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

[Paul Ross]

First, an apology to whomever started the thread, and to anyone genuinely interested in pursuing that topic. Sorry for going so far afield.

Apology accepted! (although I don't regard you as the main transgressor...)

[Paul Ross]

First, an apology to whomever started the thread, and to anyone genuinely interested in pursuing that topic. Sorry for going so far afield.

Apology accepted! (although I don't regard you as the main transgressor...)

[Gladwin]

It is amazing that this thread is still going on.

[bookie]

We have to take this dude zapping thing on faith?

Okay. These are very important issues here. You said in your post that we have evidence in the fossil record. That is not supported by honest evolutionists.

Evolution says that everything started out as chaos, right? And then over millions of years these highly detailed organisms(such as whales)develped. Isn't the major theory of evolution that things went from chaos and became more organized? All I can say is that before you get that powerful fin on the whale, you're going to get a badly deformed leg that is fit for nothing.And that won't survive in survival of the fittest, will it? What good is a deformed leg?

Have you heard of things like the gene pool? There are only so many genes in a species.

Evolution of humans? Our DNA is very complex! Our DNA can only be made using these certain 20 proteins. Ok. What's the problem? Those proteins can only be made by DNA!

As far as all that debate about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics,the point is not that energy being used up refutes evolution, it is that the total entropy of the universe increases! Evolution says the opposite. Evolutionists say that things get more orderly.

Lets get serious here. Many people believe that this is a debate that looks like this: faith v. reason, evolution v. creationism, or Evolutionism v. Christianity.

I'd like to show you another way to look at it:

made by chance v. designed
life from non-life v. life from life
natural selection v. reproduction after kinds
Designer v. no Designer

This in not just a silly debate by silly irrational Christians. This has serious implications for you(and everyone). For example, if you have evolved from monkeys and are in a transitional stage, and you will continue to evolve into who knows what, what does that make you?

It means you have no worth.

After all, what is the worth of a freak of nature, who just evolved form animals and will continue to evolve? I'm not saying you personally are a freak, I'm just trying to show where our conclutions lead us.

[bookie]

We have to take this dude zapping thing on faith?

Okay. These are very important issues here. You said in your post that we have evidence in the fossil record. That is not supported by honest evolutionists.

Evolution says that everything started out as chaos, right? And then over millions of years these highly detailed organisms(such as whales)develped. Isn't the major theory of evolution that things went from chaos and became more organized? All I can say is that before you get that powerful fin on the whale, you're going to get a badly deformed leg that is fit for nothing.And that won't survive in survival of the fittest, will it? What good is a deformed leg?

Have you heard of things like the gene pool? There are only so many genes in a species.

Evolution of humans? Our DNA is very complex! Our DNA can only be made using these certain 20 proteins. Ok. What's the problem? Those proteins can only be made by DNA!

As far as all that debate about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics,the point is not that energy being used up refutes evolution, it is that the total entropy of the universe increases! Evolution says the opposite. Evolutionists say that things get more orderly.

Lets get serious here. Many people believe that this is a debate that looks like this: faith v. reason, evolution v. creationism, or Evolutionism v. Christianity.

I'd like to show you another way to look at it:

made by chance v. designed
life from non-life v. life from life
natural selection v. reproduction after kinds
Designer v. no Designer

This in not just a silly debate by silly irrational Christians. This has serious implications for you(and everyone). For example, if you have evolved from monkeys and are in a transitional stage, and you will continue to evolve into who knows what, what does that make you?

It means you have no worth.

After all, what is the worth of a freak of nature, who just evolved form animals and will continue to evolve? I'm not saying you personally are a freak, I'm just trying to show where our conclutions lead us.

[bookie]

From the general tone of your post, I conclude you are a Christian who believes in evolution. I assume you believe in the Bible, all except for that interesting fable about creation and Adam in the Garden of Eden and how he fell into sin along with Eve his wife.

How can you believe in God, then, who says ALL His Bible is the truth?

If the story about creation is false, then the story about Adam is false, then the story about sin is false. So why do we need Jesus then? He had nothing to save us from. You can't believe in Jesus and not believe in creation.

