Questions to Ask About Christianity
Questions to ask people about Christianity when you want to hear it from someone who lives it: a friend, a relative, a colleague. The first five groups run in the order a talk tends to go: the person's own story, what they practice, how they read the Bible, the central beliefs, and then the hard questions about doubt, other religions and the church's record. The last group holds questions to ask in a Christianity class, whether that is a school course or a confirmation group: the denominations, how the Bible was put together, what the creeds settled. All of them are worded for curiosity, so nobody has to win.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Their story
How did you come to be a Christian: were you raised in it, or did you arrive later?
Why ask it
A convert usually has a before and an after, with reasons attached. Someone raised in the faith has it bound up with family and habit, which is harder to put as an argument. Knowing which you are speaking to tells you whether reasons or memories will come first.
Who made Christianity believable to you?
Why ask it
Many believers can name a person before they can name an argument: an aunt, a school chaplain, a roommate who never pushed. What that person was like is usually a fair sketch of what the speaker thinks a Christian ought to be.
Which branch of Christianity are you part of, and what does that label leave out?
Why ask it
Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist, Pentecostal and 'just Christian' point to different Sundays and different ideas about who has the last word. The second half is there because few people fit their label neatly: a Catholic who rarely goes to Mass and a Methodist who prays the rosary both exist.
What do people assume about you when they find out you are a Christian?
Why ask it
Judgmental, naive, certain to vote one way: whichever assumption they name is the one they are tired of meeting. It also lets you check quietly whether you walked in carrying it yourself.
What is the best part of being a Christian that people outside rarely hear about?
Why ask it
Outsiders mostly hear about rules and controversies, so this asks for the other column: the meals that turn up when someone is ill, the singing, one quiet hour in a loud week. Asked early, it lets them begin from what they love instead of from a defense.
How did you end up at the church you go to now?
Why ask it
People pick a congregation for its teaching, for one preacher, for the music, or because it is eight minutes from the house. The reason they give first is often the thing they would look for again if they moved. Someone between churches at the moment has a longer answer, and it is worth the time.
Was there a stretch when you stepped away from it, and what brought you back?
Why ask it
Drifting in the late teens or twenties and returning later is a familiar pattern, and the reason for the return is rarely the reverse of the reason for leaving. If they never left, ask whether they ever wanted to.
Has anything you believe changed in the last ten years?
Why ask it
Ten years is long enough for real movement and recent enough to recall. People shift on how they picture hell, on politics, on whose authority they accept. Someone for whom nothing has moved will often tell you what has deepened instead, which is a change too.
Practice
What is different about an ordinary Tuesday because of your faith?
Why ask it
Sunday is the easy day to describe, so this picks one with no church in it. Some people mention grace before meals; others describe how they handle a difficult colleague. If the honest answer is not much, they have often noticed that already and will say so.
When you pray, what is that actually like?
Why ask it
Descriptions vary enormously: set words, a running commentary, silence, lists, complaint. Asking what it is like rather than what it means gets past the catechism answer, and some people take the chance to admit it has become drier than it used to be.
What do you do when you pray for something and it doesn't happen?
Why ask it
Anyone who asks for things in prayer has been here, over an exam, a job or someone in hospital, and what they concluded is theology they worked out for themselves. Some stopped asking for outcomes, some decided the answer was no, some are still angry about it. Go slowly if the example they choose is a death.
What happens at a service at your church, from the moment you walk in?
Why ask it
A Catholic Mass, a Quaker meeting and a Pentecostal service have little in common on the surface, so the description places a person faster than a denomination's name does. Ask which part they would miss if it were cut.
What do you believe is happening when you take communion?
Why ask it
Churches have divided over this for centuries: for some the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, for others the meal is a memorial, and there are positions in between. Many churchgoers hold a view slightly to one side of their church's official one, so ask for theirs.
Were you baptized as a baby or when you were old enough to choose, and does it matter to you which?
Why ask it
Infant baptism and believer's baptism rest on different ideas of what the act does and who is doing it. Anyone baptized as a baby in one church and again as an adult in another has a story about why.
