Marilyn Mellowes
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A veteran of public affairs programming at WGBH, Marilyn Mellowes has worked for the station’s three major award-winning series: NOVA, FRONTLINE and American Experience. She developed, produced and wrote the popular four-hour series From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians, which premiered in 1998. Both the series and its website have been used extensively in schools, synagogues, churches and university classrooms.

During the 1980s, Mellowes developed the ongoing PBS history series American Experience and served as its first Series Editor. She developed the series Nixon and produced and wrote the third hour, "The Fall," winner of the Writers Guild Award; Nixon was later re-broadcast as part of the series The Presidents, winner of the Peabody Award. Mellowes served as a co-producer of the four-part series The Kennedys, honored by the British Broadcasting Press Guild Award in 1993.

Mellowes’ additional credits include "Julia! America’s Favorite Chef," broadcast on the award-wining series American Masters; "Castro’s Challenge," broadcast as part of the four-part FRONTLINE series Crisis in Central America, winner of the Peabody Award; Hard Choices, a major PBS series on medical ethics, and the 13-hour landmark series Vietnam: A Television History, which won every major award in broadcast journalism.

In 2005, Mellowes organized the WGBH Conference on Religion and Ethics and later developed the proposed PBS anthology series Belief. More recently, Mellowes was principally responsible for the research and development of the series God in America and has served as the Series Producer.

Blog Entries by Marilyn Mellowes

'God in America:' Faith and Politics

Posted October 12, 2010 | 22:27:04 (EST)

When I first started the research and development of God in America, I became intrigued by this question: What happens when people of faith become engaged in politics? What is gained, what is lost? Politics inevitably involves negotiation, compromise, power and dealing with people whose values diverge from your own....

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'God in America:' A House Divided Twice (VIDEO)

Posted October 11, 2010 | 21:23:42 (EST)

By the mid-nineteenth century, America's Protestant identity conferred national unity. But religion fractured that unity. The Civil War drove the first wedge, as North and South turned to the Bible to find warrant for their opposing stands on the issue of slavery. No sooner had the nation begun to heal...

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'God in America:' A Question of Religious Liberty (VIDEO)

Posted October 10, 2010 | 22:18:30 (EST)

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus thrust the banner of the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella into the sands of the island he named San Salvador, or "Holy Savior," claiming the territory for Spain and announcing that henceforth its people would be Spanish subjects. Observing the native inhabitants, Columbus wrote:...

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