Christian Liberty Upheld by Supreme Court While Islam Rises and Rages in France

Christian Liberty upheld by Supreme Court while Islam rises and rages in France. That is a topic we'll discuss today right here on the Christian Worldview radio program where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.

I'm David Wheaton, the host. The Christian Worldview is a nonprofit, listener-supported radio ministry where you're able to reach believers and non-believers with that mission through the radio station, website, or podcast app on which you are listening today because of the support of listeners like you. So thank you for your prayer, encouragement, and support. Today on the Christian Worldview, we are going to examine some current events taking place in America and Europe. First, Abraham Hamilton, general counsel and public policy analyst for American Family Association, joins us to analyze three decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Then, later in the program, Soren Kern, Christian geopolitical analyst and writing fellow for Middle East Forum, joins us from Europe to discuss how the widespread destructive riots and rage by Muslims in France after a 17-year-old Muslim was killed by police is indicative of an intractable immigration and assimilation problem that bodes darkly for the future of Western Europe. But first, let's hear from Abraham Hamilton about the recent Supreme Court decisions. Abraham, thank you for coming on the Christian Worldview radio program today. Before we get into these Supreme Court cases, tell us how you came to saving faith in Christ and what you do for American Family Association.

Thank you so much for that question. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to share that. By God's grace and his divine providence, my parents became new Christians the year I was born. The one thing as new Christians that my parents were committed to doing was putting us, myself and my siblings in an environment where we could hear the gospel preached regularly. So I remember as a young boy about seven or eight years old hearing the gospel preached and I was made keenly aware. I know now that it was the Holy Spirit working in me to make me keenly aware of the fact that I was desperately in need of a savior.

I'm so grateful for that now. And so as a result of that, my parents raised me in an environment where we went to church regularly. But about high school, I began to really stand on my convictions as a Christian.

Growing up in New Orleans, it was different, Berber Street and all. But as a young man, I was convicted to live a life of holiness and to live for the Lord. So I was regenerated, born again at eight, and I grew in discipleship to where I began to really stand even publicly for my commitment to the Lord in high school.

So great to hear how God saved you. And just briefly tell us what you do for American Family Association. Yes, I am AFA's general counsel and public policy analyst.

I also host the Hamilton Corner daily on American Family Radio Network at 5 p.m. Central, 6 p.m. Eastern time. But as general counsel, I'm the lead attorney for AFA. So it's my job to keep AFA legal with all matters concerning the IRS, AFR concerning the FCC, some intellectual property.

So I'm the lead attorney for the ministry in addition to what I do on the radio. And this is part of the reason why we wanted to have you on today to talk about these recent Supreme Court decisions with your legal background. Let's talk first about this case with a website designer from Colorado. And here's what NBC News had to say about it. We come on the air with breaking news from the Supreme Court at this hour. The justices deciding on a pair of cases for sweeping implications here for the First Amendment, anti-discrimination laws as well as student debt. And the court has just ruled now on the first of those cases, it features the owner of a Colorado web design company who did not want to create wedding websites for same sex couples. And the court has held that that website designer does not have to that free speech is her right and that Colorado's anti-discrimination law cannot force her to come to to do this website for same sex couples if she does not want to. So let's go right to NBC's Laura Jarrett, who's reading this decision along with me.

Here we go again. So here's a case where the Supreme Court has reversed the lower courts and said this wedding website designer cannot be forced to provide this service web design in contrast to something that she believes, which in her case is that same sex marriage is not valid. A major decision for states across the country that have anti-discrimination laws like Colorado trying to enforce them. But in this case, the high court in a divided ruling has ruled in favor of Laurie Smith, that graphic designer who, as you mentioned, says that she wants to make wedding websites, but she hasn't actually made any thus far. But she says she fears being fined under Colorado's law, which applies to all public accommodations, which says as long as you're holding your business out to the public, you have to treat everybody equally, which means you can't discriminate on the basis of someone's sexual orientation. And in this case, they say that violates her right to free speech. Now, she has said in interviews that she's actually happy to make other types of websites for gay individuals. So it's not just that she doesn't want to discriminate, but she says in particular when it comes to marriage, that's something that she opposes.

Okay, we'll stop it there for now. This seems like a major victory and precedent setter for Christian liberty to not be compelled to do something that violates their beliefs or conscience. Put this in perspective for how important of a ruling this is.

This is a majorly important decision. A couple introductory observations that I have to make is one that the Supreme Court justices ruled in a 63 fashion. So you had Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Alito, Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett on one side of the ledger. And then you had Justices Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Justice Katani Brown Jackson in the minority on this case.

