Albert Mohler (8:26)
We've seen it so much so that I do not even dare right now to try to catalog them. The reality is the list is overwhelming. The fact is that mass immigration, as many Western nations sought to undertake plans or policies, acknowledged or unacknowledged on open immigration, they have led to disaster. Now that's not to say that they have led in every case to disaster. That would be an over claim. It is to say the pattern itself has, has created a massive vulnerability within societies. And one of the things a society requires, one of the things a civilization requires, is a commitment to the civilizational principle. And if you allow people who do not buy into, do not support, will not work towards your civilizational project, you're in big trouble. Because you have just brought into your own, your own country, you have just brought into your own culture who absolutely want to transform it, or at the very least do not want to have anything to do with becoming a part of it. And there's more to this as we shall get to the issue of Islam. But on the issue of immigration, when you have immigrant communities that are unmountable ethnics, that's what some of the reference was to back in the 20th century. They simply do not become a part of the larger society. They see themselves as separate from it. That is a huge problem in Australia. Over the course of the last 25 years, the percentage of the population who've been immigrants has increased from 23% to 34%. Okay, do the math. From 23% to 34%. That means that right now, one out of three persons legally in Australia is an immigrant. Now that could be a good thing. I think we now know that's not a good thing. It could be a good thing if all of those people, or even the vast, vast majority of those people were absolutely committed to continuing the civilizational project of Australia. But we now know that is not the case. The civilizational project of Australia would include a welcome and protection of Jewish citizens. There we see that that is something this father and son definitely did not buy into. Now, exactly what policy should a nation have? I believe a nation should have a national interest immigration policy. As a matter of fact, I'm going to argue that's what is going to happen competently or incompetently in almost any situation. And so even when you look at Germany's very open receptivity to a lot of migrants coming in, even from lands where they had very different civilizational commitments coming in. In particular over the last 15 years and specifically under the leadership of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, she claimed this is in Germany's best interest as a matter of national honor, in it's really a matter of national duty. And you see, when those arguments take place, as is clear in Germany right now, many of the politicians who put those policies in place, claiming this is right for Germany now even over, against overwhelming opposition in her own country. The fact is, as is the case with Angela Berkel, they're generally, you know, retired from office before the consequences show up. But I have to get to the third issue here. It's not just the loss of freedom in free societies. It's not just the problem of immigration and the fact that incompetent, wrong, reckless immigration laws or the disregard of immigration laws leads to a civilizational crisis. It is also, thirdly, that in this case, the specific crisis we do know, we cannot honestly not know. Overwhelmingly, it is an Islamic crisis. Now, there are those who want to deny this and they are absolutely determined to shut down any public conversation. And quite frankly, if you dare to talk about these things out loud, there are many people who are going to say, you know, you're an Islamophobe. That's the current kind of language that's being used. But I want to go back to the fact that this isn't personal. This is indeed civilizational. I am very indebted to Samuel Huntington, back from the 20th century, and he made very clear that Islamic civilization is a very different civilization than Western civilization. It starts with a radically different theology and it ends up with a radically different vision of society. And as a matter of fact, they're so radically different, they're irreconcilable. And you know, there are people who are going to counter that and say, well, look at Zoram Mandani, very liberal, you know, pro lgbtq, pro abortion, pro, all these things. And he's a Muslim. Yes, but I don't think he's a Muslim who could show up as a Muslim in Muslim dominated countries and make his case. That is to say, what we have in virtually all of the west are people who have accommodated themselves to modernity and to secularism one way or the other. So you have liberal Jewish citizens, you have plenty of liberal people who identify as Christians, liberal denominations, liberal preachers, liberal bishops, and all the rest. They will endorse everything of the far left, but they don't have any legitimate claim on orthodox, biblical, historic Christianity. And so you say, well, there are liberal Christians. Yep. And you know what? In a Christian society, liberal Christians will show up in a way that's not true about liberal Muslims. And, well, you could name the country, especially in the Middle east, where, let's just say there is no real moderate Muslim population for good reason. Now, we don't have time to unpack all of this today, but we need to say enough. And we need to make very clear that a part of the central theological logic of Islam is territorial in a way that isn't true of Christianity, has never been true of Christianity. Where you have had, for