Muslims organize openly. Why do Christians act like they can’t?



Muslim communities are organizing politically in America, and they are not apologizing for it. Mosques in North Texas have become voter-registration hubs. In Michigan, Muslim candidates and activists have demonstrated the power of an organized constituency. The state has just elected the nation’s first Muslim U.S. senator.

What American Christians should learn from these examples is not theology. It is confidence in bringing religious commitments into public life. American Christians should pay attention. They have spent decades hearing that faith belongs in church and that explicitly Christian political action is somehow improper. That convenient rule does not seem to apply to everyone.

Christendom shaped the West, including America’s laws, customs, and understanding of human dignity. If Christians believe that inheritance is worth defending, they must speak up.

Christians must learn to fight for their faith in public. The future belongs to communities that intend to preserve their way of life, not those that apologize for having one.

America was founded by a population overwhelmingly shaped by Anglo-Protestant Christianity. That tradition formed its customs, moral assumptions, and public institutions. Several founding-era states required officeholders to profess Protestant or Christian beliefs. Georgia and New Hampshire explicitly favored Protestants. Other states adopted broader religious tests.

The U.S. Constitution was different. Article VI prohibited religious tests for federal office from the beginning. The First Amendment barred Congress from establishing a religion and protected its free exercise. Those protections did not change the basic reality: American life remained saturated with Protestant Christianity.

Yet the central cultural fact remains: Protestant Christianity shaped the country’s public life so thoroughly that its adherents rarely needed to think of themselves as a political majority. A fish does not know it is wet. When a nation's schools, holidays, and moral vocabulary largely reflect one religious inheritance, political organization around that inheritance can seem unnecessary.

Immigration changed the balance. Catholics had been present since colonial times, as had Jews, but immigration from Ireland, Italy, Germany, and Eastern Europe expanded the numbers and influence of religious minorities. The question was unavoidable: Could a culture built around Protestant assumptions absorb growing religious diversity without surrendering its own character?

In 1958, presidential hopeful John F. Kennedy published “A Nation of Immigrants” with the Anti-Defamation League. Its vision placed immigration at the center of the American story rather than treating Anglo-Protestant culture as the country’s defining feature. Kennedy’s election as the first Catholic president in 1960 marked another transformation in the nation’s religious imagination.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, signed by Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy’s assassination, abolished the old national-origins quota system, radically changing who would be allowed to enter the country. Suddenly the floodgates to America were open.

Something else changed alongside the laws: the meaning Americans attached to religious liberty. Freedom of conscience, once defended in a society largely governed by Protestant assumptions, increasingly meant public institutions treating rival faiths on equal terms.

Courts extended constitutional limits on religious establishment to the states. The prohibition against establishing an official state church was now interpreted as a prohibition against favoring Christianity at all.

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Liberal mainline Protestant leaders embraced this transformation. Their participation in the civil rights movement brought a conviction that public Christianity, if too closely identified with the old social order, could become an obstacle to inclusion. Others accepted the proposition that politics should be conducted in a supposedly neutral language, with Christian commitments translated into secular terms before they could be heard.

The pitch to the churches was simple — and seductive. Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar. Christ rejected an earthly kingdom. Shouldn't Christians be content to preach the gospel and leave the business of government to professionals? Fear of being labeled backward or intolerant made retreat even easier.

But Christ did not tell His followers to pretend their convictions had no bearing on law, education, or the common good. The idea that Christians must be politically passive because the Constitution protects religious liberty turns that liberty into a gag order.

Conservatives helped sell this bargain. Reduce the power of government, they said, and stop trying to shape the culture through politics. Conveniently, their opponents had no intention of surrendering political power. The result was a right that treated withdrawal as principle while every competing movement treated political organization as common sense. In schools, public ceremonies, and debates over the family, that retreat handed the initiative to others.

For decades, the Christian political class has mistaken the rules of a plural society for an instruction to disappear. No secular activist interprets pluralism that way. No Muslim organizer needs to. They enter the political arena as people with convictions, constituencies, and interests. Christians should quit treating those facts of political life as a privilege reserved for everyone else.

The Moral Majority showed that Christians could act collectively. So have the religious conservative organizations that followed it. Yet too often their leaders have been content to defend yesterday's defeats rather than articulate a Christian vision of public life. They speak of “Western values” and “Western civilization” as though Christianity was an embarrassing family secret.