Justice Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, which is going to be very significant in a moment. But I want to say the only reason why this case has even come to the Supreme Court is because the Supreme Court failed to rule on broad First Amendment grounds in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. The 303 Creative case comes out in the state of Colorado challenging the exact same statute that had a fellow brother in the faith, Jack Phillips, hailed before the high court for his. They tried to describe it as a denial of service, but what it was was a very narrow, limited declination of an invitation to specifically make a unique cake celebrating homosexual marriage. Jack Phillips did not refuse to serve homosexuals.

In fact, he invited the very couple to purchase anything in his shop, but he just refused to use his talents and gifts that God had given him to make a unique offering to celebrate what the scripture says is an abomination. The same thing occurred in Lori Smith's context, but in the Masterpiece Cakeshop's case, the Supreme Court refused to rule on broad First Amendment grounds. They simply said, ah, the issue here is that the state of Colorado was just too mean to Jack Phillips and showed a hostility towards his faith.

That's why Jack Phillips wins in this instance, which left room for further questions to be raised. In the interim time period, there was a case that came to the Supreme Court called Bostock where the issue was whether or not the 1964 Civil Rights Act created a constitutional protected right to protect people from discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity. Magically, even though homosexuality was largely illegal in America in 1964, Justice Gorsuch led a five justice majority in that case to say, yeah, the 64 Civil Rights Act includes those protections. Fast forward to where we are now with 303 Creative, Justice Gorsuch is the author of this opinion to where he is kind of taking the lead on the court to try to create this balance between rights for sexual deviancy and First Amendment rights.

So this is the first case following Bostock that seems to try to create that sort of balance. It's my opinion in my position that they're mutually exclusive at every advancement of the LGBTQIAP plus sociopolitical agenda. It comes at the encroachment upon religious freedom. Well, this case, which is a great resounding case that has broad implications to where the court ruled on clear constitutional First Amendment grounds.

I'll give you an example. On page 15 of the opinion, Justice Gorsuch wrote, quote, the state cannot use its public accommodation statute to deny speakers the right to choose the content of their own messages. Justice Gorsuch goes on to explain that commerce does not give the government the opportunity to co-opt a person's voice to compel them to speak a message that the government may think is good, right, or laudable, but that the speaker does not want to do.

The First Amendment expressly prohibits that. I would offer the one bit of caution because the 303 Creative case makes a broad, clear constitutional ruling on the First Amendment, but it does so on speech grounds, but it doesn't elevate the free exercise of religion to the same constitutional primacy that I believe the First Amendment affords. So speech articulation, and I agree with the entirety of the opinion, but I believe it's incomplete in the sense that it does not completely, broadly and flatly articulate that the free exercise of religion is fundamental as well.

So I think that's something that we're going to have to watch going forward, but there is no doubt about it. This is a huge victory for believers in Christian free exercise of religion, freedom of thought, and one of the major takeaways from the case, Justice Gorsuch wrote, that the freedom of speech flows from the freedom of thought. The government can't compel you what to think, nor can the government compel you what to say, which is why it must be protected. So it's a huge victory, but I think there's more room that's going to need to be established to properly elevate the free exercise of religion to where the founding fathers intended to articulate it, a gift given to us by God that is inalienable that our constitution exists to protect. That is very well analyzed. Abraham Hamilton with us today here on the Christian worldview, the general counsel and public policy analyst for American Family Association.

I want to play another soundbite from this NBC News report and then follow up with a question. Now one of the things we're going to be looking for as we dissect this opinion is where is the line? How does the court decide that she as an artist has that right? But what about a florist?

What about a wedding caterer? Those are typically businesses, again, open to the public that cannot discriminate. And one of the things that certain liberals on the court brought up at oral argument was how are you supposed to handle a situation in which somebody decides they don't want to serve an interracial couple? In other words, discriminating on the basis of race, everyone kind of gets their arms around that situation and can say, that doesn't seem like that would pass muster under the constitution. But in this case, how is it different? How is it different in the case of somebody who wants to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation versus race?

That's one of the things that we're now going to be looking for. Abraham, so where is the line on this between just arbitrary refusal of service because you don't like a person or particular class of people versus the kind of freedom of speech and religion that Christians want to have to refuse to use their own skills to participate in something that violates their beliefs or conscience? There's a clear way to articulate the distinction that are present here. And people like those reporters, they understand it. They just don't agree with it. So they're trying to muddy the waters and confuse the issue.

And I should say that we at AFA filed an amicus brief in the three or three creative case in favor of Laurie Smith to support her and her efforts to maintain her conscience intact and to conduct her business consistent with her faith. People again, fundamentally misunderstand. I did an interview with the Washington Post reporter in Washington, D.C. at the Supreme Court when Jack Phillips case was being heard and the reporter was not aware that the issue that Jack Phillips has had in that case was not serving homosexuals.

That's what people intentionally misconstrue. His issue was being compelled to articulate a belief and to articulate a message that he disagreed with. Jack Phillips welcomed homosexuals in his shop.

