Wednesday’s CrossTalk program on VCY America featured a conversation about the danger of Catholicism merging with Islam to create the false one world religion warned about in the biblical book of Revelation. VCY America is a Milwaukee-based Christian broadcasting operation that owns 25 full-power radio stations, mostly in the Midwest, and reaches others through affiliate stations and online.
The featured guest was Mike Gendron, described as a former Catholic and the founder and director of Proclaiming the Gospel ministry, which is dedicated to trying to rescue Catholics who are “victims of deception” and convert them to “biblical Christianity.” Gendron’s group also sells an audio recording of his one world religion warning.
As RWW has reported, major Religious Right figures have said that Islam is not really a religion but a totalitarian ideology and therefore not worthy of First Amendment protection. Gendron has similar thoughts about the Catholic Church. He says that Catholicism is, like Islam, not only a religion but a political identity, and says that “they share a similar political ideology.”
On the Crosstalk page promoting the show, they list what Gendron calls the “common bonds” between the two religions, and he and host Jim Schneider talked through them. He says Catholicism and Islam both:
- esteem and honor Mary.
- seek messages from apparitions of Mary.
- are anti-Semitic.
- embrace another Jesus.
- seek world dominion.
- deny the authority of Scripture.
- use prayer beads to avoid punishment.
- take pilgrimages to obtain favor from God.
- have human mediators.
- have a works righteousness salvation.
Gendron is unsparing in his criticism of the Catholic church, what he calls its “false Christ” and false theology of salvation, and its devotion to apparitions of Mary that he calls “signs and wonders of Satan.” He says that Catholics and Muslims both worship the God of the world, who is Satan.
For additional “evidence” of the coming merger with Islam, Gendron cites ecumenical comments by Pope Francis along the lines of “all people are the children of God” as well as older Church documents about Christian-Muslim dialogue. Host Jim Schneider read a news story about a Catholic University in Iowa dedicating a room to be available for daily prayers by Muslims and other students who didn’t want to use the chapel.
Religious Right expressions of anti-Muslim bigotry are commonplace, but given the close political relationship between conservative evangelicals and conservative Catholics in opposition to abortion and LGBT equality, it can be jarring to be reminded of how much theological enmity many evangelicals have for the Catholic Church. For example, Trump cheerleader Robert Jeffress, who prayed at the opening of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on Monday, has described the Catholic Church as a “corruption” and “counterfeit” of Christianity that reflects “the genius of Satan.” Ralph Drollinger, who teaches weekly Bible studies to members of Trump’s Cabinet and members of Congress, has called Catholicism “the world’s largest false religion.”
One caller referred to “Chrislam,” a term that has circulated in Religious Right circles for years. In October 2017, Crosstalk broadcast audio from a September 2017 VCY Rally in which speaker Sharhram Hadien warned that Chrislam is sneaking into America’s churches via the “satanic strategy” of interfaith dialogue. Kamal Saleem, the supposed “ex-terrorist” who is a popular speaker at Religious Right events, has warned evangelical activists that American churches are being “invaded by ‘Chrislam.’”
In 2011, retired Gen. Jerry Boykin (now Family Research Council’s Executive Vice President) and Michigan televangelist Jack Van Impe even cited megachurch pastor Rick Warren as promoting Chrislam. In 2013, Walid Shoebat and his son Theodore warned about Glenn Beck, saying that Mormonism is “an extreme version of Chrislam.”
One self-proclaimed prophet of the End Times imagines that the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem will be destroyed during the Gog/Magog War and replaced with a “Chrislamic / UN Religion multi-faith temple.”
The idea that Christianity and Christians will be threatened by the creation of a big merger of religions formed the basis of creation of “Persecuted,” a 2014 film screened at CPAC about religious liberty in America being destroyed by the sinister forces of equality and religious pluralism.
