The Islamic Colonization of Christianity

Order Jamie Glazov’s new book, United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas: HERE.

Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world, and yet the greatest threat to the faith is arguably not external but internal: the woke infiltration of Christian churches by subversive clergy in sheep’s clothing.

Examples abound. Most recently, at Georgia’s Vinings Lake Church, which describes itself as a “progressive, fully inclusive, diverse,” “ever-evolving spiritual collective,” pastor Cody Deese declared in a sermon that he doesn’t believe Christ died for our sins, which is the central claim of the faith. He says people in the first century AD might have believed that, but we don’t live in that culture anymore. He casually dismissed accusations that he is a heretic.

Another example: the female pastor of the United Church in Walpole, Massachusetts, Rev. Anna Flowers, recently argued that Jesus’ assertion that “I am the way, the truth and the life” – which, again, is the central claim of Christianity – is nonsensical, and that there are many valid religions and paths to God: “Jesus did not come into the world to preach a kind of ‘My way or the highway’ kind of religion.” It would be hard to find a more heretical statement.

I can’t fathom how people like this manage to maneuver their way into positions of leadership in so many churches throughout the Western world, but it demonstrates how successfully Christian culture has been diluted and subverted through wokeness. And a significant aspect of this subversion is the colonization of Christianity by Islam, through purported Christian theologians promoting a melding of the two under the guise of “tolerance,” “mutual” values, and “interfaith dialogue.”

Steve Bannon sidekick Natalie Winters posted on her Substack page recently an exclusive titled “Left-Wing Foundations Bankroll Push to Bring the Qur’an Into American Churches.” It described how a Chicago-based “interfaith” group called Challenging Islamophobia Together Chicagoland (CITC) is pushing churches to read the Qur’an from the pulpit — and to confront what it calls “Islamophobia in the Church.” The corrosive premise of this mission, as Winters states, is that “Christianity itself must be re-examined — its theology reconsidered, its traditions reframed, its posture toward Islam fundamentally reoriented.”Bottom of Form

CITC is “part of a much larger ecosystem — the Interfaith Alliance — financed by millions of dollars from major progressive institutions,” Winters writes, such as the Henry Luce Foundation and the Rockefeller Family Fund. She adds that the organization operates with a Muslim Leadership Council that “helps ensure that our efforts and initiatives are informed by the lived experiences, concerns, and insights of those directly affected by Islamophobia.” That, Winters observes, “places Muslim leadership not at the margins, but at the center of how Christian-facing initiatives are developed and executed.”

Central to the CITC’s efforts is a new book called Confronting Islamophobia in the Church: Liturgical Tools for Justice by the group’s leaders, Baptist ministers Anna Piela and Michael Woolf, who are a married couple. The book purports to “expose the Church’s role in fostering anti-Muslim prejudice and equip congregations to dismantle” it through “resources that weave Islamic scripture into the lectionary calendar.” [Emphasis added] It is described as “a call to replace fear with solidarity.” As Natalie Winters puts it, “This is not simply about understanding Islam — it is about integrating it into the rhythms of Christian worship.”

In a lecture at Georgetown University, Piela and Woolf explain that churches should not perceive Islam as “an other” or “a security threat but as a really interesting theological tradition you ought to know about.” Oh, absolutely – everyone, not just Christians, should be informed about Islam, but for entirely different reasons than those put forth by Piela and Woolf.

In language that reeks of social justice blather, Piela and Woolf added in the discussion that “Islamophobia intersects with our immigration crisis and also with anti-blackness.” (By “immigration crisis,” they mean a crisis of enforcing immigration law, of course.) Urging Christians to “be as generous a reader of the Quran as you are of the Bible” (!) they explicitly acknowledged that their approach serves as a “theological counterweight to white Christian nationalism.”

Yeah, because “white Christian nationalism” is the real “security threat,” don’t ya know. Remember how white Christian nationalists brought down the Twin Towers, killed 49 people and wounded 53 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, and drove a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street, killing 14 people and injuring dozens more, justifying it all with the teachings of Jesus?

