On Friday, July 3, 2009, PBS’s Bill Moyers Journal featured President Serene Jones, Professor Gary Dorrien and Professor Cornel West of Princeton University talking about the Union Forum course, “Christianity and the U.S. Crisis.” The program looks at our nation’s religious traditions, core ethics and values, and what they say about American politics, policy, and the challenges of balancing capitalism and democracy.

Jones, Dorrien and West, whom Moyers characterizes as “leading public thinkers,” will share insights from the unique course they taught this past spring at Union. "Christianity and the U.S. Crisis," which featured several guest speakers including Benjamin Barber, Farah Griffin, Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Wynton Marsalis, focused on the various edges and contours of the current deepening U.S. crisis and attempted to chart various Christian responses to it. The professors presented strong positive critique of the Obama administration’s current bailout and restructuring plan, and called for real alternatives to the crumbling "religion of the market."

"This is a society that has stoked and celebrated greed virtually to the point of self-destruction," says Dorrien. “We can't just go on saying, ‘Well, if we can just patch this thing up and get back to where we were,’ that things will be all right. And none of us believe that, so we also have to talk about what was wrong with the system to begin with, that had outcomes that you can't really justify morally.”

Bill Moyers returned to public television with the weekly public affairs series Bill Moyers Journal in 2007. Each week the series provides the high quality public service journalism for which Moyers and his colleagues have been identified for almost four decades. The weekly one-hour broadcast features produced analysis of vital issues, strong interviews with unique voices on politics, the arts and letters, science, religion, and the media, as well as debates on public issues and documentary specials. Bill and Judith Moyers were the recipients of the 2005 Union Medal.

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