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Christiane Amanpour Explores Faith Roots "Back to the Beginning"

The Christian Post interviewed ABC News Global Affairs anchor Christiane Amanpour about her recent trip to the Middle East to explore the roots of the Abrahamic faiths. Amanpour said she and her 12-year-old son visited historic and biblical sites including the places Moses, David and Christ walked for the making of the upcoming ABC special, Back to the Beginning, airing in two parts starting December 21 at 9:00 PM ET and ending December 28 at the same time.

“Faith has influenced my life from the beginning because I was raised in the Catholic Church,” shared Amanpour. “(This journey) takes it beyond just the personal and just what you learn in catechism or in church. It takes it to a broad, cultural level. It takes me to a bigger place of understanding why and how these stories have been passed down.”

“What inspired me was the face that throughout my career … I have covered conflicts that are too often based around religious tension, whether it’s between Christians and Muslims, whether it’s between Muslims and Jews, whether it’s between Jews and Christians and Muslims — basically from Sarajevo to Iraq to Afghanistan to Israel and Palestine to Northern Ireland. … I’ve been really thinking hard about the origins of these faiths. And the origins go back to the beginning — hence the title. We essentially believe more or less in the same things, in the same biblical and Quranic stories, and we have a shared heritage.”

Amanpour told of her experience with spiritual leaders of all three faiths, scientists, religious scholars and archaeologists, including Robert Ballard, whose underwater technology is studying the Black Sea to find evidence of the Noah flood. She says the resulting program on ABC “is equally suitable for people of devout faith, for people of no faith, for people of different faiths, and for adults as well as children.”

Read the interview transcript here.