The Increasing Threat of Militant Secularism and Islam

By Benjamin Wiker, CP Guest Contributor Friday, September 01, 2017

London Central Mosque in this undated file photo. | (Photo: Reuters)

In Germany, a male nurse, Niels Hoegel, purposely killed at least 84 patients with overdoses of heart medication.

In London, a 5-year-old Christian girl is forced to live in Muslim foster care homes, where her cross is confiscated, she is forced to learn Arabic, and is told that Christmas and Easter are "stupid."

All across Europe, empty Christian churches, both Catholic and Protestant, are being turned into mosques.

In Berkeley, California, Antifa counter-protesters show up in a swarm, covered head to toe in black to hide their identities, carry clubs and mace, sport flags that identify them as anarchists and shields emblazoned with "No Hate!" and proceed to beat up those who gathered for prayer, in support of Donald Trump, and "No Marxism at Berkeley."

Finally, D. James Kennedy ministries is suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for designating it as an official "Hate Group" for its biblically-based opposition to homosexuality and transgenderism.

All of these are the result of three things: de-Christianization of Europe and America, the rise of radical secularism, and the Islamization of Europe. The three things are not separate but intimately interwoven. The secularization of Europe and America is the cause of their de-Christianization, and the vacuum of faith and moral culture caused by secularization is being filled with a great inrush of Islam. We might add that it is the disunity of Christians that also made all of this possible by making Christianity weaker and more easily supplanted both by secularism and Islam.

What might be surprising about all of this is that it all began over a half-millennium ago. As I show in my The Reformation 500 Years Later: 12 Things You Need To Know, both secular atheism and Islam were there at the time of Martin Luther, atheism just beginning to blossom and Islam ready to take over Europe.

Why is that important to know now? Because all Christians today, Catholic and Protestant, face this common threat from increasingly militant secularism and Islam.

Secularism is the source of the eugenics and euthanasia movement that, like killer-nurse Niels Hoegel, believes that true compassion means the extermination of the unfit and suffering, just as we would any animal. This "compassion" represents a complete rejection of the moral arguments of Christianity.

The centuries-long secular drive to eliminate Christianity from culture has been very successful, leaving us with empty churches. These empty churches represent the hollowing out of our previously Christian-defined culture, and hence the nearly complete victory of secularism, which continues to be pushed ever harder by the liberal cultural elite. The Left's hatred of Christianity that fuels its efforts at de-Christianization understands that Christianity is the enemy that (however weakly) stands in the way of its complete cultural victory.

This anti-Christian hatred very much defines the far Left, Marxist-based groups like Antifa, who (with no apparent irony) use hatred and violence to snuff out groups whom they accuse of hatred and violence, and a prime target are those Christians who oppose anything of the secular Leftist agenda.

Christians "hate" because they have drawn moral lines which the Left has long ago crossed and hence crossed out, and that's why the Southern Poverty Law Center designated a Protestant ministry as a hate group.

Finally, the Left, from its beginning in the rise of modern atheism in the century before Luther, has been for almost five centuries fundamentally and vehemently anti-Christian, so much so that, as I explain in my book, it actually affirmed Islam as superior and more desirable. True to its strange predilections, secular enthusiasts praised Islam over Christianity in the 18th century Enlightenment, and true to this form welcomes a flood of Muslim immigration in the 21st century, even while it continues to persecute Christians.

Sadly, a great part of Christianity's weakness in the face of such persecution comes from its disunity, a splintering of the body of Christ for which all sides, Catholic and Protestant must share the blame.

Five centuries after the Reformation Christians must realize that we can no longer afford to be disunited, and that makes it all the more important to understand the deepest causes of the Reformation 500 years later.

Benjamin Wiker is, first of all, a husband and a father of seven children. He graduated from Furman University with a B.A. in Political Philosophy. He has an M.A. in Religion and a Ph.D. in Theological Ethics, both from Vanderbilt University. Dr. Wiker taught at Marquette University, then St. Mary's University (MN), Thomas Aquinas College (CA), and is now Professor of Political Science and Director of Human Life Studies at Franciscan University (OH). Dr. Wiker is a Senior Fellow at the Veritas Center for Ethics and Public Life, Franciscan University, and Director of Human Life Studies at Franciscan University in Steubenville, OH. He has published 12 books. He is also the writer and host of EWTN's Saints vs Scoundrels.