MONDAY

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Mr. Feiler's official site
• Q & A with Mr. Feiler
• About Where God Was Born

E-mail a friend

Tavis: Bruce Feiler is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author who's traveled extensively throughout the Middle East researching his books and television projects. One of his most recent books, 'Walking the Bible,' is being turned into a mini-series that we hope will air next year right here on PBS. His latest book is 'Where God Was Born: A Journey by Land to the Roots of Religion.' Bruce Feiler, nice to have you in our studio, sir.

Bruce Feiler: Great to be with you, Tavis. Thank you.

Tavis: I'm glad to have you, and congrats on those twins.

Feiler: Thank you very much.

Tavis: You have brand new twin girls.

Feiler: Six-month-old identical twins.

Tavis: And their names are?

Feiler: Eden, for the Garden of Eden, where I was in 'Where God was Born,' as you know. And Tybee, which is a beach in Georgia where I grew up, and where we got married.

Tavis: All right. Congrats on that. Identical twins?

Feiler: Identical.

Tavis: So have you figured it out yet?

Feiler: Well, you know, they don't look alike.

Tavis: (laughs) All right. I've been fascinated to have you on the program. - The first question I want to ask, so I'll ask it now, is what got you so fascinated by the Bible? I love the Bible. A lot of us love the Bible. But something had to really get your attention for you to write, now, two best-selling books about the Bible. And to travel around the world tracking these stories as you have.

Feiler: Well, I spent about 15 - I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, as - you said, and have traveled around the world entering different cultures. Japan, England, country music. And I hadn't read the Bible since I was a kid, which meant I hadn't really read it. I took it off my shelf, put it by my bed, and it sat untouched there. And then I went to visit an old friend in Jerusalem, and my friend said, "Over there is this controversial neighborhood, and over there the rock where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac.'

And it had never occurred to me that they would be real places you could touch and feel. And so I thought, this crazy way I live my life, what if I joined the Bible, as if it were any other world, and become a part of it? And 10 years later it's really kind of taken over my life. First 'Walking the Bible,' which is the first five books, and now 'Where God was Born,' which took me through Israel, Iraq, and Iran in the middle of this conflict.

Trying to figure out if religion, which is such a source of tension today and conflict, if we go back to the roots of religion, is it just gonna tear us apart, or can it in some way help bring us back together?

Tavis: Is the jury still out on that question?

Feiler: I think the jury is still out, but the jury - gets to speak. And by that I mean I really think in the end it's up to us. I think that the number one thing I learned from 'Where God Was Born' is by going back and reading the text in those places, and going to where David fought Goliath, and Joshua conquered Jericho by the rivers of Babylon, to all these places.

The Bible really does, the Bible was invented at this time when religions were in dialogue with one another. And it was invented in the middle of the first millennium, between Moses and Jesus. And I think we have to go back to that time and realize that the Bible contains not just a message of hatred, which is what some people find in it, but a message of diversity and respect for other faiths. So I think that moderates really have to reclaim the Bible and take it back from the extremists who try to control it.

Tavis: Of course the problem is that in this country, and indeed around the world in other parts of the globe, those persons who talk the loudest, who scream the loudest, who jump up and down the most, are the ones who get heard. And oftentimes, again, in this country and around the world, that happens to be folk who are on the fringes, folk who are extremists, folk who are fundamentalists. So what do the folk who are drowned out get to say?

Feiler: Well, I think the first thing is we have to get over that thing that our mamas all told us, which is don't talk about politics and religion in public. You have devoted a lot of your show to this, and I think that is the first step. And the second step is to kind of realize the percentage of Americans who define themselves as secular or atheist, 10.7%; who define themselves as traditional evangelical Protestant, the religious right, 12.6%.

The rest of us are in the middle. And I think that, what I have found in my book, if you go back to the book of Jonah, in which God embraces the Ninevites and denounces Jonah. In the book of Isaiah, I was in Persepolis with my wife in Iran, and Cyrus the Great introduced the notion of pluralism, respect for other faiths. And - what book pays him tribute more than any other? The Hebrew Bible. Isaiah 45. God says, "Thus said the Lord to Cyrus, his anointed one," anointed.

