As reported at Newsweek and Cowboy State Daily and elsewhere, Sarah Lucas, an Evangelical pastor in Wyoming with a strong desire to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, recently expressed her criticisms of the Tribe’s religious beliefs and practices. The pastor’s actions moved the Tribe’s leadership to encourage everyone in their community to never engage with the church and is seeking to have the church removed from the reservation.

This controversy raises questions that extend well beyond a single congregation or sermon. At its core is a centuries-old challenge increasingly faced by religious communities, governments, and civil society: How do we engage people whose religious beliefs and practices differ profoundly from our own?

For Evangelical Christians like myself, this question carries particular significance. We are called to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ (Matthew 28) while also loving our neighbors (Mark 12), speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4), and pursuing peace (Hebrews 12). These commitments may appear to be in tension but in my view they are not. A confident faith should make us more willing to understand those who believe differently.

The controversy in Wyoming also illustrates the growing importance of religious literacy: the ability to understand the beliefs, practices, histories, and internal diversity of religious communities. In an increasingly interconnected world, religious literacy is essential to effective diplomacy, sound public policy, healthy community relations, and responsible religious engagement.

The Discipline of Humility

Effective engagement across religious differences begins with humility, not because all religions are the same, but because no one likes arrogance (and frankly, because the Christian gospel clearly expects humility as a fundamental marker of spiritual maturity). Put simply: Thou shalt not be the religious jerk!

The Northern Arapaho Sun Dance provides a useful example. As I understand it, the Sun Dance is a sacred ceremony within the spiritual and cultural life of many Native American communities, including the Northern Arapaho. It cannot be understood by isolating individual practices from the worldview in which they are situated. The ceremony is connected to prayer, sacrifice, community healing, and relationship with the Creator. Likewise, the sacred pipe has a significance rooted in a larger spiritual and cultural tradition. Seeking a better understanding of these beliefs is not endorsement, as I am sure the Wyoming church would agree. The pastor knows the culture, knows the ceremonies, and wants people to live their lives another way. How she communicates the differences is what has created the conflict.

Humility requires us to distinguish between our intentions and the impact of our words. We may intend to proclaim truth while another person experiences our words as dismissive or deeply wounding. That does not require us to abandon what we believe. It requires us to consider whether we have communicated our convictions in a manner consistent with the character of Christ.

Religious Literacy and Religious Freedom

The American commitment to religious freedom protects the right of individuals and communities to practice their faith. That protection extends not only to religious majorities but especially to minority communities, including Indigenous peoples. Around the world religious majorities, as a general rule, always have their rights protected. You have to intentionally endeavor to protect the rights of the minority.

The legal questions surrounding religious exercise, tribal sovereignty, and the activities of outside organizations are complex and deserve careful consideration within the appropriate legal and governmental frameworks. But law alone cannot create the trust required for diverse communities to live together peacefully. Religious freedom requires not only legal protections but also a culture capable of living with genuine religious difference.

For diplomats and public officials, religious literacy can mean the difference between a productive conversation and an unintended offense. For lawyers, it can shape how religious liberty claims are understood. For religious leaders, it can determine whether engagement is received as genuine relationship-building or as an effort to dismiss or denigrate another community’s identity. And for most of us, it is simply part of being a good neighbor, and a good witness to our own convictions.

As I have traveled in Muslim-majority countries, I have talked with Muslims who believe that America is a “Christian nation” and, as a result, that American Christians believe and support every awful thing that comes out of Hollywood, Las Vegas, and Washington, DC, and the many other sins that are present in the USA. While that seems to those of us who are Christians living in America as a simple belief to debunk, lack of religious and cultural literacy casts a long shadow on American Christians globally.

Religious Literacy and Religious Engagement

Religious literacy is particularly important for Evangelicals because our faith makes distinctive and, in some respects, exclusive claims about Jesus Christ. Evangelical Christians believe that Jesus is Lord and that salvation is found only in him. Our task is not to erase these and other theological distinctions in the name of harmony, but to engage those differences faithfully and constructively.

The New Testament provides a model in Paul’s encounter with the Athenians in Acts 17. In one of my favorite passages, Paul does not compromise his message or suggest that all religious claims are equally true. Yet he takes the time to understand the religious world in which he finds himself and uses that understanding as a bridge to communicate the Christian message. Understanding another person’s worldview is not a retreat from evangelism; it is a prerequisite for meaningful engagement.

This is where religious literacy intersects with the work of IGE, MFNN, and the Center for Public Faith. Engagement across religious differences requires both conviction and humility: the conviction to know and articulate what we believe, and the humility to recognize that we may not fully understand what another person believes and they may never believe as we do.

No serious peacemaker’s (Matthew 5:9) goal is to eliminate disagreement. A society committed to religious freedom must make room for genuine differences in belief. The goal is to create a culture in which disagreement does not require dehumanization. We need leaders, diplomats, lawyers, and religious communities capable of distinguishing between disagreement and disrespect.

Lift Up Jesus

There is a further lesson Evangelical Christians might draw from this controversy. We do not need to diminish another religion in order to proclaim the uniqueness of Jesus.

As I have learned from IGE President Bob Roberts, you do not have to tear down another belief to lift up Jesus. Just lift up Jesus.

If Christians believe that Jesus is the pinnacle of God’s purposes, then our task is not to make other people’s beliefs appear foolish in order to make Christianity credible. Our task is to present Christ faithfully and allow the truth claims of Christianity to stand on their own merits. Charles Spurgeon once said, “The Word of God is like a lion. You don’t have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself.”

The Christian belief that every human being bears the image of God should shape how we encounter people whose beliefs differ from our own. If we believe that Jesus is sufficient, our confidence in him should free us from the need to make others appear small.

Conclusion

The controversy involving the Northern Arapaho Tribe and an Evangelical church raises important questions about religious freedom, tribal sovereignty, and the boundaries of religious activity. But Evangelicals should also ask a more personal question: Could greater religious literacy and humility have changed the way this encounter unfolded? We cannot know for certain. But we can learn from it.

Christians should never be afraid to proclaim Jesus. We should, however, seek to understand the people to whom we proclaim him, to know their history, respect their dignity, and understand what their religious traditions mean to them. We can be bold and courageous while having the wisdom to distinguish between faithful proclamation and unnecessary offense.