Anything that was on the shelf, they were welcome to purchase. He objected to messaging that violated his faith and contradicting what he believed. The reporter was unaware that Jack Phillips refused to make cakes celebrating divorce. The reporter was unaware that Jack Phillips refused to make cakes celebrating demonic activity at Halloween. The reporter was unaware that Jack Phillips had also refused to make cakes bashing homosexuals.

The rejection of the decline of making a customized cake to celebrate homosexual marriage was one among messages and ideas that violated his faith as a Christian that he declined. The same thing is true with Laurie Smith. She does not refuse service to people based on their sexual orientation or whatever. They are welcome to have websites designed for them for any host of issues. You have a person that's homosexual that want to make a website to sell trading cards, they want to sell shoes, they want to do other things.

Laurie Smith would have served them as a Christian, well lovingly and eagerly. What she rejected and objected to was being compelled by the state of Colorado to convey an idea that violated her faith and a message that violated her faith. That is the dividing line. See, people like those reporters intentionally try to conflate clear, broad refusal of service cases with free speech and religious liberty cases.

That is the distinction. So to use the metaphor and analogy that the reporter used, the dividing line is when the government can force someone to think something they disagree with, to articulate a belief that they disagree with, and to express an idea or a message that they disagree with against their will. That is the dividing line, not service, to say that, well, what about people that's, you know, quote unquote, interracial, which by the way, we're all one race, it's a human race.

They mean an interethnic marriage, but I know what they're trying to say. The laws already exist to protect people against that. That would fall under the category of a broad-based denial of service that's not based on any particular idea or thought or message being conveyed through what you being sought to participate in.

Messaging and ideas are the issue, not service. We have to make sure that people are not effective in muddying those waters to deny the American people for being able to understand those distinctions. Very well said.

Abraham Hamilton with us today here on the Christian worldview. Before we get to the next case, I just want to spend just a brief time on this, that it came out afterwards, and this is according to NBC News as well, that the Supreme Court's recent ruling in favor of an evangelical Christian web designer who refused to work on same-sex weddings again, it's always colored, you know, a certain way here, didn't hinge on what now appears to have been a request from a fake customer. So in other words, this was almost like a contrived fake case to almost test the legal system.

Is that correct? And does that impact this ruling at all? Well, it doesn't impact the ruling, but it should impact the way that American people perceive the ruling, and it's happening across the board. Your listeners may be aware of this, but the day that the Supreme Court ruled in Jack Phillips' favor, there was a lawyer in Colorado who called that exact same day who represented himself to Jack Phillips as a transgender and requested a custom cake design to celebrate his gender transition. He's a man that said, well, I'm now identified as a woman, so I want you to design a cake that's blue on the outside and is pink on the inside and celebrate the transition, because he knew Jack Phillips would stand as a Christian and his convictions and that he would decline that service. And guess what? Jack Phillips is in court all over again because of these contrived actions. The simple normal human being would say, well, hey, you want Lori Smith to design your website?

You want Jack Phillips to make your cake? They have a conviction based in their faith against celebrating homosexual marriage. Why not go to another shop?

There are plenty of shops that are available for you to do so. But no, that's not happening because there is an intentional and concerted effort to force Christians to comply, to bow, to kiss the ring of the spirit of the age in our contemporary culture. The issue is, and you think about it, where in our society right now is homosexuality not accepted?

The only place is in the Orthodox evangelical church. And so the effort is being employed to force Bible-believing Christians to bow. And so the revelation of this fake customer seeking out Lori Smith is part and parcel to the entire objective of many people that are advocates of this agenda at an agenda and policy level, not individual people who may be struggling in certain sins and bound in sin on the ground. Because I tell people all the time, we cannot as Christians curse the darkness. We've been ordained by God, Acts chapter 17, for this time and for this place. So God's not surprised that all of this rebellion is prevalent, but he wants his people, his ambassadors to be his hands and feet. So we won't curse the darkness, but there's a light years worth of difference between the sexual, devious, sociopolitical agenda activists and people who are bound in sin on the ground.

So at the same time, as we contend for the faith, we don't want to allow our compassion in Christ to be intruded upon as we both, as Nehemiah articulated, we have the sword and the trial in hand at the exact same time where we contend, but it's the love of Christ that compels us to do so. Abraham Hamilton, general counsel and public policy analyst for American Family Association is our guest today. We'll take a brief time out for some ministry announcements, but stay tuned. Much more coming up on the Christian worldview.

I'm David Wheaton. You may recall that last year the Christian worldview had the opportunity to expand to new markets such as Salem stations in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Atlanta, and Washington DC life-changing radio network in the Northeast, an American Christian network. We expanded for one purpose to reach new listeners with the biblical worldview in the gospel. If you listen to the program on one of these stations, we are asking for your help as we are well behind recouping our cost of airtime through listener support. We are praying for new Christian worldview partners who will help us remain on the air in these markets.

