A Catholic archbishop recently touched on an unspoken but highly subversive phenomenon: How anti-Christian forces exploit Christian teachings to empower those who seek to dismantle Christian civilization, Muslims being chief among them.

In an interview published last summer by the Italian outlet IlGionarle.it, Catholic Archbishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan said:

The phenomenon of so-called “immigration” is an orchestrated and long-prepared plan by international powers to radically change the Christian and national identity of the peoples of Europe. These powers use the enormous moral potential of the Church and their structures to achieve their anti-Christian and anti-European objective more effectively: To this end, the true concept of humanism and even the Christian commandment of charity are abused.

To understand how these forces exploit “the enormous moral potential of the Church to achieve their anti-Christian and anti-European objective,” one must first understand the symbiotic relationship between liberalism and Christianity.

It is often forgotten, but tolerance, human rights, a desire for peace, accommodating the other, and all similar concepts secular liberalism claims to champion did not develop in a civilizational vacuum. They developed from the singular teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Over the course of some two thousand years, these precepts have had a profound influence on Western epistemology, society, and culture to the point that they are now taken for granted.

At some point, Western Christians came to believe that the entirety of their faith rested exclusively in those passive values — particularly forgiveness and non-judgmentalism for the other, and introspection and accountability for oneself. These now manifest as blanket “tolerance” and self-guilt. Whereas Christ tolerated sinners but did not tolerate sin — always calling on sinners to “repent,” and invoking the torments of hell more than any other biblical figure — today most Western Christians believe they must tolerate (or “celebrate”) both sinner and sin. The latter, thanks to entrenched moral and cultural relativism, no longer even exists.

Such is the “Doormat Christianity©” that those who despise traditional Christianity embrace: Becoming the “useful idiot.” Muslims and other elements are persecuting innocents around the world? Show love and tolerance, turn the other cheek, say a prayer, and feel guilty for your own crimes — or even your ancestors’ crimes.

Doormat Christianity was regularly on display during Barack H. Obama’s presidency: “On Easter, I do reflect on the fact that as a Christian, I am supposed to love,” he said in 2015 — three days after a terror attack targeting Christians killed 147 people in Kenya, provoking a few American Christian groups to express anger. “And I have to say that sometimes when I listen to less than loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned.”

Similarly, during the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, 2015, Obama directly invoked Doormat Christianity tenets to shame Christians from being too critical of Islamic State atrocities: “Lest we get on our high horse and think this [Islamic beheadings, sex-slavery, crucifixion, roasting and burying humans alive] is unique to some other place,” the American president admonished, “remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”

That Obama had to go back almost a thousand years for examples by referencing the Crusades and the Inquisition did not trouble most Americans. Nor did most Americans even know the Crusades and Inquisition were defensive responses to Muslim aggression and subversion, respectively (read Chapters 4, 5, and 6 of Sword and Scimitar).

After all, Americans had been miseducated to believe that their Medieval European ancestors were false Christians who mangled the faith to persecute peaceful Muslims. As the former nun, now self-described “freelance monotheist” Karen Armstrong once put it, “During the 12th Century, Christians were fighting brutal holy wars against Muslims, even though Jesus had told his followers to love their enemies, not to exterminate them.”

The notion that Christianity begins and ends with “loving one’s enemy” — all too often a lofty way to justify cowardice in front of evil — has become mainstream among Western Christians. In 1999, to mark the 900th anniversary of the crusader conquest of Jerusalem, hundreds of devout Protestants participated in a “reconciliation walk” that began in Germany and ended in Jerusalem. Along the way, they wore T-shirts with the words “I apologize” — in Arabic.

From their official statement:

Nine hundred years ago, our forefathers carried the name of Jesus Christ in battle across the Middle East. Fueled by fear, greed and hatred … the Crusaders lifted the banner of the Cross above your people … On the anniversary of the First Crusade, we … wish to retrace the footsteps of the Crusaders in apology for their deeds … We deeply regret the atrocities committed in the name of Christ by our predecessors. We renounce greed, hatred and fear, and condemn all violence done in the name of Jesus Christ.

The First Crusaders only went to Jerusalem because Muslims had been slaughtering and enslaving literally hundreds of thousands of Christians in the East in the preceding years. The much-recounted Crusader sack of Jerusalem was a mere drop in the bloody bucket of Islamic atrocities. But this never seems to matter to such lofty-minded Christians.

