Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton thinks a judgmental culture has put young people off the Church.
The Democrat, who lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 elections, discussed Christianity, the Church, politics and race in her new podcast 'You and Me Both'.
Her first guest was Pastor William J Barber II, who leads Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina.
Clinton, a Methodist, aired her views while asking Barber what he thinks the Church should be doing today to reverse the decline among younger generations.
"Because a lot of people are leaving the Church. A lot of young people are leaving the Church, in part because the way they understand what Christianity has become ... so judgmental, so alienating that they think to themselves, well, I don't need that," she said.
Barber, a social justice advocate and author of We Are Called to Be a Movement, said churches had to widen their spheres of engagement.
"Young people are very open to faith that is about transformation, about love, about justice, about equality, about the essence, the essence of what it means to be people of faith," he said.
"And I think we have to be engaged. There's no way in the days in which we live, the church can stay quarantined inside of the four walls of a building because that's never what it was intended to do."
The Black Lives Matter movement arose during the conversation, with Clinton saying that in the wake of so many protests, the Church should "take a hard look at itself and try to figure out how it can be a real partner in this moment of moral awakening."
She also took a dig at the Republicans as she criticized the "concerted effort by one political party to basically try to own Christianity" and suggested that their approach "overlooks the role of the African-American church."
"Jesus and justice are the same thing," Clinton said.
"You know, to say that Jesus and justice are the same thing seems to me to be so obvious. I mean, how can you be a Bible reading person, a church attending person, and not understand how profoundly true that simple phrase really is."
