Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

 

Newsletter- December 2000- Vol. VI, no. 12 

Dear Friends,

I take this opportunity to send you all greetings for this festive and
joyous season. As we approach the reputed 2000th anniversary of the birth of
Jesus of Nazareth, we surely have complex feelings as we contemplate the
long centuries of Christian history. On the one hand, we must rejoice at the
achievements of Christian life and culture; on the other, we can only lament
the numerous occasions on which the Church has failed to live up to the
ideals of its founder. So too, church historians are not exempt. Twentieth
century church history, which is the focus of our Newsletter, has been an
exciting voyage of exploration; but at the same time, we have seen frequent
examples where partisanship has obscured the pursuit of historical accuracy.
May we hope that the new century will provide us with opportunities to heed
the wise admonition of Pope Leo XIII: “Let nothing untrue be said, and
nothing true be left unsaid”, or the saying of our good friend, the late
Klaus Scholder of Tübingen, “Truth may be painful for the Church, but
untruth is even more so”.
This issue completes the 6th Volume of this Newsletter, which has now had a
life far more extended than at first envisaged. But I have been sustained by
the encouragement and sometimes the written contributions you have sent in,
and am most grateful for your continued support. Particular thanks are due
to Doris Bergen for her kindness in editing the April issue. The benefits of
technology in bringing us together from all parts of the world continue to
amaze me, but I rejoice in these opportunities to make so many good friends,
even if too often unseen. I therefore greet you with heartfelt best wishes.

Contents:
1) The Pius XII Controversy continued
2)Book reviews: a) Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust
1930-1965
b) Kloczowski, History of Polish Christianity
3) Book notes: Nordblum, Fur Glaube und Volkstum
4) Journal articles: Kirby, Temple, Pius XII, natural law and the post-war
peace
Kirby, Anglo-American Cold War alliance and defence of Christianity

1) The Pius XII Controversy continued:
We are particularly fortunate that one of our subscribers, Michael Marrus,
Dean of the Graduate School, University of Toronto, is also a member of the
International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission appointed a year ago to
look at issues relating to the pontificate of Pius XII. Specifically the
mandate of the Commission, which consists of three Catholic and three Jewish
members, is to examine critically the archival material published in the 11
volumes of Actes et Documents du Saint Siege between 1965 and 1981. Despite
the large amount of documentation contained in these volumes – mostly in
Italian – polemical attacks have been made against the adequacy of Pius XII’
s actions during the Holocaust. It was the Commission’s task to see whether
any desirable further steps should be taken to clarify this picture, given
the fact that the published documents represent only a selection of the
Vatican’s holdings. The Commission recently completed an 18-page Preliminary
Report, and earlier this month went to Rome to present it. Unfortunately, a
version was leaked to the press, leading to several critical articles in,
for example, the New York Times. Nevertheless the Report has now been made
public and can be found on the website:
http://www.bnaibrith.org/cpp/randa/vatican.htm
One of the concerns voiced relates to the editorial policy when the Actes
were issued decades ago. On that occasion, it was decided to print only
documents which originated from the Vatican’s own officials. So some highly
significant pieces of evidence, which were supplied by outsiders, were
referred to only in footnotes. One example to which the Commission drew
attention was the memorandum sent by the World Jewish Congress in Geneva in
March 1942 about the mass murder of the Jews. Another example to which the
Commission could have referred was the noted eye-witness report on
conditions in Auschwitz which was presented by two escapees, A.Wetzler and
R.Vrba, to an official of the Papal Nunciature in Bratislava in June 1944.
The Commission rightly asks “What was the Holy See’s reaction, and what
discussion followed the reports that flowed in describing evidence of the
‘Final Solution’?”
So too, the Commission believes that historians’ curiosity should be
satisfied as to whether more documentation exists which would give a much
clearer picture, not only of what the Holy See attempted to do for the
victims of the war, including the Jews, but also of what was not done, as
for example the Vatican’s well-known opposition to the resettlement of Jews
in Palestine.
In all, the Commission raises its concerns in the form of 47 questions to
which they would like specific answers. While they recognize that it is
impossible for every piece of paper to be published, nevertheless they
believe that “there are numerous internal communications that every
administration leaves behind – diaries, memoranda, appointment books,
minutes of meetings, draft documents and so forth that detail the process of
how the Vatican arrived at the decisions it made” They also believe it would
help to have access to other archives such as those of the Society of Jesus,
and to the papers of numerous officials in the Vatican during those
traumatic years.
In conclusion the Commission states: “We appreciate that even if full access
were granted, this would not necessarily lay to rest all the questions
surrounding the role of the Holy See and the Holocaust. Nevertheless we
believe that this would be a very significant step forward in advancing
knowledge of the period and enhancing relations between the Jewish and
Catholic communities. . . . Ultimately, openness is the best policy for a
mature and balanced historical assessment.”

