President Obama suggested that Christians who take their religion seriously can often adopt an "us versus them" mentality, in an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson.

In an interview for The New York Review of Books, the President lamented the reality that "here in the United States, sometimes Christian interpretation seems to posit an 'us versus them,' and those are sometimes the loudest voices."

Speaking to Robinson, Obama suggested that although these voices are frustrating, she and he could "also get frustrated with kind of wishy-washy, more liberal versions where anything goes."

He asked Robinson how she reconciles the two:

"How do you reconcile the idea of faith being really important to you and you caring a lot about taking faith seriously with the fact that, at least in our democracy and our civic discourse, it seems as if folks who take religion the most seriously sometimes are also those who are suspicious of those not like them?"

Robinson replied, "Well, I don't know how seriously they do take their Christianity, because if you take something seriously, you're ready to encounter difficulty, run the risk, whatever.

"I mean, when people are turning in on themselves – and God knows, arming themselves and so on – against the imagined other, they're not taking their Christianity seriously.

"Christianity is profoundly counterintuitive – 'Love thy neighbour as thyself' – which I think properly understood means your neighbour is as worthy of love as you are, not that you're actually going to be capable of this sort of superhuman feat. But you're supposed to run against the grain. It's supposed to be difficult. It's supposed to be a challenge."

The solution to the fear of those different from ourselves is the recognition that everyone is made in the image of God, Robinson added:

"Well, I believe that people are images of God. There's no alternative that is theologically respectable to treating people in terms of that understanding. What can I say? It seems to me as if democracy is the logical, the inevitable consequence of this kind of religious humanism at its highest level. And it [applies] to everyone. It's the human image. It's not any loyalty or tradition or anything else; it's being human that enlists the respect, the love of God being implied in it."

Obama is a long term fan of Robinson's work, and spoke of how he read her novel Gilead during whilst campaigning in Iowa in 2008.