The next few months are critical as we evaluate whether to continue or discontinue on these stations and we are trusting God, whatever His will. If you'd like to help, please call us toll free 1-888-646-2233 and tell Rosie you'd like to become a Christian worldview partner or go to thechristianrealview.org and click on donate. It's critical for Christians to understand the moral depravity that has taken captive our nation. The LGBTQ movement is loud and proud on our main streets, but even more troubling, has pushed into evangelical churches under what's called gay Christianity.

M.D. Perkins book Dangerous Affirmation, The Threat of Gay Christianity explains, quote, the way gay Christian activists are rethinking theology, biblical interpretation, and the nature and purpose of the church in order to infiltrate conservative evangelicalism. The only antidote is to know and stand firm on the truth of God's word.

Dangerous Affirmation is 239 pages, softcover, and retails for $24.99. For a limited time, you can order it for a donation of any amount to the Christian worldview. Just go to thechristianrealview.org or call toll free 1-888-646-2233 or write to box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Welcome back to the Christian worldview. I'm David Wheaton.

Be sure to visit our website, thechristianrealview.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print letter, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Abraham Hamilton is our guest today. He's the general counsel for American Family Association, and we're talking about some recent Supreme Court decisions. Abraham, let's get to the case on affirmative action.

I'll just read a paragraph or two from National Review. The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the race conscious admissions policies of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The quote is this, Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.

Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives, warranting the use of race and unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful endpoints. That according to Chief Justice John Roberts. What are your thoughts on this case regarding affirmative action where colleges and universities use race as part of their emissions criteria? I'll start in assessing this particular case with a characterization from Justice Sotomayor's dissent in which she said that, quote, this guarantee can be enforced through race conscious means in a society that is not and has never been colorblind.

And that really characterizes the fundamental distinction of people to understanding and approaching this issue because the effort to move the United States of America from the doldrums of our history, as great as our nation is, we have some true objective discernible sinful iterations of our past that have implications. But to say that the objective or the goal going forward is to be colorblind in a sense that we deny the fact that the creator is given us eyes that are able to discern color and beauty and difference and variation and things of that nature. The Lord didn't create just a monochromatic flora and fauna.

We have calla lilies, we have daisies, we have roses. The Lord wants us to be able to discern those things. The thing that we don't want to do, as the apostle James pointed out, to be given to the center of partiality is that we should never ascribe merit based on our perception of superficial topical differences. Now, you probably know this, David, but I don't know if you checked lately, but I happen to be blessed with more melanin from our creator. All right.

And I thank God for that. The issue that the Supreme Court ruled upon was not that you can't take into consideration individuals' unique histories, unique backgrounds, culture distinctive to things of that nature. What the Supreme Court ruled, and Justice Clarence Thomas's concurring opinion really brings this out, is that colleges and institutions can no longer assess value or detract value from a particular candidate based solely and exclusively on their melanin discipline.

That's it. Justice Thomas articulated beautifully. In fact, let me pull up his concurrence. I'll read directly from it.

This is from page 51 in his concurrence. Justice Thomas says this, quote, what it cannot do is use the applicant's skin color as a heuristic, assuming that because the applicant checks the box for black, he therefore conforms to the university's monolithic and reductionist view of an abstract average black person. Individuals are the, Justice Thomas goes on to say, quote, according to Justice Jackson's race infused worldview, which falls flat at each step.

Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything good or bad that happens in their lives. A contrary myopic worldview based on individual skin color to the total exclusion of their personal choices is nothing short of racial determinism, which is exactly right. Justice Thomas goes on to explain that universities can and must take into consideration the backgrounds and what people have gone through as they assess the admissibility of particular candidates for higher education. But what they can no longer do is, and he used the term heuristic, H-E-U-R-I-S-T-I-C, meaning that you can automatically attribute merit or detract merit from people or to people based on nothing other than their skin color presentation.

That is something that all Americans should be able to applaud and support. But in contrast, those who do not share what I would argue is a biblical anthropology and a biblical worldview, you have people like Erica Marsh who tweeted, this is, I call it an activist for aggressivism. They would say progressivism, but I don't say progressivism because they're not advancing anything. It's actually taking us backwards. Erica Marsh tweeted this quote, today's Supreme Court decision is a direct attack on black people. No black person will be able to succeed in a merit based system, which is exactly why affirmative action based programs were needed.

