What do you think are some of the biggest stumbling blocks today for religious belief in this century?

I think a lot of people would talk before we went to break about politics or faith being the handmaid into politics.

But what do you think is that stumbling block for folks today when they're looking at their own approach to religious belief?

Well, we were just talking about one, right?

The extent to which religion and politics seem entangled.

And people feel, you know, particularly right now, if you're not conservative or right wing, people feel like

conservative Christianity is coded as right wing and there's that issue. Although, frankly,

I think a lot of issues in the Republican coalition right now are also linked to the decline

of religion, right? And that a lot of things that liberals and anti-Trump people dislike about

Trump era conservatism are not about religion run amok, but about sort of secularization

and taking root, even in the more religious coalition. I mean, the other, I think the argument

that inevitably comes up the most

about religion as a stumbling block is just the problem of evil, right? And the idea that it's just

really, really hard, at least for some people to believe in the kind of God that Christianity

especially preaches, right, which is not just some kind

of creator of the universe, but a God who is good in a way we can understand, right?

Who's not beyond good and evil, but who is good, who cares about us, who is, you know,

who is involved in our life.

And that, you know, there's a lot of suffering in the world.

It's a lot of bad things that happen from the extremes of, you know, war and famine and

disaster to the personal.

Like everyone has tragedies in their life that seem too difficult to bear and like things

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