2) Book reviews: a) Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust
1930-1965, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 300 pp. $29.95 US.
Michael Phayer is a professor of history at Marquette University, with a
notable record of publications in numerous scholarly journals. His aim in
his new book, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust 1930-1965, is to go
beyond the issue of the silence of Pope Pius XII to explore how the Church
in various countries, and through various individual Catholics, responded to
the Holocaust, and how that response eventually led during the Second
Vatican Council to the Church’s official rejection of antisemitism.
In contrast to the unfortunate diatribe by John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope,
Phayer does not portray Pius XII as a Nazi sympathizer, or as a closeted
antisemite. But his indictment of Pius is still draconian. He claims that
Pius “did little for Jews in their hour of greatest need” (xi). While
acknowledging that he was able to save Jewish lives through the actions of
his papal nuncios, Phayer claims that his “greatest failure . . lay in his
attempt to use a diplomatic remedy for a moral outrage.” (xii) At the same
time, he charges that the “image that emerges of Pope Pius is that of a
pontiff whose deep concern about communism and the intact physical survival
of the city of Rome kept him from exploring options on behalf of the Jewish
people”.(xv)
Phayer further charges that in the immediate post-war period the Vatican
under Pius XII consciously assisted Nazi war criminals to escape and “worked
against U.S.policies that sought to make German society responsible for the
murder of the Jews”.(xvi) Why? To maintain a strong Germany in response to
the communist threat, and to keep unsullied the enhanced image of the Church
in Europe as a result of its actions during the war.
While Phayer spends a small portion of his book presenting heroic stories of
individual Catholics who engaged in rescue work, he returns consistently to
the theme of a silent, almost cowardly pontiff, whose only desire was to
limit communist expansion, even if it meant ignoring the plight of the Jews.
Yet Phayer is unable, or unwilling, to produce the evidence on which to base
this interpretation. He relies too much – as did Saul Friedlander before him
thirty years ago – on Nazi documents and their interpretation of the Vatican’s motives.
This flaw is compounded by the unfortunate and unhistorical repetition of
speculative and unproven hypotheses. For example, Phayer asserts that, had
Pius XI lived a further five years, Church reaction towards Nazi Germany and
the Holocaust would have been very different, in view of Pius XI’s more
robust condemnation of Nazi racism in his Encyclicals, and his desire to
have a new one dealing specifically with the Jewish issue, which Pius XII,
as one of his first acts in 1939, suppressed. But there is simply no
evidence of any change of papal strategy under Pius XII, nor explanation
that as Secretary of State under Pius XI, the future Pius XII was intimately
involved in his predecessor’s policies. Phayer’s claim is purely the result
of wishful thinking, and does not acknowledge what Pius XI did not face: the
onset of World War II.
So too, Phayer deplores the fact that Pius XII did not, after the outbreak
of war, condemn Nazi atrocities in Poland, and instead limited his
interventions to actions behind the scenes. This was to set a pattern, which
Phayer equally deplores, of stressing the Vatican’s impartial stance which
would enable the Pope to act as a mediator to achieve a cessation of
hostilities. But Phayer dismisses this stance as no more than an excuse.
The policies of Pius, Phayer believes, were much more due to preference for
Germany as over against his main enemy, the Soviet Union. Furthermore, this
diplomatic activity was far less desirable than a moral approach, though
Phayer fails to spell out what such a moral approach would have been, or how
it could have been either feasible or successful in the face of Nazi
intransigence.
Admittedly, the Vatican’s hope of achieving a diplomatic end to the war was
unsuccessful. The Allies’ adoption of the policy of unconditional surrender
in 1943 closed the door on their side; Hitler’s fanatical determination to
immolate his whole empire before capitulating equally destroyed Papal hopes.
Yet Phayer ignores the very real evidence of the Pope’s frustration,
disillusionment and despair, and instead insists that a better result could
have been achieved by thunderbolts from the Vatican denouncing the Nazi
crimes. And he depreciates even those statements Pius did make, such as his
Christmas message of 1942, which Phayer claims was not understood. “No one,
certainly not the Germans, took it as a protest against the slaughter of the
Jews” (49) In fact that was exactly how the New York Times on Christmas Day
1942 rightly interpreted the papal statement, as did the Nazis.
The central thesis of Phayer’s book is that Pius refused to speak out
against the Holocaust because he wanted a strong Germany to face down the
threat of Soviet expansion. Yet nowhere can he cite documented statements by
the Pope or his officials to that effect. In fact, the recently appointed
international Christian-Jewish Commission, [see Item 1 above] which has been
investigating the available material came to the conclusion: “We are struck
by the paucity of evidence to this effect and to the subject of communism in
general. Indeed, our reading of the volumes presents a different picture,
especially with regard to the Vatican promotion of the American bishops’
support for the alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union in
order to oppose Nazism.”
Some parts of Phayer’s book are both interesting and worthy. He outlines
well what the Church – and individual Catholics, even within Nazi Germany –
were able to accomplish in rescuing Jews. He makes clear that the Church did
not sit by idly as the Jews were taken to slaughter. His descriptions of the
acts by these brave women and men are notable, though he cannot help but add
that they went “further than Pius XII”.
Phayer clearly belongs to the school which believes that outspoken
denunciations of Nazi crimes could have saved more Jewish lives, even if he
has to admit that there was nothing the Holy See could do to force the Nazis
to end their campaign for a “Final Solution”. Such wishful conjectures are a
tribute to Phayer’s moral sensitivity, but do not enhance his historical
analysis.
What stands out is that the Holy See, under the leadership of Pius, saved
more Jewish lives than did any other agency in war-torn Europe. Phayer has
failed to show how any different policy or strategy could have saved more
lives. It can certainly be argued that a public crusade by Pius would have
made these accomplishments impossible.
Phayer’s attacks on the Vatican for its alleged assistance to ex-Nazis
fleeing their due punishment lack any convincing proof that any such
organized help was approved by the Pope or his immediate entourage. To the
contrary, we now know that the man most clearly involved, Bishop Hudal, had
long been isolated and relegated in the Vatican’s eyes. He was not received
by Pope Pius, and was clearly in high disfavour. Presumably he was the kind
of prelate who could be hoodwinked by any clever scoundrel or persuaded that
doing good to such persons, in the name of anti-communism, would earn him
merit.
Finally Phayer claims that coming to terms with Christian antisemitism was
delayed until after Pius’ death, allegedly because of this pontiff’s
unbending conservatism and pro-German stance. The fact is that the climate
was changing dramatically and that theological and scriptural studies, which
were in fact begun during Pius’ period of office, laid the foundation for
the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.
Phayer’s stance is perfectionist. Of course, one can conceive of ways in
which more could have been done to ameliorate the lot of the Jews. But it is
not enough to assert the failings of the Papacy in this grave crisis. The
responsible scholar also has to come to terms with, and to describe the
reality of, the historical situation as it was understood by those involved
at the time, and not as we would now like it to have been.
The reality is that the Vatican’s record in helping Jews was far better than
any other governmental entity in that terrible time. This is the undeniable
fact that critics of Pius, whatever their motivation, must answer. Phayer
does not.
Robert P.Lockwood, Fort Wayne, Indiana

