He has a radio “audience of over 1 million listeners on more than 180 stations nationwide.”
He is called “a Christian pundit.” http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bryan_Fischer.
Like any pundit, Bryan Fischer has opinions. At times Mr. Fischer’s opinions make headlines in the mainstream press, presumably helping to increase his audience-share of the radio-listening public.
Recently Mr. Fischer has captured media attention by expressing his opinions on immigration to the United States of America. He suggests that the US should communicate to potential immigrants:
You’ll be welcome here, we’ll open our arms to you, we’ll open our hearts to you, we’ll open our communities to you… http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fischer-all-immigrants-are-welcome-america-provided-they-convert-christianity#sthash.UhQQ46cX.dpuf
This sounds enlightened and hopeful. But…
Fischer’s “welcome” comes with a big “but” and it’s the “but that is important:
… but we will expect you to adopt our cultural and Christian moral standards. We will expect you to adopt our Christian heroes and we will expect you to adopt our Christian history.
Fischer is clear that,
Strangers are welcome here in the United States…
But then again he adds his dark devilish “but…”
under one condition, that they be willing to assimilate completely into American culture. That they be willing to adopt our God, that they be willing to adopt our Judeo-Christian heritage … adopt our Christian holidays … If you come to America, you understand that we are a Christian country and therefore we observe Christian holidays; don’t expect us to make room for your holidays. We’re expecting you to accommodate yourself to our standards, our traditions, and our holidays.
Which “standards” and “traditions” are these “welcome” newcomers expected to “accommodate”? Who gets to decide which “standards” and “traditions” newcomers must accommodate in order to qualify for Mr. Fischer’s “welcome”? How must they demonstrate that they have indeed adopted Mr. Fischers “cultural and moral standards”? Will there be a test? How much accommodation is adequate? Will the “welcome” initially extended be withdrawn if/when they fail to measure up to the “moral standards” required? What about people who are born in the US? Will Americans find they are no longer welcome in Mr. Fischer’s America if they fail to adequately “adopt our Christian heroes and…. our Christian history”?
It is tempting to dismiss Fischer as merely an extreme example of the lunatic fringe in the US. But it is important not to overlook Mr. Fischer and his abhorrent attitudes. More times than I care to count, I have heard opinions similar to Mr. Fischer’s expressed in cultured sophisticated circles here in Canada.
We are not immune to the kind of narrow-minded bigotry and prejudice Fischer expresses and which, tragically, he feels free to call “Christian.”
Fischer subscribes to a simplistic narrow view of his nation. He apparently believes the US is “a Christian country,” in which there is a uniform “American culture” Fischer calls “our Judeo-Christian heritage.”
What is this “Judeo-Christian heritage” that Mr. Fischer believes characterizes the “Christian country” of the United States of America? Is it some hybrid religion that sprang from the teachings of Jesus, a combination of Judaism and Christianity? Is it neither entirely Jewish, nor solely Christian? Do Jewish people subscribe to a “Judeo-Christian heritage”? How Jewish does a person’s faith need to be to qualify as “Judeo-Christian”? How “Christian” can a person be until they no longer qualify as “Judeo”?
My fear is that, when Mr. Fischer uses the term “Judeo-Christian,” he does not mean Jewish at all. He actually means Christian. The Judaism has been co-opted under the banner of Christianity. If he were honest, Mr. Fischer would have to admit that there is nothing really authentically Jewish left in his “Judeo-Christian” version of faith.
To lump Judaism and Christianity together as if they are really one thing is neither intellectually credible, nor morally sustainable. It is a sly form of antisemitism. And Christians must repudiate antisemitism in any form in which it rears its ugly head.
The label “Judeo-Christian” pretends to respect Judaism while in fact subsuming the Judeo part under the umbrella of Christianity which is believed to have surpassed its Jewish birth-mother. “Judeo-Christian” glosses over the significant differences between Judaism and Christianity and, in the process, respects neither.
Mr. Fischer does not honour the Jewish faith nor the Jews who follow faithfully their belief system. His “Christian country” has no more room for Judaism than it has for Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism, or Jehovah’s Witnesses.
A “welcome” that says you are welcome if you agree to become like us because we are the dominant group is no welcome at all. A Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or atheist believer holds his faith with as much commitment and conviction as I imagine Mr. Fisher holds the tenets of his belief system. We cannot afford to exclude anyone simply because they do not adopt “our” personal vision of life, even if we represent the majority view.
