Church of Liberalism: Biden Expels the Clergy

Or: How the regime is coming for your priests

Rather quietly, as far as international news goes, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was reelected President of Turkey in May of 2023. The election reached far beyond Anatolia however, with Turkish citizens living abroad able to vote in Turkish elections. With the largest diaspora community being in Germany, the Germans themselves wrung their hands in anxiety at the idea that people living in their midst may yet support a politician that, in their view, is an Islamist Reactionary. “How could Turkish Germans vote for the Social Democrats or the Green Party in Germany, the argument goes, while simultaneously voting for the Islamic, conservative AKP in Turkey?”¹

The phrasing of the article’s title startled me, as if being a religious conservative is some kind of crime. The truth is, to the Global American Empire, it is a crime- and one that the German government attempts to address at its source. If Germany’s Turks are insulated enough from the secularizing enervation of cosmopolitan life that they still dare to vote for Erdogan, then the state must find a way to supplant Erdogan’s messages from getting into the country. Enter Nancy Faesar of the Social Democratic Party’s Ministry of the Interior to put a stop to Turkish Imams from Turkey being let into Germany to minister to Turks.

The Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB) is financed by the Turkish government’s Directorate of Religious Affairs. Their role with the DITIB is to train Muslims to be clerics for the Muslim community in Germany.² For the German government, the connection between their large Turkish Muslim community remaining socially conservative and that community being ministered to by Turkish-trained and funded Imams is obvious. Following the Turkish election in 2023, the German government announced that foreign-educated Imams will be replaced by those trained on German soil. These new religious leaders will be native to Germany, native to its language and, most importantly, native to its values.³

Germany is merely following the example of France, which in 2020 prohibited foreign-trained Islamic clerics from Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria to instead promote a growing class of Imams trained in French universities. That is, institutions that the French government controls and monitors.⁴ The German government now installs not only Imams, but “religious affairs officers” who have wider roles including teaching, lay-ministering, and so-called “community outreach.”⁵

The goal is not hidden or inexplicit; the goal for these liberal regimes is to construct a regime such that the only individuals allowed to operate significant religious duties can only do so at the privilege, supervision, and influence of the state, directly by institution, or indirectly by the surrounding culture.

At this same time, a quiet revision to immigration policy was also made in the United States. The American Christian, especially Catholic Christians, may have noticed a sharp rise in foreign clergy over the last few decades; often their local cleric is now a foreigner. This priest may hail from Nigeria, India, Kenya, Latin-America, or any other “third world” land whose Christians are poor in material wealth, but rich in spiritual conviction. These clerics remain conservative, unentertained by liberalisms like transgenderism, and their countries see many vocations while many Western states see far fewer. As such, foreign-trained clergy have been sent in recent years to minister to parishes of the faithful where a native American-born priest may not be available.⁶

A Catholic diocese needs to file a permanent work visa (so-called Green Card) for these clergy to enter the United States and stay as long as the need is required (which is commonly many years, as current trends stand). Clergy have historically been able to get a Green Card before their temporary work visa expires, due in part to a special queue for the applications of clergy. That is, this was the case until the United States government decided that several years’ worth of residency applications for “neglected and abused minors from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador” who illegally entered the United States since the 2010s were to be added to the clergy queue for residency visas. The clergy queue for a Green Card is now over a decade long, meaning those temporary visas for clergy are set to run out far before visiting clerics will have the chance to apply to remain permanently.⁷

This problem affects all manner of religious workers. Protestant pastors, Catholic Priests, and religious sisters working in Catholic schools will find themselves forcefully expelled from the United States.⁸ The American government may be accused of targeting monks and nuns specifically, as the only other visas they could apply for require their employer to show they are earning sufficient wages. As these communities take vows of poverty and do not earn wages for themselves, they cannot qualify.⁹

“Across all faith traditions, there are few options for these workers to continue their U.S.-based ministry, attorneys say. At a minimum, they would need to go abroad for a year before being eligible for another temporary religious worker visa, and repeat that process, paying thousands in fees, throughout the decade—or for however long their green card application stays pending.”¹⁰

The United States’ regime, in one fell swoop, set up thousands of foreign-trained clerics to be kicked out of the country and has entirely halted any more from entering under permanent assignment. This decision is absolutely targeted, and unmistakably purposeful, as the regime has flown hundreds of thousands (to millions) of illegal ‘pardoned’ migrants into the United States at the same time.¹¹ It is not important to the regime that those people suffer any impediment, as they are politically beneficial to the ruling elites in the Democratic Party. The Christian clergy are a comparative liability, a threat to the regime’s dogmas and power. The American conservative need only ask themselves why those foreigners are favored over these others to reach this conclusion.

The regime cannot tolerate foreign faithful leaders, uncontaminated by the effects of liberalism and willing to speak against it, to propagate freely in their empire. The conservative should never forget that the regime despises them and is willing to do far more than say a few mean words. The regime is attempting to suppress true religion and neuter all opposition. Christianity cannot live under it because Christ accuses it of its moral failings. The mere existence of conservative political thought is a notion that sparks such anxiety and hang-wringing that the regime makes policy efforts to prevent its influence.

Germany and France want to limit foreign influence on their Muslim populations because the Muslims are illiberal, ethnically alien, and cultural interlopers. No Europeans wish for Islam to reign within their borders. Conservatives do not like Islam, and the regimes would rather these Muslims be assimilated to liberalism in the way the Christians were. The detestable fact is that the United States is using the same tactics, indeed more aggressive ones, against its own Christian population, treating native born citizens as if they were the export of some foreign culture that threatens its internal stability. The United States regime sees Christians themselves as a threat to be mitigated and controlled. If the regime cannot assimilate its Christians, it will starve the churches and schools by driving their clergy out into exile. The United States would put us in the place of secret churches in the Near East, needing hidden priests to sparingly celebrate the sacraments and it counts on American Christians being passive enough to avoid the effort of seeking spiritual community until they are dead in all but body.

The lesson is not that the United States is failing to live up to its ideal of tolerating religious practice or even that Germany is unfair in targeting Muslims; it is that a house divided against itself cannot stand, that Christianity makes claims about truth which contradict the so-called truths of the regime. If the regime is not conformed to Christianity, it will attempt to conform Christianity to the regime. As I wrote before in On God Being Real, the American conservative must acknowledge what the truth of the natural law is and declare back to the regime that Jesus Christ is the Lord, even over the human law of the United States. The dogma should live loudly in the Christian, for Jesus came to set the world ablaze and He wishes it already were.

1. Why many Turks in Germany still vote for Erdogan – DW – 04/27/2023

2. Germany trains new generation of Muslim leaders – DW – 01/21/2024

3. Germany to halt admission of Turkey-trained imams – DW – 12/14/2023

4. Germany trains new generation of Muslim leaders – DW – 01/21/2024

5. Ibid.

6. US Catholic clergy shortage eased by recruits from Africa | AP News

7. The U.S. could lose thousands of foreign priests thanks to a green card processing change | America Magazine

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid,

10. Ibid.

11. Fact Focus: Claims Biden administration is secretly flying migrants into the country are unfounded | AP News