The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Tuesday, December 16, 2025

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.Part I (00:14 – 11:32)Horrible Attacks on Bondi Beach and at Brown University: The Casualties Mount, and the Issues RagePart II (11:32 – 17:11)The Problem of Islam: This is Not Just a Problem of a Lack of AssimilationPart III (17:11 – 20:56)Religious Liberty in Canada is Dying: A Change in Canada’s Religious Exemption Law Would Allow the Bible to Be Labeled as Hate SpeechPart IV (20:56 – 25:35)The Return to Times New Roman: The State Department Establishes Times New Roman as Its Official Typeface – It Matters More Than You Might ThinkSign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Tuesday, December 16, 2025. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. The scene of horror unfolded on one of the iconic beaches of Australia over the weekend when two shooters began attacking a group of people gathered for a Hanukkah celebration, part of the Jewish community there. There were some other guests as well. But at least as of now, 16 persons were killed. and several others were wounded. The victims included a 10-year-old child, a little girl, along with a rabbi

and a Holocaust survivor. Survive the Holocaust only to die in this onslaught that unfolded on Bandai Beach. We are looking here at something that is now becoming a pattern, even a pattern of recent days, not to mention a pattern of years, and as I'm going to argue, a pattern of centuries.

What we're looking at here is a far bigger question. that many people want to acknowledge. It has to do with the openness of Western societies. It has to do with the conflict between the West and Islam. It has to do with the practical problems of mass immigration. And there are very few who want to talk about these things out loud. I think that that is our responsibility.

Now, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal at least hinted at this this and a piece they ran about various attacks and arrests made in various places. They mentioned not only the mass shooting there on Bandai Beach and Australia aimed at the Jewish community, no question, and it is suspected that there were Islamic shooters, a father and a son. And then you look at the fact that last Friday, German police arrested five men, three Moroccans, a Syrian, and an Egyptian, as the journal said, quote, on suspicion of planning an attack on a Christmas market. There are other things. And so you have other headlines that are all put together here. And you're also looking at an attack that took place in Syria. There are commonalities.

One of the commonalities here is that you have an undeniable trend of anti-Semitism. It's an ugly outbreak of anti-Semitism. And in this case, you have to say, is this politically occasioned? I don't think that's a sufficient explanation. I think this is ancient hatreds. I don't think this is just a modern development. And I think we're going to fool ourselves and confuse ourselves if we see this as just a modern development. I'm not going to go through all the headlines about all the attacks, all the outbreaks of anti-Semitism. I do want to go back to the three issues that I mentioned. We are looking at the fact that you have free societies that are increasingly unfree. And it is because you look at this. And even if the police declare that Bondi Beach is now

fully open and that security concerns have been met. And then you also have the president of Brown University having to respond to a mass shooting that took place. And it took place in a classroom with a Jewish professor. And in this case, they had a suspect. The suspect we are told is no longer a suspect is now being released. That means the suspect has not been found or located. And we're looking at an undeniable pattern. And it is an assault upon the freedom of assembly. It's an attack upon the freedom of free societies. Carl Popper, 20th century philosopher, spoke of the difference between open and closed societies. We could simply summarize it more or less than free and unfree societies. In a free society, in an open society, you have the ability, for instance, of Jewish citizens,

friends and family to gather on a public beach there in Sydney for a Hanukkah celebration. But the very fact that they were known to do that meant that they were also susceptible to the kind of planned, strategic, intentional, premeditated terror attack that was actually what happened there over the weekend on Bondi Beach and with such murderous results. I don't think most of us have come to terms with how this is happening so fast, even in the United States. Free assembly is actually being cut down. Not so much by the government taking. an unconstitutional action, but simply by the society itself becoming unsafe for that kind of assembly. Now, let me just tell you that on college campuses, the rules are constantly changing.

Some of this is driven by DEI and all kinds of leftist ideology. Some of it is taking place just out of a rational response to what could be defined as a clear and present danger. So, are ideological and political considerations here? Yeah. But whether you're from the right or the left. The reality is the cost of holding a public event has gone skyrocketing high. You now have to arrange, in many cases, for security or for private police. You have to have screening. And yes, I think this has been disproportionate in terms of how it's fallen out on the political spectrum. And you just have to think of the assassination of Charlie Kirk earlier this year to understand that that will require all the rules to be changed, even if the rules aren't changed, the insurance coverage will

change. In other words, things are going to change whether or not universities and colleges initiate the changes. It's going to happen. And free expression, free assembly, the gathering of people together for the exchange of ideas, the ability of students to meet, the ability of just institutions to have any openness at all, to operate freely. How long is it going to be before every single school basically is behind some kind of military encampment? How long is it going to be before the cost of some kind of assembly in the public is simply going to be too high? How long is it going to be before, in effect, the freedom of Western societies disappears? There are two other issues, and they're going to require a lot of attention in coming weeks and months.