As long as a person is willing to seek to do no harm to the people or place we share, they must be welcomed with the unconditional acceptance that Mr. Fischer would no doubt demand if he were to move to Egypt where I doubt he would warmly embrace the dominant faith.
In A Spacious Place 
12 comments
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September 30, 2015 at 9:29 pm
CHRISTINA WATKINS
Good work. It is so important to know that Judaism is different from Christianity and to accept it as an authentic religion. I am glad you are teaching this. Are the other religions part of Jesus’ many mansions? Thanks.
From Christina Watkins
>
October 1, 2015 at 5:39 pm
robbarcruises
Perhaps we need to break apart what he is trying to say and ignore the stuff that gets him into trouble which I have no hope of changing his views.
America as Canada are founded under principles of Christianity and Western Democracy that are the foundation of our laws and society, Many of our immigrants have left countries due to persecution of many reasons t come to live in these basics. We of course welcome you and are enriched with the heritage you bring. It is when our society starts to bend over backwards to be accommodating and not offensive that we loose what the values of the country is. Our schools are told not to have a Christmas pageant to be PC yet it is not the immigrants who asked , they like to enjoy the different cultures of all of us. Some want to have Sharia law over our courts but yet why did they leave ones country. It is one thing to accommodate and grow but not to loosen what make us a great country.
Sure, we might say no one barely goes to a church, a mosque , a spiritual place but all together people rise to hold dear to those values living with each other in love
My muse for the day
October 1, 2015 at 9:10 pm
Bruce Bryant-Scott
Is this the precedent that Bryan Fisher is thinking of?
Colonial America and United States does indeed have a long history of taking in strangers with “open arms and big welcomes,” and then forcing the newcomers to adopt so-called “Christian” values and history. It was called slavery. They were welcome because they formed the foundation of the economy, especially in the South. Some 388,000 Africans were brought to the shores of America, and approximately one quarter of them, when free in Africa, were Muslim.
October 1, 2015 at 10:01 pm
robbarcruises
No disagreement with Slavery which also included Irish Slaves to the North Americas and the Caribbean. You might want to also read this article as it shows the four main immigration periods, number and reasons.
Quote: ” The 2000 Census found that 99% of today’s American population can trace its ancestry to origins across the sea—in Europe, Africa, or Asia.7 Heavy immigration through four centuries of American history played a large part in driving the country’s dramatic growth from a small backwater along the distant fringe of the British Empire to the world’s richest economy and one of its most populous and diverse nation-states.”
quote : ” Every great surge in immigration in American history has generated a corresponding surge in nativism—opposition to immigration on the grounds that an :
Quote: ” There have been four great waves of immigration in American history. The first wave came in the colonial period, peaking in the years just preceding the American Revolution. The greatest single source of newcomers to the New World in this first phase was not any European country at all but rather Africa, as the slave trade far outpaced European settlement. ”
http://www.shmoop.com/early-american-immigration/summary.html
October 3, 2015 at 2:58 am
Robert
I came to this page from an advert I happened to see online referring to your church’s intended sponsorship of a Syrian refugee family to live in Victoria. I was left wondering if this was to be a Christian Syrian family or a moslem one? We know that our fellow Christians in Syria are being persecuted in a most barbaric manner by moslem extremists there. I wish I could call it “medieval” but it is reminiscent of the genocide of the Armenian Christians by the moslem Turks in the last two centuries, with whose demonic cruelty I need not bore you.
So, what is your parish, indeed your church, doing to aid Christians in Syria; among whom as you presumably know are the last few thousand speakers of Galilean Aramaic, the language Christ taught in? Perhaps it is to our persecuted fellow believers that we should first give aid? Would that be a reasonable interpretation of our Christian duty?
Of course your church may have already given all the aid it can to our fellow Christians in the Middle East and still have a surfeit?
October 3, 2015 at 1:58 pm
robbarcruises
St Philip itself is working through the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia Organization as to sponsoring a family , we are not dictating to best of my knowledge who or what they are.
You pose good questions, I suggest you contact Bruce Bryant-Scott for information.
Private Sponsorship of Refugees
Sponsored by the Refugee Committee of the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia
More information
•Bruce Bryant-Scott (250) 889-8917
•refugeecommittee@bc.anglican.ca
October 4, 2015 at 12:47 pm
Robert
I thought this was Bruce Bryant-Scott’s blog?
Should I ask the Refugee Committee and then report here what they tell me?
