Re: I was talking about pope so pay attention.....
Forget the Pope... I ,too, fell for the Judeo-Protestant spiel and used to believe that the Catholic Church had been Hitler's best friend --until I read Richard Evans' superb second volume on the history of the Third Reich(*)...
Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Protestant Fuehrer.
The Protestant churches in Nazi Germany
GARNET PEET (1960 - 1987)
[...]
Hitler dealt first with the Roman Catholics. After discussions with the archbishops, who conferred with the pope, a concordat or agreement was signed in June 1933. The concordat assured the church (on paper) of its privileges and was intended to guarantee either its neutrality or its support for the Nazi regime. The Roman Catholic Centre Party was disbanded.
Hitler and the Protestants
When Hitler turned his attention to the Protestants, he faced a different situation. How does one deal with at least twenty-eight different church federations? The national assembly of these churches had no real authority, and the Protestants had neither archbishop nor pope. Hitler therefore decided to create such a figure. He suggested that the Protestant churches elect or appoint a national bishop who would sit in the religious affairs department (the Ministry of Cults) of the national government.
The reaction of some German church leaders was ecstatic, witness this message:
Through God's intercession, our beloved German Fatherland has experienced a mighty exaltation. In this turning point in history we hear, as faithful evangelical Christians, the call of God to a closing of ranks and a return, the call also for a single German Evangelical Church .... The Confessions are its unalterable basis .... A national bishop of the Lutheran confession stands at its head .... Christ comes again and brings an eternal completion in the majesty of His Kingdom.
Although not all Protestants voiced these sentiments, a general feeling of elation grew in the Protestant churches. Miracles seemed to be happening. The Protestants were asked once again to play a role in the affairs of the nation. They were even offered a chance to form a national, unified church. Could all this simply be coincidence? It seemed to be the hand of God at work in Germany. He was calling the churches back to their old place and task in the midst of the nation.
The Fuehrer was popular. He was giving work to the millions of unemployed. The country was picking up rapidly. Nationalism was growing. Leftists were being suppressed[**]. Surely the Lord was with such a man as Adolf Hitler! Provincial churches united and synod after synod voiced its approval of a national church under one bishop. Few, very few people realized that all was not well. Fewer still issued warnings.
The "German Christians"
There was no excuse for this mass approval of Nazism by the German Protestants or, for that matter, by any other German group. They could have been aware of Hitler's ideology and aims: he had revealed much of them in his autobiography Mein Kampf, published in the twenties. They could also have an inkling of what was likely to happen to the German churches if the Nazis gained power. Long before January 1933, when Hitler became chancellor, groups had arisen in Germany which attempted to combine Christianity with the type of paganism that the Nazis also espoused or would espouse. In 1932, that is, before Hitler became chancellor, a number of these groups had united in what came to be known as the movement of the "German Christians" (Deutsche Christen).
This movement espoused the Nazi party's "positive Christianity," which is meant, among other things, that it denied sin and depravity, as well as humility, and that it stressed nationalism and the saving character of the state. The church, as part of the state, was to march alongside the people to bring it to its earthly paradise. As Karl Barth described it, "The state is eternal, equal to the Bible in expressing God's will. The Fuehrer is equal to the commands of God, rather, he is above them." With Hegel, Nietzsche, Rosenberg, and Wagner as their prophets, the "German Christians" preached their perverted gospel.
Their movement consisted of various streams. There were conservative Lutherans, who merely wanted a political voice in the new state, were against war debts, democracy, and the exclusion of the churches under the Weimar regime. Another stream propagated the religion of the "Volk," an old, nineteenth-century idea. According to this group, Christ came to help Germans fulfil their potential as a separate folk and nation, with its own law: that of struggle. Germans were born for struggle: they would fulfil their folkishness by that means. The call to arms and slogan for the Christian life was "struggle, cross, and sacrifice" over against "false and weak freedom." Christian ethics, such as those of the Sermon on the Mount, belonged to the kingdom of heaven, not to the earthly German one. Weaklings and non-Aryans were not to be allowed. Euthanasia was good; it would help keep the folk pure and strong. War also was good: it would bring the highest religion of all (Christianity) to other peoples, and it would bring the greatest folk of all, the Germans, to full fruition as rulers of lesser peoples and churches and religions. The Germans were the super race, the Herrenvolk.
Needless to say, Marxism, socialism, pacifism, as well as Jews and blacks and other non-Aryans, were to be rejected. Church confessions were declared outdated, and race and people, blood and soil, became the standards. Hitler stood next to Christ as the leader of all Germany, the manifestation of the divine in history. Hitler as Fuehrer was infallible, and revealed God's will to men better than any Bible or confession, History had given Germany its messiah.
The "German Christians" in action
It was especially these "German Christians" who pushed for a national church under one bishop and one Fuehrer. Once Hitler consolidated his power in the course of 1933, their influence grew tremendously. They had members in every provincial church-governing body and were openly supported by members of the Nazi party, many of whom now joined the church. It was the patriotic thing to do. The church was not only a religious body, but also a bulwark of morals and of German traditions. Storm-troopers and Hitler Youth came to church in full uniform. What an impressive sight to see more than a hundred young men march to church on Sunday in uniform and sit in the front pews. Mass marriages were rigged; army bands in SS uniform played. The spectacles drew many to the churches.