b) Jerzy Kloczowski, A History of Polish Christianity, Cambridge University
Press, 2000. 385pp
Jerzy Kloczowski is Poland’s most distinguished senior church historian.
Despite having lost an arm during the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi
invaders, he went on to have a notable career at the Catholic University of
Lublin, which took courage of a different sort. For some time he was a
colleague of Karol Wojtyla, now John Paul II. His special research interest
is in ecclesiastical topography, and he has built up a splendid library of
maps, demonstrating the growth of religious institutions in eastern Europe,
particularly for the Middle Ages.
Kloczowski recognized the need for a comprehensive history of Polish
Christianity at the time of its millennium in the 1980s. But little could be
done to publicize its record or achievements during the period of Communist
rule. Once Communism fell, the opportunity came to give Kloczowski’s work a
wider audience. This abbreviated but well translated English version will
therefore introduce its foreign readers to a rich but largely unknown
history.
The twentieth century gets 90 pages, i.e. nearly a quarter of the book. The
independent Poland re-established in 1918 was both a multinational and a
multidenominational state. Kloczowski gives a comprehensive and sympathetic
description of the various branches of the church and depicts the notable
growth of Catholic institutions and religious life during this period. But,
at the same time, waves of chauvinism and nationalism produced much
religious conflict, including virulent antisemitism. Anti-clericalism was
also rife among the intelligentsia. In any case, Poland’s rapacious
neighbours, both west and east, within twenty years destroyed the nation and
sought to enslave its peoples. Both Nazis and Soviets persecuted the church
brutally and consistently. Under the Nazis, nearly a fifth of all Polish
Catholic priests were killed; 1760 Polish priests were sent to Dachau, where
860 died; 3 bishops were murdered in concentration camps. The material
damage destroyed all the achievements of the interwar period; the moral
damage was incalculable. But the identification of Polish nationalism with
Catholicism gave rise to examples of heroic resistance and defiance, such as
the self-sacrificing death of Maxymilian Kolbe, later canonized. In
Kloczowski’s view, the Catholic Church suffered terrible losses, but its
position in 1945 was much stronger than in 1939, which was to be of
paramount importance in the subsequent years.
The forty-five years of Communist rule still need to be objectively
researched and analyzed. But it is clear that Poland was the most
significant arena where the dominant Communist totalitarian ideology was
challenged by the vitality of Catholicism, powerfully and deeply rooted in
the people at large. The 1945 revision of Poland’s borders strengthened
Catholicism by expelling other Christian communities, while the few
remaining Jews sought exile elsewhere. But the task of restoration was
deliberately obstructed by the anti-clerical policies of the regime, which
led to the arrest and detention of the Polish Primate, Wyszynski, for three
years from 1953-56. The stubbornness of the church was undoubtedly one
factor which forced the government’s new leader, Gomulka, to take a more
moderate stance after 1956. Despite the official propagation of communist
atheism, the popularity of the “church-in-chains” grew steadily, as did the
authority of its leaders, one of whom became Pope in 1978. The emphasis on
pastoral work was notable, but strengthened the church’s innately
conservative character. Not until 1970 was Polish first used in the Mass,
and the reforms of the 2nd Vatican Council were only slowly adopted.
Kloczowski acknowledges the danger of Polish-Catholic ethnocentrism, and
regrets that, for all its vitality, the church shows little willingness to
engage in ecumenical activities beyond its immediate horizons.
The election of a Polish Pope and his appeal to the moral foundations of
Christianity’s heritage undoubtedly played a significant role in undermining
the Communist regime. The regaining of independence was of course a welcome
development, even if it led to the appearance in Poland of scores of new
religious groups, Christian or other. Kloczowski notes that, despite the
numerical and organizational strength of Polish Catholicism, it also suffers
>from manifest weaknesses and inner divisions. Political quarrels over the
role of the church in society are notable. Theological consensus on
doctrinal questions is far from complete. But such tensions could be
expected at a time when the social order in Poland, the Polish state, the
Church in Poland and all of Poland’s Christians have entered a new phase and
face challenges different from the one encountered under totalitarianism.
This eirenic and scholarly history gives an excellent introduction to the
present situation, and we are indebted to Professor Kloczowski for his lucid
guidance and appreciation. JSC