Does the Refugee Committee have a policy of helping fellow Christians first?”Dictate” is a curious choice of word.
Does that mean your parish is not going to ask whom they will be sponsoring? Or that your parish has no preference?
I’m wondering who will be sponsoring the Syrian Christian refugees who are being given a choice of apostasy or death. Do you think any Canadian moslems will be sponsoring them?
As you may know, the fantastically wealthy gulf states are doing very little to help their “fellow muslims” from Syria and are admitting almost none as immigrants or refugees.
October 5, 2015 at 11:39 am
Bruce Bryant-Scott
Hi Robert.
The Refugee Program of the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia takes its lead from a certain Jesus of Nazareth who, when approached by a woman from Syria, gladly granted her request, even though she was not of the same faith or ethnicity as him (Mark 7.24-30). Thus, our first question is not what faith or denomination a person belongs to, but whether they are a person in need. The next question is whether we can help. Thanks to the great rise in interest in refugee sponsorship, we are expanding the capacity of our refugee program three-fold.
We sponsor people who are from Muslim and Christian backgrounds. We don’t ask how fervent their faith is. We usually find out their religious affiliations after we agree to sponsor them. We don’t engage in high-level political analyses. If a constituent group based in a parish declares a preference for a particular country or origin or religious affiliation, we try to accommodate that interest. There are hundreds of thousands of Christians fleeing the war in Syria and Iraq, as well as millions of Muslims. They are all worthy of assistance and care.
I hope this answers your questions. I assume that by your question you want to help refugees. If you are on Vancouver Island or the Gulf Islands e-mail us directly at refugeecommittee@bc.anglican.ca . If you are off the islands but in Canada a list of Sponsorship Agreement Holders can be found at http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/refugees/sponsor/list-sponsors.asp – I encourage you to contact one of them, and join a sponsoring group, or make a donation. You can also donate to the work being done overseas in the refugee camps at http://www.unhcr.ca/, http://www.msf.ca/ , or at http://pwrdf.org/ .
The Rev. Canon Bruce Bryant-Scott, Refugee Coordinator
The Anglican Synod of the Diocese of British Columbia
c/o The Parish of St. Matthias
600 Richmond Street (at Richardson)
Victoria, BC CANADA V8S 3Y7
refugeecommittee@bc.anglican.ca
October 5, 2015 at 1:08 pm
robbarcruises
Well said and covered Bruce…
‘Robert ‘, I used the word ‘dictate’ to simply state per information from our parish we are gathering funds and support to provide for a refugee family period and will go on what the Anglican group per Bruce informs us of..
Good to see your concern .
October 5, 2015 at 1:00 pm
Robert
Did not Christ refuse that woman’s request and tell her that He was sent first to the Children of Israel?
We are told that He did grant her request in response to her reply; it is a notably humble, even abject appeal for help: “Yes Lord, but do not even the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table?”
The way it is written in the Gospels He appears to have approved of her reply and granted her request as a result, would you agree?
Whether he “gladly granted her request” I do not pretend to know, as I cannot read the minds of even my fellow mortals, but had she not made that reply, does it seem likely that He would have then assented to the request He had just denied?
I am sure it is gratifying proclaim one’s tolerance and love for all etc., but I was merely asking whether your parish intended to sponsor a Christian family. If the Christians of Syria have all the help they need, then I would say by all means assist the moslems or whoever one wishes.
“Cast not your pearls before swine” was another phrase Christ used. He was referring to some of our fellow humans I’m afraid. I believe it generally agreed that this passage is an injunction to use our discretion in sharing “spiritual gifts”. Why would it not be entirely consistent to also use some discretion in sharing more temporal gifts? That is not unkindness, it is simply a wise use of resources.
I recognize that it is extremely difficult to ask people to take a few steps down from what they think is the top of the moral sand pile, but Christ already has that spot and we’re not better than He was, so we might as well stop pretending to be, in my humble opinion.
I will find somewhere to help the persecuted believers of Syria, but it doesn’t look like it will be the Anglican church.
October 5, 2015 at 1:14 pm
robbarcruises
You are correct in Christians being persecuted , though we now know also sects of the Muslim faith by ISIS . My limited knowledge says if we can reach out to someone it will not be based on ones beliefs or lack of.
November 12, 2015 at 5:48 pm
Robert
Some very interesting perspectives here from a Christian woman of middle eastern extraction.
http://islamdom.blogspot.ca/2007/03/islam-and-future-of-europe.html