Texas Takes a Stand

Here’s the situation: Texas once welcomed this alien population to live and work within its borders. But over time, the birth rate of these immigrants has boomed, and they are encouraging other outsiders to join them. As their numbers swell, so does their political power. Native Texans are alarmed, as these aliens refuse to assimilate and threaten to replace Texans’ existing religion, laws and culture with their own.

This story could be taken straight from the front page of the Dallas Morning News. Except that it isn’t. This is what happened in Texas some two hundred years ago.

In 1821, the newly independent Republic of Mexico sought to develop its sparsely populated north-eastern territory. It invited Stephen F. Austin to bring 300 families from the United States to settle along the Colorado and Brazos Rivers. Life was difficult, and building farms and ranches was hard work, but these Americans prospered. Soon, family and friends back in the U.S. started jumping the border to get a piece of the action. By the 1830s, Mexico’s central government was becoming alarmed that the new-comers were reneging on their agreement to practice Catholicism, were violating the immigration laws, and bringing American slaves with them. Tensions mounted to the point of open rebellion.

Understandably, Mexico took affront. Having invited these guests into their home, the guests called in their families and friends to crash the party, then chased the hosts out of the house for refusing to speak to them in English. The parallels between Texas in 1835 and Texas in 2026 are disturbingly similar, except that today’s Texans are unwilling to grant to Muslim immigrants the freedoms their ancestors had enjoyed.

Here’s the evidence. In February 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott characterized a housing development proposed by the East Plano Islamic Center as an example of a “sharia city.” He then directed several state agencies to investigate. He designated a well-known Muslim civil rights group, “a foreign terrorist organization” and forbade it from buying land in his state. And school vouchers*, one of the Christian right’s favorite instruments for defunding secular public schools and undermining the teachers’ unions were made unavailable for Muslim schools in Texas.

This is just part of a larger and growing problem. The supreme law of the land forbids any act establishing an official religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religious faith (U.S. Constitution, Amendment I and Amendment XIV, Section 1). But Republican orthodoxy is increasingly at odds with religious freedom as historically understood. This fusion of American civic life with “Christian Nationalism” is rapidly gaining force across the country. “The United States of America was founded as a Christian nation,” declared Gov. Abbott. And the late MAGA pundit, Charlie Kirk claimed America is living through a “constitutional crisis” because “you cannot have liberty if you do not have a Christian population.” This might surprise the Israelis.

If the MAGA Movement achieves permanent government power, its true colors will be revealed. Its popular support is based on resentment and vengeance. If Christian Nationalism becomes the de facto state religion, its adherents will soon turn on the Mormons for not being sufficiently Christian. With them driven from civic power, it will then turn on the Catholics for not being Protestant, and having allegiance to that foreign potentate, the Pope. The liturgical Protestant denominations (Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian) will be next, for not being Fundamentalist. By then the Eastern Orthodox will be long gone from public life for their stubborn insistence that the Holy Spirit proceeds only from “the Father”, not “the Father and the Son,” and their refusal to make the sign of the cross from left to right. Then when it is too late, we will realize that Christian Nationalism had meant “fundamentalism” all along.

One of the fundamental teachings of Christianity is, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” How well are those proud Texas Christians in the state GOP living their faith?

* Full disclosure, I’ve supported school vouchers for years, but carve-outs favoring some faiths over others are giving me reason to revisit this position.