shared. >> while in new york, obama met with israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu and palestinian president mahmoud abbas to try to revive peace talks. prior to the meeting, a coalition of 30 christian, muslim and jewish leaders released a statement urging the president to make this issue a priority. they pledged to support the administration on several specific steps, which they said could help advance the peace process. one controversial speaker at the general assembly was iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad, who attacked u.s. policies and indirectly criticized jews. ahamadinejad's appearance

sparked several protests, including some rallies organized by jewish groups who urged a quote "nuclear-free" iran. separately, a group of prominent conservative evangelical and catholic leaders called for a total arms embargo and other tough sanctions to stop iran from developing nuclear weapons. also this week, leaders of the world's most powerful countries gathered in pittsburgh for the g-20 summit. in connection with the meeting, religious leaders held their own summit to draw attention to issues facing the world's poor. in their meeting-- and in a procession through the streets of pittsburgh-- 30 leaders from different faiths said the most important indicator of global economic recovery should be what happens to the hungry and the poor. meanwhile, according to a new study by the united nation's world food program, food aid is now at a 20 year low.

and the number of hungry people around the world is soon expected to pass one billion for the first time. in washington, a striking scene on the lawn of the u.s. capitol, as thousands of muslims gathered for what they called a day of islamic unity. muslims from around the country came together to pray, hear religious lectures and read from the koran. the event's chairman said participants wanted to express thanks that allah put them in america, a place where they can freely exercise their religion. and to show that the emphasis was on prayer, no signs or political speeches were allowed. some conservative christians were alarmed by the muslim gathering. and held a national conference call to offer their own prayers for america. now, a profile of writer, liberal activist and harvard university theologian harvey cox, on the occasion of his

remarkable retirement ceremony after 44 years of scholarship and teaching. the celebration had everything: good weather, old friends, short speeches, laughter and music, all starring the honoree. that's cox, the hollis research professor of divinity on the tenor sax, with his big swing band, the soft touch. the chair cox has held was endowed in colonial times, when some professors got to graze cows in harvard yard. >> pasturing cows in those days was equivalent to parking privileges today. >> abernethy: for this occasion, cox borrowed a cow whose name turned out to be pride. cox pretended that he had been worried that a cow so named might be inappropriate for an event at the divinity school. but then another professor reassured him.

>> he said, harvey, at harvard we do not consider pride to be a sin. >> abernethy: there was a tuba ensemble, a speech in latin and many tributes to cox's lifetime of combining the study and teaching of religion with a commitment to liberal activism. and, of course, the more or less contented cow and signed copies of cox's latest book, the future of faith. we talked with cox about what he sees as religion's surprising strength. >> the resurgence of religion around the world, and the various religious institutions, which is unexpected, global. there were people who were predicting the marginalization and even disappearance of religion in my early years as a teacher. that disappearance,

marginalization did not happen. it's a basic change in the nature of our civilization. it will continue. >> abernethy: except for fundamentalisms, cox says, in all religions. >> fundamentalisms. i use the word in the plural. i do not think they're going to last out much longer. >> abernethy: for cox, that includes the religious right. >> the last couple of elections have really exposed the religious right as really being a kind of paper tiger. they just didn't produce the votes. i think they are in considerable disarray. and, frankly, i'm not mourning over that. >> abernethy: meanwhile, especially in christianity, cox sees a shift away from beliefs and hierarchies to an emphasis on individual faith. >> i call it the age of the spirit. the yearning for some kind of personal experience, even the yearning for some kind of an

ecstatic, under... encounter with god, or with the divine. clearly in pentecostalism, which he calls the fastest-growing branch of christianity. he also says pentecostalism is now balancing its well-known exuberance with more and more social service. >> the combination of social ministry and experiential worship is a dynamite combination. >> abernethy: within protestantism, cox takes some of the blame for the decline of many of the old mainline churches. >> the clergy, and i take some responsibility for this, having been involved in it for over 40 years, was trained in christian thought, christian philosophy, christian theology. and not enough in how to nurture the experience of god, the experience of the spirit and encounter with christ.

