Aiding and abetting false worship

A Muslim walks into the Vatican, and the pope gives him a prayer rug.

This isn’t the start of a bad joke, but a real-life controversy stemming from the revelation that the Vatican Library recently provided a prayer rug to Muslim researchers for their study room at their request. But as of the writing of this article, Catholics visiting Mecca are still waiting to hear whether Muslims will provide them prayer beads.

Wait a minute—I just remembered that non-Muslims are forbidden from visiting Mecca!

The controversial revelation came to light in an interview with the vice-prefect of the Apostolic Library, Giacomo Cardinali, who defended the action. Cardinali told La Repubblica that the Library is “a humanistic institution,” and as such it is “the most secular of all Vatican institutions.” While “secular” is an interesting description for anything related to the Vatican—the world’s only city-state founded on purely religious grounds and governed solely as an absolute theocratic monarchy—it still doesn’t explain how facilitating prayer to a god that claims your God isn’t actually divine could be described as “secular.” In response to Cardinali’s reasoning, one conservative Catholic critic noted that libraries are for reading and study, not for worship. One wonders if the Vatican would comply if a Buddhist or Hindu requested a Buddha or Vishnu idol for prayer in their study rooms.

Other observers interpreted the Vatican’s gesture in light of Pope Leo XIV’s predecessor. Earlier this year, Pope Leo hosted inter-religious delegations to the Vatican. He invoked Pope Francis’s efforts to open what he called “new avenues of encounter to promote ‘the culture of dialogue as the path; mutual collaboration as the code of conduct; reciprocal understanding as the method and standard.’” Islam isn’t the only inter-religious dialogue the current pope is pursuing. This month also saw Pope Leo blessing a block of ice in the name of “climate justice.” Then King Charles, the titular head of the Church of England, traveled to pray with the pope in the Sistine Chapel. One benefit of this last effort was that they were both able to address the same God in prayer!

What are Protestants to make of the pope’s actions, especially in light of the anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation on Oct. 31, 1517? First, we should note what mission drift looks like in the church and then commit to always be reforming according to the Word instead. What does the Great Commission (Matthew 28) have to do with handing out Muslim prayer rugs and blessing blocks of ice? We can also be thankful that we don’t have to defend the indefensible, especially the infallibility of such an office as the pope, now vested in a fallible man from Chicago. On another level, we can appreciate the progress that has been made in the cessation of religious wars and persecutions of the past, at least among Christian sects. But even this is not without qualification, as radical Muslims today are seeking to eradicate Christianity through genocide in places like Nigeria and in some parts of the Middle East.

But this controversy does bring to the fore many important questions about secularism, religious freedom, and true Christian worship. To be clear, it would be a dire mistake to pretend like Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Taking both faiths seriously means understanding that one very clearly worships Jesus as God, and the other very clearly denies as an article of faith the deity of Christ. Only one can be true.

We must take the faith claims of other religions seriously and at face value, just as we do Christianity. The practice of the church in the New Testament was to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ—which means proclaiming His identity as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The God of the Bible is not one god in a pantheon, but the Triune God over all, Maker of heaven and earth and everything in them. He is a jealous God (Exodus 34:14), and our religious spaces should not be shrines of pluralism. Pluralism cannot mean that pluralism is the only true religion.

But what specifically about the Vatican’s provision of prayer rugs to Muslim researchers? Is the Vatican a church, or a state? It’s complicated. Certainly, Christian churches shouldn’t facilitate false worship. What about Christian states? Can states be Christian? And while religious toleration may be prudential, can any Christian in good conscience aid and abet a false religion? As Christianity in the West continues to decline and religious adherence to Islam continues to increase—through both mass immigration and conversion—we will continue to face tough questions along these lines. In many ways, these are the very questions that the best forms of the debate around Christian Nationalism seek to answer.

What shouldn’t be tough is for Christians to proclaim the Truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that salvation is by grace alone through faith in Him alone—and certainly not facilitate false prayers claiming the contrary. Instead, we should proclaim the Christian gospel and pray for the conversion of those participating in false worship.