I am working with a hosting provider who has installed mod_python for me.  I followed the install instructions locally and included it in httpd.conf but they have opted to put it in conf.d/python.conf.
Is there any difference/benefit to doing it either way?
No, all the files are parsed at run time, you can include as many as you want. They've just opted to seperate out the configuration for easier management.
Is there a difference between installing mod_python via httpd.conf and conf.d in apache?