Renowned journalist John McCarthy has been investigating these issues and approaches six major world religions with the same questions:
 
How do these institutions balance the demands of religious teaching and ceremony with wealth, power and human weakness?
 
How do they function as powerbrokers in the often dangerous realm of politics, both local and global?
 
And do these dealings inevitably threaten the moral integrity and clarity of purpose of religious institutions?
 
God's Business is a six-part series by ORTV for Al Jazeera:  
 
PART ONE: Greek Unorthodox
 
The Holy Land: the place where Christianity was born, and has existed continuously from the beginning; yet the Greek Orthodox Church has moved in to key holy sites and treated them as its own fiefdom.
 
In doing so, it has alienated the local congregation of Palestinian Christians to the point where it’s accused of running a property business, not a religious institution.
 
This allegation coincides with a whole outburst of financial, sexual, political and legal scandal that’s affected the Church, not only in Jerusalem and the Holy Land but in Greece itself.
 
We focus on some land deals in Jerusalem which have profound political, financial and moral implications; they even impact on the larger Middle East issue as the land in question was a key discussion point when Clinton, Arafat and Barak met at Camp David.
 
The Greek Orthodox Church is the second-largest landowner in Jerusalem after the Israeli state and this property business is presided over by a secretive organisation of Greek bishops called the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre - it owns the leases both of the prime minister’s residence and the Knesset, which has just expired
 
PART TWO: Hinduism Goes global
 
This film tells the story of a small regional Hindu sect that has gone global; the Swaminarayan movement was founded 200 years ago in the state of Gujerat by a man who declared himself to be the ultimate manifestation of God.
 
His first followers were poor peasants, but this group, many of them Patels, has since spread all over the world as shopkeepers, teachers and increasingly as successful entrepreneurs and highly educated professionals.
 
Today they’re building vast religious complexes across America and Europe, Africa and Asia. Their most impressive centre, which uses the techniques of Disneyland to convey a message of Hindu pride, was built in the Indian capital, New Delhi.
 
So influential has the Swaminarayan movement become that both the Prime Minister and President of India presided over the recent opening of the Delhi centre.
 
But has the movement grown so absorbed in creating a corporate presence, involved in finance, politics and influence – as well as charity work – that it now risks losing its spiritual heart? Are networking and power-play submerging the original message?
 
PART THREE: Islam in Israel
 
When Israel was created in 1948, the Palestinians were scattered and divided across many lands; today, the Palestinians who now make up 20% of the Israeli population are growing ever closer to their fellows in the Occupied Territories.
 
Increasingly they are being drawn together by the Islamic faith as a religious, cultural and political force. At its centre is the most contested piece of land on earth: the site of the Al Aqsa mosque or, as the Israelis know it, the Temple of Solomon.
 
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories can no longer get to Jerusalem because of the Wall, so the Islamic movement organises busloads of Israeli Palestinians every week to come to attend the mosque and help sustain the battered economy of the Old City.
 
This is the symbolic heart of the health, welfare and education projects that have made the Islamic movement a fast-growing political force; its supporters have elected mayors of Arab towns and members of the Knesset.
 
These representatives also act as a bridge to Hamas, the elected leadership of the Occupied Territories. We show how, on both sides of the Wall, Islam is becoming the dominant voice of Palestinian politics.