Which part of the church year means the most to you?
Why ask it
Christmas is the popular answer and Easter the theological one, and a fair number of people will say Lent, Advent or a plain Sunday in summer. Some churches keep no calendar beyond the two big feasts, which is a position in its own right.
Do you treat Sunday differently from the other six days?
Why ask it
Answers run from a full day of rest with no shopping to an hour of church before a normal weekend. People raised with a strict Sunday often keep a looser one now and can say exactly what they dropped and what they held on to.
Does being a Christian change what you do with your money?
Why ask it
Money is where belief becomes a decision somebody else could check: giving a tenth, backing one charity for decades, turning down a well-paid job. Ask about the principle and leave the amounts alone.
Who do you go to when you have a question about your faith that you can't answer?
Why ask it
It might be a priest, a study group, a parent, a podcast, or nobody at all. Whoever it is holds the authority in practice, and that is not always where their church says authority sits.
Which teaching do you find hardest to actually follow?
Why ask it
This is about obeying, not believing, and the answers are concrete: forgiving one particular person, being generous, telling the truth when it costs something. People tend to be harder on themselves here than on any point of doctrine.
The Bible
How do you actually read the Bible: straight through, a passage a day, or mostly what you hear in church?
Why ask it
Plenty of committed Christians know scripture mainly from what is read aloud on Sunday, and plenty of others follow a plan that takes them through it in a year. Neither is a measure of seriousness, but it tells you what kind of knowledge to expect in the rest of their answers.
Do you take the Bible literally, and what do you mean by that?
Why ask it
The word covers several positions: every sentence as plain fact, poetry read as poetry and history as history, or a human book through which God speaks. Two people who give opposite answers sometimes turn out to read a given passage the same way, so ask for an example, such as Jonah or the flood.
Which parts of the Bible do you find hardest to read?
Why ask it
Most people who read it steadily have passages they avoid: the conquest narratives, stretches of the law, the harsher psalms. Naming one is a sign of actual reading rather than received summary. Someone who says none of it is difficult has probably not read all of it.
How do you handle the passages that seem to contradict each other?
Why ask it
The interest is in the method rather than the verdict. Answers range from harmonizing the texts, to reading genre by genre, to accepting scripture as a record of an argument between its authors. A flat denial that any tension exists tends to close the subject.
How do you square the opening of Genesis with the age of the earth?
Why ask it
This is a live disagreement among Christians rather than a trap, and the answer places someone fairly precisely: young earth, day-age, framework, or simply uninterested in the question. Notice whether they can state positions other than their own fairly.
How do you decide which Old Testament laws still apply to you?
Why ask it
Christians eat shellfish and wear mixed fabrics while quoting other verses from the same books, and critics point it out often. Most traditions have a worked-out reply about ceremonial and moral law, or about what the New Testament set aside. Find out whether the person knows it or has never needed one.
Which translation do you read, and why that one?
Why ask it
The choice between the King James, a modern version and a paraphrase is partly taste and partly a badge of tradition. Some people hold strong views on it and some have never looked at the title page, and either way you learn how close they stand to the text.
Is there a verse you think gets quoted to mean something it doesn't?
Why ask it
Regular readers tend to have one ready, often a line from a mug or a sports interview that reads differently inside its chapter. It lets them be the critic for once, and you hear how they go about reading a verse in its context.
If I were going to read one book of the Bible, where would you send me?
Why ask it
Mark for speed, Luke for the stories, John for the theology, the Psalms for feeling, Ecclesiastes for a skeptic: the recommendation is a small portrait of the recommender. You also leave with something you can act on that evening.
Beliefs
What makes someone a Christian, in your view?
Why ask it
Traditions weigh baptism, belief, belonging to a church and the way a person lives differently, and individuals inside one tradition do too. Listen for who the answer counts in and who it leaves out, because that line comes back in the harder questions.
Who is Jesus to you, if you put it without church vocabulary?
