Ryan Burge

The mainline's always been the refuge of the doubters, right, who try their best to believe these things but just can't get over the hump sometimes.

And if that goes away—

If you're Protestant, your only option is the evangelical pastor who pounds the pulpit and says, if you don't believe what we believe, you're going to hell.

And the person sitting there goes, yeah, but how do you know that?

So I think that's what we're missing is this huge chunk of people who were open to the idea of belief.

are not going to have an outlet to go to a place where they really do feel like people like them are welcome.

And the conversation is worthwhile because it's going to be unless you believe what we believe, you are less than us.

And I think people, why would you want to go to a place where you feel like you're less than voluntarily?

I mean, there's something called social contact theory.

Gordon Allport talked about it.

It's just the idea of like being around people who are different than you makes you more tolerant of those differences.

And when we're so cloistered, right, where it's just all these people who believe all these core beliefs about Jesus and gay people and women pastors, you don't know the other side.

You never hear the other side of the argument actually articulated in a thoughtful, loving, careful way.

You just see the memes on Facebook, right?

about the other side.

And atheists are in the same boat.

They don't understand evangelicals at all.

And they basically create the worst version of them in their minds where they all hate gay people and they all hate women and they hate immigrants.

And it's like, no, the average evangelical is not really there either.

So I think what we do is you create caricatures in our mind because we never interface with someone from the other side of the aisle.