Overview
If you ask people what they think about religion, you often get one of two answers: Religion is the source of war, violence, abuse, and hypocrisy OR a route to love, kindness, tolerance, and mercy. Put another way, it’s either what divides us or it’s the thing that can actually bring us together. In a country deeply divided over social, political, and moral issues that seems to be moving further apart by the day, the answer’s not likely to be a simple one.
Join PRX’s How God Works Podcast to explore how beliefs affect our minds, why something that has the potential to connect us so deeply can divide us so profoundly, and whether, regardless of what we believe, we can learn from what religion gets right at times to find a way to come together. Host Dave DeSteno will be speaking with a panel of leading spiritual thinkers and social scientists who have experienced both sides of the issue, including Central Synagogue Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, award-winning author and Christian Historian Diana Butler Bass, The University of North Carolina’s Deepest Beliefs Lab director Kurt Gray, and The Aspen Institute’s Religion and Society Program’s executive director Simran Jeet Singh.