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Meanwhile, a spiritual vacuum does not stay empty. Secular humanism promised to supply moral purpose without religion. Wokeness took on the character of a rival creed, complete with its own saints, heresies, and rituals of public repentance. And now Muslim communities, confident in their religious identity, are also competing for influence in the public square.

Christians should stop acting surprised. Political power will not remain unclaimed simply because they refuse to reach for it. Nor will churches recover their cultural authority by pretending that doctrine has no public consequences.

Christendom shaped the West, including America’s laws, customs, and understanding of human dignity. If Christians believe that inheritance is worth defending, they must speak up. They must organize, argue, vote, and fight politically for the institutions and moral commitments they want their children to inherit.

The lie is that doing so violates the country’s principles. The truth is that religious liberty gives Christians the same right to organize that everyone else already exercises. A faith that refuses to defend its place in public life should not be astonished when others occupy the ground it abandoned.

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Congress had the receipts. Katherine Maher had amnesia.



On October 26, National Public Radio CEO Katherine Maher received the James C. Goodale First Amendment Award from Harper’s Magazine. The honor recognizes people who have demonstrated a consequential commitment to a free press and its constitutional protections. Apparently, demonstrating a commitment to those protections is easier when your own organization needs them.

Harper’s applauded Maher for defending NPR against President Donald Trump’s attempt to cut off its federal funding. NPR challenged the executive order, and in March, a federal judge ruled that the government could not use its spending power to punish speech it disliked. The judge, not NPR’s lawyer, supplied that First Amendment language.

The First Amendment is not a menu from which public figures may order only the protections that suit their politics.

I agree that the government shouldn’t punish a news organization for its opinions. But I would like to know when Katherine Maher discovered the merits of letting people express theirs.

In January 2021, after Trump was bounced from major social media platforms, Maher posted this little valentine to free expression: “Must be satisfying to deplatform fascists. Even more satisfying? Not platforming them in the first place.” She didn’t name Trump. The timing hardly required a decoder ring.

Six months later, during an Atlantic Council discussion of online misinformation, she described the First Amendment as the “number-one challenge” to governmental regulation because it provides robust protection for rights. Imagine that: The Constitution was getting in the way of government action against speech.

Maher also said those protections were important for platforms deciding what to carry. The problem is the ease with which she can celebrate keeping undesirable speakers off private platforms and then accept an award for defending speech against government interference. Different legal questions, certainly. But what a conveniently adjustable enthusiasm for expression.

CYA takes on new meaning here. Who gets to designate “misinformation”? Who fact-checks the fact-checkers? And what happens when the people appointed to decide the truth have a habit of declaring their political opponents unfit to be heard?

Sorry, but if Maher had renamed NPR “NPPR” — National Pol Pot Radio — after taking over in 2024, she might at least have spared the audience the pretense of ideological neutrality. NPR’s critics have long questioned the network’s political sympathies; she arrived with a social media archive that did nothing to reassure them.

Then Congress invited the free-speech laureate to explain herself.

At a March 2025 House hearing on public broadcasting, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) confronted Maher with a tweet asserting that America was “addicted to white supremacy.” She acknowledged the post and explained that her thinking had “evolved” over the previous five years.

Evolved! How reassuring. Under congressional lights, old declarations become artifacts of a former self. For everyone else, an unwise social media post can remain an indelible mark of moral depravity.

Gill also asked about her January 2020 post announcing that she had taken a day off to read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations.” Maher first said she didn’t think she had read the essay. Confronted with her own words, she said she couldn’t recall the post. He had the receipts. She had the amnesia.

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It recalled, with apologies to Hillary Clinton, the pink-pantsuit “I do not recall” tour: plenty of confidence when issuing pronouncements, less when an inconvenient statement comes back for an encore.

Maher didn’t run NPR when it made some of the coverage decisions congressional Republicans criticized. She runs it now. That is reason enough to ask how the network treated Hunter Biden’s laptop, COVID-19’s origins, and allegations involving Trump and Russia — and whether a news organization so eager to scrutinize others welcomes the same attention.

