I'm a writer of faith who worries about the intolerance of

“I’m a writer of faith who worries about the intolerance of religion. I look at the past and fear we haven’t learned from it. I believe that humanity is capable of evil as well as great acts of courage and goodness. I have hope. Deep down, I believe in the human spirit, although sometimes that belief is shaken.” Thus spoke Julianna Baggott, a poet and storyteller whose words carry the dual fire of faith and doubt — the eternal tension that has shaped the conscience of humankind since the dawn of time. In her confession, she lays bare the soul of one who sees the world as it is — scarred by hatred, yet luminous with grace. Her quote is not a sermon, but a meditation; not a cry of despair, but a plea for remembrance — that we must never let faith become blindness, nor hope become naivety.

Baggott calls herself a writer of faith, yet she trembles before religion’s intolerance. This paradox lies at the heart of her wisdom. For faith — true faith — is a flame of compassion, while religion, when corrupted by power or pride, can become a sword. Across the ages, the same scriptures that once taught mercy have been used to justify persecution. The same temples that promised peace have echoed with war. Baggott’s fear is ancient and just: that mankind, though taught by centuries of blood, has yet to learn that faith without humility becomes tyranny. Her words remind us that belief is sacred only when it sanctifies life — not when it condemns it.

When she says, “I look at the past and fear we haven’t learned from it,” she speaks as the historian of the heart. The past is a graveyard of warnings — the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust — all testaments to what happens when faith hardens into dogma, and when the love of truth becomes the lust for domination. Yet Baggott does not speak as one without faith; she speaks as one who believes so deeply that she cannot bear to see belief twisted into hatred. Her worry is not the death of faith, but the death of love within it. To remember the past is to guard the soul of the future.

Still, she balances her warning with hope, for she believes that humanity is a creature of dual nature — capable of unspeakable evil, yet also of transcendent good. Like the ancients who spoke of light and shadow, of the divine and the fallen within every soul, Baggott acknowledges this eternal struggle. She does not deny evil; she confronts it with honesty. But she also affirms courage and goodness — those moments when human beings rise beyond their fear, their prejudice, their weakness, to perform acts of compassion that redeem the world. The doctor who risks her life to treat the sick in war zones, the stranger who shelters the persecuted, the child who forgives when adults cannot — these are the proofs that the divine spark within us has not been extinguished.

Her faith in the human spirit, though sometimes shaken, is the faith of all who walk the difficult road of love in a broken world. To believe in humanity, even when humanity disappoints, is an act of defiance and grace. It is easy to hope when times are bright, but the truest hope is that which endures in the dark. This hope is not blind — it sees the world’s flaws and still chooses to believe. It is the same hope that sustained Anne Frank, who wrote from her hiding place: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Such hope is not ignorance; it is courage — the refusal to surrender one’s soul to despair.

The origin of Baggott’s words is both personal and universal. As a writer, she has walked between belief and doubt, between the sacred and the sorrowful. She has studied human nature through story — and found that no tale is purely good or evil, but a weaving of both. In her faith, she finds meaning; in her fear, she finds vigilance. Her voice joins the chorus of prophets and poets who have always wrestled with the divine — who have dared to question not to destroy faith, but to keep it alive. For questioning is the breath of living belief, and love, not certainty, is its heart.

Let this then be the lesson for those who listen: have faith, but keep your heart awake. Do not let religion become a wall; make it a bridge. Do not let belief silence compassion; let it amplify it. Remember the past, so that intolerance does not rise again in new forms. And when the world seems lost, remember that even the smallest act of kindness restores the balance between despair and hope. To believe in the human spirit, even when shaken, is to hold the universe together by threads of light.

Thus, the wisdom of Julianna Baggott is not the naïve optimism of the untested, but the seasoned hope of one who has seen both the heights and depths of humanity. She teaches that faith must walk hand in hand with humility, and that the courage to love, even in a cruel world, is the holiest act of all. For though belief may falter and hope may waver, the light within the human heart — fragile, flickering, yet unyielding — remains our greatest miracle.