As a matter of fact, I think we're in a civilizational struggle, so these issues are going to continue for a considerable amount of time. and one of them simply has to do with immigration. There is no way around it. This is a part of the picture there in Australia. It's a part of the picture in so many of these attacks. It's a part of the picture in so many nations. And you see a pushback on this across the political spectrum. And you also see it in some very unusual ways.

Perhaps you haven't noticed. In the United States, for some time, it was basically people on the right who were making this case. pretty loudly for restricting immigration. But you'll notice that defenses of, say, open borders and all of this, which was a part of liberal discourse, that has gone dormant and at least softer. You don't see many people even on the political left or in the Washington spectrum. You don't see many Democrats standing up and becoming vociferous, vocal, very loud defenders of unrestricted immigration. No, as a matter of fact, the Overton window, as it's called on that, has shifted significantly. The acceptable discourse now is what kind of appropriate immigration restrictions should be in place.

Now, one of the problems on the left right now is that they will fight actually coming up with those restrictions. And a part of it is because their own coalitions are so fractured over these issues. Their movement on this is very, very limited. and yet the public eventually is going to demand a change to this situation. That is happening in Western European nations. It has already been happening over the course of the last several years. It is a big issue in Germany right now. I mentioned the arrest of those who were suspected and coming from Islamic lands

who were arrested in anticipation of the fact they were plotting a Christmas market attack. Christmas markets, by the way, are an exercise in free economics, also free assembly, and free expression there in Germany. They're a very important part of the Christmas culture. And so this is an attack at the very heart of Germany, the very heart of German culture, the very idea of German liberty. And you see a clash here,

and immigration is a big part of this. And we have seen this, by the way, in previous attacks on Christmas markets in Germany. We've seen it so much so that I do not even dare right now to try to catalog him. The reality is the list is overwhelming. The fact is that mass immigration, as many Western nations sought to undertake plans or policies acknowledged or unacknowledged on open immigration,

they have led to disaster. Now, that's not to say that they have led in every case to disaster. That would be an overclaim. It is to say the pattern itself has created a massive vulnerability within societies. And one of the things a society requires, one of the things a civilization requires is a commitment to the civilizational principle. And if you allow people who do not buy into, do not support, will not work towards your civilizational project, you're in big trouble because you have just brought into your own, your own country, you have just brought into your own culture, those who absolutely want to transform it, or, at the very least, do not want to have anything to do with becoming a part of it. And there's more to this, as we shall get to the issue of Islam, but on the

issue of immigration, and when you have immigrant communities that are unmeltable ethnics, that's what some of the reference was to back in the 20th century. They simply do not become a part of the larger society. They see themselves as separate from it. That is a huge problem. In Australia, over the course of the last 25 years, the percentage of the population who have been immigrants has increased from 23% to 34%. Okay, do the math. From 23% to 34%. That means that right now, one out of three persons legally in Australia is an immigrant. Now, that could be a good thing. I think we're we now know that's not a good thing. It could be a good thing if all of those people or even the vast, vast majority of those people were absolutely committed to continuing the

civilizational project of Australia. But we now know that is not the case. The civilizational project of Australia would include a welcome and protection of Jewish citizens there. We see that that is something this father and son definitely did not buy into. Now exactly what policies should a nation have? I believe a nation should have a national interest. immigration policy. As a matter of fact, I'm going to argue that's what is going to happen competently or incompetently in almost any situation. And so even when you look at Germany's very open receptivity to a lot of migrants coming in even from lands where they had very different civilizational commitments, coming in, in particular over the last 15 years, and specifically

under the leadership of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, she claimed this is in Germany's best interest as a matter of national honor, it's really a matter of national duty. And you see, when those arguments, when those arguments take place, as is clear in Germany right now, many of the politicians who put those policies in place, claiming this is right for Germany now, even over against overwhelming opposition in her own country, the fact is, as is the case with Angela Barclayorkel, they're generally, you know, retired from office before the consequences show up. But I have to get to the third issue here. It's not just the loss of freedom in free societies. It's not just the problem of immigration and the fact that incompetent, wrong, reckless immigration laws or the disregard of immigration laws leads to a civilizational crisis.