Of course, Maher can criticize Trump. She can call him names, cheer private companies that deny speakers a platform, and advocate tighter restrictions on “misinformation.” The First Amendment protects her right to make the case. It also protects the public’s right to notice the inconsistencies — and to ask why taxpayers should subsidize a network they regard as partisan.

What makes the Harper’s award so delicious is the timing. One year she is in Washington explaining the evolution of her thoughts and forgetting inconvenient tweets. The next she is at a glittering ceremony receiving a prize for constitutional principle. If that isn’t a career arc worthy of a statuette, what is?

Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009; two years later, his administration killed American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen. Apparently, once the medal is pinned on, the terms and conditions expire.

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Maher’s honor suggests an exciting new category of prizes for our part-time constitutionalists.

Why not a “Silence Is Golden Award” for a prosecutor who complains that suspects invoking the Fifth Amendment interfere with convictions — and then invokes it himself when a police officer pulls him over for drunken driving? Surely the citation would be magnificent.

Or a “Gun Violence Prevention Award” for a crusader against firearms who keeps a pistol by the bed and fires it at an intruder? An acceptance speech about the need for fewer guns would bring the house down.

Perhaps Harper’s could create a special trophy for people who find the Constitution irksome when it protects their adversaries and indispensable when it protects their friends. Given the competition, it might need an entire banquet hall.

The First Amendment is not a menu from which public figures may order only the protections that suit their politics. Maher can claim every one of those protections and good for her. But she cannot reasonably expect applause for her own freedom while escaping scrutiny for her apparent indifference to the freedom of those she dislikes.

Someone might explain that to the lovely, vivacious Katherine Maher before she accepts her next award.

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The pulpit answers to God, not the IRS



Before America had a Constitution, it had pulpits.

Pulpits that taught citizens how to think about authority, duty, and the proper limits of government. The ministers later associated with the “Black Robed Regiment” understood that biblical truth must step through the church door. They addressed public questions because they believed theology had consequences for all of life and that pastors had a responsibility not to comfort congregations but to form their biblical worldview.

Critics often accuse pastors of turning biblical issues into political ones. In many cases, the sequence runs the other way.

For most of American history, pastors did not need permission from the state to speak about the moral and political questions confronting their people. They preached about slavery, war, temperance, elections, public officials, religious liberty, and national repentance because they understood the pulpit to be accountable first to God.

Restoring an old right

The modern expectation that pastors should carefully separate biblical teaching from anything deemed “political” would have been foreign to much of the American church that helped shape this country.

That context is important because the fight over the Johnson Amendment is often framed as though churches are seeking some new political privilege. We are not asking the government to give pastors a new right, but to stop restricting an old one.

The origins of the Johnson Amendment are revealing. In 1954, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson was facing a primary challenge from Dudley Dougherty, a wealthy young Texas politician whose fierce anti-communism appealed to supporters of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Dougherty was hardly a formidable opponent — Johnson defeated him by more than 40 points in the Democratic primary — but he had sympathizers in powerful conservative organizations, including the Committee for Constitutional Government and Facts Forum, a media operation established by Texas oil billionaire H.L. Hunt.

Johnson was particularly concerned about the Committee for Constitutional Government, which had circulated material promoting Dougherty. He asked his staff to investigate whether its activities violated election laws or threatened its federal tax exemption. The answer on the latter question was apparently no.

Johnson was undeterred. Having investigated whether existing law could be used against his political opponents, he now proposed changing the law itself. That July he introduced an amendment to the federal tax code barring tax-exempt charitable organizations from participating in political campaigns. It passed without debate. Churches, which had played no part in Johnson's dispute, were covered by the new restriction.

Freeing the pulpit

There was no sweeping national debate about churches corrupting elections. There were no extensive hearings over whether the American pulpit had become dangerously partisan. Johnson claimed to be confronting communist nonprofit organizations, but churches had become a source of political opposition. The law was written broadly enough, encompassing churches; they were heavily affected by its enforcement and soon began receiving letters from the IRS. The restriction ultimately extended far beyond Johnson's immediate political dispute, reaching into the pulpits of American churches for generations.

Today, the Johnson Amendment prohibits 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, including churches, from supporting or opposing candidates in political campaigns.

This restriction is at the center of the legal challenge by National Religious Broadcasters. Churches remain free to address public policy issues, including controversial ones, but pastors face restrictions when their speech crosses into supporting or opposing a political candidate. NRB seeks to protect the freedom of churches and their pastors to speak from the pulpit without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status.