Why ask it
Savior, Lord and Son of God are true answers for a Christian and tell you nothing about how this person relates to him. Take the stock words away and you get a description: someone they talk to, a teacher they keep failing to imitate, a figure they find more unsettling than comforting.
Why does it matter to you that Jesus died, and not only that he taught?
Why ask it
The cross is the symbol most churches put up, and outsiders often find it the strangest part: why an execution would be good news. Christians have explained it as a sacrifice, as a victory over death and as an example of love, and the explanation this person reaches for shows how they understand forgiveness.
What do you understand to have happened at the resurrection?
Why ask it
This is the load-bearing claim, and people hold it in different ways: bodily and historical, symbolic, or deliberately unsettled. Asking what they understand happened is less confrontational than asking whether they believe it, and it usually yields more.
What does salvation change for you in practice, apart from the definition?
Why ask it
The definition arrives fluent and rehearsed. The lived version comes slower: what being saved changes about how they regard their own failures, or their own death. A pause before the answer is not a sign of insincerity.
How would you explain the Trinity to someone who thinks it doesn't add up?
Why ask it
How a person handles a doctrine they cannot fully explain shows what they do with mystery in general. Watch whether they reach for an analogy, admit the limit, or treat the question as illegitimate. The third response usually marks where the conversation will stop.
What do you mean by sin?
Why ask it
Outside the church the word sounds like a list of banned pleasures. Inside it can mean a broken relationship, a condition everybody shares, or particular acts, and which of those someone means changes what they hear in the words guilt and forgiveness.
When has grace been more than a word for you?
Why ask it
Grace is the teaching that God's favor is given and not earned, and it is central enough that people can recite it without having felt it. An instance, being forgiven by someone they wronged or failing badly and not being written off, turns the doctrine into something you can follow.
What do you mean by the Holy Spirit, and is it part of your experience?
Why ask it
Of the three persons of the Trinity this is the one outsiders find vaguest, and churches treat it very differently in practice. A Pentecostal may describe speaking in tongues, an Anglican a quiet sense of being guided, and some will admit it is the part they think about least.
What do you expect after death?
Why ask it
Popular pictures of heaven and the creeds' language about the resurrection of the body are not the same thing, and many churchgoers hold a mixture of the two. 'Expect' asks what they personally anticipate and how firmly, which can differ from what their church teaches.
What is the church for, in your view?
Why ask it
Every congregation does some worship, some teaching, some looking after its own members, some serving the neighborhood and some making converts, and each ranks them differently. A person's own ranking explains a good deal about why they stay in a church or leave one.
Hard questions
What convinces you that Christianity is true, and not only good for you?
Why ask it
Comfort, community and a moral frame are reasons to stay, and none of them is a reason to think it happened. Some people point to the case for the resurrection, some to an experience they cannot explain away, some to how well the whole picture fits the world they see. Let them finish before you weigh it.
What do you do with a doubt you can't resolve?
Why ask it
What a person does with a doubt, carry it, shelve it, pray about it, says more than what the doubt is. If they tell you they have never had one, leave it there: in some churches doubt is not something a member admits to, and in some lives it has not come up.
What do you think is true in other religions?
Why ask it
The question is put positively on purpose: what is wrong with other faiths gets a list, and what is true in them gets thought. Responses run from every faith arriving at the same place to a firm claim that Jesus is the only way, held alongside respect for a Muslim neighbor's prayer or a Buddhist friend's discipline.
What do you think happens to people who never believed?
Why ask it
This is where hell comes in, and where a belief that comforts the believer has its hardest implication for everyone else. Churches teach different things, from a final separation to the hope that all are saved in the end, and plenty of members are uneasy with their own church's answer. Ask gently and accept an unfinished reply.
How do you think about suffering that has no explanation?
Why ask it
The stock answers, a plan we cannot see, free will, a greater good, are available to anyone. If they bring up a loss of their own, what they thought in the middle of it is far less tidy and much more worth hearing. Do not go looking for one on their behalf.
Have you ever been let down or hurt by a church, and what did you do next?
