Adolf Hitler was
hostile towards Christianity. He openly
renounced the Catholicism of his upbringing and came to view Christianity as ‘a
fairy story invented by the Jews.’ Yet he
also dismissed atheism.
Positive Christianity
When the Nazi Party
was founded in the 1920s it formally adopted ‘Positive Christianity’. Positive Christianity rejected Christianity’s
ethic of compassion and humility in favour of a more ‘heroic’ Jesus.
‘The Jews and their Lies’
Tragically antisemitism in the Christian church stretches all the way back to the Church Fathers. For example, Tertullian had a particular dislike of Jews and even Augustine felt that Jews should be reminded of their participation in the death of Jesus.
The following is a
quote from ‘The Jews and their Lies’:
First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able
toss in sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some
hellfire. That would demonstrate to God our serious resolve and be evidence to
all the world that it was in ignorance that we tolerated such houses, in which
the Jews have reviled God, our dear Creator and Father, and his Son most
shamefully up till now but that we have now given them their due reward.”
Kristallnacht
Luther’s words have terrible resonance in the awful events of
Kristallnacht. This was a pogrom carried
out against the Jews by SA paramilitary forces and civilians on 9th
and 10th November 1938. The
German authorities looked on without intervening. The name ‘Crystal Night’ comes from the
shards of broken glass that littered the streets from the broken windows of
Jewish owned stores, buildings and synagogues.
Liberal theology
The liberal
theology of the early twentieth-century also resonated to anti-Semite
thinking. Miracles like the virgin birth
were discounted. Some suggested that
Mary was actually impregnated by a Roman soldier and the ‘myth’ of the virgin
birth was an attempt to cover this up.
The respected liberal theologian Adolf von Harnack thought that
Christianity went so far beyond Judaism that the Old Testament might not belong
in the Christian Bible at all. Few
Christians in the 1920s would have gone this far, but many were downplaying the
Jewish origins of their Christian faith.
Aryan Paragraph
In 1933 the ruling
Nazi Brownshirts unleashed a wave of anti-Semitic violence. Hundreds of Jews were murdered. There was a boycott against Jewish
businesses. The ‘Aryan Paragraph’ was a
law that excluded Jews from public office.
New National Church
When the Nazis took
power, the German Protestant church consisted of a federation of independent
churches which included Lutheran, Reformed and United traditions. In 1933 the leadership of the Protestant
federation agreed to write a new constitution for a new ‘national’ church. This would be called The German Evangelical
Church.
The church adopted
the Aryan Paragraph that effectively defrocked clergy of a Jewish descent and
even clergy married to non-Aryans.
German Christians
The ‘German
Christians’ were a group of pro-Nazis in the Protestant Church. They were sympathetic to the Nazi’s goal of
‘co-ordinating’ the individual Protestant churches into a uniform Reich church.
On 13th
November 1933 a rally of ‘German Christians’ was held in Berlin. Before a packed hall banners proclaimed the
unity of National Socialism and Christianity.
Swastikas were also on display. A
series of speakers called for the removal of pastors who were unsympathetic to
National Socialism, the removal of the Old Testament from the Bible and the
addition of a more ‘heroic’ interpretation of Jesus who should be portrayed as
battling corrupt Jewish influences.
The Confessing Church
This movement was
primarily religious rather than political.
They were opposed to government-sponsored efforts to unify all
Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German Evangelical Church.
Out of a population of 65 million, 45 million were Protestants. There were 18,000 Protestant pastors. In 1935, 3,000 of these strongly adhered to the ‘German Christian’ faction of the church and 3,000 strongly adhered to the ‘Confessing Church’ faction. In 1933 there were 525,000 Jews in Germany. There were 150,000 ‘Free Church’ Protestants.
The Barman Declaration of Faith
May 1934. This was primarily authored by the notable
Swiss Theologian Karl Barth with the help of other protesting pastors. It reaffirmed the belief that the German
church was not an ‘organ of the state’ and that state control over the church
was doctrinally false. This declaration
became the foundation of the Confessing Church.