The broader concern is what decades of uncertainty, legal caution, and fear of enforcement have produced inside churches themselves: a deep-seated culture of self-censorship.

'Political' ... or biblical?

Critics often accuse pastors of turning biblical issues into political ones. In many cases, the sequence runs the other way. Politicians took questions involving abortion, marriage, sexuality, race, religious liberty, and justice and turned them into partisan battlegrounds.

These were biblical questions long before they were campaign issues.

Politics does not acquire ownership of a moral question merely because politicians begin arguing about it. Scripture had something to say about marriage, government, money, justice, and human dignity long before there were Republicans, Democrats, campaign platforms, or federal agencies. The church does not surrender those subjects when they appear on a ballot.

Perhaps pastors will stop being accused of bringing politics into the pulpit when politicians stop dragging biblical questions into politics.

That does not mean churches should become campaign headquarters. They should not. The pulpit should never become an appendage of either the Republican or Democratic parties. Biblical authority is diminished whenever Scripture is bent to serve political power.

But there is an opposite error: treating “nonpartisanship” as a reason for silence whenever Scripture touches a politically controversial subject.

A pastor should be free to preach biblical truth without compromise and apply it to the real-world questions confronting his congregation. If Scripture challenges the left on abortion, sexuality, family, or religious liberty, he should say so. If it challenges the right, he should say that too. The standard is not partisan usefulness. It is biblical fidelity.

That is why NRB entered the legal challenge to the Johnson Amendment.

The district court dismissed our case on jurisdictional grounds rather than reaching the merits of the constitutional claims. The case is now on appeal. NRB will continue fighting because the government should not stand between a pastor and his responsibility before God.

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Courage required

But the legal fight only reaches so far.

The First Amendment can protect a pastor’s freedom. It cannot produce courage. A court can remove a restraint, but it cannot make a church recover confidence in the authority of Scripture. NRB can fight for the freedom of the pulpit. Pastors must decide whether they will use it.

That question grows more urgent because Christians are being formed every day by institutions that have no hesitation about preaching their own worldview. Social media, universities, corporations, entertainment, political movements, and influencers constantly catechize Americans about morality.

When churches avoid the same subjects because they have become politically controversial, they do not create neutrality. They simply leave the work of formation to everyone else.

America does not need a more partisan pulpit. It does need a freer and more courageous one.

We are fighting to restore an old right: that of pastors to open the Bible, preach the whole counsel of God, and speak to the life of the nation without first asking the government for permission.

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‘We’ve lost Dearborn’: Why one woman is taking the Muslim-run city to federal court



Attorney and Federalist senior legal correspondent Margot Cleveland is taking the city of Dearborn, Michigan, which includes Muslim Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, to federal court.

Cleveland alleges that the city has violated the Constitution’s Establishment Clause by promoting one religion over others, and after hearing the full story, Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck can’t help but agree.

Glenn explains that the purpose of the First Amendment, when it comes to religion, is “protecting the religion against government,” not the other way around.

“Well, in Dearborn, they’ve gone the opposite way. They are only celebrating Islamic holidays,” he says.

And this is why Cleveland is taking the city to court.


“If I didn’t do it, no one was going to do it,” she tells Glenn. “It has been a problem that I’ve been trying to rectify with the city for over a year. I did everything I could to try to avoid bringing a lawsuit. I basically went to city council and begged them to work with me, and they refused.”

“But the mayor has made clear that he will favor Islam, that he has a disregard for people who disagree with Islam, who hold other beliefs. The rhetoric that has come from him is extremely disturbing,” she explains.

One example Cleveland uses is the renaming of a street in Dearborn after a man named Siblani, who has called Hezbollah and Hamas “freedom fighters.”

“The mayor went and celebrated the street being renamed in Siblani’s name,” she says.

When a pastor complained, the mayor said on video, “You’re not welcome here.”

“You also had the mayor blaming Israel, on October 7, for what happened on October 7,” Cleveland tells Glenn, who doesn’t have much hope for the city.

“I think we’ve lost Dearborn. It’s an Islamic city, and I’m with you 100%,” he says, shocked.

“It’s extremely disturbing,” he adds.

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