By Michael Motes

If a proverbial stone has been left unturned in the area of religions of the world, it's certainly not from the lack of trying on behalf of Ronald Eyre.

Eyre is a British playwright and stage director who spent three years traveling more than 150,000 miles through 14 countries to discover what religion holds for people in today's society.

The result is The Long Search a 13-part, hour-long series beginning on Saturday, September 16, on WGTV (Channel 8) and on Friday, September 22 on WETV (Channel 30). Both Public Broadcast System stations will air the show at 9 p.m. Subsequent programs will air on the same days, i.e. Fridays and Saturdays on the two stations.

Eyre was surprised when he was asked to work on the series because of his lack of a theological background. In attempting to briefly describe what The Long Search is about, Eyre said:

"I guess you can say that the series is about the pupil, not about the teacher. In other words, the emphasis is about the search, not about the answer. This is not a study in the history of theology, but a series of encounters with men and women who are living their faiths now."

The premier episode is entitled Protestant Spirit U.S.A. and was filmed in Indianapolis, Indiana, where Eyre talks with clergy and members of three very different Protestant churches: the Baptists Temple, a 7000-member fundamentalist congregation; North Methodist Church, a liberal mainline parish; and Mount Vernon Baptist Church, a black service-oriented community.

"Protestantism is an impulse to keep things moving," Eyre says, "and anyone who builds a shrine around an impulse and claims to have kept it still and caught it is deluding himself."

Peter Montagnon, the former Head of Radio and Television for the Open University in England, is the producer of The Long Search, which was funded by a grant from the Xerox Corporation to the Public Broadcast System.

Catholics will be the subject of the eighth program in the series. Rome, Leeds and the Desert finds Eyre attending a High Mass celebrated by the late Pope Paul VI in St. Peter's and visiting with a convert to Catholicism who lives with her family in Leeds, England.

The Catholic segment also focuses on the Little Brothers of Jesus, an order dedicated to replicating in their lives the humble life of Christ. The Monastery of Saint Anselmo and the Abbey of Montserrat are also highlighted in the program

Other segments in the series are Footprint of the Buddha (Buddhism in Sri Lanka); The Romanian Solution (Orthodox Christianity in Romania); Way of the Ancestors (Toraja primal religion in Indonesia); The Chosen People (Judaism in New York, London, and Jerusalem); 330 Million Gods (Hinduism in India); There is No God but God (Islam in the Middle East); Land of the Disappearing Buddha (Buddhism in Japan); Zulu Zion (Traditional and Independent Christian Religion in South Africa); A Question of Balance (Buddhism and Taoism in Taiwan); West Meets East (Alternative lifestyles in California); and Loose Ends (Reflections on The Long Search).

The series was developed by Cultural Information Service, a New York-based ecumenical resourcing agency. Their discussion guide is being distributed to Catholic educators in the September issue of Religions Teacher's Journal, published by Twenty-Third Publications.

In addition, a series of seven bulletins for viewer use are being offered by Cultural Information Service, PO Box 92, New York, NY, 10016.