Confronting Christianity in 2026
Rebecca McLaughlin joins Faith Lab for a wide-ranging conversation about Christianity’s most persistent objections and why they still matter in 2026.
Rebecca is the author of Confronting Christianity and the host of the Confronting Christianity podcast. In this episode, Nate and Shelby talk with Rebecca about the historical reliability of the Gospels, the role of women in the early Christian movement, suffering and the problem of evil, and why Christianity’s moral vision has shaped ideas of human dignity that continue to influence the modern world.
They also explore why Christian faith is often misunderstood as fragile or anti-intellectual, how apologetics can clarify what Christianity actually claims, and why honest questioning does not weaken faith but can deepen it.
This conversation is for anyone wrestling with modern skepticism, cultural critiques of Christianity, or the question of whether the Christian story can still hold up under serious examination.
Why So Many Christians Fear Hard Questions
In many church environments, questioning can feel dangerous. Doubt is often treated as a threat rather than a normal part of belief. Faith is implicitly framed as safe only when it remains unexamined.
Over time, this trains people to suppress questions rather than engage them honestly.
Rebecca points out that this fear of questions is historically strange. Christianity emerged in a world where its claims were publicly contested. Early Christians did not spread their message in private spiritual spaces but in marketplaces, synagogues, and open debate. From the beginning, the Christian story was scrutinized.
When questions are avoided today, the result is not stronger faith but thinner faith. People may appear confident on the surface while remaining unprepared for skepticism when it eventually arrives. Christianity does not weaken when questions are asked. It weakens when questions are postponed.
Faith Is Not the Same as Blind Belief
One of the most common objections to Christianity is that it requires believing without evidence. Faith is often caricatured as a blind leap, a decision to believe despite the absence of reasons.
Rebecca challenges that definition. In everyday life, trust is never blind. People trust based on testimony, experience, and credibility. Faith, in the Christian sense, functions much more like trust than denial. It responds to claims about reality rather than replacing them.
When faith is reduced to feelings alone, it becomes fragile. Emotional certainty rises and falls with circumstances. Historically, however, Christianity appealed to public events, eyewitness testimony, and shared claims about what actually happened. Faith was never meant to shut down thinking but to engage it.
Why Jesus Still Creates Resistance
Even among people open to spirituality, Jesus remains a stumbling block. Many admire his ethics while rejecting his authority. Others assume his claims were exaggerated or invented by later followers.
Rebecca highlights that Jesus does not fit neatly into modern categories. His teachings consistently challenged religious, moral, and social expectations. He did not merely comfort people. He confronted them.
Rather than smoothing over these tensions, the Gospels preserve them. Doubt, confusion, and resistance appear throughout the narratives. Ongoing disagreement about Jesus may not signal weakness but depth. A figure who continues to provoke questions two thousand years later may be worth examining more carefully.
Moral Objections and the Christian Story
Many modern critiques of Christianity are moral rather than historical. Critics argue that Christianity promotes harm, intolerance, or injustice, often pointing to real failures committed by Christians.
Rebecca does not deny those failures. Instead, she asks whether Christianity itself should be judged by the actions of those who claim it. She also raises a deeper question about where modern moral standards come from in the first place.
Concepts such as human dignity, equality, and justice did not emerge in a vacuum. Ironically, many moral critiques of Christianity depend on values Christianity helped introduce. If Christianity is removed entirely, it is not obvious that those values automatically endure.
The question is not whether Christians have failed, but whether Christianity provides the resources to critique those failures meaningfully.
Why Deconstruction Often Feels Inevitable
Many people who deconstruct their faith are not rebelling against Christianity. They are responding to questions they were never allowed to ask.
When faith is built on certainty without explanation, doubt can feel catastrophic when it finally surfaces. Rebecca suggests that deconstruction is often delayed honesty. The questions were always there but were never welcomed.
When alternative worldviews later offer explanations, Christianity can appear thin by comparison, not because it lacks answers, but because those answers were never explored. Reintroducing intellectual engagement does not guarantee belief will remain unchanged, but it gives faith the chance to grow rather than collapse.
Christianity in a Pluralistic World
Christianity no longer benefits from cultural dominance. In a pluralistic world, belief must persuade rather than assume.
Rebecca argues that this shift, while unsettling, may actually strengthen Christianity. When belief is optional, reasons matter. Claims must be articulated rather than inherited. This environment forces clarity about what Christianity is and why it matters.
The future of Christianity may depend less on influence and more on credibility. Engaging skeptics thoughtfully rather than defensively may be one of the faith’s greatest opportunities.
Why This Conversation Matters
Christianity is often dismissed before it is understood. This conversation with Rebecca McLaughlin challenges that reflex. It invites Christians and skeptics alike to slow down, ask better questions, and think carefully about what the Christian story actually claims.
Faith Lab exists to create space for these conversations without fear or pretense. Christianity may not be easy, but it may be far more resilient than many assume. In an age of skepticism, that resilience is worth examining.
