Christians: 13 -- The Godless State?

The last in a series of thirteen films in which Bamber Gascoigne traces the history of Christianity over nearly 2000 years, from its origin and early growth up to its continued survival today. In 1848, the year that Marx and Engels published the Communist Manifesto, an atheist revolution swept away the French monarchy. The first country to make atheism a policy of state was Russia, though Christianity in the USSR is far from dead. Lenin described religion as the opium of the masses, but it has been calculated that one out of every six Russians still goes to church. In Poland the strength of the Roman Catholic church is demonstrated by the large crowds that attend mass in the ideal socialist city of Nowa Huta. In Italy, the centre of Roman Catholicism, a town like San Gimignano is governed by a communist mayor, but there is no conflict between communism and Christianity on a local level, illustrating the unique ability of the faith to adapt and survive