3) Book notes: Pia Nordblum, Fur Glaube und Volkstum. Die katholische
Wochenzeitung “Der Deutsche in Polen” (1934-1939) in der Auseinandersetzung
mit dem Nationalsozialismus. (Veroffentlichungen der Kommission fur
Zeitgeschichte, Reihe B. Bd 87), Paderborn 2000 DM 168
The Nazi policy of “Gleichschaltung” which affected so many aspects of
German life, also fundamentally altered the close relations between Berlin
and the German ethnic community in Poland, which had been established during
the Weimar Republic. One of the leading German Catholic politicians in this
community in Poland, Dr Edward Pant (1887-1938), early on recognized that
the new Nazi regime would try to exploit his community for its own political
purposes. However, he was unable to convince his compatriots of the accuracy
of his analysis of the situation. The German-Catholic minority split into
pro- and anti-Nazi factions. Following his isolation politically, Pant took
the counteroffensive journalistically, founding a new conservative Catholic
weekly newspaper in Upper Silesia, “Der Deutsche in Polen”. During its
publication run from 1934 to 1939, this newspaper quickly became an
important mouthpiece for German Christians living in East-Central Europe who
were opponents of Nazism, including recent emigres. The paper also served as
a forum for those German ethnic minorities in eastern European states who
did not want to be subject to “Gleichschaltung”.
The author, Dr Pia Nordblom, Heidelberg, has used rich and wide-ranging
source material from German, Austrian and Polish archives, as well as
extensive use of private papers, hitherto unknown. She has also analyzed the
contemporary press at length. As a result, she is able to paint a
comprehensive picture of the political and cultural life of the German
minority in Poland during the 1930s. Moreover, in describing the founding
and contents of Der Deutsche in Polen, as well as its organizational
profile, she makes an important contribution to the history of the popular
press. Finally, this study adds to the history of the German resistance
against Nazism – especially among Catholics in Silesia – and to the history
of German-Polish relations before the outbreak of the Second World War.

4) Journal articles: a) Dianne Kirby, University of Ulster, William Temple,
Pius XII, Ecumenism, natural law, and the post-war peace in Journal of
Ecumenical Studies, 26: 3-4, Summer-Fall 1999, 318-339

 
During his tenure of the archbishopric of Canterbury, 1942-4, the
internationally respected William Temple sought to bring together the Roman
and non-Roman worlds in order to transcend the divisions inflicted on
Christendom by World War II. Temple, a founder of the World Council of
Churches (in process of formation), hoped to make a personal visit to Pope
Pius XII to demonstrate to the world the agreement on principles for
peacemaking that existed on both sides of the Reformation divide. His
efforts engendered political opposition from the British Foreign Office,
less than enthusiastic at the prospect of Christian influence on post-war
plans. These officials saw no reason to assist Temple in realizing his aim
to reach an agreement with the Pope regarding the moral foundation of a
lasting peace. Temple also had to contend with embedded Anglican suspicion
of Roman Catholicism, including his own. Nonetheless, right up to his
premature death in 1944, Temple remained determined to effect an approach to
Pius XII which would show the world the way toward a Christian peace and the
churches a way toward the ecumenical ideal he cherished.

b) Dianne Kirby, Divinely Sanctioned: The Anglo-American Cold War Alliance
and the Defence of Western Civilization and Christianity, 1945-48 in Journal
of Contemporary History, Vol 35, no 3, 2000, 385-412
As the war-time alliance of the great powers fell apart to be replaced by
suspicion of the Soviet Union’s intentions, the leaders in both Britain and
the USA sought means for building a new relationship capable of stemming
this danger. Because of the divergence between the British Labour Government
‘s socialist stance and that of the Truman administration’s more right-wing
internal politics, the use of Christianity became a convenient ideological
justification for this new policy. This had the advantage of projecting the
Soviet regime as an evil power while at the same time consolidating the
‘special relationship’ across the Atlantic. So too the success of
establishing Christian Democratic parties in western Europe demonstrated the
usefulness of this religious motivation. Not only did this tactic contribute
to the intensification of the Cold War but transformed numerous Christian
leaders into Cold War warriors, as well as making Christianity a politicized
doctrine.

