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Will the Christendom resist the global ambitions of Islam?

Again, the past may assist in determining the future. Some have described radical Islam as Communism with a religious veneer. While serious differences exist in the areas of metaphysics and materialism, both systems are determinist in their views of human events, triumphalist in their views of history, collectivist in their perceptions of social order, and totalitarian in their civil governments. (Nazism had all these characteristics, although other authoritarian post-World War I regimes in much of Europe, often labeled as fascist, lacked some or all of them.) In fact, radical Islam is more like Communism than it is like the old European regimes where the monarchy and the church were intertwined and their mutual roles in society were blurred.

As far back as the Unitarian movement in early 19th Century New England, the religious Left adhered to political and social goals similar to those of the Jacobin radicals in France and their successors in the European revolutions of 1848. The Social Gospel arose as a major movement around the turn of the last century and was centered around theological liberals in the mainline denominations, such as Walter Rauschenbusch, J. Bromley Oxnam, and Pearl Buck.

The mainline denominations were clearly anti-anti-Communist during the Cold War era, and sometimes even pro-Communist. Right wing commentators in the post-World War II era showed links between prominent Protestant liberals and Communist front groups and sometimes even the Communist Party itself. While some of the accusations were sensationalistic and were criticized by J. Edgar Hoover as harmful to legitimate anti-Communism, there is no doubt that the mainline denominations opposed aggressive actions to oppose Communism overseas and supported the leftist agenda domestically.

In contrast, evangelical Protestants were staunchly anti-Communist. Examples would include Carl McIntyre, Francis Schaffer, and Fredrick Schwartz. While many fundamentalists avoided delving directly into the political arena until the late 1970s (e.g., Jerry Falwell), they, along with evangelicals, were certainly critical of the cultural Marxism and moral degeneracy represented in the sexual revolution and the beatnik/hippie movements. Evangelical and fundamentalist voters, aroused out of a half century of political slumber by the effects of rising cultural degeneracy, provided Ronald Reagan and a resurgent conservative movement with the support needed for the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.

In the conflict with radical Islam, it is worthy to note that some of the same figures, such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who had been staunch anti-Communists in the Cold War era, became strong supporters of the war against Islamofascism. In the meantime, the mainline churches, especially the Presbyterian Church, USA, have attempted to divest themselves of investments in Israel, radical Islam's enemy. The liberals in the apostate church are once again aligning with secular liberals in opposition to vigorous attempts to defeat those who would overturn the Western nations.

Same song, second verse.