instance, the claim that this is Christian territory, what it really means is this is where Christians constitute a majority and where a basic Christian understanding of human dignity and human law and all this prevails, that's very different than the Muslim understanding of territory. Which means that in the Muslim worldview, the world is actually divided between the world of Islam and the world of war, where there is the responsibility of Muslims to wage the battle to bring those unconquered parts of the civilization under Muslim control, under the rule of the Quran. Now, there is no such thing as. When you look at Judaism or Christianity, it's a very different logic. But then again, Muhammad was a very, very different founder. And when it comes to people in the west, there once was a time when in the west you had people who were in office who understood the difference and understood the threat. But now you have an absolute naivete for decades on the part of many Western leaders who just assume that everyone can be enticed to conform to a Western historic understanding of human rights, of the process of law, of the status of nations, of the ideal of citizenship and all the rest. Clearly, that isn't true. It should have been clear at every single point. And that is not to say there cannot be some persons who will identify as this or that who can blend in well in the United States. It is to say that we have a conflict of theologies. We have a conflict of worldviews, we have a conflict of civilizations. And to deny it is sheer idiocy. And it comes hand in hand, by the way, with those who are the cultured elites in the United States and Europe who want to suggest that Christianity had basically nothing to do with the formation of Western civilization or that you can have a continuation of Western civilization with its understandings of human dignity and all the rest after having abandoned Christianity. And the other thing to notice is that when Christianity is abandoned, it isn't followed by a vacuum that is impossible. It is followed by something stronger. When a weak theology abandons the ground. What follows is a strong theology. And understand this, Islam is a very strong theology. All right. So many issues here for us to have to consider. Our hearts go out to the people of Australia and in particular to the Jewish community there, to students at Brown University and all involved. Unfortunately, the list is long and the casualties mount and the denial yet continues. It's going to be very interesting to see where this conversation goes. I'm not one to offer very many predictions, but I will say this. I don't think this situation can remain as it is. You see right now enormous pushback in Western Europe simply because of those who are not assimilating into these societies. And over time, you had the Liberals say, well, the society should feel guilty when. For the fact that this assimilation isn't taking place. No, that is not the fact. The problem here is not that the societies aren't genuinely open. It is that there are so many people who genuinely do not want an open society. All right. While we're speaking about religious liberty, it's important to understand that the fight for religious liberty is everywhere, all the time, even when you don't think it is. And when you look at the nation of Canada, you're looking at a nation that. That at least is confronting the possibility of increasing encroachments on religious liberty in the name of appropriate government action. The thing to watch right now, and the Telegraph in London is reporting on this, I think very helpfully. The point is that the Justice Minister and the current Liberal government, Sean Fraser, is now arguing for changes to Canada's criminal code, particularly related to what's often called hate speech. Very problematic category, obviously. And under the current criminal code there in Canada, the crime is being found guilty of willful promotion of hatred. But exempted from the grounds are statements, quote, made in good faith and based on belief in a religious text. Ooh, that's interesting, isn't it? Explicit carve out here, supposedly for beliefs that are based on a religious text. Now, remember that we have had politicians in some Western nations even arrested for and prosecuted for reading from the scripture. So in other words, the scripture itself is defined as hate speech. And now you see that, at least in one case, you have the Justice Minister there in the Kearney government in Canada suggesting that just maybe these changes need to take place. It would be in this case in the form of an amendment to the Combating Hate act, which we are told is currently working its way through Canada's parliament. We're also told that civil liberties groups and religious groups have complained what's described here as a groundswell of opposition. But it's also clear that some of the provinces are already moving in this direction there in Canada, and so is the logic. Now, something else that's interesting is that another minister in this government, Mark Miller, who's the minister of Canadian identity and Culture, we're told that he, in testimony, told a parliamentary committee there in Canada that the Bible contains, quote, clear hatred towards, for example, homosexuals. End quote. That. That's his phrase. Clear hatred towards, for example, homosexuals. Okay, so I think I can think of some of the biblical text he's thinking of. But you'll notice here that that would be redefined if this law is changed as hate speech so that the Bible would now be hate speech. And don't fool yourselves. It will not simply be the scriptural text. It will be any preacher