It should be noted that Doormat Christianity is a distinctly Western phenomenon. Several Eastern European nations reject it, refusing to play along by opening their doors to Muslim “refugees.” Two days after the Paris terror attack that left 130 dead, tens of thousands of Poles demonstrated against Muslim immigration; this November 11, 2015, march was Poland’s largest in history. They chanted that they would defend their homeland, where “Christ is king” and there is “no place for Islamic Sharia or terror,” against Muslim invaders and “Leftist traitors.”

Two months earlier, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán expressed similar sentiments, if more diplomatically:

Those [migrants] arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims. This is an important question, because Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity. … We don’t want to criticize France, Belgium, any other country, but we think all countries have a right to decide whether they want to have a large number of Muslims in their countries. If they want to live together with them, they can. We don’t want to, and I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country. We do not like the consequences of having a large number of Muslim communities that we see in other countries, and I do not see any reason for anyone else to force us to create ways of living together in Hungary that we do not want to see.

Then, Orbán did the unforgiveable: He invoked Islam’s occupation of Hungary from 1541 to 1699:

I have to say that when it comes to living together with Muslim communities, we are the only ones who have experience, because we had the possibility to go through that experience for 150 years.

(For an “idea” of how those 150 years went, read Chapters 7 and 8 of Sword and Scimitar.)

Just how outrageous citing Europe’s actual history with Islam in the context of rejecting Doormat Christian sensibilities can be seen in how the Guardians of the Narrative — beginning with the UK’s aptly named Guardian — responded:

Hungary has a history with the Ottoman empire, and Orban is busy conjuring it. The Ottoman empire is striking back, he warns. They’re taking over! Hungary will never be the same again! … Hence the wire; hence the army; hence, as from today, the state of emergency; hence the fierce, unrelenting rhetoric of hatred. Because that is what it has been from the very start: sheer, crass hostility and slander.

For simply maintaining an accurate view of history and unapologetically seeking to preserve his nation’s Christian identity and heritage, numerous Western media and politicians characterized Orbán as “xenophobic,” “full of hate speech,” and Europe’s “creeping dictator.” Another Guardian piece simply referred to Orban as a “problem” that needs to be “solved.”

Meanwhile, the indigenous citizens of European nations that have taken in large numbers of Muslim migrants — including France and Germany — are fleeing to and seeking refuge in Hungary, a fact which speaks for itself.

Incidentally, lest it seem that only “liberal Protestants” are devotees of Doormat Christianity, it bears mentioning that the man who holds the same office that historically spearheaded the defense of Christianity against Islam is one of the greatest representatives of passive Christianity: The Catholic pope, Francis.

While he repeatedly calls on Western nations “not to create walls but to build bridges,” including by taking in millions of Muslim refugees. Yet his Vatican residence is surrounded by walls built over a millennium ago to prevent ongoing Muslim raids. One of those raids sacked two of Christendom’s greatest basilicas, St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s (read Chapter 3 of Sword and Scimitar).

Nonetheless, according to the Vicar of Christ:

When I hear talk of the Christian roots of Europe, I sometimes dread the tone, which can seem triumphalist or even vengeful. It then takes on colonialist overtones.

How the desire to preserve the national, cultural, and religious integrity of one’s homeland can have “colonialist overtones” remains to be explained.

Yes, Europe has Christian roots and it is Christianity’s responsibility to water those roots. But this must be done in a spirit of service as in the washing of the feet. Christianity’s duty to Europe is one of service. … Christianity’s contribution to a culture is that of Christ in the washing of the feet.

Here, then, is Doormat Christianity at its finest, existing only for the “washing of feet” — or, in this context, taking in millions of Muslim migrants, many of whom are openly hostile to Christians.

For the record, yes, Christ served and washed his disciples’ feet and preached mercy and compassion — but that was hardly the sole or even primary purpose of his mission. He offered an entire worldview founded on theological assertions of eternal significance. When people erred by profaning the temple, he did not “turn the other cheek” (let alone wash their feet) — he whipped and cast them out. When he himself was slapped, Jesus did not offer the other cheek but rather challenged his abuser (John 18:23). He praised a Roman centurion without calling on him to resign from one of history’s most brutal militaries (Matt. 8: 5–13). In short, he did not call on his followers to be doormats — but to be “wise as serpents.”

Why do Bible-thumpers everywhere fail to remember these Christian positions that at least balance out those on tolerance and forgiveness? Because they were born and bred on Doormat Christianity, an oxymoronic caricature developed to orchestrate Western civilization’s own suicide, including at the hands of jihad.