How to Find Common Ground When You Disagree About the Common Good

By John Inazu

September 5, 2024

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty. Courtesy of Christianity Today

(Christianity Today) — How do Christians live faithfully and as good neighbors in a world we don’t control?

In 2020, Tim Keller and I coedited a book titled Uncommon Ground. Our project convened a group of evangelical and evangelical-adjacent friends to reflect—as the subtitle said—on how Christians can live faithfully in a world of difference. Since then, however, I’ve rephrased the question for my own work. We should be faithful, yes, but also neighborly. And our world is not just host to real difference of belief; it’s also a world we don’t control.

I owe this subtle but important reframing to my friendship and work with Eboo Patel, the founder and president of Interfaith America. The most important interfaith organization in the country, Interfaith America does not advance a soupy multiculturalism that pretends that all roads lead to heaven or that our differences don’t matter. It takes religious particularity seriously, identifies conflicts and tensions created by that particularity, and works to find common ground across religious differences.

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We believe Christians can be friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens with those who don’t share our faith—and that we can do so within the fullness of our Christian identity.

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