It is also, thirdly, that in this case, the specific crisis, we do know. We cannot honestly not know. Overwhelmingly, it is an Islamic crisis. Now, there are those who want to deny this, and they are absolutely determined to show. shut down any public conversation. And quite frankly, if you dare to talk about these things out loud, there are many people who are going to say, you know, you're an Islamophob. That's the current kind of language is being used. But I want to go back to the fact that this isn't personal. This is indeed civilizational. I am very indebted to Samuel Huntington back from the 20th century and he made

very clear that Islamic civilization is a very different civilization than Western civilization. It starts with a radically different theology, and it ends up with a radically different vision of society. And as a matter of fact, they're so radically different, they're irreconcilable. And, you know, there are people who are going to counter that and say, well, look at Zeram Mondani, very liberal, you know, pro-LGB, pro-abortion, pro all these things, and he's a Muslim. Yes, but I don't think he's a Muslim who could show up as a Muslim in Muslim-dominated countries and make his case. That is to say, what we have in virtually all, all of the West are people who have accommodated themselves to modernity and to secularism,

one way or the other. So you have liberal Jewish citizens. You have plenty of liberal people who identify as Christians, liberal denominations, liberal preachers, liberal bishops, and all the rest. They will endorse everything of the far left. But they don't have any legitimate claim on Orthodox biblical historic Christianity. And so you say, well, there are liberal Christians. Yep. And you know what? In a Christian society, liberal Christians will show up in a way that's not true about liberal Muslims in, well, you could name the country, especially in the Middle East, where let's just say there is no real moderate Muslim population for good reason. Now, we don't have time to unpack all of this today, but we need to say enough, and we need to make very clear that a part of the central theological logic of Islam is territorial in a way that isn't true of Christianity, has never been true of Christianity. Where you have had, for instance, the claim that this is Christian territory, what it really means is this is where Christians constitute a majority and where a basic Christian understanding of human dignity and human law and all this prevails.

That's very different than the Muslim understanding of territory, which means that in the Muslim worldview, the world is actually divided between the world of Islam and the world of war, where there is the responsibility of Muslims to, wage the battle to bring those unconquered parts of the civilization under Muslim control, under the rule of the Quran. Now, there is no such thing when you look at Judaism or Christianity. It's a very different logic. But then again, Muhammad was a very, very different founder. And when it comes to people in the West, there once was a time when in the West you had people who were in office who understood the difference and understood the threat. But now you have an absolute naivete for decades on the part of many Western leaders who just assume that everyone can be enticed to conform to a Western historic understanding of human rights

of the process of law, of the status of nations, of the ideal of citizenship, and all the rest. Clearly, that isn't true. It should have been clear at every single point. And that is not to say there cannot be some persons who will identify as this or that who can blend in well in the United States. It is to say that we have a conflict of theologies, we have a conflict of worldviews, we have a conflict of civilizations, and to deny it is sheer idiocy. And it comes hand at hand, by the way, with those who are the cultured elites in the United States and Europe, who want to suggest that Christianity had basically nothing to do with the formation of Western civilization, or that you can have a continuation of Western civilization with its

understandings of human dignity and all the rest after having abandoned Christianity. And the other thing to notice is that when Christianity is abandoned, it isn't followed by a vacuum. That is impossible. It is followed by something stronger. When a weak theology abandons the ground, what follows is a strong theology. And understand this, Islam is a very strong theology. All right, so many issues here for us to have to consider. Our hearts go out to the people of Australia, and in particular to the Jewish community there, to students at Brown University and all involved, unfortunately, the list is long and the casualties

mount. And the denial yet continues. It's going to be very interesting to see where this conversation goes. I'm not one to offer very many predictions, but I will say this. I don't think this situation can remain as it is. You see right now enormous pushback in Western Europe, simply because of those who are not assimilating into these societies. And over time, you had the liberals say, the society should feel guilty for the fact that this assimilation isn't taking place. No, that that is not the fact. The problem here is not that the societies aren't genuinely open. It is that there are so many people who genuinely do not want an open society. All right, while we're speaking about religious liberty, it's important to understand that the fight for religious liberty is everywhere all the time, even when you don't think it is. And when you look at the nation of Canada, you're looking at a nation that at least is confronting the possibility. of increasing encroachments on religious liberty in the name of appropriate government action. The thing to watch right now, and the Telegraph in London is reporting on this, I think, very helpfully. The point is that the justice minister and the current liberal government, Sean Fraser,

is now arguing for changes to Canada's criminal code, particularly related to what's often called hate speech, very problematic category, obviously. And under the current criminal code, there in Canada, Canada, the crime is being found guilty of, quote, willful promotion of hatred, but exempted from the grounds are statements, quote, made in good faith and based on belief in a religious text. Ooh, that's interesting, isn't it? Explicit carve out here, supposedly, for beliefs that are based on a religious text. Now, remember that we have had politicians in some Western nations even arrested for and prosecuted for reading from the scripture. So in other words, the scripture itself is defined as hate speech. And now you see that at least in one case, you have the justice minister there in the Karni government in Canada, suggesting that just maybe these changes need to take place. It would be, in this case, in the form of an amendment to the Combating Hate Act, which we are told is currently working its way through Canada's parliament.