Today's decision is a travesty. Now the problem that Erica Marsh seems to completely be oblivious to is that that is a type of partiality and paternalism that brings echoes of Hitler's Nazism to the fore. She's saying that because of my melanin display that I cannot succeed in a merit based system. She's saying that I am incapable of functioning on an equal plane with people who are fellow bearers of God's image who have a different melanin display. That type of condescension and paternalism is the type of partiality that we should be trying to excise from our society and as the preamble to our constitution says, to work towards the formation of a more perfect union.

That is so well said. Abraham Hamilton with us today in the Christian Real View, the general counsel and public policy analyst for American Family Association. Let's get to the third case we're going to discuss today, Abraham, the student federal loan forgiveness order that President Biden had made an executive order that he was going to forgive something like $430 billion of federal student loans.

What are your thoughts on this particular decision by the Supreme Court? People sometimes think that, oh, this is just to help out a few poor people. The particular policy provisions are right here, quote, borrowers with eligible federal student loans who had an income below $125,000 individually, $250,000 per household.

Either 2020 or 2021 will qualify for the loan balance discharge. I'm not a mathematician, but I do think people who make six figures probably should be responsible for paying off their own debts that they've incurred. As you said, it's not like you're just getting rid of the bill. You're going to take tax money from other Americans, many of whom have never even gone to college, others who may have gone to pay off their own debt, work their way through.

And first and even worse, never signed up for this loan debt and used their money to pay off this loan obligation. And so the opinion is a great opinion. It is once again a 6-3 opinion. In this case, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion and he just took the Biden administration through a basic exercise in English and word definitions. The policy sought to use the Heroes Act of 2003. It's the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, which was created to help first responders and military service members in the wake of 9-11 to help manage finances for their families. But he sought to use that legislation from 2003 to do his debt cancellation program in the year 2023. Now, the particularities of the Heroes Act only allows the Secretary of Education to modify loan commitments in these very narrow circumstances where there's either one, a declaration of war, two, a military operation has been established, or three, the preservation and continuation of a national emergency.

Well, in the year of our Lord 2023, we don't have any declared wars that the U.S. is involved in, nor do we have any specified Congress-affirmed military operations that we're involved in. So the only other remaining option would be the continuation of a national emergency. What was the national emergency the Biden administration tried to use? COVID.

There's only one small problem. This is the same Biden administration that as the policy was unrolling concerning loan forgiveness, they announced that the COVID national emergency was over. So how can you on one side say there's a national emergency going on to relieve debt than the other side say, but there is no national emergency. So the court rightfully walked through the parameters of a statute and said, if you just look at the words, the plain definition, it shows that the Biden administration does not have the authority to do this.

And they correctly concluded that it's unconstitutional. Abraham, thank you for coming on the Christian World View Radio program today to explain with simplicity and clarity what was at stake in these particular Supreme Court decisions. Thanks also for the great work you're doing for the Lord's Kingdom at American Family Association and elsewhere, all of God's best and grace to you and your family. Thank you. Pleasure joining you. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Okay, we have a very full program today. So we need to make a quick transition across the ocean from America to Europe and speak with Soren Kern, a Christian geopolitical analyst and writing fellow for Middle East Forum to talk about the recent riots in France. Soren, we are always grateful when you are able to come on the Christian World View Radio program. You are based in Spain, which is not far away from France. You've been watching what is taking place in that country over the last week. Tell us who and what has caused the rioting in France and the extent of it. Sure, thank you very much for having me on your program.

Again, it's always a privilege for me. I think what we've seen in France is really the culmination of 40 or 50 years of mass migration of fantasies about multiculturalism. The belief that people from a completely different world view, a non-Judeo-Christian world view can be integrated into Western society. What we have really is a situation where we have tens of millions of people across Europe who do not want to assimilate into the host country. So what we saw in France plays itself out in Sweden, in Norway, in Germany, to some extent here in Spain. And what you have essentially is people who came to Europe in the 1950s and 60s to work in the factories. Remember that during the Second World War, an entire generation of males was wiped out. And so these guest workers came from Turkey and Northern Africa and other Muslim countries.

And they basically ran the factories. Now you have a second and third generation of offspring of these original migrants who are not able to integrate very well into, just say, for example, French society. They are no longer Algerian or Moroccan or Tunisian. They weren't born there. They were born in France. Some of them have problems even speaking Arabic. So they have no real identity of the country where their parents or grandparents came from, but they're also not really accepted in European countries.

So I sometimes refer to them as stateless people. They face a lot of hurdles in terms of finding jobs, in terms of becoming productive citizens. And there is an incredible, incredible amount of anger. And so I guess similar to George Floyd protests in the United States, where there was a black man was shot by and killed by police or whatever the instances were on that. You have the same situation here in which millions of people are triggered by the slightest case of police brutality or police misconduct. And what you have in the United States is really organized rioting where you have really Marxist groups like Black Lives Matter and other groups that are encouraging this. But this here in Europe is just non-organized.

