18 Feb A ‘Time for Choosing’: Theology
Andrew Breitbart famously observed that ‘politics is downstream of culture’. He didn’t go far enough. Culture doesn’t exist in a vacuum but is itself downstream of: theology.
Texans in particular, Americans in general, and mankind overall, are in the midst of a history-shaping, even existential struggle over theology that will define culture and politics worldwide for perhaps the balance of the 21st century. It is a new iteration of the ‘Time for Choosing’ that Ronald Reagan spoke of[1].
For purposes of this post, theology refers to a structure of ideas that attempt to define the existence and nature of God, and of man’s (including women’s) relationship to that God. It is that which seeks to answer, at the deepest level, the timeless questions of: Who are we? And, why are we here?
America’s founding was guided by Judeo-Christian theology, which embraces monotheism—one creator God—and affirms through the teachings of the Bible that this one God is ultimately a loving God who has endowed men and women (His image and likeness) with unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights form an ethos of human freedom and noble life purpose—of conscience and the ability to live, think and speak freely.
The Founders’ unstated assumption (that is, unstated in the Declaration of Independence) was that the exercise of these rights by a people who strove, however imperfectly, to live by the ‘moral and religious’ teachings of the Bible, would over time lead to an individual and collective political and cultural experience of peace and prosperity and civilizational stability superior to any other nation not similarly founded.
Their assumption proved, over the first 250 years of American history, to be true.
America’s Founding Fathers did not view this founding theology to be a matter of latching onto a trendy philosophy; they did not articulate it as that which they weren’t sure of but hoped to be true; they asserted it as reflecting ‘self-evident’ truths.
____________
Texans, Americans and mankind in general are now being confronted with the prospect of their individual and collective national life—including culture and politics—under a radically different, darkly conflicting theology: Islam.
While sharing a surface-level commonality of monotheism, the Allah of Islam is not in any way, shape or form similar to the God of the Bible. The Allah of Islam is not a loving creator but a profoundly violent and murderous warlord figure (a sort of Mohammed-magnified) who does not endow men or women with rights that contemplate anything resembling liberty or the individual pursuit of happiness, but rather demands submission to an all-encompassing, oppressive code of laws known as sharia. That code authorizes, among other things, the killing of Jews and other infidels; the killing of anyone who leaves the Islamic fold or questions the Islamic founder; and the killing of children by their parents if the parents believe they have been shamed by their children’s behavior. That code unquestionably subjugates women to second-class status relative to men; it reflects an obsession with the sexual demands of men and the purpose of women to satisfy them. (Islamic teaching says seventy-two virgins in heaven are the reward for the Muslim who dies while fighting for Islam.)
There is no such thing as individual freedom or noble life purpose under sharia; there is only submission to sharia. Freedom of speech is especially nullified because all speech and thought and action must conform to sharia.
The culture and politics which are downstream of Islamic theology cannot possibly be blended or otherwise harmoniously reconciled with American culture and politics.
_______________
There is a longstanding American tradition of treating religious belief as a private matter—a sort of ‘leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone’/’don’t discuss it at the dinner table’ attitude.
And among American secular intellectuals (and secular intellectuals elsewhere in the world), there is a tendency to view any and all religion/theology as ‘for the little people’ and not something true elites should have to think about. To them, all religion is mostly silly superstition and ritual, and freedom allows them to ignore or simply not care about the subject.
But as Erick Erickson famously warned, ‘you will be made to care’. Wherever you might fall on the historical American religious spectrum—from aggressive atheism on the left to devout Jew or Christian on the right, and everything in between—the rise of Islam destroys the old spectrum and along with it, the simple American desire ‘to live and let live’. You will not have the option to be left alone in an Islamic caliphate.
Islam’s expressly stated purpose is to conquer the world and establish a global caliphate governed by sharia. As applied to America, that means the wholesale replacement of the Constitution and American rule of law with sharia. That’s not speculation or extrapolation; that’s what imams—Islamic preachers—openly say is Islam’s mission in America.
So what lies ahead?
America’s Declaration of Independence illustrated her theology at the time of her founding. But the passage of 250 years has eroded America’s collective confidence in the profession and practice of that theology.
The silver lining of the challenges of defeating and removing sharia from America in 2026 may be the fresh stirring those challenges are causing among Americans, and especially American Christians, about what theology they do believe and why. Because at the end of that stirring, Americans may well end up much closer and more unified with the spirit of their Founding Fathers: America’s foundational Judeo-Christian theology is a matter of self-evident truth. And it will not be surrendered to Islam and sharia.
Eric Georgatos
[1] No, Mr. Reagan didn’t expressly speak of theology in his famous speech, but he did speak of America as facing an up or down time for choosing—between the ‘[up, toward] man’s old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.’ Islam is a form of totalitarianism.