 

At the conclusion of the year, and of this volume, I want to send you all my
best wishes, in the hope that I may hear from you with your comments and
criticism in the year ahead.
Sincerely,
John Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/akz

 

List of books reviewed in 2000
Barnett, V.J.: Bystanders. Conscience and complicity during the Holocaust
July/August
Baum, Gregory ed.,The Twentieth Century. A theological overview January
Besier, Gerhard: Kirche,Politik und Gesellschaft im 20 Jahrhundert May
Cornwell, John: Hitler’s Pope January
Devine, T.M. ed.: Scotland’s Shame. Bigotry and Sectarianism October
Doering-Manteuffel, A and Nowak, K: Religionspolitik in Deutschland
Festschrift für Martin Greschat September
Furuya, Y. ed: A History of Japanese Theology July/August
Garrard-Burnett, Virginia: Protestantism in Guatemala July/August
Hastings, Adrian: A world history of Christianity November
Hoover, Arlie J.: God, Britain and Hitler in World War II October
Ion, Hamish: The Cross in the Dark Valley March
Kääriäinen, Kimmo: Religion in Russia after the collapse of Communism
October
Kell,G and Seborg, C.J: Reflections on Bonhoeffer March
Kloczowski, J.: A history of Polish Christianity December
Lewy, Gunter: The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies June
Loveland, Ann: American Evangelicals and the United States Military April
Ludwig, Frieder: Church and State in Tanzania June
Phayer,Michael: The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965 December
Railton, Nicholas: The German Evangelical Alliance and
the Third Reich February
Rittner, C, Smith, S., and Steinfeldt, I: The Holocaust and
the Christian World May
Roggelin, Holger: Franz Hildebrandt May
Rychlak, Ronald: Hitler, the War and the Pope November
Safranski, Rüdiger: Martin Heidegger. Between good and evil September
Seliger, S: Charlotte v.Kirschbaum and Karl Barth February
Shapiro, James: Oberammergau October
Terray, Laszlo. He could not do otherwise. Bishop Lajos Ordass March
Thiesen, John D.: Mennonite & Nazi in Latin America? June
Vogelin, Eric: Hitler and the Germans February
Vuletic, Aleksandar-Sasa: Christen jüdischer Herkunft im Dritten Reich June
Werner, Uwe: Anthroposophen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus May
Wilkinson, Alan: Christian Socialism: Scott Holland to Tony Blair March
Wollasch, Hans-Josef ed: “Betrifft Nachrichtenzentrale des Erzbischofs
Gröber in Freiburg”.Die Ermittlungsakten der Geheimen Staatspolizei
gegen Gertrud Luckner September

All reviews except those whose authors are specifically noted are written by
your Editor

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

 

Newsletter- November 2000- Vol. VI, no. 11 

Dear Friends,

This issue is principally devoted to the history of Catholic Church and to
the policies of Pius XII, which continue to arouse considerable controversy.
In fact, during the compilation of this Newsletter, I received a copy of The
Catholic Church and the Holocaust, kindly sent to me by the author, Michael
Phayer. To be reviewed later.

Greetings to you at this season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

Contents:

1) Enquiry

2) Report on Conferences: a) Notre Dame, Indiana, b) GSA, Houston, Texas c)
International Bonhoeffer Congress, Berlin

3)Book reviews:

a) Rychlak, Hitler, the War and the Pope
b) ed. Hastings, World History of Christianity

4) Journal articles: O.Heilbronner, German Catholic Ghettos
Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, March 2000

5) Titanically . . .

 

1) Peter Baehr presently at Lingnan University, Hong King, is making a new
translation of Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic. He asks for help in tracking
down some allusions which need clarification. Can any one assist him, and if
so, can you reply to:
pbaehr@ln.edu.hk
He wants to know: a) why are some nations known as peoples of the Liberum
Arbitrium (free will), e.g. Italy and France?
b) What does “genus proximum differentia specifica” mean?
c) Weber refers to a “cawerische” sect. Who were/are these people?

2) Recent conferences:
a) A one day symposium on Pope Pius XII took place at Notre Dame University
on September 23. Participants were Jose Sanchez (St. Louis University),
Steward Stehlin (New York University), Michael Phayer (Marquette
University), and John Pollard (Anglia Polytechnic University), who chaired
the panel and the following discussion. Sanchez is publishing an
historiographical study of Pius; his remarks, consequently, reviewed known
positions, but Sanchez indicated that his own view was sympathetic to the
pope. Stehlin reviewed the situation of the church after the Weimar
Republic, pointing out that the Concordat with Germany was logical and
therefore did not constitute the papal power play that John Cornwell
portrays it to be in Hitler’s Pope. After noting studies of Pius that have
been completely favorable or completely unfavorable to Pius XII, Phayer
provided the views of his contemporaries, people like the English minister
Francis Osborne, the Jesuit advisor, Robert Leiber, and the French
ambassador to the Vatican, Jacques Maritain.
In the discussion that followed with the audience of about 40, Gary Wills’
recent book was mentioned along with his accusation that the pope could have
but did not excommunicate perpetrators. This led to a discussion about the
advantages and disadvantages of the pope’s speaking out. How many would have
been endangered? On the other hand, how many would have been saved by a
papal warning? One member of the audience mentioned that a new collection of
Jacques Maritain’s letters (six volumes!) was presently being published.
Some of this material is reportedly critical of the pope (Maritain was the
French ambassador to the Vatican after the war until his resignation in
1948.)
b) The 24th German Studies Association met in Houston from October 6 to 8.
One session was devoted to a discussion of Pope Pius in the aftermath of
John Cornwell’s study, Hitler’s Pope. The panel consisted of Hannah Decker
(Houston University), Richard Rubenstein (president emeritus of Bridgeport
University), Michael Phayer (Marquette University); the session was chaired
by Michael Marrus (Toronto University) and Francis Nicosia gave the comment.
Decker and Rubenstein reviewed Cornwell’s biographical representation of the
pope, his family and educational background. Decker agreed that a
psychological study of the pope could shed light on his decisions during the
war and the Holocaust; she indicated that certain people experience crises
when they attain positions of complete power. Phayer compared favorably
Bishop Preysing of Berlin to Pope Pius and then reviewed the October , 1943,
razzia of Roman Jews, indicating that the pope’s actions were reasonable if
mistaken. Rubenstein, in basic agreement with Decker and Phayer, couched his
remarks around cognitive dissonance theory. In his commentary, Nicosia
indicated his favorable view of Hitler’s Pope.
In the discussion that followed the 15 minutes presentations, Michael Marrus
pointed out the mistake in assuming that the pope should have spoken out
when there was no precedent for this kind of intervention. The audience
asked about the pope’s diplomatic situation after the Hitler-Stalin pact and
invasion of Poland. Phayer noted that Myron Taylor, President Roosevelt’s
personal envoy to the Vatican, reported that the pope did not speak out
because of his extreme depression.
c) VIII International Bonhoeffer Kongress, Berlin