It's just hatred that's been built up for many generations and is uncontrollable. Every single year, the European Union is receiving tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of more migrants. This year, possibly 350,000 migrants are expected to reach European shores, mostly from North Africa, from the Middle East and from sub-Saharan Africa. And these people cannot be integrated. I'm not saying that this is the case with all of the migrants that come to Europe.

I'm saying that it's a case with a very important minority. And most of these are young males, unmarried, shiftless, no real career prospects, no prospects for marriage. And the anger, the destruction that we've seen in France is really a result of just a failure of all this wishful thinking of multiculturalism.

Unfortunately, this problem is not going away. I feel like there's a lack of hope for the future of Europe. They have allowed their continent to essentially be overrun by people who are not integratable. Why do these migrants from Islamic nations in the Middle East or North Africa, why do they want to come to Europe if they're going to be so angry and there's not opportunity and so forth? Why are they coming in the first place to these Western European nations?

Sure. That's a very important question. I think that there's two categories of people that we're talking about here. Some of those are people who were born in France or Spain to immigrant parents. And these people are, in many cases, French citizens, they have French nationality.

But by virtue of their last name, an Arabic last name, it's very difficult for them to find a job, to get employed. It's true that there is racism in Europe on a very large extent. The other aspect of this is the newcomers, the people who are coming. And I think that with the rise of the Internet, with social media, you have tens of millions of people in Africa, particularly in South Saharan Africa, who see the standard of living in Europe and they want part of that. And so a German official said that he estimates that there are 20 million people in Africa right now who want to come to Europe. We're talking about a massive population transfer over the next decade or two. And people, when they come here, they find that it's not the land of milk and honey as they expected.

It's not as easy to integrate as possible. It's important to understand that many of them are illiterate in the languages of their home country. So it's very difficult for them to learn languages like German or French or complicated European languages like the Scandinavian languages. When they come here, they face the reality that this is a really complicated situation. The problem is with the EU human rights law is that these people can't be deported.

So many of these people resort to crime, drug dealing, purse snatching, of course, a lot of sexual crimes to sort of sustain themselves because they can't find real jobs. And what happens is that they can't be deported. And so you have a situation here in Spain and in France, and particularly in Germany, where you have prisons full to the brim with migrants, and they can't be deported. And so what usually happens is that lenient judges, judicial system puts these people back on the street. And they're just basically repeat criminals over and over and over again.

And the Europeans, really the political class really doesn't want to deal with the problem. And so in a certain way, that is really what's contributing here to the rise of the so-called far right, the so-called populist parties who are essentially law and order parties who want these people to be deported, criminals to be deported. They want law and order on the streets. They want the laws to be complied with.

They want to give the police more power and authority to enforce laws. So we have here really in Europe right now is a mass division of people who want to maintain the status quo. They can't admit that their multicultural project is a failure. And on the other hand, you have the people who want to put an end to this mass migration flow.

And these people are really being branded as racists and Islamophobes. And we're in a situation here in Europe where this whole issue is going to come to a head in a violent way if the political process doesn't work, doesn't help to resolve this. As you describe this, Soren, it's striking the parallels we see here to America because we also have a major immigration problem here in America. We're letting in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of immigrants into this country. There's a major crime problem in our cities. You talk about lenient judges and revolving door.

They get arrested and let out in the street. But before we get into more with you, Soren, we need to take a brief break for some ministry announcements. You are listening to the Christian worldview radio program.

I'm David Wheaton. You may recall that last year the Christian worldview had the opportunity to expand to new markets such as Salem stations in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Atlanta, and Washington DC, life changing radio network in the Northeast, an American Christian network. We expanded for one purpose, to reach new listeners with the biblical worldview and the gospel. If you listen to the program on one of these stations, we are asking for your help as we are well behind recouping our cost of airtime through listener support. We are praying for new Christian worldview partners who will help us remain on the air in these markets.

The next few months are critical as we evaluate whether to continue or discontinue on these stations and we are trusting God, whatever His will. If you'd like to help, please call us toll free 1-888-646-2233 and tell Rosie you'd like to become a Christian worldview partner or go to thechristianworldview.org and click on donate. It's critical for Christians to understand the moral depravity that has taken captive our nation. The LGBTQ movement is loud and proud on our main streets, but even more troubling has pushed into evangelical churches under what's called gay Christianity.

M.D. Perkins book Dangerous Affirmation, The Threat of Gay Christianity explains, quote, the way gay Christian activists are rethinking theology, biblical interpretation, and the nature and purpose of the church in order to infiltrate conservative evangelicalism. The only antidote is to know and stand firm on the truth of God's word.

