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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (7692)	6/20/2010 6:08:53 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

The option to be taken off the church rolls (Kirchenaustritt) has existed in Germany since 1873, when Otto von Bismarck had introduced it as part of the Kulturkampf aimed against Catholicism.[15] For parity this was made possible for Protestants, too, and for the next 40 years it was mostly they who took advantage of it.[15] Statistics exist since 1884 for the Protestant churches and since 1917 for the Catholic Church.[15] An analysis of this data for the time of the Nazi rule is available in a paper by Sven Granzow et al., published in a collection edited by Götz Aly. Altogether more Protestants than Catholics left their church, however, overall Protestants and Catholics decided similarly.[16] The number of Kirchenaustritte reached its "historical high"[17] in 1939 when it peaked at 480 000. Granzow et al. see the numbers not only in relation to the Nazi policy towards the churches,[18] (which changed drastically from 1935 onwards) but also as indicator of the trust in the Führer and the Nazi leadership. The decline in the number of people who left the church after 1942 is explained as resulting from a loss of confidence in the future of Nazi Germany. People tended to keep their ties to the church, because they feared an uncertain future.[17] ..... Nazi Attitudes towards Christianity Hitler and other Nazi leaders clearly made use of both Christian symbolism combined with indigenous Germanic pagan imagery mixed with ancient Roman symbolism and emotion in propaganda for the German public and this worried some Protestants.[47] Many Nazi leaders subscribed either to a mixture of then modern scientific theories (especially Social Darwinism),[48] as Hitler himself did,[9] or to mysticism and occultism, which was especially strong in the SS. Central to both groupings was the belief in Germanic (white Northern-European) racial superiority. The existence of a Ministry of Church Affairs, instituted in 1935 and headed by Hanns Kerrl, was hardly recognized by ideologists such as Alfred Rosenberg or by other political decision-makers. Despite Germany's long history as the seat of the Holy Roman Empire and the birthplace of the Reformation, Christianity was in a decline during the rise of the Nazi Party. Some of the factors leading to this decline were the after effects of World War I which challenged "traditional" European viewpoints. ...... In 1941, Martin Bormann, a close associate of Hitler said publicly "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable".[51] In 1942 he also declared in a confidential memo to Gauleiters that the Christian Churches 'must absolutely and finally be broken.' Thus it is evident that he believed Nazism, based as it was on a 'scientific' world-view, to be completely incompatible with Christianity.[52] When we [National Socialists] speak of belief in God, we do not mean, like the naive Christians and their spiritual exploiters, a man-like being sitting around somewhere in the universe. The force governed by natural law by which all these countless planets move in the universe, we call omnipotence or God. The assertion that this universal force can trouble itself about the destiny of each individual being, every smallest earthly bacillus, can be influenced by so-called prayers or other surprising things, depends upon a requisite dose of naivety or else upon shameless professional self-interest.[53] Other members of the Hitler government, including Rosenberg, during the war formulated a thirty-point program for the "National Reich Church" which included: The National Reich Church claims exclusive right and control over all Churches. The National Church is determined to exterminate foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800. The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible. The National Church will clear away from its altars all Crucifixes, Bibles and pictures of Saints. On the altars there must be nothing but Mein Kampf and to the left of the altar a sword.[54] Nazi party leaders viewed Christianity and National Socialism as competing world views (even though some Christians did not see a conflict) and Hitler planned to eliminate the Christian churches after securing control of his European empire. The churches were permitted some self governing and allowed to remain because Hitler did not want to risk strong opposition until other more pressing issues were dealt with.[55] From the mid 1930s, anti-Christian elements within the Nazi party became more prominent - they were restrained by Hitler, who thought religion would die by itself as science advanced.[9] Nevertheless the Party began to suppress religious teaching, closed religious youth movements and excluded religious instruction from the Hitler Youth. The public collection of money for religious charities was forbidden. In 1937 all confessing church seminaries and teaching was banned. Dissident Protestants were forbidden to attend universities, and state-sponsored denominational and private religious schools were closed. During Hitler's dictatorship, more than 6,000 clergymen, on the charge of treasonable activity, were imprisoned or executed.[9] The same measures were taken in the occupied territories, in French Lorraine, the Nazis forbid religious youth movements, parish meetings, scout meetings, and church assets were taken. Church schools were closed, and teachers in religious orders were dismissed. The episcopal seminary was closed, and the SA and SS desecrated churches, religious statutes and pictures; 300 clergy were expelled from the Lorraine region, monks and nuns were deported or forced to renounce their vows.[56]