One of the challenges I face in my work is getting White evangelicals to care about their Muslim neighbors. While White progressives tend to engage Islam through a social justice framework, White evangelicals often approach the topic with suspicion or indifference.
By Dr. Tim Orr
One of the challenges I face in my work is getting White evangelicals to care about their Muslim neighbors. While White progressives tend to engage Islam through a social justice framework, White evangelicals often approach the topic with suspicion or indifference. Both sides, however, fail to look at this issue through the lens of the gospel, which I explore in depth in my new book, Gospel-Centered Christianity and Other Religions: Unpacking the Depths of the Gospel—Its Foundations, Power, and Uniqueness.
White evangelicals, by and large, struggle to engage meaningfully with Muslims. Their perception of Islam is often shaped by concerns about religious pluralism, radical Islam, and theological incompatibility (Woodberry, 2008). While these concerns are not entirely unfounded, they usually lead to an avoidance of Muslim communities rather than active engagement. The emphasis in evangelical circles tends to be on protecting Christian values rather than building bridges with those of other faiths. This defensive posture makes it difficult to cultivate relationships that could lead to meaningful gospel conversations.
At the same time, White evangelicals are deeply committed to the authority of Scripture and the uniqueness of Christ, which should theoretically compel them to share the gospel with Muslims (Pew Research Center, 2017). However, fear, cultural barriers, and a lack of missional training hinder their willingness. Without a gospel-centered framework, many evangelicals default to either political opposition or passive neglect when it comes to engaging with Islam. Too often, evangelicals allow political narratives to shape their understanding of Muslims rather than Christ’s command to love their neighbors. The hesitancy to engage leads to an insular faith that misses opportunities for evangelism and mutual understanding.
Beyond fear and political entanglement, there is also a theological gap. Many evangelicals lack a robust understanding of Islam beyond media portrayals, leaving them ill-equipped to communicate the gospel in a way that is meaningful to Muslim audiences. Moreover, evangelicals often emphasize personal salvation but struggle to articulate how Christianity addresses broader societal and communal concerns, which are deeply significant in Islamic cultures. Without contextualized engagement, evangelicals risk either alienating Muslims or reinforcing misconceptions that Christianity is purely an individualistic faith with little relevance to communal and societal structures.
White progressives, on the other hand, are often eager to defend Muslims against discrimination and Islamophobia. Their engagement with Islam is driven by values such as multiculturalism, inclusivity, and anti-racism (Said, 1978). While these intentions are noble, their approach often lacks theological discernment. In their desire to support Muslim communities, progressives frequently downplay problematic aspects of Islamic doctrine and political Islam. For instance, while progressives are vocal about gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights in the West, they often ignore or excuse the oppression of women and minorities in Muslim-majority countries (Coleman, 2019).
This contradiction reveals a deeper issue: a reluctance to acknowledge that Islam, like all religious systems, has theological and ethical dimensions that deserve scrutiny. Rather than engaging with Muslim individuals on a level of faith and belief, many progressives reduce their relationship to a form of political solidarity. This is particularly evident in interfaith dialogues, where the distinctiveness of Christian doctrine is often set aside in favor of a generic message of coexistence. Such an approach prevents meaningful gospel conversations from occurring and overlooks the transformative power of Christ’s message for Muslims who may be seeking truth.
Additionally, progressive Christians often exhibit a form of theological relativism, seeing all religions as equally valid paths to God. This creates a significant barrier to evangelism, as the gospel claims of Christ’s exclusive salvific work are downplayed or ignored. In this framework, Christianity is reduced to a moral and ethical system rather than a transformative message of salvation. By neglecting the theological distinctives of Islam and Christianity, progressives fail to offer a gospel witness that calls Muslims into a redemptive relationship with Christ.
Both White evangelicals and White progressives fall short in their approach to Islam because they do not filter their engagement through the gospel. Evangelicals are often hesitant to engage, while progressives engage without a clear theological foundation. The result is that neither group effectively communicates the hope of Christ to their Muslim neighbors.
The gospel compels believers to love their Muslim or otherwise neighbors with truth and grace. A truly biblical approach to engaging Islam would involve:
In Gospel-Centered Christianity and Other Religions, I explore how the gospel is not just one perspective among many but the defining truth that should shape how Christians engage with people of other faiths, including Muslims. If Christians—both evangelical and progressive—began to see Islam through the lens of the gospel, they would not only develop more thoughtful engagement but also cultivate a deeper love for their Muslim neighbors. True Christian witness does not arise from fear, political alignment, or cultural accommodation but from a deep, unwavering confidence in the gospel’s power to transform lives.
Coleman, S. (2019). The politics of religious pluralism: Engaging Islam in Western democracies. Oxford University Press.
Murray, D. (2017). The strange death of Europe: Immigration, identity, Islam. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Parshall, P. (2003). Muslim evangelism: Contemporary approaches to contextualization. InterVarsity Press.
Pew Research Center. (2017). Religious beliefs and practices of evangelicals. Pew Forum.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
Volf, M. (2011). Allah: A Christian response. HarperOne.
Woodberry, R. D. (2008). The missionary roots of liberal democracy. American Political Science Review, 102(2), 244-274.
Tim Orr is a scholar of Islam, Evangelical minister, conference speaker, and interfaith consultant with over 30 years of experience in cross-cultural ministry. He holds six degrees, including a master’s in Islamic studies from the Islamic College in London. Tim taught Religious Studies for 15 years at Indiana University Columbus and is now a Congregations and Polarization Project research associate at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University Indianapolis. He has spoken at universities, including Oxford University, Imperial College London, the University of Tehran, Islamic College London, and mosques throughout the U.K. His research focuses on American Evangelicalism, Islamic antisemitism, and Islamic feminism, and he has published widely, including articles in Islamic peer-reviewed journals and three books.