who preaches on them. It will be anyone who dares to cite them. It will be anyone who reads them out loud. All of this will be a potential hate crime. Hate speech, crime. The logic of hate speech is itself problematic, not because we don't think hate speech exists and not because we don't think it's a moral issue, but because once the government steps in, it is almost assuredly going to shut down free speech in the name of eliminating hate speech. And that's because government is a blunt instrument. And quite frankly, government is always political. And government, once something is on the laws, will create an entire culture in which it shifts from what might I say that might get me arrested to how can I say that so I don't get arrested? The shift in that logic means actually the end of religious liberty. It's also interesting that the removal of specific language, the two words good faith as a religious exemption. It's very interesting that the opponents of the current law who want to see it revised so that the scripture might be considered legally or criminalized as hate speech. It's also clear that the two words, good faith are words they don't want to go together. Good faith no longer would play a role. I think that also tells us a lot of what's going on here now. All right, we've talked about some really big issues today, and that's what we're here for. But sometimes we also need to see signals in the culture that might not make such controversial headlines, but are actually interesting. So why would the national media give attention to the typeface that is now a part of the rule book of the U.S. state Department. Why would there be interest in this? It is because the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has ordered that in the State Department, the official typeface. And this does matter a lot, because anything that comes out is a statement. What you see on the website and all the rest. He says it should now be Times New Roman as a typeface, rather than what had been in place in particular under the Biden administration. So this is over typeface. Does it matter? I'm going to argue, yes, it matters. I think the Secretary of State has done something here that's really important. It's not the kind of thing on which, as a single act, civilization stands or falls. That would be an exaggeration. But it is also not irrelevant. It is relevant. What does the United States government look like when it's communicating even. What is the typeface? Now, the older typeface was something that was far less formal, the Biden administration typeface, far less formal. And I'm not going to go into all the typography. It was calibri, by the way, and it just didn't look so official. It looks unofficial. Now the State Department is going back to Times New Roman. Times New Roman is not ancient. It just looks ancient. When I say that's a distinction, it is because it is based on a Latin tradition. It is based upon, well, just imagine the carvings in capital letters on the buildings of ancient Rome, that beautiful chiseled Latin. That is exactly what Times New Roman is seeking to reproduce. But it has two achievements over the Old Latin number one, it has lowercase letters. That turns out to be important, too. We don't shout everything. The other thing that Times New roman developed in 1931 offers is that it can be adjusted to fit a page through kerning or through the compression of the typeface so that you really don't see the compression, but the words line up, or at least the columns line up, the margins line up. And so anyway, that's just an interesting thing. And you say this is a really small act. And why is it getting any attention, you ask? Well, indeed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that one of the reasons was to save money, just to have a continuing typeface the State Department would use so that you don't have to redo everything. But more than that, it states authority and tradition, respect continuity. It looks like a government document ought to look a government document that, by the way, represents a government that, when it puts up a monument, tends to use a very formal font typeface in order to signal the importance of the monument, the Department did use some language to describe the change quote to restore decorum and professionalism to the Department's written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program, the Department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface. That was actually put in a cable to American diplomats all over the world. Use Times New Roman. Why? Because it matters. Yes, it does matter. One simple way to explain the need for this change, by the way, is that if you're changing the font all the time, especially if you're getting outside of traditional fonts going into, well, what by definition or non traditional fonts, you end up dating all of your documents. Like, well, the fashions of the day and the colors that were popular. You can walk in some rooms and say, wow, this was done in the 1970s. That should not be true of official correspondence with government authority and documents related to the United States government. Honestly, I use Times New Roman in just about everything that I do because I like the way it looks. It says continuity and I like that just because it's a new document doesn't mean that it has to look particularly new. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmohler.com, you can find Follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.comalbertmohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological seminary, go to sbts.edu. for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.
