Chismar:  Do Christians have a responsibility to educate themselves about other religions?

Olasky: Number one, as part of general knowledge, we should know about other religions if we want to understand something about American history, world history, different cultures of the world then of course we have to understand their religions in the same way that we want to understand the literature of different countries and the history of different countries.  So just for the purposes of understanding the world and people then sure we want to do that.  And then number two if we want to take practical policy actions in regard to say Islam as well as other religions then we have to understand how that works out.  That’s going to heavily influence our judgment on what we can do in Iraq and lots of other places. And then number three there are evangelistic purposes that are significant and yeah I think the approach of taking a bullhorn and shouting out Bible verses is not particularly effective.  It’s much better to discuss something with a person, find out where that person’s coming from and be able to deal with the real questions that person has.

Chismar: You write, “The most dangerous misperception is that all paths lead to heaven.” Can you comment on this?

Olasky:  The more you learn about different religions, you learn they can’t all be true because there are huge differences. Buddhism, for example, says it’s going to take a long time but we can move closer to sanctification by our own efforts. Christianity emphasizes God’s grace. Christianity emphasizes that we die but yet our souls live on. Our bodies are real; this is a real death. Our souls remain and there is the hope of heaven afterwards. That’s very different from Buddhism or Hinduism with the endless cycles of reincarnation. They both can’t be right. 

Christianity is very much a religion of peace that has had some moments in which people identified as Christians have opposed peace. Islam is very much a religion of war.  Christianity grew by having its adherents suffer martyrdom. Islam grew by martyring others.  You can’t say that both are true. You can’t even say that elements of different religions are true because the elements tend to contradict each other so much. If you have a very superficial knowledge of religions, you might be able to say they are all the same path, but the more you learn, the more you understand the differences.