>> abernethy: as cox looks at the u.s., he sees a huge social problem. >> a rampant culture of market consumer values really has a grip on many people in america. everybody seems to be driven by, especially, the lure of advertising, which says you ought to have this, you really need that. you owe it to yourself to have this and that. i think the role of religion at this point is to make very clear that this structure of values, of consumer values is not coherent with christianity, with the gospel, with the life and example of jesus. that's not what he was talking about at all. >> abernethy: cox condemns the so-called prosperity gospel, preaching that says if people are faithful, god will make them rich. >> can you imagine that kind of sermon coming from the mouth of jesus himself? no.

it's a rank contradiction. it's really... let's call it by its name: it's a heresy. >> abernethy: cox has been a popular teacher. one year, a thousand students signed up for one of his courses. it is the students now who give him a lot of hope. >> the change that i've seen is the enormous growth in the hunger and interest in religion and spirituality among students at this university. it's phenomenal. when i first came here we didn't even have a religious studies program at harvard college. i notice increasingly among my students, both undergraduate and students in the divinity school, a deep suspicion of this life of accumulating, consuming to the soul. the danger to the soul of consumerist values. let me tell you that the urge to graduate from college, like this one, and immediately go down to a wall street investment firm is

greatly shrunk this year from what it was last. >> abernethy: nina was beside him. she, too, is a scholar and professor. she is also jewish. cox is an american baptist. they have a college-age son. >> we did not want our marriage to be one of those religious- free zones. >> abernethy: so, out of respect for jewish law and custom, when the mother is jewish, their son was raised jewish. cox became his judaism teacher. >> we have shared in each others' spiritual traditions, and it can be done. it's also very exciting. i mean, i really believe that i understand christianity better having participated in jewish life-- and remember, jesus was a rabbi-- than i would have if i hadn't done that. >> abernethy: cox also told a book store audience this week about religions borrowing from each other.

>> i've been to three or four synagogues recently where they have quite obviously introduced forms of buddhist meditation within the synagogue service. when we have the opening chant here let's hold it for a very long time, the way you might hold "om." but they say "shalom." >> abernethy: as cox studies the variety of religions in the world, he says he has made a big adjustment. >> i have learned to think about christianity as one of the possible religious and symbolic ways to approach reality, among others. the plurality of the religions in the world is a check on any one of them, including ours, not to get too pretentious, and think that we have the whole truth. one of the most dangerous things in any religion is to identify my understanding of the truth, my own take on it, with the truth itself.

the truth is something out there. it's absolute. but my take on it is relative. god is larger than this. god is much larger than any particular understanding of god. >> abernethy: the common ideas among major religions inspired composer thomas beveridge to blend jewish and christian themes musically. the result is called the yizkor requiem. yizkor being hebrew for "may he remember," and requiem, a mass for the repose of the dead. bob faw spoke with the composer. >> reporter: for people of faith, services which acknowledge, indeed commemorate, death can bring comfort or anguish. thomas beveridge's yizkor requiem recognizes both.

performed here by the orchestra and chorus of london's st. martin-in-the-fields, the music is emotional and cerebral- suggestive, even, at times, haunting. ♪ conducted by sir neville marriner and recorded for the milken archive of american jewish music, the "yizkor requiem" was composed by beveridge not just to remind listeners of what beveridge says "really matters," but also to combine, musically, two faiths. >> i realized that i could put together a piece that kind of stands on the bridge between the

two religions, the christian religion and the jewish religion, and takes a look at, simultaneously, at the ritual for the dead. >> reporter: beveridge says he was inspired to compose this piece after the 1991 death of his father, an episcopal priest and scholar who immersed himself in both faiths. it was, says beveridge, "a quest for spiritual roots." >> my quest and my father's quest. my father inspired me to look at the origins of christian liturgy in the synagogue. i mean, that's basically what we're talking about here. >> reporter: was it an attempt to come to terms with his death, or to memorialize him, or both? >> i think both. i find it a very cathartic experience to make this effort

in his memory, and in the process i learned a lot. >> reporter: what beveridge, a church organist, choir director, and composer of more than 600 works, learned over the two years he spent writing the "yizkor requiem" is that despite profound differences in theology, the two faiths share enormous common ground. >> i went through the requiem mass and found passages that were almost exactly the same as passages in the yizkor service or in similar synagogue ritual, and that's where the mass came from. it came directly out of the synagogue. >> reporter: "yizkor," hebrew for "may he remember," is a memorial service for the deceased. the requiem is the music for a catholic funeral service, seeking eternal rest for the departed. while a requiem emphasizes comfort, and the yizkor can be sad, musically they reinforce one another.

here, for example, as the cantor sings the kaddish in hebrew, the chorus underneath sings the lord's prayer in english. each of them a doxology, a hymn praising god. >> the kaddish is a doxology. the lord's prayer is a doxology, though the yizkor requiem begins with the kaddish prayer, which is what every jew says at the yahrzeit, the annual remembrance of anyone in his family who has died. >> reporter: another similarity which beveridge accents musically: the word "holy," repeated here three times in hebrew-- kadosh, then three times in latin-sanctus.

