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Of the three major networks' news anchors, Peter Jennings of ABC has shown a consistent fascination with religion, producing such comprehensive reports as In the Name of God. Because of his advocacy, ABC is the only network to employ a full-time religion reporter. Jennings, who was raised in Canada as an Anglican, takes his interest in religion reporting to ambitious heights on June 19 with the special Peter Jennings Reporting: The Search for Jesus. Jennings spoke with CT's Douglas LeBlanc about the program.

Tell me about the title, The Search for Jesus.

Jeanmarie Conden, the producer, and I had done a film called Jerusalem Stories, which was a compilation of the three principal views of Jerusalem, gathered largely by me over 30-some visits when I lived in and out of the Middle East. When it was over, Jeanmarie and Ben McCoy, our cameraman, said,

"This was just fabulous. What can we do next?"

We decided that I, as a reporter, could set out and see what I could find about Jesus, the man, as he lived in this part of the world in the first century.

Is the project similar to Albert Schweitzer's work in Quest for the Historic Jesus?

No, it's a journalist's work. "Quest," I think, would put the wrong spin on it because, while you cannot do a project like this without being particularly sensitive to the faith or spiritual dimension of it, I was interested in trying to find out: Who was Jesus as a person? Where did he preach? Where did he go? Who did he see in this short period of his life?

What aspects of Jesus do you find most fascinating?

I am utterly struck how, 300 years after his execution, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Though in the special we don't deal at length with the Resurrection, I'm struck by the intenseness of the debate and the intensity of belief: something happened after Jesus was executed that created this momentum that led to Christianity becoming the official religion of the empire.

I've been to Jerusalem many times. I never get over the feeling that one gets from visitors, from all over the world, who visit where the Gospels tell us Jesus rose from his tomb. I'm utterly struck by the power. In his very brief life, Jesus met and spoke with probably no more than a few thousand people at best. He wrote not a word we're aware of. He commanded no army. Yet he had a vision of a just society for which he was prepared to die.

Were some of your colleagues nervous about a show focusing on Jesus?

Sure [laughs]. Religion in the newsroom is a delicate subject to begin with. In journalism we are accustomed to dealing with concrete issues, and religion, especially the differences between religions, is unsettling to many people.

At ABC we have a slight advantage; several years ago, we did take a serious enough interest in religion to hire a full-time religion reporter. So there is a greater measure of comfort, I think, in our newsroom than there is in some others.

When you begin on a project like this, you know you're going to offend somebody. I don't mind offending people& amp;mdash;journalists should not mind offending people if they're in search of the truth. But television executives are sometimes more sensitive to the greater good than I am.

Do any of Jesus' remarks leave you wishing he had said more?

The very first place we visited was the controversial Jesus Seminar. I was struck by their intellectual attempt to try to decide what Jesus really said. As it turns out, we ended up using none of the seminar itself in the special, though I found being there exhilarating.

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June 12 2000, Vol. 44, No. 7