Rob Phillips wrote in the Baptist Press:
In America, where there are an estimated 7 million followers, Islam is growing at a 6 percent annual rate. White Americans are the fastest-growing segment of U.S. Islam, and 80-85 percent of all U.S. Muslims consider themselves former Christians. If present trends continue, every major U.S. city will be predominantly Muslim by 2020, [Carl] Ellis warned. ... “We must understand that there is a comprehensive plan in progress to Islamicize America and the West,” said Ellis, noting that since 1973 the Organization of Islamic Conference has spent about $105 billion in this effort, much of it funded by Middle East oil revenues.
Personally, I don’t find these numbers very believable. Phillips is almost certainly defining Christianity in a very narrow way, excluding just about all self-professed Christians outside of evangelical and fundamentalist circles. On the other hand, I don’t very much doubt that there may be genuine efforts to convert the West to Islam.
Now American Christians know how the Muslims in the Middle East feel when evangelicals send over their missionaries. It’s not every comfortable, is it?
It’s worth noting the explicit reference here to how efforts to “Islamicize” America are being funded by “Middle East oil revenues.” The ways in which our purchases of oil end up funding things we don’t like, for example extremist Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and terrorism elsewhere, sometimes intrudes on the thoughts of conservative Christians. Unfortunately, few seem to concentrate hard enough on this idea to arrive at the obvious conclusion that perhaps we should find ways to spend less on oil.
Christian Right & Christian Nationalism:
Christian Right Issues & Agenda:
More About Islam:
So, the Baptists believe the country is being taken over by the Mexican Muslim Homosexual agenda?
Even if Phillips’ numbers are accurate, and even if the 6% growth rate actually continued for another 14 years, by 2020 the number of Muslims would have barely doubled, from 7 million to about 15.8 million. Or, from about 2.3% of the population to about 5.25%. (This is not taking overall American population growth into account either.) That’s hardly enough to make Islam qualify as a majority in any major city I’m aware of.