In April 1933 Hitler appointed his friend Ludwig Mueller, a member of the "German Christians," as his advisor in church affairs. Having moderated his movement's platform to some extent, Mueller offered himself as candidate for the position of national bishop. The churches, at a national meeting held in May, put forth their own candidate, however, a respected conservative. Mueller was defeated. In revenge, the "German Christians" prevailed upon the government to dismiss various conservatives from church-governing bodies and to replace them with "German Christians." After these purges, and with the endorsement of Hitler himself, Mueller was now easily elected bishop. The church order was changed, and the so-called Aryan Paragraph introduced which stated that no one of non-Aryan background, or married to someone of non-Aryan background, could serve as either pastor or church official. Those pastors and officials who had married a non-Aryan were to be dismissed.
It was these developments in the summer and early fall of 1933 that at last began to act as eye-openers for an increasing number of German Protestants.
[...]
Failures and achievements
Resistance, however, was engaged in by too small a minority; it started too late, and it was too hesitant. Not only Karl Barth - actually one of the leaders of the opposition movement - admitted shortcomings in his stance under Hitler, but so did Niemoeller and many others. After the war, in October 1945, the Stuttgart Manifesto was published wherein the German churches expressed their collective guilt:
With great pain we say: Through us, infinite suffering has been brought upon many peoples and countries. What we have often declared before our congregations, that we now declare in the name of the whole church: For long years we struggled in the name of Jesus Christ against the spirit which found its frightful expression in the National Socialist regime of force; nevertheless,we accuse ourselves of not having confessed more courageously, prayed more faithfully, believed more joyfully and loved more ardently. Now a new beginning must be made in our churches.
There was reason for self-reproach and penitence. It is only fair to say, however, that there were also achievements, inadequate as they may have been. Perhaps the situation was best described by Karl Barth when he wrote:
The Confessing Church stands condemned by the message of its own Barmen Confession. And for this, it has been properly and improperly reproached.
Properly insofar as a strong Christian Church . . . should not have remained on the defensive and should not have fought on its own narrow front alone;
Improperly insofar as on this admittedly all too narrow front a serious battle was waged ....
In proportion to its task, the Church has sufficient reason to be ashamed that it did not do more; yet in comparison with those other groups and institutions (the German universities and schools, the legal profession, business, theatre and art, the army and the trade unions) it has no reason to be ashamed; it accomplished far more than all the rest.
Causes of the failures
To have done more than the rest was not enough, and the reasons why believers in Germany failed to prevent the Nazis from bringing disaster to their own country and to the world still deserve careful consideration. In his book from which I have quoted earlier, J.S. Conway suggests four main reasons for this failure. I will summarize them, adding comments of my own. Conway's four reasons are:
1. Narrow individualism, especially the ingrained tradition of Pietism with its subjectivism; the belief that "politics do not concern the Church, and an almost Manichaean conviction that the affairs of political and social life are irredeemable." I would add that neither Barth or Barmen adequately addressed this problem.
2. Submissive allegiance to the state, that is, "the characteristic German readiness to accept the existing political order without criticism and to exact obedience to established authority." "The German church was not equipped with a theology adequate to sustain any critical attack upon the actions of its political rulers, and for that reason, even at the end of the Nazi era, there was no more than what Professor Wolf has called a 'reluctant resistance.'
I agree here: the Lutheran teaching of two kingdoms, one of this world and political affairs and the other the Kingdom of God, paralyzed many. Yet to say, as at least one author did, that Karl Barth was a Reformed Protestant, and to see "in the political activism of that Calvinist tradition a better protection against political totalitarianism than in the teaching of Luther," may be putting it too simply. First of all, Barth did not stand completely in the Reformed, Calvinist tradition. As K. Schilder showed, his theology did not comprehend the Calvinist stress on Christ as King and Redeemer of all spheres of life. Furthermore, many of Hitler's opponents were Lutherans, in Germany and in the Scandinavian countries. Although I, too, am inclined to say that a truly Reformed theology and preaching prepares the believer better than a truly Lutheran system to resist a tyrannical government, it is clear that one must beware of generalizations.
3. Pursuit of pseudo-Christian doctrines. The author refers here especially to the "German Christians" with their vague knowledge of Christianity and their political opportunism. Again I agree that this movement weakened the church considerably. At this point mention should also be made of the rapid process of secularization during the interwar years, and of the fact that the churches were Volks kirchen, where people of all convictions and none could feel at home. Indeed, as Barth said, the whole German church was so steeped in false, unbiblical theology that it hardly realized that Hitler was not the messiah until it was too late.
4. Doctrinaire anticommunism. The churches were conservative and deadly afraid of communism. That gave them tunnel vision. They saw Hitler as the only one who could save Germany from a Bolshevik takeover. He sounded so good, so authoritarian, so Christian. He promised to maintain the status quo, exalted faith and morality, was nationalistic, appealed for unity of church and people. I would take this as a warning for us today, that we do not simply vote anti-left and think all is well, but that we carefully consider what both left and right have to offer.
[...]
spindleworks.com
(*) On the warpath
In The Third Reich in Power, Richard Evans brilliantly conveys how the Fuhrer reignited Germans' pride as he led them to catastrophe, says Neal Ascherson
Sunday January 1, 2006
The Observer
The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939
Richard J Evans
Allen Lane £30, pp941
observer.guardian.co.uk
[**] Message 21882231 |
