In Charlottesville in 2017 Nazi flags and Rebel flags
flew together. Jim Crow laws in the American South
inspired the German race laws that led to the Holocaust.
In 2016, the Evangelical Church in America voted
overwhelmingly for a President who is openly racist and has bragged about
breaking all the Commandments. Depending
on how you count Evangelicals they are one quarter of the U.S. population. The
same people who, less than 50 years ago, did not smoke, drink, dance or watch
movies and called on their followers to separate themselves from the world, now
grasp for money and power as ruthlessly as the worst Medieval Popes and
Cardinals.
By backing Trump, the Evangelical Church in America abandoned faith for
political power. The Evangelical Church in Germany did the same thing in the 1930s.
In 1932 Germany’s state church—the German Evangelical Church—was by far the largest Church in Germany with 40 million
members. Another 22 million Germans were Catholic. Jews numbered fewer than a
million and about ten percent of them were converts who were members of German Churches.
Throughout the 1920s, the Evangelical
Church was increasingly influenced by German nationalist ideologies.
German Evangelicals voted for the openly racist Hitler because they feared
communism more than Hitler's rabid racism. Nazis stoked fears of communism and said Hitler would Make Germany Great Again.
With Hitler’s rise to power 1933, most Protestant
clergy willingly accepted Hitler’s racist views. The Nazi regime issued the
Edict of April 1933 called the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional
Civil Service.” Many Protestant clergy consequently agreed with the Nazi policy
and chose to eject all pastors who had Jewish parents, grandparents or
great-grandparents. The Church voluntarily “Aryanized” itself, immediately
firing all pastors of Jewish descent in 1933; by 1935, all congregants of
Jewish descent were expelled.
Nazis used Luther’s anti-Semitic writings “with scarcely a word of
protest or contradiction" from the leaders of the Protestant Church.
Theologically and politically, the fates of
Christians and Jews should have been bound together. But most Germans,
including those within the church, put an even greater distance between
themselves and the Jews. The Church turned its back on its own Jewish believers,
which made it easy for Nazi leaders to segregate them, and then kill them.
Theresienstadt, a small city in the German-occupied
part of the Czech Republic, was a Jewish ghetto and concentration camp during
World War II.
One witness said:
From the end of 1941 to the beginning of 1945, more
than 140,000 Jews were sent to this ghetto, which for many, about 88,000,
became a transit camp to the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Approximately
33,000 died in this ghetto. When it was all over and the ghetto had been
liberated on May 8, 1945, there were about 19,000 survivors.
Among those who died in Theresienstadt, or were
deported from Theresienstadt to the death camp Auschwitz or survived the
horrors in Theresienstadt, were individuals who were Christians of Jewish
descent. It is tempting today to call them “Messianic Jews”, but this would not
correspond with their self-perception. Like most other Jews in Germany they saw
themselves as Germans; unlike most other German Jews they were Jews who had embraced
the Christian faith, some by conviction, others for pragmatic reasons. But in
Theresienstadt they shared the fate of “Mosaic” Jews. In the eyes of the Nazis,
their Christian faith did not obliterate their Jewishness.
Theresienstadt is a window into what happened to
Christians of Jewish descent during the Holocaust. It is estimated that as many
as ten percent of the half million Jews in Nazi Germany were Christians. They
suffered and died along with their fellow Jews. For Nazis, blood not belief defines a person, or a non-person.
The path Germany followed from civilized nation to Nazi domination went from prosperity, to defeat in war, to racism and slaughter.
In 1913, Germany was by many measures the most powerful and civilized nation on earth, the world leader in education and manufacturing. It was the country where Jews were most integrated into the life of the nation, many of whom considered themselves German citizens who were Jewish.
In 1913, Germany was by many measures the most powerful and civilized nation on earth, the world leader in education and manufacturing. It was the country where Jews were most integrated into the life of the nation, many of whom considered themselves German citizens who were Jewish.
By 1923, Germany was defeated in war and crushed by
the terms of peace. Anti-Semitism was on
the rise and Germany turned inward. In
1933, Hitler was in power and German Jews would suffer increasing attacks. By 1943 nearly all German Jews were dead or
enslaved and soon would die. Thirty
years and an immoral leader completely changed the fate of Jews in Germany and
every nation the German Army conquered.
The Evangelical Church in Germany backed Hitler
early and strongly, blessing his war machines and abandoning Jews in their own
congregations and their Jewish neighbors to be tormented, deported and murdered. The Church sold out for power.
Beginning in 2015, the Evangelical Church in
America has backed the vilest human being ever to be elected President and
backs him more enthusiastically than any other group of his followers. I know many Evangelicals who say that naming
conservative judges to the court and defunding Planned Parenthood prove he is a
Pro-Life champion. I could understand
their position before Charlottesville, but after Trump called Nazis “fine
people” there is no way to label him Pro-Life. Nazis, White Supremacists and
all who support them are Pro-Death, Pro-Genocide but not Pro-Life, unless they
mean Pro White Life.
Jerry Falwell Sr. was the first prominent sellout for
political power. He created the Moral Majority to create voting bloc for all
those who wanted the restoration of White Power. The Moral Majority was clearly
the White Majority in America. Brown people, Liberals, Gay people and others
who were not white conservatives were not true Americans.
When the Moral Majority dissolved in 1989, it spawned a
dozen other organizations with Christian labels grasping for secular power. By
2016, Evangelical leaders flushed doctrine, covenants and commandments down a
cosmic toilet and showered blessing on an entitled racist who despises everyone
mentioned in the Beatitudes.
But this is not new territory for Evangelicals. Before the
Civil War, Evangelical Churches in the America South blessed the especially
vile form of slavery practiced in slave states. When the South was defeated,
the same Churches supported Jim Crow laws creating American apartheid. Churches
were just as segregated as voting booths, schools and drinking fountains.
Since World War II, American Evangelical leaders have blamed
the reclusive biologist Charles Darwin for inspiring Nazi leaders with the
theory of evolution. They assume Darwin is responsible for Social Darwinism,
which is akin to believing Albert Einstein developed the philosophy of moral
relativism.
Do I think Trump will turn on the 5 million
American Jews? Maybe. But it’s more likely that a national crisis will let a
worse racist than him grab power. Trump, unlike Hitler, is a coward and a bully
who dodged the draft and attacks men who actually have courage. He is more sleazy than Nazi.
But I am quite sure the Evangelical Church will
corrode further and faster as it receives power and privilege from its new god
in the Oval Office. Its millionaire preachers will abandon all traditional
faith for its orange-ish golden calf.
