Do you think that philosophy plays/should play a rather minor role? From what I read on the internet, many atheists are often quick to dismiss philosophy in favour of "science".
What people fail to understand is that science came from philosophy. Philosophy is not just a set of axioms or theories from a bunch of old geezers that did nothing but thing. Philosophy is quite literally the science or organizing your thoughts coherently and to express them logically. It's a study of the universe using your mind, and works by shaping the stream of ideas away from fallacies and other illogical ways of thinking, and towards a logically consistent train of thought.
What is science? What is non-science? What is bad science? What's pseudo-science? These are not questions that science can answer, they are in the realm of the philosophy of science.
Next time you hear someone dissing philosophy, replace 'philosophy' with 'a way to think logically'. Philosophy is not dead. It is not something that should play a minor role. Philosophy no longer enjoys the spotlight, and one discovers new things through empirical research instead nowadays, but philosophy is very often the very structure of ideas that allow us to make the empirical discoveries in the first place.
Philosophy of religion is simply a way to think logically about religion. You take the premises that religious beliefs give you, and you literally run a simulation with them. You 'compile' the code of philosophy of religion by taking your core assumptions, deducing logical truths from them, and then travelling further down the logical path of each conclusion to the next idea, always making sure to stay internally consistent and to proceed in a logical way.
When we're talking about philosophy of religion, it's not that things are illogical all the time. They seem illogical to us because the logic of religion starts from a different foundation, a different set of assumptions. The logic, or structure, of thought is the same, if you will, it's just that the core ideas at the foundation determine what kind of building you can built on that foundation.
There are things that seems like leaps of logic (faith, they call it) to those of us who don't accept the same basic premises as they do, and it is completely correct. We cannot accept that the philosophy of religion is accurate if we do not accept that the premises are true.
Philosophy helps us think logically about ideas. Religious ideas, concepts, and logic are ideas we can think about. Philosophy can help us better understand and defeat bad religious ideas. Let's keep holding on to this wonderful tool and promote its good use, all right?