Over 250 members of the International Bonhoeffer Society met from August
20-25 at the historic Gendamenmarkt of Berlin to learn more about and
discuss
issues relating to the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Under the theme
“Religion and the Shape of Christianity in the 21st Century,” seven major
lectures and sixteen elective presentations were offered to the participants
representing eighteen countries.

Professor Christian Gremmels, chair of the International Bonhoeffer
Gesellschaft, preached the sermon for opening worship held at the Berlin
Dom,
while Renate Bethge, widow of Eberhard Bethge and niece of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, served as lector. Following the opening worship on August 20,
the Karl Barth Prize (given by the Evangelical Church of the Union) was
presented to Dr. John de Gruchy of Capetown, for his faithful leadership
over
many years in the South African struggle to end apartheid.

The major lectures were given by Dr. Jean Bethke Elshtain (Chicago):
“Religion and Modernity”; Dr. John W. deGruchy (South Africa) and Dr. Bassam
Tibi (Germany): “Christianity in Times of Religious Pluralism”; Dr. Larry
Rasmussen (USA) and Dr. Johann Baptist Metz (Germany): “The Shape of
Christianity in the 21st Century and the Future of Ecumenism”; and Bishop
Wolfgang Huber (Germany): “The Relevance of Christian Freedom in View of the
Social Challenges of our Time”. (Scheduled to speak, but later unable to
attend, was Dr. Peter L. Berger of the USA. )

Included in the week’s program were elective tours of significant sites
related to Bonhoeffer and the Holocaust, such as the Sachsenhausen
Concentration Camp, the Topography of Terror and German Resistance Memorial
Centers, the House of the Wannsee-Conference, as well as two evening
concerts
at the Bonhoeffer Haus in Charlottenburg.

The closing worship service on August 25th was held at St. Matthaikirche,
near the Tiergarten, the parish at which Bonhoeffer was ordained in 1932.
Officiating at Holy Communion and preaching the sermon was Dr. Wolfgang
Huber, Bishop of Berlin-Brandenburg and an active member of the Bonhoeffer
Society. Following the worship was a reception for conference delegates at
the Schloss Bellevue, at the invitation of the Bundespraesident, Dr. h.c.
Johannes Rau, who because of illness could not personally be present, and
who
delegated the host responsibilities to his secretary of state.

For copies of the conference lectures, contact: Enno Obendieck at
Koetschaustrasse 14, D-40474 Dusseldorf, Germany.

The date and place for the (next) IX International Bonhoeffer Kongress (year
2004) has not yet been determined; the Newsletter of the International
Bonhoeffer Society – English Language Section (Box 235, Afton, Minnesota
55001) will publicize such details, as they become known.

John W. Matthews, vice-president
International Bonhoeffer Society – English Language Section

3a) Ronald J.Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope. Our Sunday
Visitor, Huntington IN. 548 pp. US $26.95

Amid the flood of tributes to Pope Pius XII following his death on
October 9, 1958, those of Jewish leaders were especially warm. “During
the ten years of Nazi terror,” said Golda Meir, then Israeli
representative to the United Nations and later Prime Minister of Israel,
“the Pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and to commiserate
with their victims.” Rabbi Elio Toaff, who would one day welcome
another pope to his synagogue as Rome’s Chief Rabbi, said that Italian
Jews “more than anyone else … had the opportunity to appreciate the
great kindness, filled with compassion and magnanimity, that the Pope
displayed during the terrible years of persecution and terror.” The
tributes of major rabbis in New York alone were so numerous that it took
three issues of the New York Times to report them all. Praise came also
>from the Jewish press. “There was probably not a single ruler of our
generation,” wrote the Winnipeg Jewish Post, “who did more to help the
Jews in their hour of greatest tragedy … than the late Pope.”

The triumphal car got off to a good start. But Vengeance came limping
after in the form of the German playwright Rolf Hochhuth. His play The
Deputy, first performed and published in 1963, portrayed Pius XII as
indifferent to the Holocaust, concerned chiefly to preserve the
financial interests of the institution over which he presided in
imperial isolation. Born in 1931, Hochhuth was too young to have
experienced the events of which he wrote. But his play captured the
imagination of a generation starting to protest against authority in all
forms. Ever since, the wartime Pontiff has been the anti-hero of a
Black Legend, the one wartime leader who might have stopped the
slaughter of six million Jews and failed to do so: out of cowardice,
cynicism, and indifference – even (in the recently expanded version of
the indictment) anti-Semitism.

