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“Can You Follow Jesus and Still Practice Smudging?”

“Can You Follow Jesus and Still Practice Smudging?”

Last updated on: October 5, 2026 at 3:18 am by Gregory T. Smith

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“Can You Follow Jesus and Still Practice Smudging?” 2026-10-04T14:57:00-08:00 Gregory T. Smith

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A chaplain’s question about Indigenous Christians opens a conversation about grace, spiritual authority, and who gets to name our faith.

We must find ways to recognize the good in someone else’s spirituality without insisting that they are secretly following Christ without knowing it. (Photo by Arina Krasnikova on Pexels)

Recently, a dear friend who serves as a prison chaplain asked me about Indigenous people he knows who identify as Christian and also practice traditions such as smudging.* He wanted to know if I believed they were still Christians. I believe he asked sincerely. He was trying to discern how to offer spiritual counsel with integrity.

My answer was simple. “If they tell me they are Christians, then they are. I take them at their word.” But that simple answer sparked a larger conversation. Because not every Christian understands each practice in the same way. And I wanted to address the nuance. I should not assume that an Indigenous person should abandon their deeply-rooted traditions when they become Christian. Neither can I say they forfeit the name “Christian” because their prayer does not look like mine.

Faith in What?

We talked about what happens during a smudging ceremony. I compared it to a house blessing with anointing oil, or a priest sprinkling holy water. In each case, a material action can express prayer and an intention to bless or cleanse. The chaplain asked, “What are they cleansing it with?” I said, “Faith.” He asked, “Faith in what?”

It was a fair question. But I didn’t feel I could answer it, even with a degree in world religions. Because the people who practice smudging are the ones best able to answer it. There is no single Indigenous tradition and even among Native Christians, people understand their inherited ceremonies in different ways. Some identify the Creator they pray to while smudging as the same God Jesus called “Abba.” Others describe this differently, insisting that the two are not interchangeable. Smudge is not the same as Christian incense, holy water, or anointing oil. These practices may be used to cleanse an area, but in Indigenous culture, the plants and ceremony carry their own special meaning.

The Anglican Diocese of Edmonton describes a Cree and Anglican gathering in which people worship Jesus and smudge as they prepare their minds and hearts for prayer. That example does not represent the perspective of every Indigenous community. I have attended Pentecostal meetings in which Native American worship leaders quote Bible verses to explain their use of the drum as a sacred instrument. Conversely, I know of many First Nations people who believe converting to Christianity means abandoning their ancestral spirituality. So, the sight or scent of smoke cannot tell a chaplain, by itself, whom someone worships.

We are Not the Arbiters of Other People’s Faith

My friend told me that when an Indigenous person had asked whether it was okay to keep practicing smudging and other traditions, he had suggested praying about it. If God said yes, then yes; if God said no, they should listen. I respect that response. My friend did not issue a prohibition. He didn’t appoint himself the arbiter of someone else’s faith. He left room for the person’s own discernment, even as he was working through questions of his own.

It’s important to point out the setting and tone of this conversation between an Indigenous prison inmate and a White chaplain. Whether or not he intends them to, the chaplain’s words carry the weight of institution and a history of churches and governments suppressing Indigenous spiritual practices. That history must not be ignored in this conversation. I had to remind myself of the same power imbalance in case management—that, unintentionally, as a middle-class, White, American, Christian, government worker, I represented “the man” to many marginalized populations. So, I do not mention this power differential as an accusation against my friend. I bring it up to ask: how can we offer guidance while making clear that we are willing to hear an answer we did not expect? And to remind those who find themselves in a position of spiritual, government, or other types of authority that we are not the arbiters of other people’s faith.

As we talked, the conversation moved beyond the Indigenous Christians who had prompted it. There was a larger question I found myself asking. When someone’s spiritual life falls outside my familiar categories, do I assume God is absent**? Or, do I remain open to finding God already at work within that person?**

Anonymous Christians?

As we talked, I was reminded of Karl Rahner’s idea of the “anonymous Christian.” This is a notion that can be either comforting or disturbing, depending on who you are. Rahner was trying to answer a question that many Christians struggle with. If God desires the salvation of all people, and if Christ is necessary for God’s saving work, what do we say about someone whose life reflects a deep and abiding love—someone who deeply depicts divine grace, yet who does not profess Jesus as their savior?

