Editor’s Note: The following first appeared in the April-June 2026 issue of Good Faith Magazine, which was devoted to interfaith dialogue.
Aside from brief moments in the Old Testament, nowhere in the Bible do the people of God hold a dominant position in their surrounding communities. They are mostly minority groups living in occupied lands. At various times throughout their story, their beliefs and practices were ignored, tolerated, or met with violent persecution. Because of this, Scripture offers little guidance on how Christians should approach interfaith dialogue when they occupy a position of power.
The clearest example we do have in the New Testament comes from Acts 17, when Paul shared the gospel with the people in Athens. But the example comes not from Paul, but from the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers who were listening to him. After declaring that “he seems to be proclaiming strange deities” (17:18), we are told that they took him to the Areopagus and asked him: “May we know what this new teaching is that you are proclaiming? For you are bringing strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean” (17:19).
The purpose of this story’s inclusion in Acts is likely to document Paul’s missionary strategy. But in the philosophers’ questions, we see the curiosity and inquisitiveness needed to engage in dialogue with people who hold differing beliefs. They are not looking to convert or to argue, but to understand.
However, numerous verses encourage followers of Jesus to adopt a posture essential for anyone seeking to engage in interfaith work. In Paul’s prologue to the famous hymn of Jesus’ self-emptying in Philippians 2, we are told, “In humility regard others as better than yourselves; look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (2:3–4). This guidance grounds any dialogue in “emptying ourselves,” rather than in the defensiveness and aggression that often accompany conversations about faith.
Perhaps the clearest guidance comes from James, where we are instructed to “be quick to listen, slow to speak, [and] slow to anger” (James 1:19). For James, active listening without speaking is a spiritual discipline we are called to cultivate.
It is interesting that these scriptural admonitions against defensiveness, anger, and aggression are given to believers with very little power over their neighbors. For religious minorities living under the threat of empire, humility and gentleness were not really options. But they become choices we must make when we no longer practice a faith on the margins.
Even with the decline in Christian influence in the United States, Christianity remains the dominant religious voice in society. Granted, there is no single approach to our faith, but we still “hold all the cards” in interfaith dialogue. Because of this, humility requires us to be especially mindful of our place in the world.
For some readers, interfaith work may be as simple as a desire to learn more. Others have years — even decades — of experience talking with, working alongside, and cultivating deep friendships with people of other faiths.
Regardless of where you are, a few principles can help as you consider going deeper into interfaith and interreligious dialogue and work. The following insights emerged from an interfaith workshop led by the team at Faith Commons during a recent session at FaithWorks’ Compassion and Justice Conference in Austin, as well as from research into the Tri-Faith Initiative story featured in the April-June 2026 issue of Good Faith Magazine.
Leave Room for Holy Envy
Recounting his history with interfaith work, Rabbi David Rosen says he learned from Krister Stendahl, the former bishop of Stockholm and dean of Harvard Divinity School. One of Stendahl’s principles of interfaith work is to “leave room for holy envy.” This includes discovering elements of other religions that resemble our own. More than that, however, it asks us to leave space for something in another person’s faith tradition that we admire or even envy. “There is nothing wrong with seeing something special and even unique to different traditions and being able to admire it,” Rosen writes in The Power of Interfaith Dialogue.
Never Judge Another Person’s Religion by Its Worst Adherents
For Christians living in a dominant and diverse Christian society, we want people of other faiths to understand that not every action done by someone who carries the name “Christian” reflects our faith. When members of Westboro Baptist Church protest funerals and concerts with signs saying the worst things imaginable, we assume that Sikhs, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, or people who hold no faith at all will not equate us with those people. Yet when an act of injustice is committed by a member of another faith, there is always the temptation to ascribe those actions to the faith itself. In these situations, we must practice the Golden Rule, extending to others the same grace we hope to receive.
A corollary to this principle is that the best person to teach us about another faith is someone who practices that faith. We have all heard claims about other religions from Christian leaders that practitioners themselves would be surprised to learn they supposedly believe. We must assume that a Muslim knows more about Islam than we do, just as we would want them to assume that we know more about Christianity than they do.
Interfaith Work Is Best Done with a Common Pursuit of Justice
All the stories that demonstrate healthy interfaith relationships share one thing in common: they move beyond conversation and dialogue, putting boots on the ground and hands in the soil together in pursuit of justice. Whether Egyptian Muslims forming a protective circle around Coptic Christians at prayer after the 2011 terrorist attacks, or Jews in Omaha, Nebraska, encircling a neighboring mosque after the 9/11 attacks, interfaith work requires something of us beyond talk.
Evangelism Must Be Set Aside
Perhaps the greatest challenge for many Christians in interfaith dialogue is addressing the reality that much of the story of our faith includes a missionary impulse. There are numerous Christian beliefs and approaches to evangelism, the practice of seeking to “win over” others to our faith. Healthy interfaith work does not require us to accept or reject any particular theology of missions or evangelism. It does, however, ask us to set aside the practice of proselytizing, at least temporarily, as we seek to understand and live in unity with neighbors who practice other religions, or none at all.
In the end, interfaith work asks us to cultivate a virtue that is severely lacking in our emotionally defensive world: curiosity. As we encounter the stories of people who practice different faiths — and those who practice no faith at all — may we be quick to listen and slow to speak.
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Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.