The Cross vs. the Swastika

Boundless ^ | 1/26/02 | Matt Kaufman

[Paul Ross]

The Cross vs. the Swastika

Boundless: Kaufman on Campus 2001

The Cross vs. the Swastika
by Matt Kaufman

I vividly remember a high school conversation with a friend I’d known since we were eight. I’d pointed out that Hitler was essentially a pagan, not a Christian, but my friend absolutely refused to believe it. No matter how much evidence I presented, he kept insisting that Nazi Germany was an extension of Christianity, acting out its age-old vendetta against the Jews. Not that he spoke from any personal study of the subject; he just knew. He’d heard it so many times it’d become an article of faith — one of those things “everyone knows.”

Flash forward 25 years. A few weeks ago my last column (http://www.boundless.org/2001/regulars/kaufman/a0000528.html) refuted a number of familiar charges against Christianity, including the Christianity-created-Nazism shibboleth. Even though I only skimmed the subject, I thought the evidence I cited would’ve been hard to ignore; I quoted, for example, Hitler’s fond prediction that he would “destroy Christianity” and replace it with “a [pagan] religion rooted in nature and blood.” But sure enough, I still heard from people who couldn’t buy that.

Well, sometimes myths die hard. But this one took a hit in early January, at the hands of one Julie Seltzer Mandel, a Jewish law student at Rutgers whose grandmother survived internment at Auschwitz.

A couple of years ago Mandel read through 148 bound volumes of papers gathered by the American OSS (the World War II-era predecessor of the CIA) to build the case against Nazi leaders on trial at Nuremberg. Now she and some fellow students are publishing what they found in the journal Law and Religion(www.lawandreligion.com), which Mandel edits. The upshot: a ton of evidence that Hitler sought to wipe out Christianity just as surely as he sought to wipe out the Jews.

The first installment (the papers are being published in stages) includes a 108-page OSS outline, “The Persecution of the Christian Churches.” It’s not easy reading, but it’s an enlightening tale of how the Nazis — faced with a country where the overwhelming majority considered themselves Christians — built their power while plotting to undermine and eradicate the churches, and the people’s faith.

Before the Nazis came to power, the churches did hold some views that overlapped with the National Socialists — e.g., they opposed communism and resented the Versailles treaty that ended World War I by placing heavy burdens on defeated Germany. But, the OSS noted, the churches “could not be reconciled with the principle of racism, with a foreign policy of unlimited aggressive warfare, or with a domestic policy involving the complete subservience of Church to State.” Thus, “conflict was inevitable.”

From the start of the Nazi movement, “the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement,” said Baldur von Scvhirach, leader of the group that would come to be known as Hitler youth. But “explicitly” only within partly ranks: as the OSS stated, “considerations of expedience made it impossible” for the movement to make this public until it consolidated power.

So the Nazis lied to the churches, posing as a group with modest and agreeable goals like the restoration of social discipline in a country that was growing permissive. But as they gained power, they took advantage of the fact that many of the Protestant churches in the largest body (the German Evangelical Church) were government-financed and administered. This, the OSS reported, advanced the Nazi plan “to capture and use church organization for their own purposes” and “to secure the elimination of Christian influences in the German church by legal or quasi legal means.”

The Roman Catholic Church was another story; its administration came from Rome, not within German borders, and its relationship with the Nazis in the 1920s had been bitter. So Hitler lied again, offering a treaty pledging total freedom for the Catholic church, asking only that the church pledge loyalty to the civil government and emphasize citizens’ patriotic duties — principles which sounded a lot like what the church already promoted. Rome signed the treaty in 1933.

Only later, when Hitler assumed dictatorial powers, did his true policy toward both Catholics and Protestants become apparent. By 1937, Pope Pius XI denounced the Nazis for waging “a war of extermination” against the church, and dissidents like the Lutheran clergyman Martin Niemoller openly denounced state control of Protestant churches. The fiction of peaceful coexistence was rapidly fading: In the words of The New York Times (summarizing OSS conclusions), “Nazi street mobs, often in the company of the Gestapo, routinely stormed offices in Protestant and Catholic churches where clergymen were seen as lax in their support of the regime.”

