Popular singer and music producer Pharrell Williams shared how he believes there is "power" in the name of God, as he has personally "experienced and seen" it himself.
Recently, Williams sat down with Gospel music star Kirk Franklin and radio DJ Scott Vener on the Beats 1 radio show OTHERtone to discuss religon and the crossover between Christian and secular music.
The "Happy" artist first suggested that some people may not subscribe to any particular religion because they don't have the capacity to do so.
"I don't think the church gives enough credence to, like, science," he said. "There are departments in your brain for everything that you think. All of your thoughts come from your brain, that tissue, that muscle ... and there's a part where it falls under religion. And there are certain people that just don't have that."
However, instead of giving up on such people, Pharrell recommended using alternative methods to get them to read scripture.
"I think a cool way to bring people together is to say, 'Look, you don't have to look at it in a religious or faithful way. Read it as a text.' Replace the word 'God' with 'the universe' and it starts to make more sense, to you. Now, I know that there's power in that word [God]. I've experienced it. I've seen it. But everyone has their journey, and not everyone is going to believe
He added, "If you have a difference of opinion, I think it's smarter for me to understand your difference of opinion, than to not know at all, and we're always just mortal enemies and we don't want to talk. I think the easy way for us to like get to know each other is to share each other's beliefs and our difference and get to know them and to understand them."
In turn, Franklin said he is encouraged by the amount of artists who use their music to challenge people to think about God and faith, pointing to Kanye West's "Ultralight Beams" and the "gospel moments" in Chance's new mixtape, and Lecrae.
"People are hungry, they've just been to some dirty restaurants," he said. "We have to believe that the system is created for the good of mankind. There may be wicked hearts in it, but the system isn't wrong. And I believe that when you look at God, you can't put man in there...you can't put religious leaders who have contaminated what the whole purpose of what the faith was supposed to be. It's still a pure, spiritual hope for mankind. But yes, there are many men who have contaminated it. But instead of closing the restaurant, let's get new cooks."
Pharrell has previously opened up about his faith and argued that it's "incredibly arrogant" to deny the existence of a spiritual being.
"I believe in God but I also believe in the universe...and I believe in that innate ability to make decisions and to exercise our feelings as human beings," he told Stylist magazine in 2014.
"How do you see all the stars and think there's nothing else out there?" he continued. "It's so incredibly arrogant and pompous. It's amazing that there are people who really believe that. It's unbelievable."
While he is not a devout Christian, the artist described his religious views best when speaking to GQ Style magazine late last year, in which he explained that he believes there are different routes to God.
"... On paper I'm a Christian but really I'm a Universalist," said Williams. "Do I think that Christianity is the only way? No. I think the only route for everything is their connection to God ... There's religious dogma that gets involved, something for the greater good and sometimes for not so great reasons ... But they give you a way, a vehicle to get to God."