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Order resources for adults and children and support the ministry. Soren Kern, writing fellow for Middle East Forum, is our guest today as we talk about the rise of Islam in Europe. And Soren, let's get into the idea of why Europe itself wants to have millions of Islamic people come to their country. They don't want to be integrated in their society. And really, how could they be integrated? Their worldview is so different. They have completely different values. Western European values versus Islamic values collide in so many different areas.

So how could they be integrated? So what is the reasoning of the elites in Europe that want to continue to see this happening? I think two real points here, and one is the demographics in Europe. Most of the countries in Europe, the birth rates are so low that they're not at replacement level. So you have a situation in Germany and Spain, in Italy, where in 50 years, the native population is going to be significantly reduced.

So there's a feeling among many European officials, General Merkel, the German Chancellor was one of them, the European Union officials, they believe that the only solution to Europe's demographic problem is to bring in immigrants, that the birth rate decline in Europe is unsustainable, and that Europeans need to bring in people to run the factories and keep these whole social welfare systems afloat. So I think what you have now is sort of like political parties on the right, that are beginning to challenge these assumptions about the demographics about if this is really the right way to go about it. What you have is Conservative Party, particularly in Italy, now that is very pro-family. The Conservative Party here in Spain, there are going to be elections here in Spain at the end of July, and it's quite possible that the Conservatives will be in a coalition government.

They're very pro-family. So what you see is political parties in Scandinavia as well trying to encourage native people to have more children and to reverse the sort of decline. The second part of this is that after the end of the Second World War, a lot of intellectuals were asking themselves, like, how can we prevent another world war among Europeans? According to them, nationalism is the problem. So it's German nationalism, the French nationalism, Spanish nationalism. And so the idea is basically to bring in as many people from different cultures and mix it all up so that the whole idea of what is a German or what is a French person or what is a Spanish person is completely diluted in terms of numbers. So if you would have, you know, 50 years ago, everybody who was a German was German by blood. Now you have a situation in which maybe only 70% or 60% of German citizens are Germans by blood. And so this is a deliberate strategy that was put together in the 1950s and 60s by European elites as a way to try to reduce nationalism.

That's really at the core of the multicultural experiment is to try to prevent another world war from happening. Your typical European is sick and tired of this. They pay exorbitant taxes all their lives. They receive very meager retirement payments. And you have these millions of people coming from Africa who've never contributed a dime to the social welfare systems.

And in many cases, they are earning more in handout than the people, the many Europeans who have paid into all this. I'm a first generation American. My parents both came to the United States from Germany.

And right now I am in Spain as an immigrant. I'm very pro migration. I think migration has been one of the greatest blessings to the United States.

All of the scientists and all of the interventions that America has benefited from over the centuries through migration. What we're talking about here is mass illegal migration. We're talking about uncontrolled migration in the situation where these people can never be properly integrated or assimilated into the host culture. And that is just a huge problem that politicians are just kicking down the road for some future generation to try to figure it out and pick up the pieces. So I just wanted to state that I'm not anti-immigrant.

I'm a law and order. And you can see that when you're dealing with even in a situation in the United States where you have millions of people entering the country in an uncontrolled manner, the United States is following in Europe's footsteps, unfortunately. So in some of your recent columns, you talked about the migrants, that there's a portion of them who aren't just coming for economic opportunity for the social welfare systems that these Western European countries offer, but that are actually coming to convert. They believe that Europe is meant to be an Islamic continent. They have this as a goal to Islamicize Europe or the countries they're in. And anytime there's pushback that you've been talking about with some of these what's called far right groups or more nationalistic groups, or anyone who speaks out against it, you're immediately termed an Islamophobe. And in one of your recent columns, you said the latest edition of an annual Islamophobia report falsely claims that Muslim persecution in Europe is ubiquitous, present in a lot of places and incorrectly portrays Europe as unsafe for Muslims to practice their faith. The report, which attempts to politicize the term Islamophobia, appears aimed at furthering long standing efforts by Islamists to criminalize criticism of Islam in the West. How is this reflexive use of Islamophobia, as by the way, you hear with other issues in the United States like transphobia or homophobia? How is this term of Islamophobia used to gain ground for Islamists in Europe? This particular Islamophobia report that I wrote about is sponsored by the Turkish government. Turkish government has been doing this for about eight or nine years now. They're trying to create the perception that Europe is very unsafe for Muslims. And so the idea basically that the church government has had for a long time with President Erdogan is that they want to create an international law to prohibit the criticism of Islam. Of course, Islam, you have to remember, is a missionary, it's a proselytizing religion.

The aim of Islam is to proselytize the whole world, to Islamize the whole world. So what's going on with these migration flows, even though individual Muslims might be going to Europe for economic opportunities, Muslim leaders are taking advantage of this to try to consolidate their control over the Muslim groups in Europe to exercise influence and to continue spreading Islam. So what I'm talking about here is that you have a very large group of Algerian and Moroccans in France. You have mostly Moroccans in the Netherlands. You have mostly Moroccans in Spain.

