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To: rzman21

Bonhoeffer?


93 posted on 11/13/2011 8:03:58 PM PST by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: redgolum

Bonhoeffer and Barth were the minority.


100 posted on 11/13/2011 8:12:24 PM PST by rzman21
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To: redgolum
"Bonhoeffer?"

I'm a big fan of Bonhoffer, "The Cost of Discipleship" in particular and have given away quite a few copies of that book over the years. Having spent most of my life as a Lutheran, though, I'm under no illusions about the fact that Bonhoffer and a few others were exceptions to the rule. Years ago the Lutheran church I attended had several speakers come on a couple of Sundays in a row and speak on how the vast majority of the Lutheran Church in Germany had gone along with Hitler and ignored what they knew or thought might be going on with the Jews and Gypsies. These were Lutheran pastors who had lived through the war, not some second hand researcher or academic, but the people who admitted that they, too, were guilty and were warning people about being overly dedicated to Luther rather than to what the Lutheran Church taught regarding Scripture.

These speakers were talking about what was wrong with the Lutheran past both historically and in more recent history and every one of them mentioned that almost every Lutheran Church in Germany preached about and recommended Luther's "The Jews and Their Lies" when some Reich ministry requested that they do so no long after the "Kristallnacht". They helped dampen down the negative public reaction to the first waves of open attacks on Jews and they helped their flock keep going by regularly preaching about what Luther had to say with regard to always supporting those in power over you, no matter what.

There were a lot of individual Lutherans who wanted to do something or who when given the chance, helped hide or otherwise help Jewish families, but all in all, the Lutheran Church in German has nothing to be proud of in the way it interacted with the Nazi regime in that era. They aided them as much as they could both prior to the War and during it.

Regards

122 posted on 11/14/2011 1:49:31 AM PST by Rashputin (Obama stark, raving, mad, and even his security people know it.)
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