Series examines ‘God in America’

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Consider the blessings and demands that await a consumer at any supermarket, with its dizzying array of choices to be made. Toothpaste, soda, laundry detergent — whatever. Every product comes in countless variations and competing brands.

Now take that decision-making burden and endow it with the high moral stakes of conflicting spiritual values.

Such has been the hurly-burly of religious observance in America.

For four centuries, this has been a land where religious liberty was a notion held sacred, even as the nature of “liberty” was hotly debated.

All of that is examined by “God in America,” a sweeping three-night, six-hour survey of rough-and-tumble competition in what the series calls the religious marketplace.

Airing Monday through Wednesday at 9 p.m. on PBS, “God in America” is a co-production of “American Experience” and “Frontline.”

With religious faith as its narrative thread, it tells the story of America in a fresh and unexpected fashion, interweaving archival footage, interviews with religious historians and dramatizations by noted actors.

The series serves as a wide-ranging crash course — which is just what many people need today, in the view of its executive producer.

“America has a religious literacy problem,” says Michael Sullivan. “Americans are very religious, but also tend to be ignorant about religions other than their own, as well as about their country’s religious history.”