In Germany, you have mostly Turks. And so what you have is Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, all these countries are trying to build mega mosques and Islamic cultural centers all over Europe as a way to attract these people and to bring them under their umbrella to exert control and to proselytize. And the goal, of course, is to change the political system in Europe and in the United States as well in the West. The goal is that Islam and Sharia law will replace liberal democracies, Western democracies. And so unfortunately, a lot of people are silent, or they're going silent. They're censoring themselves because they don't want to be accused of Islamophobia. If you are looking for a job and some employer types your name and it says Islamophobia, you know, it's unlikely that you're going to get that job. And so what's happening here in Europe is that these Islamist groups through these Islamophobia reports and accusations of Islamophobia are succeeding.

They're silencing massive amounts of people. Very few people are willing to talk out about this and to hold the Islamists to account. And so you have Saudi Arabia in particular, these countries with just massive amounts of financial resources in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Peninsula, who are building mega mosques all across Europe. We're talking about a multi-million dollar structure for 5,000 worshipers, 10,000 worshipers. And it's basically coming to the point where a lot of these Muslims that are coming here are now proselytizing secular Europeans and a lot of Europeans, many Europeans, thousands and thousands of Europeans are actually converting to Islam.

Just one more question for you, Soren. As you think about all you've talked about today, the different angles, the immigration, the building of mosques, the charges of Islamophobia and so forth, how do you see the dynamics going on in Europe right now and then also I'd say in America as well, is leading the world toward what the Bible talks about specifically in Revelation and other places toward the end time scenarios that the Bible describes and what the world's going to be like with a world leader, a false religious prophet, and then eventually the return of Christ? Sure, I believe that everything that we're seeing in our generation is fulfillment of Bible prophecy. The most important piece of the puzzle obviously is the re-establishment of the state of Israel that really gives Christians the understanding that the prophetic clock is ticking. But you see this mass secularization in Europe, this massive abandonment of Judeo-Christian worldview has left a spiritual vacuum here. And you know, in spiritual terms, if it's not the Bible, it's going to be something else that fills the vacuum. And really here in Europe, it's Islam that's filling it. I think for the United States, the big difference in the migration is that by and large, the immigrants that are coming to the United States are from Latin America. So they have a certain sort of a basic Judeo-Christian worldview.

This is very different from the migrants that are coming to Europe who are by and large coming from a Muslim worldview, which is really at odds completely with Judeo-Christianity. I'm very discouraged by what I see, but also encouraged because we know that at some point the Lord is going to intervene. This really can't continue forever. I do believe personally in my heart that we are the generation that is going to experience the rapture. There's just so many signs.

You have had so many other guests on your program over the past year. And it's this sign upon sign upon sign with economics, whether it's in society, whether it's in apostasy, whether it's with the sexual revolution, you can just see all the signs are leading to just massive evil. And at some point the Lord is going to put an end to it. And so I think that as Christians, we can be encouraged that we have the Bible and we have these promises that the Lord is in sovereign control and that he will intervene. He will take his church out to protect it from the worst that is to come. But I think as Christians, we need to understand that all the things that are happening around us are not happening in a vacuum.

It's accumulation of sin, generations and centuries of sin and of rejection of the truth. At some point, the Lord is going to intervene in this in a way that he has never intervened before in human history. I think this is an opportunity once again to share the gospel with our neighbors and with their family members, unsaved family members, their friends because the time is really running out. What we're seeing here in Europe is just not sustainable.

I mean, it's just clear that this can't continue for much longer. I think that's a very helpful way to end our conversation today that we can often get discouraged and rightfully so because we love our countries and we want good to prevail and not evil to take over. But this is what the Bible says is going to happen before the rapture of the church and the return of Christ someday. And that's our great hope for Christ to return and to reign and to set things right in our world and eventually create a new heavens and new earth.

And that is the hope of the believer. Soren, we so appreciate you, the biblical truth that you stand for, the analysis of world events that you bring out in your columns. Just so appreciate all you do and just wish all of God's best and grace to you. Thank you for coming on the Christian World View Radio program.

Thank you for having me. We are completely out of time, but let's close with this truth that Christ expressed at the very end of scripture. He said, Yes, I am coming quickly, to which the response is, Amen.

Come, Lord Jesus. Thanks for listening to the Christian World View. Until next time, think biblically, live accordingly and stand firm. The mission of the Christian World View is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript or find out what must I do to be saved, go to thechristianworldview.org or call toll free 1-888-646-2233. The Christian World View is a listener supported nonprofit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, become a Christian World View partner, order resources, subscribe to our free newsletter, or contact us, visit thechristianworldview.org, call 1-888-646-2233 or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Thanks for listening to the Christian World View.