In English the word is Messiah. The Bible says in the book of Isaiah to - embraces the idea of respecting other traditions. We can find in the Bible this message of respect, but we have to read it. And we have to be able to say, when the extremists hold up the text and say, it says this, those of us who believe in respect and tolerance, we get to hold it up and say, "Wait a minute. It also says this.'

Tavis: Okay, so tell me, before I get back to your travels to Iran with the mother of these two twins - this set of twins, not two twins. Set of twins. Let me follow up what you just said a moment ago first, though. Where did - I don't mean to be naive in asking this question, but where did we go wrong? Where did we get off track?

If in fact religion has become this source of animosity, this source of angst, this source of argument, this source of violence and death. But ought to be used as a vehicle, as a tool for peace, where did we get off the track? And why did we get so violently off track?

Feiler: Well, I think that what I have learned, and 'Where God was Born' talks about this, is if you go back to the text, okay? We're talking about the Bible written 2,500 years ago, it contained these messages. It is as universal, I think, as you can find. Go back to Abraham. God blesses Abraham, both of his sons, Ishmael and Isaac, all of their descendants.

But what happened is, Tavis, as you know, over time, each of the religions tried to elbow one another aside and say, "Wait a minute. This book belongs to me.' So Jews tried to make it into a Jewish book, Christians into a Christian book, and Muslims into a Muslim story. And so it was this rivalry of organized religion. But we live in this time where we don't accept what our politicians tell us anymore, even our journalists. Each of us makes our own mind.

And we have to be in this time now, and I think it's what's going on in this country, where each of us has to make our own faith and make our own relationship with God. And that means going back to the text. And what I've tried to do in 'Where God was Born' is take these stories out of the black covers with the gold on the pages, replant them into the ground, and invite people to engage the story and make their own relationship with God.

Tavis: So you mentioned that you've been to the Middle East any number of times, of course, most recently with your wife. While doing this book, in fact. You went to Iran. I can only imagine what that must have been like traveling with a woman in that particular culture. She had to wear the veil and...

Feiler: She did. In fact, my wife had traveled a lot, but she'd never been to the Muslim world, and I said, "you gotta get some appropriate clothing.' She comes back with two outfits. They were long sleeved, but one was white with bright blue embroidery. The other was tangerine orange, and I'm like, "It's my goal to teach you Muslim modesty.' But we were struck that 25 years after the revolution, the religious police were kind of lightening up.

We saw women with makeup, inching their hair back. But what was powerful about being there with her, as you know, in 'Where God was Born,' is we were in Persepolis, looking at Cyrus and this idea, and my wife literally broke down and started to cry, and she said, "Iran is supposed to be this pariah, but now that I'm here, I've never had this feeling of wanting to go closer to another culture, and I wish Americans weren't so cut off from this place because I see this source of hope for the first time.'

Because the biggest question of our time is, can the religions get along? And it was the ancient Persians, with their respect for diversity and pluralism, who really introduced that idea into the world.

Tavis: I couldn't have you on the program without asking you a question about content and context. We know - reasonably know the content of what's happening in Iraq. We know there's this constitution. We're still trying to figure out what it means and what the vote is, but we know what's happening content-wise in the world - known as Iraq. Put that in a broader context of your work, of the Bible, of the times that we live, and tell me what it all means, content inside of context.

Feiler: The entire story of the Hebrew Bible takes place on the Fertile Crescent, okay? I will now become, through public television, the Fertile Crescent.

Tavis: The Fertile Crescent, bam.

Feiler: But you've got the Tigris and Euphrates in ancient Mesopotamia, the Nile down in Egypt, and the promised land here. So much of ancient civilization began in Mesopotamia, the Garden of Eden, the Tower of Babel, writing was invented here; the day first got 24 hours here. This is where civilization began, and it's why I've been wanting to go to Iraq and why I went 10 months after the fall of Saddam, six months after getting married.