Why ask it
Many long-term believers carry a story of this kind: a congregation that split, a leader who abused trust, a cold shoulder after a divorce. Let them tell as much or as little as they choose. What came next, staying, moving, or years away, shows what their faith is actually attached to.
Where does your church stand on women in leadership, and where do you stand?
Why ask it
Some churches ordain women as priests and bishops and some reserve the pulpit for men, and each kind has members who disagree with it. The two halves of the answer are often not the same, which opens a bigger subject: why someone stays in a church they think is wrong about something.
How do you decide when a moral teaching of the church can change and when it can't?
Why ask it
Many churches have changed their teaching on slavery, on lending at interest and on divorce, and are arguing now about other things. This asks for the rule behind the changes instead of a verdict on one issue, and the rule will lean on scripture, tradition, conscience or some blend of the three.
What do you make of Christians whose politics are the opposite of yours?
Why ask it
There are Christians on every side of most political arguments, quoting the same book. How someone accounts for that shows whether they take their own reading of scripture to be the obvious one or one among several. A person who can name something the other side gets right has thought about it.
Which parts of church history would you rather not have to defend?
Why ask it
The list is not short: the crusades, the churches' part in slavery, residential schools, abuse and its concealment. A thoughtful believer has already reckoned with some of this and does not need protecting from the question. The answer to be wary of puts every wrong on people who were not really Christians, which lets the church off without a look.
Do you want the people close to you to believe, and how do you handle it when they don't?
Why ask it
Whether they hope you convert is often the unspoken question in the room, and raising it directly relieves the pressure for both of you. The second half matters more: what happens to a friendship where the other person is never going to agree.
What would change your mind?
Why ask it
Save this for the end of a conversation, and expect it to come back at you. An answer with content, a piece of evidence, an experience, a moral failure of the church, means the belief is held rather than assumed. 'Nothing would' is also an answer, and worth taking at face value.
In class
Is this class taught from inside the faith or as an outside study, and are skeptical questions welcome?
Why ask it
A confirmation or newcomers' class and a school or university course on Christianity have different aims, and one question can be routine in the first and awkward in the second. Asking in the first session saves you guessing for the rest of the term, and a teacher who says yes has told you how frank you can be.
What do almost all Christians agree on, and where do the disagreements begin?
Why ask it
It gives the class a map before the detail: a shared core around Jesus, the Bible and the early creeds, then divisions over authority, the sacraments and how salvation works. The teacher's answer also shows which tradition the course leans toward, which is useful to know early.
Why are there so many denominations, and what were the big splits actually about?
Why ask it
The break between the Eastern and Western churches and the Reformation are the two a course usually covers, and each had political causes alongside the theological ones. Ask which of those disputes still matter to ordinary churchgoers and which are now mostly history.
Who decided which books went into the Bible, and when?
Why ask it
Students often assume a single meeting settled it. The fuller account is a slow process in which churches came to agree over centuries on the writings they read, and it also explains why Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Bibles do not have identical Old Testaments.
Why are there four gospels instead of one, and how do they differ?
Why ask it
Matthew, Mark and Luke share a great deal of material and John goes its own way, which opens questions about sources and audiences. Comparing how two of them tell one event, the birth or the empty tomb, is an exercise a teacher can set up in ten minutes.
How did a small Jewish movement turn into a separate religion?
Why ask it
Jesus and his first followers were Jews, and the parting from Judaism took generations and was argued over inside the New Testament itself. The answer reaches past history, because it frames how Christians read the Hebrew scriptures and how the two faiths have treated each other since.
What is a creed, and what argument was the Nicene Creed written to settle?
Why ask it
Creeds read like lists of settled facts, yet each line answers a dispute, in this case over whether the Son is fully God. Learning the argument behind the wording makes the Trinity much easier to study than meeting it as a puzzle with no history.
What do Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches do differently on a Sunday?
Why ask it
Differences of belief are easier to remember once you can picture them: icons and incense, a Mass built around the Eucharist, a service built around a sermon. If the class is going to visit a service or watch one, ask beforehand what to look for.
