Goodreads asked Barbara O'Brien:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Barbara O'Brien The perspectives in Rethinking Religion: Rethinking Religion: Finding a Place for Religion in a Modern, Tolerant, Progressive, Peaceful and Science-affirming World have been perking in my head for several years. There currently are a lot of "orthodoxies" in popular culture with which I disagree -- that religion primarily is about believing in doctrines about God; that religion and science are ultimately incompatible; that being "spiritual but not religious" is the wave of the future. All of those popular ideas are based on gross misunderstandings of what religion and spirituality actually are. And in framing my arguments in "Rethinking Religion" I draw on Christian theologians even more than I draw on Buddhism.

In the early part of my life I was immersed in Christianity, and for the past 25 or so years I've been immersed in Buddhism, and while these traditions have points of agreement they operate within radically different conceptual frameworks. Going from one to another broadened my perspective considerably. I have things to say that no one else is saying.

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