In light of last week’s election results, several evangelical pastors have taken to social media or other platforms to paint a picture of America as having “lost its way.” Part of what they are reacting to is seven Muslims being elected to Congress1 and how Sharia Law and secret agendas are going to “take over” and destroy our country. One sermon in particular by Mark Driscoll entitled “The Christian Guide to Surviving a Post-Christian America” really bothered me.
In the sermon he says “Islam is not a religion, but a regime.” That simply isn’t true, and quite honestly, it’s ignorant. But because Mark and others are pushing this narrative and instilling fear in the hearts and minds of evangelical Christians everywhere, I wanted to provide some actual facts. What does the data say about our Muslim neighbors?
What the Numbers Actually Say
Muslims make up 1.1% of the population. Pew Research Center estimates about 3.45 million Muslims live in the U.S., and 82 percent of them are citizens.2
They are proud to be here. Again, according to Pew research 92 percent of U.S. Muslims say they are proud to be American.3
They reject violence at a higher rate than the rest of us. About three-quarters of U.S. Muslims say targeting and killing civilians can never be justified. Compare that to 59 percent of the general public.4
They literally help stop terrorism. This doesn’t get talked about enough. In the decade after 9/11, Muslim Americans were the source of the tip in 52 of the 140 terrorism cases where investigators could identify where the tip came from.5
Muslim leaders are nothing new. More than 255 Muslim Americans were already serving as elected officials by summer of 2026. They have been on school boards and city councils for years.6 Why all the outrage now?
It’s hard to argue with the facts. And just as Westboro Baptist Church doesn’t speak for all Christians, Muslim extremists don’t speak for all Muslims. Every religious tradition has its radicals. Nobody wants to be measured by the worst people who share their faith, and the Muslims I know are the same way. Sure, there are real theological differences between Muslims and Christians (I am teaching a comparing world religions class right now) but there is also a lot more common ground than a lot of us were taught.
Something else we need to reckon with as Christians is our own Bible has passages that would scare someone reading them for the first time without any context. Think about the conquest stories in Joshua, or the end of Psalm 137. Whoof. No one reads those verses and thinks those are reason to go to war with our neighbors because we read them in their historical context and put in the interpretive work necessary. Millions of Muslims do that same work with hard passages in their scriptures too. We need to give them the same grace we give ourselves every time we open our Bibles.
I’d guess these pastors don’t have many Muslim friends. If they did, they wouldn’t speak about them this way. They are some of the most loving and compassionate people I know.
I will leave you with one of the main ideas from the class I am teaching this month:
You cannot love a neighbor you have to caricature.
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Thank you for speaking not only truth, but what should be common sense. Most of us practice our faith tradition because of where we were born in the world…and where we are born is not something any of us get to choose. But what we can choose is to love our neighbors of all faiths…and no faith at all.
I bet there are plenty of conservative Christians who still listen to the music of Yusuf Islam, Ice Cube, Sinead O’Connor; celebrate sports greats Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Muhammed Ali; and give credence to many others who have converted to Islam. There may be some selective discrimination going on.