The opening of the Iraq constitution says, "We stand here in the name of God and our culture. This is where writing was invented. This is where numbers were invented.' And what the constitution is doing is going back before Islam, before Christianity, before Judaism, to the fact that civilization began in Iraq, and trying to connect what's going on in Iraq today with what's going on then. And it lays out this idea of pluralism. It's there in the constitution.

As you said, is it gonna work out? It's gonna have to be figured out whether it's gonna work out, but the challenge in Iraq is the challenge in the world, and that is, who gets to speak for scripture? Is it the fundamentalists with their bombs and, just today, another bomb going off? Or is it the moderates? That is the challenge that the constitution sets up, but I think that what is hopeful about it is it does root this culture in the oldest civilization long before the religious conflicts, and, in effect, challenges Iraq, with its many different voices, to rise to the legacy of its history.

Tavis: This question might seem a bit counterintuitive, but let me offer it anyway, Bruce. I wonder whether or not there is something to be learned from the conflict, the ongoing conflict that we have over religion. Is there something to be learned out of this?

Feiler: I think that there is. I think that there is no document that captures the violence inherent in this question more than the Bible itself. I mean, there - you're a lover of the Bible. You know, there's a lot hard things in there.

Tavis: There's a scripture in fact that says, "The violent taketh by force.'

Feiler: The opening line of Genesis - 'When God began to create the Heavens and the Earth, the Earth was unformed and void and a darkness over the face of the deep, this chaos.' Before there is order, there is chaos. And I think the Bible understands that chaos is part of the human condition, but - who creates order? God creates order. And how does he create it? How does he create - the world? He uses words. The only thing more powerful than violence is words.

And I think that is the message of the text. And after all of these, a decade now of running around the world, 'Walking the Bible,' 'Where God was Born,' this PBS show coming up, my favorite line in the text comes from Genesis 1, in which God says, "Let us create humans in our image after our likeness.' And in those words, I think, is an answer, because it says that each of us carries a little bit of divinity around within us, so to disrespect another human is to disrespect God.

Tavis: And yet there are a litany of examples, certainly not enough, but there are any number of persons who we could call their names, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., who have shown us, to your very point, that words are more powerful - and yet, we don't seem to heed that advice.

Feiler: Well, I think that Martin Luther King is a good example of someone who found in scripture itself the message of peace by going back to the prophets. The night before he died, Martin Luther King said, "I have been to the mountaintop.' I mean, he likened himself to Moses, who fought this battle greater than anyone, and who was stopped just short of the promised land.

And so I think that we see that scripture can be used for hatred. We also see it can be used for peace. And I think we've got a choice. It's open conflict among the faiths, or it's some kind of coexistence. Coexistence depends on dialogue.

Tavis: Let me ask you an impossible question with a minute to go. How would that happen? I hear what you're saying. I'm down with it, but how would that happen?

Feiler: Well, you know what my answer to that is? We can't sit back and say, "I hope they - have that conversation in Kabul or Baghdad," or, "I hope they get them borders worked out in Jerusalem.' This has to happen in every community and every neighborhood and in every heart. I put on brucefeiler.com, F-E-I-L-E-R.com, an inter-faith discussion guide for my book on Abraham.

Also for 'Where God was Born.' In a year, 5,000 people around the world downloaded this information, invited 10 people to their book store or library or living room and said, "Let's have a small step, a first step, grassroots conversation.' And so my answer is, the Bible calls us to action. Each of us has to act. So I invite people to come along to join it and to do a small part. Reach out to a neighbor, a colleague, a brother-in-law, and say, "Let's begin the conversation here.'

Tavis: Bruce Feiler's new book is 'Where God was Born: A Journey by Land to the Roots of Religion.' It is the sequel to his best-selling 'Walking the Bible.' Fascinating conversation, Bruce. Glad to have you on.

Feiler: Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: Take care of those babies. Up next, acclaimed novelist Amy Tan. Stay with us.