The book’s stated goal is “to help congregations break down stereotypes about Islam and, ultimately, find common ground for building relationships with Muslim communities in the U.S.” Piela and Woolf are in denial about the fact that it is many Muslims themselves whose actions created and continue to validate those stereotypes.

“You write that anti-Muslim hate is, at its core, a Christian problem,” the RNS interviewer asked. “Why?” (Legitimate criticism of Islam is not “anti-Muslim hate,” of course, but this is how Islam’s apologists always frame the issue in order to shut down opposition.)

Piela’s answer exhibits a stunning degree of willful blindness about the history of Islam and the history of what she claims is her own faith. “As soon as Islam emerged on the global scene,” she replies,

there were responses from various Christian actors who would write all those polemics against Islam. They considered Islam as a Christian heresy…. Those tropes were then used to justify conquest, to justify territorial expansion. Christians benefited from Islamophobia because Islamophobia could be turned into this political capital for rulers.

So Piela would have you believe it was Christianity, not Islam, which forged an empire by the sword, and that Christian thinkers throughout history have simply made up self-serving, polemical tropes about Muslims out of whole cloth. She goes on to smear today’s critics of Islam as religious bigots who spout hateful rhetoric because it’s “lucrative.”

“If you want to be a good Christian,” Woolf said in the interview, “if you want to be a good follower of Jesus, then love of neighbor is pretty much the entire basis for the faith.” So, by defending Muslims against Islamophobia, you’re “practicing your faith in the absolute best way possible.” [Emphasis added]

Piela said in the same interview that as a “sociologist of Islam” prior to becoming ordained, she was inspired by the “humble eloquence” of women wearing the niqab. “This was what put me on the path to ministry.” Maybe she should have asked the women of Iran or Afghanistan, oppressed under fundamentalist theocracies, how they feel about the choice they’re given between the “humble eloquence” of wearing the niqab or the terror of being tortured in prison or stoned to death for refusing head coverings.

Piela says that “fear” keeps Christians in a bubble of ignorance, influenced by “nasty rhetoric” which gets it into their heads that Islam is “something dangerous.” Pardon my Islamophobic “othering,” but the truth is that what she deems the “irrational fear of Islam” is actually a legitimate, rational concern arising from 1400 years and counting of real-world, genocidal Islamic supremacism.

Woolf warns that “Islamophobia” and – gasp! – “white Christian nationalism” are on the rise, and that it is necessary for Christians to “be an ally and stand in solidarity” with Muslims. In truth, Christians today, as throughout history, need to be allies and stand in solidarity with their persecuted brothers and sisters, especially in Muslim-majority countries where they are treated, at best, as second-class citizens and the practice of their faith forbidden, or at worst, slaughtered outright. The reverse happens nowhere in the Christian West.

This push to incorporate Islam into Christian worship is aligned with the heresy known as “Chrislam,” a portmanteau term blending “Christianity” and “Islam.” It refers to various syncretic religious movements, originating in Nigeria during the 1970s, that attempt to merge elements of Christian and Islamic beliefs and practices into a hybrid faith, emphasizing shared monotheism, moral teachings, reverence for figures like Jesus, and Abrahamic roots, while downplaying or reinterpreting core theological differences.

 Christianity, to cite the most obvious example, views God as a Trinity, while Islam, which views Jesus as a merely human prophet, considers this concept to be polytheistic.

Contrary to what Progressive false prophets claim, Jesus did not preach a message of tolerance for false gods and solidarity with a diversity of faiths (you may recall that worshipping idols did not end well in the Bible). He did not come to affirm us in our sin and disbelief, but to call us to change. Yes, He came with a message of love, but He also rebuked an errant disciple with, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

The merging of Christianity and its existential enemy Islam is one of the many ways in which Christian congregations are being undermined and betrayed by Progressive agents of subversion like Anna Piela and Michael Woolf. We must call out and rebuke them wherever they rear their ugly heads.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.