[Junior]

Evolution says that everything started out as chaos, right?

Herein you are arguing with a creationist strawman. Evolution has nothing to do with chaos. It simply states that organisms change to adapt to their environments and that these little changes add up over the generations into big changes. We know the changes occur. That makes evolution a fact. How they occur is the theory part of it. For example, random mutations in the genome lead to new traits. Environmental pressures (not random) select for the most favorable of those new traits. This is the theory of natural selection (there are also theories dealing with sexual selection). These small incremental changes have, over the past 3.5 billion years, given rise to all the diversity of life we see around us.

[Junior]

How can you believe in God, then, who says ALL His Bible is the truth?

First off, it is man who claims the Bible is the word of God; using the Bible's claim to be the word of God as proof it is the word of God is circular reasoning. Secondly, God uses parables and allegories in the rest of the Bible, so why couldn't Genesis be such? After all, there is no physical evidence backing up the Genesis account; indeed the physical evidence refutes the account in Genesis. From this we can conclude: 1) Genesis is false and should not be included in the Bible or 2) Genesis is an allegory and should not be taken literally but figuratively.

[bookie]

To Ol' Sparky:

Don't resort to name calling, please. It lowers our postion. We have open minds, which is why we believe in creation. We have scientific proof. I couldn't believe something that goes against reason. Creation is the only explanation of the world I've found that doesn't. So.

I know all you evolutionists will laugh, but I can't help that.

[bookie]

So where did the life come from in the first place?

[bookie]

We don't have to take only the Bible's word for it.

The Bible was written by...

40 different people

living in different places(desert, palaces, small towns, large cities)

centuries apart(times of war, times of peace)

in different moods(feeling of great joy, great sorrow, moments of fear,times of insecurity)

from different continents(Africa, Europe)

in three different languages(Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic)

about controversial topics(the nature of God, moral issues, politecal alliances, religious cerimonies)

Would you expect a book like that to agree with itself at all? Of course not!

But the Bible does. Why not believe the best answer? Someon other than man had to have written this.

[Junior]

That's a question for the biogenics folks. Did it arrive here aboard a comet or asteroid? Did it arise from the evolution of ever more complicated self-replicating molecules (of which there are many)? Or did God zap the first organism into existence billions of years ago? There is very little evidence extent from the period on Earth when the first life came into being, and researchers are reduced to replicating early conditions in the laboratory to test out any number of hypotheses. In other words, your guess is as good as mine.

[bookie]

Yes, changes occur. Within a species.

All the evolutionist scientists who have tried to produce mutations have only succeeded in producing horribly deformed creatures that die.

[bookie]

What about the gene pool?

How can little changes add up into big changes over time with the gene pool in the way? There is a limit to how much an organism can change.

You didn't answer what I said about the whale fin.

[Junior]

Would you expect a book like that to agree with itself at all? Of course not!

It doesn't agree with itself at all. The two Genesis accounts have different orders of creation. The NT says the Kingdom of God would be at hand before all those present had passed away.

Hell, if it were the unadulterated Word of God, why did the Protestants hack a bunch of books out of it?

[bookie]

You didn't answer what I said about Jesus.

[Junior]

The gene pool isn't "in the way" (how can you think it is?). The gene pool is the field in which the changes take place. As for your whale fin claim, we have a whole range of semi-aquatic and aquatic mammals to show the change from leg to fin (otter, seal, dolphin) -- and none of them seem to have any problems.

[Junior]

Man didn't need to have fallen to be a sinner.

[bookie]

Okay, I have answers I'm itching to post but there are about 10 rabbit trails out there.

So lets just answer the first basic question. Where did life come from?

Just start by looking around you at the world.

You have no outside sources.
Don't look at evolutionary evidence and

don't look at creation evidence.

What do you see?

Where did life come from?

Not what happened after life got here.

Where did life come from?

Try to come to a conclusion ignoring the fact that you really do believe that evolution is the truth.

Where did life come from?

[bookie]

I've gotten my answers from biogenics folks. And if my guess is as good as yours, why are you so sure that the idea that God created the universe is silly?