I enjoyed reading “God is big enough to hold all of our curiosity, doubts, joys, and fears” by Rev. Adriene Thorne (Pastor’s Life, June 2026). I, too, have deeply appreciated dialogue and friendship with people of other faiths, particularly with Muslims and Jews. And my day-to-day life is filled with encounters with Buddhists from Myanmar, who oversee businesses in my city, Muslims who have become friends because of our participation in formal dialogues, and several rabbis whom I count as close friends. I am grateful for these relationships. When I think of how I approach other faiths, I realize I almost always do so in the midst of relationships.

Many years ago, I made a comment in a seminar that another student found troubling. She blurted out, “But you’re speaking from a Christian perspective.” To which I replied, “It is the only one I’ve got.” One of the joys of interfaith encounters is that we bring our whole selves into the conversation, and we are pleased when our conversation partners bring their whole selves as well. My commitment to Jesus Christ is at the center of my whole self. I have sometimes found that in formal dialogues some Christians are often consumed with finding common ground before the dialogue begins. I tend to practice a simpler approach: the only requirement for dialogue is a willingness to talk. Common ground, if it emerges, will rise up within the conversation.

We enter dialogue as exactly who we are, coming with our beliefs, experiences, and backgrounds. We also expect our partners from other faith traditions to come as exactly who they are in the same respect. No one is generically religious, nor do we assume commonality that may not exist. This approach brings integrity to Christians in the process and encourages integrity to participants from other faith(s) – we do not presume to comprehend them in our theology without their participation of their whole selves. If there is to be a mutual accounting of one another, it emerges in that kind of dialogue.

One of the limitations that I often see as mainline Protestants and Catholics encounter people of other faiths is that we generally have the easiest road with dialogue with the more Westernized, liberal forms of other religions. We can much more easily talk with Reform Jews than Orthodox Jews. It can be easier to talk to American converts to Islam than to more traditional Muslims. I hope for encounters with more people who practice traditional forms of religion, not just the Westernized, liberal versions. I have often found myself better led and more enlightened in this regard by mission co-workers who have worked with those of other faiths internationally, and who often have concrete experiences of regularly interacting with non-Westernized people of other faiths.

A wrinkle in this process is the growing number of persons in this world who internalize a pluralistic or syncretistic approach to religions where the operative question is not what is true? But what works? And ‘what works?’ may come from a variety of traditions.

The Interreligious Stance of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) articulates that notion this way: “Presbyterians approach others in a spirit of openness and trust as they follow Jesus Christ in respecting and affirming the freedom of others. Thus, the church affirms that dialogical (i.e., mutually interactive) relationships are an authentic and appropriate form of witness in which we share ourselves and our commitments and also listen intently to what others express to us.”

Such an approach opens me up not only to share my faith experience, but also to be open to the possibility of my own transformation. Without true openness to transformation, no real relationship is formed.

A common foundation is not a requirement for dialogue and relationship, but love is. We must love our neighbor of another faith. They are not the enemy. And their faith is part of their identity, not an accidental or superficial characteristic. So, deep engagement with Islam, for instance, will necessarily involve an appreciation of Islam. One of the transformative experiences of my life was observing Ramadan while I was in Cairo. I knew that fasting for Ramadan was one of the Seven Pillars of Islam, but I didn’t really know how it worked. I vividly remember being in the Khan el-Khalill bazaar and watching families and friends break the fast together. I witnessed beauty in the breaking of the fast. The laughter, the feasting, the gathering of family and friends was overwhelmingly lovely.

To witness beauty in Islam is not to erase difference or be blind to the divergent ways that Christianity and Islam have interpreted our common Abrahamic roots. It is a call not to identify good or evil with a religion, per se. We must be very careful not to make facile judgments about good or evil in particular religious traditions. There is evil in this world. But Christians don’t just believe in evil, we also practice it. Somewhere I hear echoes of a discussion about specks and logs. (Matthew 7:3-5)

My appeal here is not some soft tolerance for people of other faiths. It is instead an appeal to love (that seems like a Jesus thing) where appreciation or specific criticism of the other grows out of relationship and real knowledge and not just caricatures that come so easily.

It is an established principal of interfaith dialogue that its purpose is dialogue, not conversion. But what is our hope, our desire, for the other? I don’t presume to speak for you, but I hope for a commitment to follow Jesus. I say this as someone who does not presume to know how God will ultimately judge. I just do not know.

Some involved in interfaith dialogue will say that if a Buddhist came to them and asked how to become a Christian, they would instead try to help them be the best Buddhist they could. Christianity exists because people who had lived within one religious commitment made a risky choice to follow Jesus: from second-temple Jews to Ashanti traditional worshippers. We dishonor those who have gone before us (or are alongside us) who have made costly choices to follow Jesus when we unequivocally discourage conversion.

Because I am reliant on the grace of God for my salvation, as is everyone else, I am not filled with anxiety regarding my neighbor. But I do believe I have good news to proclaim. Conversion is ultimately the exclusive work of the Holy Spirit. Building Block #5 of “The Interreligious Stance of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)” reads: “Modesty in Witness. Presbyterians urge a humble modesty in witness that recognizes God’s Spirit is at work in ways we often least expect. Whatever the form of witness—mission, dialogue, evangelism, peace, justice, environmental issues—the church affirms that it is not called to respond to others in judgment but in awareness of the limitless grace of God.” What could be more Reformed than to accent the limitless grace of God?

Because “Grace, love, and communion belong to God, and are not ours to determine,” we need not pressure anyone to conversion. There is no need. I offer authenticity and invitation, an invitation to Christ. We live out and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” [2 Corinthians 5:19].

Let us be faithful to the Gospel and to our neighbor, whatever their religious commitments.