by Natasha Leake, Telegraph
Clergymen are used to people like the Tory leader claiming God cannot exist in a world full of evil. This is how they respond…
At one stage in her life, Kemi Badenoch believed in God. “I would have defined myself as a Christian apologist, always arguing with people about why there was a God,” she told the BBC on Thursday. But then news of Josef Fritzl, who’d locked his daughter in a cellar for 24 years, broke. “That killed it”, said Badenoch.
It’s a story familiar to religious leaders across the country, who are often asked how God can exist and still allow evil and awful personal tragedy to take place.
Indeed, vicars, priests, rabbis and imams often experience their own trials, which can be all the more tortuous given their responsibility to project confidence and stability in the face of adversity.
Here, five religious leaders describe how they address doubts that are raised with them about the existence of God, even in cases where they have privately wrestled with similar concerns.