The Nazis still paid enough attention to public perception to paint its church critics as traitors: the church “shall have not martyrs, but criminals,” an official said. But the campaign was increasingly unrestrained. Catholic priests found police snatching sermons out of their hands, often in mid-reading. Protestant churches issued a manifesto opposing Nazi practices, and in response 700 Protestant pastors were arrested. And so it went.

Not that Christians took this lying down; the OSS noted that despite this state terrorism, believers often acted with remarkable courage. The report tells, for example, of how massive public demonstrations protested the arrests of Lutheran pastors, and how individuals like pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (hanged just days before the war ended) and Catholic lay official Josef Mueller joined German military intelligence because that group sought to undermine the Nazis from within.

There is, of course, plenty of room for legitimate criticism of church leaders and laymen alike for getting suckered early on, and for failing to put up enough of a fight later. Yet we should approach such judgments with due humility. As Vincent Carroll and David Shiflett write in their book Christianity on Trial (to repeat a quote used in my last column), “It is easy for those who do not live under a totalitarian regime to expect heroism from those who do, but it is an expectation that will often be disappointed. . . . it should be less surprising that the mass of Christians were silent than that some believed strongly enough to pay for their faith with their lives.”

At any rate, my point is hardly to defend every action (or inaction) on the part of German churches. In fact, I think their failures bring us valuable lessons, not least about the dangers of government involvement in — and thus power over — any churches.

But the notion that the church either gave birth to Hitler or walked hand-in-hand with him as a partner is, simply, slander. Hitler himself knew better. “One is either a Christian or a German,” he said. “You can’t be both.”

This is something to bear in mind when some folk on the left trot out their well-worn accusation that conservative Christians are “Nazis” or “fascists.” It’s also relevant to answering the charge made by the likes of liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd: “History teaches that when religion is injected into politics — the Crusades, Henry VIII, Salem, Father Coughlin, Hitler, Kosovo — disaster follows.”

But it’s not Christianity that’s injected evil into the world. In fact, the worst massacres in history have been committed by atheists (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot) and virtual pagans (Hitler). Christians have amassed their share of sins over the past 2,000 years, but the great murderers have been the church’s enemies, especially in the past century. It’s long past time to set the historical record straight.

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Copyright © 2002 Focus on the Family. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
When Matt Kaufman isn’t writing his monthly BW column, he serves as associate editor of Citizen magazine.

The complete text of this article is available at http://www.boundless.org/2001/regulars/kaufman/a0000541.html

[longshadow]

VOMIT ALERT

And you've proved that you can't explain away the contradiction because you're the moron that tried to compare hurricanes to evolution .... [snip]

Yup, you're definitely out of arguments.

[VadeRetro]

A more complete Acanthostega page. Note the real fossil photos.

[VadeRetro]

I'm sure your insights will be valuable when you get the chance. But yes, Sparky has been out of ammo since before he showed up.

[Southern Federalist]

This will no doubt get buried on the pro-and-con evolution thread that this has oddly become, but you asked a serious question that some Christian ought to answer seriously.

Of course there is a long Christian history of anti-Judaism. Since it wasn't racist in nature, it probably serves clarity to call it something besides anti-Semitism, but that doesn't make it good. The way I think it came about was this: Christians and Jews originally competed in an open market in the Roman world. In that competition, Christians developed a set of attitudes and some bad theology that lingered when the situation was quite different.

Christians have not always been violent towards Jews, but the situation began to get bad around the beginning of the second millenium, when a considerable amount of control-freakery took hold in both the church and the new nation-states. Moreover it took Christianity a long time to figure out that its mission could not be helped along by coercive state power. All this added up to a corruption which led Christians to ignore the fundamental commandments of Jesus in their treatment of Jews. Our record overwhelmingly stinks.

