On Memorial Day: Visiting the Grave of Major Richard "Dick" Winters

Major Richard Winters, 1918-2011

This morning I got a message on Facebook from Sarah Frye Gingrich. She was asking about a gravesite of a soldier to visit on Memorial Day.  I immediately answered with the grave of Major Dick Winters, one of the soldiers I most admire, and who is admired by even the most cynical of my fellow soldiers. 

The Winters family grave at Bergstrasse Lutheran Church

Ephrata, Pa.

 In suggesting the visit to Sarah, I was aware I had never visited Dick Winters grave.  Sarah took her six kids to cemetery at Bergsrasse Lutheran Church in Ephrata, Pa.  An hour later, I put on my uniform for the first time since I left the Army and went to visit Winter's grave with my youngest son Nigel. 

Nigel at the Winter's family grave site.

For those who don't know the story of Dick Winters, I cannot recommend more highly the book Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose and the HBO miniseries of the same name.   

First time in my uniform since 2016

There are many memorials to the men who participated in the Normandy invasion. The airborne museum at Sainte-Mere-Eglise tells the story of those who flew into the invasion in gliders and with parachutes.  And the American Cemetery at Normandy where more than 9,000 soldiers are buried on the cliffs above Omaha Beach.

Nigel and I after the visit.

Rest in Peace Major Winters.

Faith in the Military: Chaplains During the Cold War and the Current Wars

Army Chaplain with Armor Unit

In the Cold War Army of the 1970s, the Protestant Chaplains were very different men than most of the Chaplains I met in Iraq in this century.  For one thing, they were all men. In this century a few of the Chaplains were woman. 

Between the 70s and the 2000s a big gap opened between the kind of person who was a Protestant Chaplain and those who were Catholic Chaplains.  All of the Chaplains I knew in the 70s were from what are now called mainstream denominations.  They were men with advanced degrees: masters or doctorates of Divinity.  Catholic Chaplains then and now were graduates of Catholic seminaries, also with advanced degrees. The only Orthodox Chaplain I met was a college chaplain. All were educated men who were approved by their national denominations for service.

But somewhere between Cold War West Germany and Camp Adder, Iraq, the standards for the chaplaincy and the people who were Protestant chaplains changed.  Most of the Protestant chaplains I met in Iraq and in the Army in this century were Evangelicals. They had undergraduate degrees from Bible Colleges and other Christian Colleges.

The 21^st Century Catholic Chaplains were no different than the 1970s, or, I imagine, from the 1870s.  Chaplain Valentine, the Catholic Chaplain on Camp Adder, Iraq, was teaching Philosophy at Fordham University on September 11, 2001. He saw the attack from his office window and joined the Army as soon as he could.  His story is here.

How different were the Protestant Chaplains in 1977 and 2009?  In 1977, I was a sergeant in a tank unit in West Germany. I attended chapel services and had a lot of questions.  The chaplain gave me C.S. Lewis’ book “Mere Christianity.” I loved the book. I read it, re-read it and asked for a book about C.S. Lewis.  The Chaplain gave me Lewis’ autobiography “Surprised by Joy.” I stopped reading at page 13 and did not try to read it again until I was in graduate school five years later.  The book has 246 references to authors and books I had never heard of. I eventually made an index of the books and authors Lewis mentions.  At that time, I had only a high school education and Lewis’ autobiography was beyond me.  The chaplain gave me other books by Lewis when I told him how difficult the autobiography was.

Thirty years later, I re-enlisted was again a sergeant. But this time I was a sergeant with a master’s degree in literature that had read and re-read all of 39 books C.S. Lewis wrote.  I started a C.S. Lewis book group on Camp Adder.  We read several of Lewis’ most popular theology books.  

The core of my book group was three Chaplains and an Air Force Colonel.  A few enlisted soldiers came and went, but only one of them stayed. It was weird for them to be in a book group with mostly officers. The Chaplains had heard about C.S. Lewis but never read any of his works except the Narnia Chronicles.  I know that a 56-year-old sergeant with, as soldiers say, “more degrees than a thermometer” was not typical.  But the Chaplaincy had clearly changed.  Evangelical Chaplains better reflected what the soldiers in the Army believed, but they were much more spiritual guides than experts.  The Chaplains had not read C.S. Lewis, or any leading 20^th Century religious thinkers outside the Evangelical world.

Before Iraq, I was tempted to think this change made sense.  Mainline Protestant Denominations were in decline; Evangelical Churches were growing. Does a Chaplain really need an advanced degree? 

No. But the most popular services on Camp Adder, the only ones that filled the seats of the stone-floored chapel, were when the Chaplain Valentine, the Fordham Professor turned Catholic Chaplain, was leading the service.  Soldiers respect expertise.  More than once, I heard a soldier say, “Chaplain Valentine really knows his shit!”  He did. And he made me nostalgic for the Chaplain who introduced me to one of the leading Christian writers of the last century, not the Chaplains who had me introduce them to the same writer.  

Comments:

Vinnie Vinanti I had a good chaplain in Germany, he was a Methodist. A few years later they were all evangelical and pushy about their faith; I did not appreciate that. Throughout the rest of my career the chaplains were all evangelicals. I usually avoided them. I always fell I was being judged for having a difference in faith.

Another from Facebook: 
I found a difference in Chaplains over the years too. Back in the day, the unit Chaplain was the spiritual leader of the unit. He could easily transition between religious services for different faiths & denominations. If he was unfamiliar with the faith of soldier in his command, he was tell connected to other religious resources, both military & civilian. In Iraq in 2004, we had a National Guard evangelical chaplain. We all hated him. If you didn't follow his faith, you were going to Hell. He was also the racist & jealous type. Many of us gravitated towards a young Korean-American chaplain from the 1st Cav. He was Christian & that was about how much we knew about his own spiritual beliefs. He supported all of our needs. He even made sure the Rabbi chaplain came by to visit our Jewish unit members. The Guard chaplain viewed the Rabbi like Satan himself. I prefer the old school chaplains. They were there for the soldiers, not to spread their own beliefs.

The German Evangelical Church Backed the Nazis in 1932 Then Turned on Their Jewish Members

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.

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.