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I believe Christians should have relationships with unchurched people and that pro-lifers should have relationships with pro-choice people. Atheist Ira Glass recently did an interview that includes the best argument I’ve ever heard regarding relational evangelism.

Last year, I hosted an episode of Life Report on the topic of whether pro-lifers should have pro-choice friends. I did this because I was surprised that some of my closest pro-life colleagues had expressed some strong concerns about the fact that I had (and still have) pro-choice friends. By “friend,” I don’t simply mean “acquaintance;” I’m talking about people that I genuinely care about and would like to hang out with, whether or not we’re talking about abortion on that particular day.

I recently happened across a fascinating interview that Jim Henderson did with Ira Glass, the host and producer of This American Life. Toward the beginning of the interview, Ira explains how he thinks Christians are unfairly portrayed by the media and that the Christians in his life aren’t anything like the stereotype that many atheists hold. You can see Ira talk about this in the video below:

Ira says that even though all sub-groups complain about being treated unfairly by the media, it seems like Christians are portrayed more severely — that is, they’re portrayed as crazy, evil people — which is not at all the experience that Ira has had with the Christians in his life, even with the fundamentalists.

In the next video, Ira spends seven minutes describing his friendship with a couple of missionaries named Glenn and Jane Fitzgerald. He met them because he wanted to do a piece on Chicago gangs, and they were the only people outside of the Police Department who had any contact with the gangs in Chicago. You can watch Ira talk affectionately about his relationship with Glenn and Jane in the embedded video below: