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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Were the German people in Nazi Germany Christians?
Message-ID: <940@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Nov-84 23:44:22 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.940
Posted: Fri Nov  9 23:44:22 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Nov-84 19:58:22 EST
References: <1695@ucf-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: mangoe@maryland.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 65
Summary: Some were, some weren't

In article <1695@ucf-cs.UUCP> yiri@ucf-cs.UUCP (Yirmiyahu BenDavid) writes:

>An interesting question has come up on the Jewish net which seems to me
>to be of a more general interest so I'm offering it to net.religion for
>comment. 
>
>In discussing the undercurrents of antisemitism in America, I asserted
>that the German people in Nazi Germany were primarily Christians and as
>church-going as most countries (stated a little differently but same
>idea). I had never run across any serious attempts to show evidence to
>refute this notion. Larry Bickford has offerred some quotes which the
>reader may wish to review on the jewish net to which I will address
>myself.
>
>Two of the three quotes offerred (the first and the third) are
>apparently nothing more concrete that stated goals of the a small elite
>in the German government. Granted that I was not aware of this, however
>at least at this point, I am still not at all persuaded by this scant
>evidence that this was even remotely true for the masses of German
>people in Nazi Germany. Furthermore, since the Fourth Reich was to have
>been the Fourth Holy Roman Empire, I find these quotes somewhat
>contradictory to the German goals which were also widely published.
>
>The second quote, when read carefully, can be taken to support my
>assertion that this was a church-going Christian people which forced
>Prof. Hauer to "confess the primal religious will of the German people".
>This seems to me to support what I've been saying rather than contradict
>it. The quote that "the struggle between Christianity and the German
>faith in the German soul is thus an event of unexpected depth" really
>says nothing decisive on the matter. Further, it would be appropriate to
>supply references when there is some question as to the validity of the
>source. Since there may well be questionable sources on this topic, I
>would like references on the quotations submitted by Larry in his last
>article as well. 
>
>I'd be interested if there is hard evidence beyond the usual "THEY
>weren't REALLY Christians" drivel. This does NOT mean opinion, beliefs,
>convictions, suppositions, etc. that we usually hear.  (The quotations
>are hard evidence, but haven't enough weight to be convincing at this
>point.) Also, I will not accept the usual Christian methodology of
>presuming it is right, offering some flimsy half-relevant argument and
>then concluding "See, you can't PROVE I'm wrong THEREFORE I'm right!"
>Oy!

The Lutheran churches had, up until the War, a strong policy of
non-involvement in politics; they refused to get involved until it was too
late for them to put up an effective protest.  While it is certainly true
that the Nazi party appealed to "christianity" to drum up anti-semetic
sentiment, the material evidence suggests that they were afraid of organized
christendom, and tried (at least among some of their own people) to
substitute a vague sort of religion more palatable to their political ends.
As an example, the chapel of Spielberg castle in Brno was deliberately
profaned and rebuilt as a 'Nazi" shrine.

A number of important religious leaders were arrested and some executed, the
most famous being Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Others joined underground movements.
A majority were certainly either too scared to do anything or were so 
nominally christian that its moral system had few claims on them anyway.

The claim of 'christ-killers' so frequently used as a rallying call for
persecution of the Jews is, by the way, a clear perversion of the christian
message, and the gospels explicitly disown it in many places.  Revenge is
most explicitly forbidden to christians.

Charley Wingate   umcp-cs!mangoe