♪ but make no mistake: while much of this composition is solemn, parts are also light-hearted, or what beveridge calls "lickety- split." ♪ "i wanted," says beveridge, "to give the impression of a train that gets going and keeps going, going along." >> it's not all very ponderous stuff. there's a lot of joy in it. the joy of recognizing that a departed soul may be resting in eden, in the garden of eden. >> reporter: perhaps the most dramatic moment of all in the yizkor requiem comes at the end, when a single flute plays a plaintive theme. ♪

finally, with the soft refrain of "amen" by the chorus, the flute slowly fades away. ♪ >> the flute player turns around and walks out of the building and disappears, and the last phrase is played over and over and over again until the player can hardly be heard any more. i wanted to depict the departing soul somehow, and the flute playing the melody of the ninth movement, the words of which are "the souls of the righteous are in the hands of god." >> reporter: what beveridge has done, says one reviewer, is "bring us back to our

and our endings" in a work which beveridge says is meant to be reassuring, a peaceful work about the experience of death. >> i mean, we are the ones who are left. we're the ones who have to deal with this event in our lives and to try to understand it, try to find a way, through ritual or through musical experience, of coming to terms with it. >> reporter: a spiritual lesson in music, bridging traditions which differ, but which also experience the same thing and which here come together as one. for "religion & ethics newsweekly," this is bob faw in washington.

>> abernethy: on our calendar this week, yom kippur, the jewish day of atonement, begins sunday evening. it's the holiest time of the jewish year, with fasting and prayers all day in synagogues and temples. we talked about yom kippur observances with rabbi irwin kula of the national jewish center for learning and leadership. >> the central ritual on yom kippur, besides prayer itself, that's most well-known, is fasting. what fasting does is it says i'm not going to concentrate on my physical body right now. i'm going to concentrate on a different kind of food. rather than nutrients for my body, i'm going to concentrate on the nutrients for my spirit, my heart, and my ethical way. so when you feel hungry at two o'clock in the afternoon, the feeling of hunger is not so that you'll be in pain.

the feeling of hunger is to stimulate two things: what am i really hungry for, because it's more than just food. what am i really hungry for in my spiritual and ethical life? and who really is hungry that i need to feed? and if you take those two insights from the practice seriously, it's working. that's what atonement... that is what "at-one-ment" means. kol nidre is the first prayer of the yom kippur service. what we do on kol nidre is the confrontation and the challenge of having to look at every promise and obligation and commitment that i have in my life and starting by saying okay, fine. you have none of them. you have no obligations, no promises. kol nidre, all the promises are null and void. okay, now what? it's very frightening to imagine that we have no obligations,

because it is our obligations, our promises that define who we are. the rest of yom kippur, in a sense, is taking back the obligations, reassessing them. okay, i am married, do i want to be married? what does it mean to have that obligation? hey, i am a father, what are the obligations that come with being a father that may have gotten distorted in between last yom kippur and this yom kippur? what are my obligations to my work and my craft and my calling? what are my obligations, what are the promises that i've made to myself? so kol nidre is a very profound method and technology for stripping us of all promises and obligations that may distort us, so that we stand there naked, just us, with the ability to take back promises, take back obligations over the next 25 hours. the focus of the high holiday period is not on death. the focus is on life.

it turns out that one of the great ways to focus ourselves on life is to think about death. that just turns out to be the paradox. so if on yom kippur we fast, if on yom kippur we deny ourselves certain bodily pleasures and engage in a kind of deep introspection on the moral, psychological, and spiritual level, well, it turns out we will become better people. i mean, that's just what happens. but, again, there are no guarantees. you can go through everything on yom kippur and go through the motions, and on the other hand you can sit in yom kippur and never use a prayer book but just really think about who you are and it can make a difference in your life. >> abernethy: also on our calendar, five days after yom kippur the joyous celebration of sukkot. many jews build temporary shelters, called sukkahs, to commemorate the 40 years the children of israel wandered in

the desert. and hindus are celebrating the nine-day navratri festival. it's dedicated to female deities, including the goddess durga who is celebrated for triumphing over evil. the festival is marked by prayers, processions and music. finally, reverend forrest church, perhaps this country's best known unitarian- universalist minister, died this week after a three-year battle with cancer. church was the longtime pastor of the unitarian church of all souls on the upper east side of new york.=k he was also author of 24 books. his latest, called "love and death," reflected on living each day with joy and gratitude. >> the only way to reconcile yourself, make peace with yourself, make peace with your neighbor, make peace with god, find salvation is to break through and love, to forgive and to love. >> abernethy: that's our program

for now. i'm bob abernethy. we have much more on our website, including a link to more audio of the yizkor requiem as well as more of our interview with harvey cox and an excerpt from his most recent book. you can comment on our stories and share them. audio and video podcasts are also available. join us at pbs.org. captioning sponsored by the lilly endowment captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org