What did Jesus teach, as distinct from what the church later taught about him?
Why ask it
The parables and the Sermon on the Mount are about how to live and about the kingdom of God, while much of the doctrine about who Jesus was is worked out in Paul's letters and the later councils. Believers see the second growing out of the first and some critics see a gap, and a good class sets out both views.
Where is Christianity growing today and where is it shrinking?
Why ask it
A course built on European history can leave the impression that the story ends in emptying pews. Ask for the current picture in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and for where the figures come from, since counts of believers depend on who is doing the counting.
How would a practicing Christian say this course gets their faith wrong?
Why ask it
An academic class describes a religion from outside, and believers often say the description misses what it is like from inside: prayer, belonging, the sense of being addressed. A teacher who can answer fairly is showing you the limits of the method, and the answer makes a strong angle for an essay.
If I want to keep going after this class, what should I read or visit first?
Why ask it
A teacher can fit the suggestion to you: one gospel, a short history, a service at a church unlike any you have seen. Ask for the single thing they would pick, because one named book gets read and a reading list does not.
How to have this conversation
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before you start
Decide whether you are asking or arguing
Both are legitimate, but they will not fit in the same half hour. If you want to understand, say so and park your objections. If you want to debate, say that too, so nobody feels ambushed halfway through.
Take a few from each group
Six or seven questions fill an hour. Two from Their story, two from Practice or The Bible and two from Beliefs make a rounded first conversation, and Hard questions can wait for the second.
There is no single Christian position
Answers to almost everything here differ between Catholic, Orthodox, mainline Protestant, evangelical, and Pentecostal believers, and between congregations within each. Ask which tradition they come from before assuming what they think about scripture or authority.
Ask about practice, not only belief
Doctrinal questions get rehearsed answers. What they did last Sunday, what they pray about, what they give money to, and who they call when things go wrong will get you the specific version.
Answer if they ask you back
If they want to know where you stand, say so briefly and honestly. Deflecting turns the exchange into an interview, and interviews do not produce candid answers for long.
If you are asking in a class
The In class group is worded for a teacher or a discussion, whether that is a school or university course, a confirmation class or a course for newcomers at a church. Fit the question to the week's topic, ask while there is still time for an answer, and note the names and dates you are given so you can check them. If the assignment is to interview a Christian, the first five groups are your interview: say who will read it, and ask before you record or quote.
Follow-ups that get past the prepared answer
- Can you give me an example from your own life?
- Is that your church's position, or yours?
- How would someone in your tradition who disagrees with you put it?
- When did you last change your mind about that?
- What do you say when someone asks you that and you have no answer?
Common pitfalls
Stacking the hard questions
Violence in the Old Testament, hell, hypocrisy in the church: each is fair to raise, and all three in a row will be felt as an ambush. Take one, and stay for the whole answer.
Inferring their politics from their faith
Christians vote every way there is to vote, and which churches lean which way changes from one country to the next. Ask rather than assume, and expect to be wrong some of the time.
Treating an admitted doubt as an opening
When someone tells you about an unresolved doubt, that is trust rather than a crack to lean on. Pressing there is the quickest way to make everything after it guarded.
Explaining their tradition back to them
Even if you have read more theology, telling someone what their church really teaches ends the conversation. Ask how they understand it and where they know that reading is contested.
An order that tends to work
- Open with Their story: how they came to it, who made it believable, which branch they belong to.
- Move to Practice: an ordinary Tuesday, prayer, what a service is like, communion and baptism.
- Then The Bible: how they read it, whether they take it literally, which passages are hard, and how they handle tension in the text.
- After that Beliefs: what makes someone a Christian, Jesus and his death, the resurrection, salvation, the Trinity, sin and grace.
- Only then Hard questions: why they think it is true, other religions, suffering, politics, church history. One or two, not the whole group.
- Close with what would change their mind, and be prepared to answer the same question.
- In a class, begin with whether the course is taught from inside the faith or outside it, then bring the two or three In class questions that fit the week.