Things got yet worse in the 19th century when liberal theology denied that Christianity had any important roots in Judaism at all. All the big-name German liberal theologians in the 19th century denied that the Jewish Scriptures were God's word at all. This permitted an even more intensely and comprehensively negative attitude to Jews. The rise of romantic nationalism and pseudo-biological racialism gave secularized Christian anti-Jewish attitudes new and more extreme avenues of expression.

Some small changes for the better also began in the 19th century. As a kind of foreshadowing of the relationship emerging between Israel and evangelicals, some conservative biblicists were rethinking the doctrinal basis for Christian anti-Judaism. Ironically, the pietistic societies for missions to the Jews were often the most determined enemies of anti-Semitism. But all this didn't reach very far into the general Christian consciousness.

In the Hitler period, the churches inside and outside Germany mostly did badly. The handful of real martyrs and confessors does not make up for the sluggish indifference or collaboration of the rest. But the phenomenon of Nazism gave the impetus for the serious thinkers in all the western Churches to reconsider in a deep-going way the traditions that had contributed to the horror. It is not anything we can be puffed up about, but today most western Christians reject the old teachings of contempt. It is the bondage of liberal Christianity to the left, more than any survival of the old teachings, that causes so many liberal Christians to fawn on the enemies of Israel.

The point of this new Hitler evidence should not to assuage the Christian conscience but to force on us the realization the Church is so deeply rooted in Israel that anti-Semitism (even on the part of Christians) is always by its own logic going to turn against Christianity. We can't untangle our fate from yours. It is shameful that Hitler saw this indissoluble bond more clearly than we did. Perhaps in the third millennium we will do better.

[PatrickHenry]

Christians and Jews originally competed in an open market in the Roman world. In that competition, Christians developed a set of attitudes and some bad theology that lingered when the situation was quite different.

Very thoughtful post. My personal take on it is unlike anything I've ever read anywhere. Up until the conversion of Constantine in around 300 AD, when the church became Rome's official religion, Christians were more or less a denomination of the Jewish religion, with Jews being sometimes in leadership roles. From Durant's work, I gather that there were Jewish-Christian congregations all over the Roman world.

But when Rome became officially Christian, I suspect that the schism (sp?) happened. Why? Here comes my own unique version of events: Because the Jews expected to be allowed back into Jerusalem, from which they had been banished in roughly 70AD after yet another rebellion against Rome. They must have raised hell over the issue, from within the church, and as a result the Romans tossed them out of the church. It may be that some of the gospels were very slightly edited to emphasize the split. Ever since, the Jews have been "out". Of course, Rome is pretty much out of it too, so the reasons for the split have long ago vanished. But these things have a momentum of their own.

[Ol' Sparky]

Again, the hurricane example, in no way, is comparable to evolution. 1) A hurricane does not involve a decrease in entropy on the earth. Any decrease is matched by an increase in the hurricane's surroundings. 2) The hurricane does not involve an increase in information and complexity.

To say evolution is compatiable with the Second Law would require eliminating the part of the law that states physical systems that use energy are becoming disorderly. The Second Law primarily applies to living things that use energy and was almost exclusively defined by observations on the earth. For evolution to be true, the Second Law would have to be rewritten.

[Ol' Sparky]

You've yet to make a point proving this lame theory. Let alone refuted the massive holes in it. Unlike Stephen J. Gould, who has the intellectual sense to admit that evolution is a theory with holes in it and Darwin's gradualism is likely impossible, you babble on as if evolution is anywhere near being a fact.

[Ol' Sparky]

My God. You have a technical degree from a top 25 university and are comparing evolution to a hurricane. My, how standards have been lowered. You've been brainwashed with propaganda.

My cousin is one of the top EPA managers in the state of California. She believes in global warming. Does that make it so?

With this tremendous degree you have, you shouldn't feel intimidated to call up Bob Enyart. Then, we could here a guy with a real nice degree make an idiot out of himself.

