Mike Sylwester:
One question about Lutheran colleges that should be answered is whether the pro-war hysteria of WWI had the effect of Americanizing various ethnic groups in the United States. The social pressure to conform was intense, but the fear of a fifth column at home was also real.
Imagine if there had been no social pressure to learn English and integrate into American society. What would have happened then? I think it’s hard to say. It is easy in retrospect to assume that the gravitational pull of the English language is so immense and the power of American culture is so intense that immigrant communities would necessarily have embraced speaking English. And yet, while I do think that loyalty to our Constitution is far more important than speaking a common language, we need to realize that assimilation is primarily a political event.
Remember, the de facto language of the United States of America is English. It isn’t Choctaw, Cherokee, Seneca, Lakota, or Navajo. Many parts of the United States have been colonized by people who have not assimilated to Native American cultural norms. So, let’s be honest and say some projection is involved in the fears of English speakers.
I see modern Lutheran schools as harmless. However, imagine if Nazi Germany had systematically attempted to take over existing Lutheran schools in the United States and massively funded the building of dozens of new Lutheran schools that taught German and hundreds of churches that taught Nazism. This is precisely what the Saudi royal family is doing with its promotion of madrassas and mosques throughout the world.
It is one thing for Muslims to want religious instruction for their children. It is an entirely situation if the local school or mosque becomes a carrier of a totalitarian ideology that tells children that they must not have any non-Muslim friends. It is important to distinguish the two so Muslim schools in the West are controlled by rational Muslims who sincerely want to live in peace with their neighbors. Unfortunately, that is not happening enough.