We're also told that civil liberties groups and religious groups have complained, what's described here is a groundswell of op. opposition, but it's also clear that some of the provinces are already moving in this direction there in Canada, and so is the logic. Now, something else is interesting is that another minister in this government, Mark Miller, who's the minister of Canadian identity and culture, we're told that he in testimony told a parliamentary committee there in Canada that the Bible contains, quote, clear hatred towards, for example, homosexuals. And quote, that's his phrase, clear hatred towards, for example, homosexuals. Okay.

So I think I can think of some of the biblical texts they're thinking of. But you'll notice here that that would be redefined if this law has changed as hate speech. So that the Bible would now be hate speech. And don't fool yourselves. It will not simply be the scriptural text. It will be any preacher who preaches on them. It will be anyone who dares to cite them. It will be anyone who reads them out loud.

All of this will be a potential hate crime, hate speech crime. The logic of hate speech is itself problematic. Not because we don't think hate speech exists and not because we don't think it's a moral issue. but because once the government steps in, it is almost assuredly going to shut down free speech in the name of eliminating hate speech. And that's because government is a blunt instrument. And quite frankly, government is always political. And government, once something is on the laws, will create an entire culture in which it shifts from what might I say that might get me arrested to how can I say that so I don't get arrested. The shift in that logic means actually the end of religious liberty.

It's also interesting that the removal of specific language, the two words good faith as a religious exemption, it's very interesting that the opponents of the current law who want to see it revised so that the scripture might be considered legally or criminalized as hate speech, it's also clear that the two words good faith are words they don't want to go together. Good faith no longer would play a role. I think that also tells us a lot of what's going on here. Now, all right, we've talked about some really big issues today, and that's what we're here for.

But sometimes we also need to see signals in the culture that might not make such controversial headlines, but are actually interesting. So why would the national media give attention to the typeface that is now a part of the rulebook of the U.S. State Department? Why would there be interest in this? It is because the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has ordered that in the State Department, the official typeface, and this does matter a lot because anything that comes out is a statement, what you see on the website and all the rest. He says it should now be Times New Roman as a typeface rather than what had been in place, in particular under the Biden administration.

So this is over typeface. Does it matter? I'm going to argue, yes, it matters. I think the Secretary of State has done something here that's really important. It's not the kind of thing on which as a single act civilization stands or falls, that would be an exaggeration. But it is also not irrelevant. It is relevant. What does the United States government look like when it's communicating, even what is the typeface? Now, the older typeface was something that was far less formal. The Biden administration typeface, far less formal.

And I'm not going to go into all the typography. It was Calibri, by the way. And it just didn't look so official. It looks unofficial. Now, the State Department is going back to Times New Roman. Times New Roman is not ancient. It just looks ancient. When I say that's a distinction, it is because it is based on a Latinit tradition.

It is based upon, well, just imagine the carvings in capital letters on the buildings of ancient Rome. That beautiful chiseled Latin. That is exactly what Times New Roman is seeking to reproduce, but it has two achievements over the old Latin. Number one, it has lowercase letters. That turns out to be important, too. We don't shout everything. The other thing that Times New Roman developed in 1931 offers is that it can be adjusted to fit a page through kerning or through the compression of the typeface so that you really don't see the compression, but the words line up or at least the columns line up, the margins line up. And so anyway, that's just an interesting thing.

And you say, this is a really small act and why is it getting any attention you ask? Well, indeed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that one of the reasons was to save money just to have a continuing typeface the State Department would use so that you don't have to redo everything. But more than that, it states authority and tradition, respect continuity. It looks like a government document ought to look. A government document that, by the way, represents a government. that when it puts up a monument,

tends to use a very formal font typeface in order to signal the importance of the monument. The department did use some language to describe the change, quote, to restore decorum and professionalism to the department's written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program. The department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface.

That was actually put in a cable to American diplomats all over the world. use times new Roman. Why? Because it matters. Yes, it does matter. One simple way to explain the need for this change, by the way, is that if you're changing the font all the time, especially if you're getting outside of traditional fonts going into, well, by definition, or non-traditional fonts, you end up dating all of your documents like, well, the fashions of the day and the colors that were popular. You can walk in some rooms and say, wow, this was done in the 1970s. That should not be true of official correspondence with government authority and documents related to the United

States government. Honestly, I use Times New Roman and just about everything that I do because I like the way it looks. It says continuity. And I like that. Just because it's a new document doesn't mean that it has to look particularly new. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.org.org. For information on Boyce College, just go to voicecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.