00:00:00.000As Muslim immigration in the United States has increased, Americans have witnessed the rise of organized political Islam.0.96
00:00:06.800In states like Michigan and Texas, where immigration has created broad demographic shifts, Islamic diasporas are organizing to alter politics in their new homelands.0.94
00:00:17.320American Christians have been taught for generations that religion and politics don't mix, that it's a serious social taboo to explicitly organize electoral activism around faith.0.99
00:00:28.120But the new arrivals with entirely different cultures, traditions, and faiths have no such
00:00:32.680reservations. Christians must learn to fight for their faith because the future of the nation
00:00:37.540belongs to those who are dedicated to ensuring that their way of life carries on. America was
00:00:43.400founded as an Anglo-Protestant nation. A small population of Catholics were allowed to coexist
00:00:48.500in the new country, but the people and the culture were overwhelmingly Protestant. Even after the
00:00:53.860constitution and the bill of rights were ratified many states continued to require political leaders
00:00:59.220to explicitly profess their protestant christianity no one else including catholics
00:01:04.920were eligible for public office when americans championed religious liberty they meant that you
00:01:10.240could be whatever form of protestant you liked when a culture is naturally dominated by a particular
00:01:16.060faith it's easy to forget how important it is for the functioning of that society just as a fish
00:01:21.560doesn't know that it's wet, many Americans didn't notice how critical Protestant Christianity was
00:01:26.540to shaping their culture. There's very little need for Protestants to organize politically as a
00:01:31.360voting bloc because all candidates were literally required to share their faith by law. To engage
00:01:37.280in politics was to engage in Protestant Christian politics by definition. As the scope of immigration
00:01:43.960increased to include places like Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe, the religious balance
00:01:49.720of the u.s changed catholics had always been present but they had been in small numbers
00:01:55.120now their ranks were swelling quickly while new religious groups like jews began to appear in
00:02:00.400significant numbers americans had always believed in religious freedom but the implicit homogeneity
00:02:06.120of protestant america had always been the unspoken bedrock of that belief now the question became
00:02:12.500would that tolerance still function in a far more religiously and ethnically diverse nation0.53
00:02:18.280If the United States was to absorb these new religious minorities without converting them,
00:02:25.960New arrivals expected representation in democratic elections,
00:02:30.000meaning that previous religious restrictions would need to be eliminated.
00:02:33.840Default assumptions about Protestant Christianity in education, government,
00:02:37.800and even the shared calendar of holidays was now up for debate.
00:02:41.380The unifying faith tradition that had defined every aspect of American life
00:02:46.000was now just one of many vying for attention in 1958 presidential hopeful john f kennedy released
00:02:53.680his book a nation of immigrants in cooperation with the anti-defamation league the book reframed
00:02:59.420the collective american identity from a predominantly anglo-protestant nation that
00:03:04.420had assimilated a broader european diaspora to a nation of immigrants with no central religious
00:03:10.280or ethnic identity. Kennedy's win over Nixon in the 1960 election was seen as a huge victory for
00:03:17.380political Catholicism and a major shift in the cultural attitudes of the nation. In 1965, two
00:03:24.260years after Kennedy's assassination, the Hart-Seller Act was passed in his memory. The legislation
00:03:30.080removed immigration quotas that had previously preferred applicants from northern and western
00:03:35.560europe radically changing who would be allowed to enter the country suddenly the floodgates to
00:03:40.840america were open people from all over the world had the same right to enter the country and bring
00:03:46.560their diverse religions with them the adl had paired with kennedy in the belief that anti-immigrant
00:03:52.480sentiment was growing and that racial and religious minorities like jews would be treated
00:03:57.500more favorably in a diverse and cosmopolitan america the unified christian culture of the
00:04:03.260United States was now seen as a stumbling block to the future of the country instead of a foundation
00:04:08.920of society. The religious tolerance of Protestant Christians was used as a battering ram for social0.99
00:04:15.100change. The First Amendment promised freedom of worship in accordance with the Protestant idea0.64
00:04:20.280of freedom of conscience. Even though that had initially meant a freedom to choose whatever
00:04:25.500Christian denomination you'd like, it was quickly expanded to include all forms of faith. The
00:04:31.060prohibition against establishing an official state church was now interpreted as a prohibition
00:04:36.240against favoring christianity at all the status of christianity as the default cultural bedrock
00:04:42.280of the country was being challenged liberal mainline protestant churches were more than
00:04:48.080happy to bolster this transition many church leaders were crusaders in the civil rights
00:04:53.220movement and saw secularization of the public square as a critical step in defeating discrimination
00:04:59.700The culture couldn't be explicitly Christian and be welcoming to new immigrants of different faiths.
00:05:05.820If America was to be inclusive in regards to all the new immigrant populations arriving on its shores,
00:05:12.260it must eliminate its preference for Christianity in the same way it had eliminated its preference for Europeans and their culture.0.79
00:05:19.940The pitch to Christian congregations was simple.
00:05:22.300The anxiety around social change and the civil rights movement hit the church as hard as it hit every other cultural institution.
00:05:28.600Churchgoers were terrified of being identified as backwards racists and looked for any way to avoid that social stigma.
00:05:36.120Did Christ not say to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's?
00:05:39.600Should Christians even be involved in politics when Christ rejected an earthly kingdom?
00:05:44.200Over a thousand years of Christendom was discarded in the belief that a new secular form of government could eradicate the conflict between different ethnic and religious groups.
00:05:54.800for years christians have watched silently as their faith is pushed out of the public square
00:06:00.900conservative pundits and politicians told their voters that nothing could be done because religious
00:06:06.060liberty was a constitutional principle and the answer was to reduce the power of the government
00:06:11.300rather than fight for control of it this convenient reframe accelerated the cultural change that many
00:06:17.080cosmopolitan conservative leaders desired while providing a convenient excuse as to why the right
00:06:23.120had to lose the cultural battle on principle. This ideological disaster became hard-coded
00:06:28.880into the DNA of the conservative movement, and the moral majority of the 1980s proved to be the
00:06:34.840dying breath of organized political Christianity, not its resurgence. Now, American Christians are0.72
00:06:41.080learning the same brutal lesson that has devastated Europe. When you leave a spiritual void in society,0.99
00:06:47.340it doesn't remain empty. Something rushes in to fill it. At first, it was secular humanism,
00:06:52.520but that sterile placeholder couldn't fulfill the true role of faith in a society.
00:06:58.240Wokeness became the religious manifestation of that belief,
00:07:01.640including the heretical worship of individuals like George Floyd.
00:07:05.760Wokeness itself proved to be too weak to maintain its grasp,0.90
00:07:09.240and Islam is slowly but steadily stepping in to fill the role.1.00
00:07:13.200It's not whether a nation will have a religion, but which religion it will ultimately honor.0.74
00:07:18.440In the face of a weak and timid Christianity, the vital self-assurance of Islam begins to1.00