Hi there, I'm Jason Gautz, and you're listening to Think Again, a big think podcast.

I've spent more of my life than most people I know, immersed by choice in what my guest today would call scripture.

I was never much of a Roman Catholic, in spite of being dragged weekly to church,

until I was about 13 and could no longer be dragged. And in my boredom, sometimes believing I saw

the statue of Jesus moving on the cross. But in late adulthood, the need for spiritual meaning

gripped me tight and wouldn't let go. It led first into Judaism and Jerusalem,

and then for the past couple of decades, mostly to Buddhist study and practice. But I'm as

troubled as all the Enlightenment thinkers I know by scripture thumping orthodoxy and intolerance

of any kind, troubled also watching my wife Demet's country, Turkey, split between retrograde, homophobic,

and misogynistic Islamism on the one hand, and intractable secular nationalism on the other.

Moses and I don't have much in common, but like him, I get tongue-tied talking about these things.

Religious or spiritual or scriptural ideas and practices

can be so essential and become so problematic at the same time. My guest today is Karin Armstrong.

On these subjects, she doesn't get tongue-tied. She's one of the clearest and most nuanced thinkers I know of on God,

religion and scripture, author of The Spiral Staircase and

the Case for God, recipient of the TED Prize, and co-creator of the Interfaith Charter for Compassion.

Her new book is called The Lost Art of Scripture, and I'm so happy it brings her to think again.

Thank you.

We should talk a little bit about the word scripture and what your

definition of scripture is in general and in this book, because I know for a lot of Americans,

for myself included, like when we hear that, our mind immediately goes to like evangelicals. We don't

have the same idea of it as you're describing here. Well, scripture, of course,

...