German Christians have always hated other races of people and sects of Christians with or without the help of Adolf...
On the 400th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, in 1917, the Flensburg pastor Friedrich Andersen, the writer Adolf Bartels and Hans Paul Freiherr von Wolzogen presented 95 Thesen on which a "German Christianity on a Protestant basis" should be founded. It stated :
“ The newer racial research has finally opened our eyes to the pernicious effects of the blood mixture between Germanic and un-German peoples and urges us, with all our forces, to strive to keep our Volkstum pure and closed. Religion is the inner strength and finest flower in the intellectual life of a people, but it can only strongly affect expression in popular culture ... a deep connection between Christianity and Germanness can only be achieved when it is released from this unnatural connection, wherever it stands nakedly approached by the Jewish religion. ”
For the authors of the Thesen, the "angry thunder-god" Jehovah was the same as the "Father" and "[Holy] Ghost", that Christ preached and that the Germans would have guessed. Childlike confidence in God and selfless love was, to them, the essence of the Germanic "people's-soul" in contrast to Jewish "menial fear of God" and "materialistic morality." Church was not an "institution for the dissemination of Judaism", and they felt religious and confirmation materials should no longer teach the Old Testament and the Ten Commandments, nor even the New Testament, which they held to be of Jewish influence that had to be "cleaned" so that the child Jesus could be used as a model for "self sacrifice" and "male heroism".
In 1921 Andersen wrote Der deutsche Heiland (The German Saviour), in which he opposed Jewish migration as an apocalyptic decision:
“ Who will win, the six-cornered star or the Cross? - The question is, for now, not yet evident. The Jew goes on his way purposefully, in any case ... his deadly hatred will defeat his opponent. When the Christian Good Friday is celebrated, it should at least not weigh in his dreams; ...otherwise there could come a whole lot of terrible Golgothas, where Jews across the whole world dance their jubilee songs on the grave of Christianity as heirs of a murdering people, singing to the Jahu they destroyed. ”
Against the "contamination by Jewish ideas", mainly from the Old Testament, the Churches and Germany should (he argued) be "mutually benefits and supports", and then Christianity would win back its status as "a religion of the Volk and of the struggle" and "the great exploiter of humanity, the evil enemy of our Volk [would] finally be destroyed".
In the same year, 1921, the Protestant-dominated and völkisch-oriented League for German Churches (German: Bund für deutsche Kirche) was founded in Berlin. Andersen, pastor Ernst Bublitz and teacher Kurd Joachim Niedlich brought out the twice-monthly The German Church (German: Die Deutsche Kirche) magazine, which in 12,000 articles advanced the Bund's ideas. Jesus should be a "tragic-Nordic figure" against the Old Testament's "religious idea", with the Old Testament replaced by a "German myth". Each biblical story was to be "measured under German feelings, so that German Christianity escapes from Semitic influence as Beelzebub did before the Cross."
In 1925 groups such as the Bund united with ten völkisch, Germanophile and anti-Semitic organizations to form the German Christian Working Group (German: deutschchristliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft). The Christian-Spirit Religious Society (German: Geistchristliche Religionsgesellschaft), founded in 1927 in Nuremberg by Artur Dinter, saw more effect in the churches, striving for the 'de-Judification' (German: Entjudung) and the building of a non-denominational People's Church (German: Volkskirche).
The proposed abolition of the Old Testament was in part fiercely opposed among Christian German nationalists, seeing it as a racist attack on the foundations of their faith from inside and outside. The theologian Johannes Schneider, a member of the German National People's Party (German: Deutschnationale Volkspartei or DNVP) (a party fairly close to the political aims of the NSDAP), wrote in 1925:
“ Whoever cheapens the Old Testament will soon also lose the New. ”
In 1927 the Protestant Church League (German: Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchenbund) reacted to the growing radicalization of German Christian groups with a Churches Day in Königsberg, aiming to clarify Christianity's relation to "Fatherland", "Nation", "Volkstum", "Blood" and "Race". Many local church-officers tried to delineate, such as with regards to racism, but this only served to show how deeply it had intruded into their thinking. Paul Althaus, for example, wrote:
“ Volkstum is a spiritual reality ... certainly there will never be a Volkstum without the precondition of, for example, the blood unit. But once a Volkstum is begotten, it may exist as a spiritual reality ... even foreign blood may be lent [in]to it. How great the significance of blood might be in intellectual history, but the rule is, even if one is born into a Volkstum, the spirit and not the blood. ”
On this basis, the radical German-Christians ideas were hardly slowed down. In 1928 they gathered in Thuringia to found the Thuringian German Christians' Church Movement (German: Thüringer Kirchenbewegung Deutsche Christen), seeking contact with the Nazi party and naming their newsletter "Letters to German Christians" (German: Briefe an Deutsche Christen).
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