Acceptance of this legend is now so widespread that the Pope’s supposed
“silence” during the Holocaust was the starting point for all media
comment on John Paul II’s prayer for forgiveness of Catholic sins in
March of this year and his subsequent visit to Israel.

Ronald J. Rychlak, a professor and dean at the University of
Mississippi’s School of Law, a nationally recognized authority on the
interpretation of evidence and a non-Catholic, he had never heard of the
Black
Legend until a few years ago, when “a friend of mine accused Pope Pius
XII of having been a Nazi.” This book is the result.

Starting in the 1920s and concluding with Pius XII’s death, Rychlak
presents the judgment of the Pope’s contemporaries in rich detail. A
concluding chapter analyzes the charges against the pontiff in the form
of ten questions and finds them without foundation.

The New York Times is in the forefront today of those propagating the
myth of Pius XII’s “silence.” As the story unfolded, however, the
“newspaper of record” saw things differently: For example,
– “NAZIS WARNED IN LOURDES”: was the headline reporting the protest in 1935
of
then Cardinal Pacelli against “superstitions of race and blood.”
When Pacelli was elected Pope on March 2, 1939, the Times
reported “nearly general applause around the world,” except in
Germany. “POPE CONDEMNS DICTATORS, TREATY VIOLATORS, RACISM”: was the
three-column front-page headline reporting the Pope’s first encyclical, Oct.
28, 1939. Or again,- “VATICAN DENOUNCES ATROCITIES IN POLAND; GERMANS CALLED
EVEN WORSE THAN RUSSIANS”: Jan. 23, 1940.
– “JEWS’ RIGHTS DEFENDED”: Mar. 14, 1940, reporting the Pope’s
“burning words to [Nazi Foreign Minister] Ribbentrop in defense of the
Jews in Germany and Poland.”
– “Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping
Europe this Christmas. … The Pope put himself squarely against
Nazism”: Dec. 25, 1941.
– “The papacy is throwing the whole weight of its publicizing
facilities into an exposé” of Nazi atrocities (through Vatican
radio): Jan. 24, 1942.
– “POPE IS SAID TO PLEAD FOR JEWS LISTED FOR REMOVAL FROM FRANCE”:
Aug. 6, 1942. And on Aug. 27: “VICHY SEIZES JEWS; POPE PIUS
IGNORED.”
– “This Christmas [1942] more than ever [the Pope] is a lonely voice
crying out of the silence of a continent”: editorial on the Pope’s
reference to “the hundreds of thousands who … solely because
of their nation or race, have been condemned to death or progressive
extinction.”
– On August 21, 1944 Pulitzer laureate Anne O’Hare McCormick wrote in
the Times that the Pope had given “first priority” to saving Jews.
– “Under the Pope’s direction the Holy See did an exemplary job of
sheltering and championing the victims of the Nazi-Fascist regime. … None
[in
Rome] doubts that the general feeling of the Roman Curia was anti-Fascist
and
very strongly anti-Nazi”: Times reporter Herbert L. Matthews, Oct. 15, 1944.

Expressions of thanks by Jewish leaders, throughout the war and at its
conclusion, were numerous. “The people of Israel will never forget what
His Holiness is doing for us,” Chief Rabbi Herzog of Palestine wrote in
one of his many wartime communications to the Holy See. Similar
assurances recur repeatedly. On October 11, 1945 the New York Times
reported a gift to the Vatican of $20,000 from the World Jewish Congress
“in recognition of the work of the Holy See in rescuing Jews from
Fascist and Nazi persecution.”

The perception of Pius XII’s contemporaries is virtually unknown
today. When adverted to, it is dismissed as irrelevant, or simply
wrong. Why? Hochhuth’s play may have occasioned the change. It cannot
have caused it. “The evil is so great that people keep looking for
another culprit,” Rychlak writes. Hochhuth’s indictment of the Pope
came, as already noted, just as the rebellion against authority was
getting underway in western democracies. The demonization of an
authority figure revered by millions was welcome to an age proclaiming
the death of God and rejecting the pretensions of those claiming to
speak in his name. Today people who hold that there is no such thing as
truth, but only differing opinions, cherish the Black Legend as a means
of discrediting an institution still too benighted to concede a position
they hold to be self-evident.

Readers skeptical about the value Rychlak assigns to the judgment of
Pius XII’s contemporaries may wish to consider Rychlak’s Epilogue. This
deals with the most recent statement of the case against the wartime
Pontiff by John Cornwell in his book, Hitler’s Pope, which appeared when
Rychlak’s manuscript was substantially complete.

He cites abundant evidence contradicting Cornwell’s claim that his
original intention was to defend Pius XII against calumny (the Black
Legend), but that “previously unseen material” which Cornwell studied
“for months on end” in the secret Vatican archives reduced him to the
“state of moral shock” which produced Hitler’s Pope. In reality,
Cornwell’s research in the Vatican archives extended for three weeks
only, during which his visits were not daily. None of the material he
cites was “previously unseen.”

