Christians opposed to Christian nationalism and President Donald Trump’s attacks on immigrants can push back in part by learning about Muslims and Islam, according to the Baptist authors of a new book on Islamophobia.
“The Christian nationalism we are seeing, the hatred toward Muslims and immigration cruelty, are all intrinsically linked,” said Michael Woolf, co-author of Confronting Islamophobia in the Church: Liturgical Tools for Justice.
Woolf is senior minister at Lake Street Church, an Alliance of Baptists congregation in Evanston, Ill. He also is nationally-known for his participation in protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Chicago and his high-visibility arrest for doing so.
Anna Piela
His co-author in the project is Anna Piela, a minister with the American Baptist Churches in the USA and editor of The Christian Citizen.
The January publication of their book coincided with a rapidly surging wave of anti-Muslim rhetoric and legislation among Republican politicians focused on the coming 2026 midterm elections. Multiple state and federal bills have been introduced targeting Islamic communities and organizations and to ban travel from certain Muslim countries.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations recently was declared a terrorist organization by Florida and Texas, a stance not taken by the U.S. State Department. And Texas has denied Muslim schools and students from participating in the state’s private school voucher program.
Exacerbated now by the war with Iran, Republican politicians are claiming Islam is not a religion and Muslims should not be in U.S. society because they are attempting to establish Sharia Law across the nation.
Michael Woolf
Woolf said these developments are part of a wider conservative movement to destabilize the nation in order to have a more theocratic form of government.
“Islamophobia is one expression of the ongoing attacks on our pluralistic democracy, and we’re really at an inflection point as a society to either continue as a pluralistic ethos or move into a more Christian nationalist direction,” he said.
Confronting Islamophobia was written to help Christian congregations educate themselves about Islam and to encourage practices that dispel stereotypes about Muslims within churches, Piela explained.
The need for an informative and action-oriented text on the subject became apparent after the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, an event that led many churches to back away from interfaith dialogue with Muslims, she said.
“A lot of Christian churches pulled back from collaborative projects because people were really, really worried that they would be called antisemitic. So, just to be on the safe side, they cut back on interfaith collaborations involving Muslims.”
It’s also challenging that Islamophobia remains one of the last remaining prejudices that can be mentioned in polite society, Piela added.
“Many feel quite comfortable dealing with non-Christians like Buddhists, Hindus and Jewish people, and those religions are perceived as kind of friendly and nonthreatening, whereas with Islam there’s always this perception that this religion is dangerous, that Muslims are very violent, and that basically hinders dialogue with them.”
The bias is much more evident among right-wing Christians, who often have little reluctance to engage in open hate speech and to spread negative stereotypes about Muslims.
“But among liberals and progressives, it’s much more subtle — there are still many stereotypes,” Piela said. “There’s still this idea that Muslim women are oppressed, that they need women’s rights like those in Western societies to fully function as human beings.”
It’s also common in interfaith spaces for Christians to dominate gatherings and workshops by talking at length about the evils of Islamophobia and denying Muslims adequate time to speak in the process.
“Basically, they (Christians) drown out everybody else, which essentially censors Muslims who are unable to express their perspectives. This is a more subtle form of Islamophobia, but it still exists.”
Confronting Islamophobia is designed in part to inspire Christians and churches not only to learn about Islam, but to be willing to engage with Muslims, Piela said.
“Working with Muslims and having relationships with Muslims — not just having knowledge about Islam — makes you a better Christian.”
“We definitely want to convey that supporting Palestine is not antisemitic, but our broader point is that working with Muslims and having relationships with Muslims — not just having knowledge about Islam — makes you a better Christian. That’s a strong theological point we are making in this book.”
One approach in the book is to connect the dots between present-day Islamophobia and the historic hatred and persecution faced by Baptists in Europe and in the American colonies, Woolf said. “Baptists are in a unique position as this group with a history of persecution and marginalization by dominant religions, so we can draw on that in order to invite others to work for the benefit of others because of that history.”
The pluralism and religious freedoms espoused by pioneering Baptists provides another motivation for pushing back against Islamophobia and the oppression of immigrants and refugees, he added. “The next step is to get into Baptist ideas around separation of church and state, around religious liberty, around soul liberty and soul competency and freedom of religion, and to show how that is so relevant to engaging with Muslims now.”
Building those relationships helps dispel the fear that grows from not knowing Muslims or about Islam, Piela said.
“Fear fills in the gaps in information people have. It is easy to accept stereotyping what we get in the media and political rhetoric and from our politicians. So educating yourself is a great way to overcome that fear.”
To that end, the book includes a chapter that is a primer on Islam and highlights “its shared DNA with Christianity in the sense that it was introduced into a political context that was oppressive, and in the beginning was a religion of oppressed and marginalized people who were drawn to the, you know, ideas of equality and justice.”
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Confronting Islamophobia is a needed resource | Opinion by Rodney Kennedy