In May 1936 the
confessing Church addressed a polite, but firm, memorandum to Hitler. This memorandum protested against the Nazi
regime’s anti-Christian tendencies, its antisemitism and demanded that they
stop interfering in the internal affairs of the Protestant church.
Hitler’s responded
by arresting several hundred pastors, confiscating funds of the Confessing
Church and forbidding Confessing churches from taking up offerings.
Some of the leaders
of the Confessing Church were sent to concentration camps. Some risked their lives by hiding Jews during
the war. Bonhoeffer lamented the timid
silence of much of the Confessing Church
The Nazis attitude towards the church
In 13th February
1937 the Minister of Church Affairs spoke to churchmen explaining that
‘Positive Christianity is national Socialism … National Socialism is the doing
of God’s will … [Doctor Zoellner} has tried to tell me that Christianity
consist in faith in Christ as the son of God.
That makes me laugh … Christianity is not dependant on the Apostle’s
Creed … the German people are now called … by the Fuhrer to a real Christianity
… The Fuhrer is the herald of a new revelation.’
When the war came
in 1939 the German Christians longed to provide military chaplains. They hailed the war as a great sacrament of
blood. But the Nazi’s were unimpressed. They limited the number of chaplains and
there was even a so-called Uriah Law—where chaplains were sent to the front of
combat. Hitler’s view was that ‘the best
thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.’
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
was a young Confessing Church pastor who saw Nazism for what it was. He saw the Nazi regime as no longer being a
state but as a criminal conspiracy. He
became active in a failed plot to kill Hitler.
In 1945 he was hanged. He
lamented that even the Confessing Church had not adequately stood up to
Hitler. Remember that the Confessing
Church primarily had theological rather than political objections to the
Nazis. He explained that when it came to
evils done by the state the average Christian scarcely consulted their
conscience. However, when it came to
resisting the Nazis their conscience was full of scruples. While many Christians would not agree with
taking part in an assignation plot surely there is a call to stand up to state
evil.
Am I my brother’s keeper?
The majority of
Protestants sided neither with the German Christians or the Confessing
Church. Many within the Confessing
Church did not speak out against the persecutions of the Jews and others. Smaller churches like the Methodists, New
Apostolic Church and sects like the Christian Science seemed concerned
primarily with protecting themselves.
The Nazi’s generally left these smaller groups alone. However, the Jehovah Witnesses did suffer
under the Nazi’s. While their Watchtower
magazine explained that they hated the Jews as much as any other religion, they
were disliked for being pacifists and they refused to use the ‘Heil Hitler’
salute.
But why were so
many Christians apathetic towards or even supportive of the Nazis? Maybe like Cain they felt that they were not
their bother’s keeper! I suggest a few
reasons leads Christians then and know to keep their mouths shut in the face of
political evil:
1. Fear: This has to be the biggest
reason for political inaction now as then.
Who wants to put their head up when that will bring them into the firing
line?
2. Pragmatism: We face a danger of
being too political as well as not being political enough. It is sad to see churches split over
legitimate political disagreement. It is
sad to see people put their politics ahead of their love for fellow
believers. But this desire not to rock
the boat can be dangerous when the time comes to speak instead of stay
silent. We have to ask ourselves ‘am I
prone to being too politically divisive or too unwilling to challenge the
status quo?
3. Ignorance: Some Christians
welcomed the rise of the Nazis because it countered some of the rising
secularism at the time. Some thought
that National Socialism would be a stepping stone to national revival, and that
when the national revival happened the uglier face of Nazism would
disappear. They were willing to overlook
Hitler’s many faults because they thought there were aspects in which he might
help their agenda. Remember that John
the Baptist did not think King Herod’s personal life was off limits!
4. Naivety: Some believers told
themselves stories of how Hitler carried a well-thumbed New Testament in his
pocket. Even in 1941 a rumour spread
that Hitler had experienced a Christian conversion and now confessed Christian
faith.
5. Spite: The sad truth is that many
people approved of Hitler’s anti-Semitism.
It reflected their own tribal hatreds.
A narrow sense of patriotic nationalism is not hard to stoke up in our
proud and arrogant hearts. People like
to be told that they belong to a special and superior people.
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