You've learned evolution well. That's like saying you learned Greek mythology well. So what? You're well versed in propaganda that denies established laws of science.

Most of the Founders of science were Creationists. There are dozens of scientists that have accomplished more than you ever will that are Creationists.

Your degree is meaningless...

[PatrickHenry]

Most of the Founders of science were Creationists.

Brilliant. Could it be because most of them lived before Darwin? Anyway, the ultimate founder of science was Aristotle, and he was no creationist. You don't know very much about history either, do you?

[VadeRetro]

Again, the hurricane example, in no way, is comparable to evolution. 1) A hurricane does not involve a decrease in entropy on the earth. Any decrease is matched by an increase in the hurricane's surroundings. 2) The hurricane does not involve an increase in information and complexity.

Again, you prove that you do not understand the terms you are using. Or perhaps, in this case, you don't know what a hurricane is?

A hurricane has a definite structure which seems to spontaneously form itself from amorphous air. It also represents a concentration of energy that defies your simpleton's version of the 2nd law which forbids evolution. The evolution of such a thing should be quite impossible because you and your pamphlet-writing mentors make no distinction between the whole (closed) system and the open subset.

But the 2nd law only says that a closed-off, weatherless, sunless volume of gas will not concentrate itself into an organized system. In an open, sun-heated system like the earth's atmosphere, we see all sorts of stormy disturbances caused by differential heating of this spot versus that spot and subsequent turbulent mixing, precipitation, lightning, etc. Furthermore, you can tap into all this secondary solar power to do work. A windmill, for instance. A windmill is as much a violation of your second law as evolution.

The hurricane does have a great decrease in entropy inside itself. It's a bundle of work-doing kinetic energy. The main increase in entropy is not in the hurricane's surroundings, either, but in the sun. That's where the piper was paid. The storm's energy will dissipate as entropic energy eventually, but that would have happened to the sunlight that initially triggered the storm anyway.

[VadeRetro]

You've yet to make a point proving this lame theory. Let alone refuted the massive holes in it. Unlike Stephen J. Gould, who has the intellectual sense to admit that evolution is a theory with holes in it and Darwin's gradualism is likely impossible, you babble on as if evolution is anywhere near being a fact.

(Snort!) I took you out every time. Your Gould-ian quote-mining sillies were exposed by ThinkPlease at least twice. You cannot have failed to notice, but you brazen on.

[Scully]

Most of the Founders of science were Creationists.

ROFL! PatrickHenry really nailed you for this statement. Best laugh I've had all day! Thanks!!! :)

[Scully]

There are dozens of scientists that have accomplished more than you ever will that are Creationists. Your degree is meaningless...

Tell me, Sparky, when did you graduate from MIT? Have you earned anything that even remotely resembles an advanced degree? I really am interested!

[Ol' Sparky]

The Second Law applies to the planet as a whole. A hurricane does not decrease entropy on the planet. Any decrease is at the expense of an increase somewhere else. In fact, the net effect of a hurricane supports thermodynamics and is yet more evidence against evolution:

Henry Morris: "These might be viewed as 'structures' and to appear to be "ordered," but they are soon gone. What they leave in their wake is not a higher degree of organized complexity, but a higher degree of dissipation and disorganization."

The planet and life on the planet -- according science (the Second Law) -- are becoming more disorderly, decaying and are headed for maximum entropy. Evolution contradicts science.

[VadeRetro]

The Second Law applies to the planet as a whole.

You're getting it wrong because you can't afford to get it right. It applies to the universe as a whole, the only truly closed system.

[Southern Federalist]

An interesting thesis. Constantine certainly marks the point after which Christians and Jews were less and less equal competitors, and Christians were tempted by state power. But I have always understood that there weren't many Jewish Christians by Constantine's time. You've stirred me to look again. Thanks.

