Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson has now gone on the record: American Christians aren’t Christian enough if they don’t want to fund or house Muslim refugees from the Middle East.
Writing in The Washington Post, Gerson suggests that worldwide religion has been challenged by the refugee crisis: Islam has been challenged by the rise of the Islamic State, but Christianity has been challenged by its own apathy:
American Christianity, has its own self-examination to conduct… Christians must overcome their discomfort with Islam and their belief that conflict among Muslims is none of their concern. Is the Christian faith merely a cover for tribalism? Or will it demonstrate its essence in service to the refugees of another faith who did nothing to deserve their fate?
This is ridiculous. The question for American Christians is not whether to help suffering Muslims, but how best to do so.
By continuing to incentivize immigration into Christian areas without assimilation, and to hand international institutions vast sums of money that will likely be seized by those who would use such money for evil? Or by spreading Western civilization abroad and standing up for it at home?
Western civilization has entered its suicidal phase in much of the United States and Europe.
As a reaction to the horrors of 19th and early 20th century colonialism, Western civilization shrank from the notion that it has anything to teach those abroad, and has allowed country after country to collapse further into chaos or dictatorship as a result. Then, when the externalities of such collapses reach Western shores, Westerners take in the victims without attempting to change their culture – the same culture that brought about problems in their home nations in the first place.
The result: a lack of Christian charity at home and a lack of Christian influence abroad. In Sweden, the impending implosion of the welfare state due to unfettered immigration is bringing about a massive backlash that threatens the supposedly liberal foundations of the state. As The Washington Post reports:
In this Scandinavian country famous for its progressive politics and unfailingly polite citizenry, a party with roots in the neo-fascist fringe has surged toward the top of recent opinion polls with a defiantly hostile message to refugees: Those on their way to Sweden should stay out. Many of those already here should go home.
Are they wrong? It’s hard to argue they are wrong while Sweden takes in 10,000 refugees per week and watches its long-cultivated culture spin out of control. In Malmo, Sweden, Jews have fled the rise of radical Islam; the Simon Wiesenthal Center in the United States has issued a travel advisory to Jews visiting Malmo. In 2013 and 2014, the town, which is now one-third Muslim, has experienced over 130 anti-Semitic incidents.
Ordinary Europeans are reacting as their culture is hijacked: they’re moving to the right in Britain, with the rise of the U.K. Independence Party; in Switzerland, with the Swiss People’s Party winning a stunning victory at the polls; in Poland, in Austria, and in Hungary, too. Angela Merkel is even under heavy fire in Germany, where an Iranian national who converted to Christianity was beaten with a baton this week by a Muslim migrant from Afghanistan.
Colonialism and imperialism were rife with exploitation, brutality and evil – but so is Western self-abasement, because a world without the West is a darker one.
Western self-abasement also threatens the West itself, which is the only force capable of spreading freedom and prosperity across the globe via free markets, property rights and a respect for religious freedom. Gerson’s suggestion – that the West not spread its values abroad, and instead undermine its own strength and culture at home – is a short road to destruction for Muslims who want to live in peace and prosperity, and for the Christians that Gerson criticizes.