Rahner’s personal theology could not allow a person like this to be condemned, simply because their life fell outside the scope of Christendom. So he proposed that such a person could receive Christ’s grace without knowing it by that name. He called that person an “anonymous Christian.”

I understand why this idea is attractive for many Christians. It challenged the assumption that God’s grace only operates through the Church. It answered that Sunday school question, “How could God send someone to hell if they’d never heard about Jesus?” For Christians who believe that everyone outside an explicit confession of Jesus is lost, Rahner offered a solution that sounded helpful. It said we do not get to decide where grace can go. His proposal challenged our certainty about the fate of others and made us less eager to condemn.

But I also understand why calling someone an “anonymous Christian” is offensive to those who are not Christians. A Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, or practitioner of an Indigenous religion has not asked me to call them Christian. If I insist that their faith is Christianity in disguise (or in some embryonic form), I may appear generous in my own eyes. But really I am making my own tradition the standard by which all others are judged. History is marked by Christian attempts to suppress or colonize other religions, so this is no small matter. We must find ways to recognize the good in someone else’s spirituality without insisting that they are secretly following Christ without knowing it.

There is an important difference between Rahner’s hypothetical non-Christian and the people the chaplain asked me about. My friend’s acquaintances aren’t “anonymous Christians.” They have specifically stated that they are Christians. The question is whether we will trust them about what that means in their own lives. And whether we will exercise enough humility in our own beliefs to recognize that they, not we, get to determine the extent of their Christianity.

While Jesus is the particular person through whom I have come to know the universal Christ, I believe God is present and active beyond the boundaries of the Christian religion. But I have to be careful with saying that, because “Christ” is the name I use from within my own faith. But people of other faiths use other words that I recognize to be equally meaningful to them. I do not need a neighbor of another faith to adopt a name that I find personally helpful before I can believe God is present to them. And I don’t need to rename that neighbor as Christian to remain faithful to Jesus.

Be Like Jesus—Get Curious

Perhaps the most faithful response to “faith in what” is to be like Jesus, who often answered one question with another question. This isn’t evasion—it’s curiosity. So, perhaps the next question might be, “Would you tell me what this ceremony means to you?” Or, “Since you are practicing them both, do you see places where they are compatible or incompatible?” Or, “Who told you that you could not hold them both at the same time?” Or, “What would you be giving up if you chose one over the other?”

As I say in Jesus and Lao Tzu: The Way of Love, we must listen longer than we lecture. Listen long enough for the answer to surprise you. Discernment begins with a person, not with a suspicion attached to a practice.

I want to keep Rahner’s confidence that grace reaches beyond—and even despite—our institutions. But I want to let go of the label that interprets every response to that grace as implicitly Christian. When an Indigenous Christian tells me that following Jesus and honoring Native traditions belong together in their life, I’m going to begin by trusting that they know their own faith better than I do. And I’m going to practice enough humility and curiosity to become a witness to God’s presence in someone else’s life, rather than judging the quality of their religion.

* Living in Canada and working in the United States, I encounter different terminology. “Indigenous” is a broad term; in Canada, it includes First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. “Native American” is common in the United States. These terms are not exact synonyms, and I aim to respect the names people and communities use for themselves.

For related reading, check out my other articles:

General Christian

Careers, Workplace and Religion

History and Religion

Challenging the Church

Deconstruction

Theology

anonymous christian

colonial christianity

First Nations Christians

Indigenous Christians

Native American Christians

smudging

About Gregory T. Smith

I live in the beautiful Fraser Valley of British Columbia and work in northern Washington State as a behavioral health specialist with people experiencing homelessness and those who are overly involved in the criminal justice system. Before that, I spent over a quarter-century as lead pastor of several Virginia churches. My newspaper column, “Spirit and Truth,” ran in Virginia newspapers for fifteen years. I am one of fourteen contributing authors of the Patheos/Quoir Publishing book “Sitting in the Shade of Another Tree: What We Learn by Listening to Other Faiths.” I hold a degree in Religious Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University and also studied at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. My wife Christina and I have seven children between us, and we are still collecting grandchildren. You can read more about the author here.

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