[Ol' Sparky]

Scully, You are moron:

Father's of science that were Creationists:

Philip Paracelsusm, 1541, Chemical Medicine, Established role of chemistry in medicine

Nicolas Copernicus, 1543, Scientific Revolution, Planets orbit the sun, rejected Aristotle’s earth-centered system

Francis Bacon, 1626, Scientific Method, Founded scientific method: observe, measure & experiment

Johann Kepler, 1630, Physical Astronomy, Elliptic orbits, laws of planetary motion, contributed to calculus

Galileo Galilei, 1642, Law of falling bodies, Jupiter’s moons, pendulum, sector-compass, mathematics

Rene Descartes, 1650, Analytic Geometry, “I think, therefore I am.” Furnished new weapons to defend faith

William Harvey, 1657, Circulatory System, Discovered role of the heart as pump, and circulation of blood

Robert Boyle, 1691, Chemistry, Boyle’s law on properties of gas

Isaac Newton, 1727, Gravitation Differential calculus, universal gravity, mechanics, color

Carolus Linnaeus, 1778, Taxonomy, Defined: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species

George Cuvier, 1832, Anatomy/Paleontology Zoologist who established comparative anatomy & paleontology

John Dalton, 1844, Atomic Theory Discovered 20 elements, created the periodic table

Darwin’s ORIGINS, 1859

Michael Faraday, 1867, Electromagnetism Invented generator, chemistry discoveries, electromagnetism

Louis Agassiz, 1873, Glaciology Paleontologist, zoologist, geologist, Harvard professor

Gregor Mendel, 1884, Genetics Botanist, experimenter, mathematical science of genetics

Louis Pasteur, 1885, Modern Microbiology Bacteriology, vaccines, disproved spontaneous generation

James Joule, 1889 Thermodynamics, Discovered first law of thermodynamics: transform matter/energy Lord Kelvin, 1907, Thermodynamics Discovered second law of thermodynamics: entropy

Joseph Lister, 1912, Modern Surgery, Founded antiseptic surgery

G. W. Carver, 1943, Modern Agriculture Agricultural chemist, experimenter, developed new crops

Wright Brothers , 1948, Aviation, Inventors, aviation pioneers, first sustained & controlled flight Werhner von Braun, 1977, Space Exploration Rocketry, space exploration, NASA’s von Braun program

Raymond Damadian, alive, MRI Revolutionized medicine with Magnetic Resonance Imaging

John Baumgardner, alive, Geophysical Simulator Los Alamos geophysicist developed Terra, best geophysical tool

[Ol' Sparky]

You're not seriously implying that the Second Law doesn't apply to this planet, are you? The law was almost EXCLUSIVELY observed on this planet. And, there are NO known violations to the Second Law:

“...there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated [closed] systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems ... there is somehow associated with the field of far-from equilibrium phenomena the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems. It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself.”

[Dr. John Ross, Harvard scientist (evolutionist), Chemical and Engineering News, vol. 58, July 7, 1980, p. 40

[Ol' Sparky]

Actually, 13 of the Founders of scientific field AFTER Darwin's theory were creationists and, not surprisingly, the two Founders of thermodynamics, James Joule and Lord Kelvin. Also, Louis Pasteur, George Washington Carver, the Wright Brothers, Werhner von Braun (founder of space exploration), Raymond Damadian (MRI) and John Baumgardner ( Geophysical Simulator ).

Even evolutionists are jumping off the Darwin bandwagon given the utter lack of proof for his theory in the fossil record. At least, Stephen J. Gould is honest enough to admit the theory has real problems.

[Ol' Sparky]

So, would you like some rope to hang yourself with? You're claiming thermodynamics only applies to the universe and not to the earth? Despite the fact, the First and Second Laws were established by two creationists based on observations made on -- no, not the moon or mars -- but on this planet.

“...there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated [closed] systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems ... there is somehow associated with the field of far-from equilibrium phenomena the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems. It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself.” [Dr. John Ross, Harvard scientist (evolutionist), Chemical and Engineering News, vol. 58, July 7, 1980, p. 40]