A letter written in 1919 by Pacelli when he was nuncio in Munich, which
Cornwell calls “a ticking time bomb” and proof of anti-Semitism,
appeared in print several years before Cornwell started his research.
The letter reports an attack on the Munich nunciature by a band of
communist thugs led by “a young Russian Jew: pale, dirty, with vacant
eyes, hoarse voice, vulgar, repulsive, with a face that is both
intelligent and sly.” This description is by an aide not by Pacelli
(who did not witness the incident). Though this language has been
criminalized by today’s language police, it was hardly remarkable eighty
years ago. Moreover it correctly states the facts. It no more proves
Pacelli’s lifelong anti-Semitism than incidents from his early
schooling, which Rychlak shows that Cornwell has either misunderstood or
misinterpreted.

Rychlak also demonstrates that Cornwell misrepresents Pacelli’s role
(as papal Secretary of State) and motives in negotiating the Holy See’s
Concordat with Hitler in July 1933. Cornwell’s source is the German
Protestant Klaus Scholder, whose work is available in English
translation, and whom Cornwell calls “unchallenged in German
scholarship.” In fact, Scholder’s work has been decisively refuted by
two German Catholic historians whose works remain untranslated: the late
Ludwig Volk SJ and Konrad Repgen. (Cornwell appears to have used no
German sources at all.)

The initiative for the Concordat came not from Rome (as Cornwell,
following Scholder, claims) but from Hitler. Far from weakening the
resistance of German Catholics to Hitler, as Cornwell contends, the
treaty contained protections for the church, eagerly desired at the time
by the German bishops. Moreover, Pacelli was more realistic about the
value of Hitler’s promises than most political leaders, telling the
British Minister to the Holy See that while he expected Hitler to
violate some of the Concordat’s provisions, he probably would not
violate all of them at the same time.
Cornwell makes much of Pius XII’s supposed indifference to the roundup
of Roman Jews by the Nazis on October 16, 1943, shown (Cornwell
contends) by the Pope’s failure to mention this in a conversation with
the American official Harold Tittmann the very next day. Though
Tittmann’s published report is dated October 17, this is clearly
erroneous. The Vatican records show that the conversation took place
October 14. Rychlak writes: “The Pope did not mention the roundup of
Jews because it had not yet happened.” In fact, thousands of Roman Jews
were saved by the Pope. When Robert Katz (another star witness for
Cornwell) claimed the contrary after Pius XII’s death, his niece won an
action for libel from the Italian Supreme Court. Cornwell falsely
claims that the verdict was “inconclusive.”

Similarly skewed is Cornwell’s account of papal policy toward the
wartime Ustashi regime in Croatia, which cooperated with Nazi
persecution of Jews. Far from approving of the regime, the Holy See
refused to recognize it and mounted feverish efforts to help Jews in
Croatia. Cornwell repeats post-war charges by the Yugoslav communist
government that the Croatian Archbishop Stepinac supported the Ustashi
regime. His approval was short lived. After learning of the regime’s
brutality, and receiving instructions from Rome, Stepinac vigorously
condemned the regime and worked to save its victims. Following his
post-war conviction by a communist court, widely recognized even then as
a frame-up, the American Jewish leader Louis Braier defended Stepinac,
calling him “a great man of the church … who spoke openly and
fearlessly against the racial law. After His Holiness, Pius XII, he was
the greatest defender of the Jews in persecuted Europe.”

While Rychlak’s refutation of the Black Legend is impressive, it is
unlikely to change many minds. The myth of Pius XII’s silence and
inactivity serves a function similar to that of the myths in classical
antiquity. It helps explain what would otherwise be unintelligible.
Moreover, deeply held beliefs seldom yield to facts. Already an Israeli
member of the six-member panel charged with evaluating the twelve
published volumes of wartime documents from the Vatican archives has
called Pius XII “complicit in German policy.”

In the face of six million dead, no one can claim that enough was
done. To claim, however, that nothing was done – or that the failure to
do more was the result of cynicism or indifference – is a grave
falsification of history. When the victim of this falsification is a
person of demonstrable moral courage and goodness, it is shameful.
John Jay Hughes, St Louis, Missouri

3b) ed. Adrian Hastings, A World History of Christianity, London: Cassell,
1999. pp.xiv, 594.
This handsome volume, clearly essential to the shelves of any
self-respecting library, will strike its readers as indispensable and
infuriating., in proportions likely to teach each reader a good deal about
him/herself! Built on a plan drawn up by Peter Hinchliff, whose early death
was one of several blows to affect the final outcome, it consists of 13
essays on particular areas/periods, so that the entire world-wide experience
of Christians to date is ‘covered’. But not encyclopaedically – don’t expect
to be able to look up your favourite episodes or witnesses. The editor
forestalls not a little of the infuriation with his apology on p. 4f for
areas that are overlooked – though he could have included Poland, Bohemia
and Hungary too!
Any such project cannot but provoke endless questions about emphasis and
structure. The writers clearly all strive to be properly ‘objective’. yet
already the centrality of ‘Christianity’ as their topic proves in detail
slippery. It was undoubtedly a good idea to entrust the opening chapter on
“The emergence of Christianity” to a learned and courteous Jew, who gives
half his space to the social and intellectual background in the Roman Empire
and in Judaism. But the other chapters vary considerably in their relative
attention to the ‘outer’ aspects, i.e. the church history, or to the ‘inner’
history, what the faith has meant (or otherwise) in a given culture, let
alone to the overall social and intellectual history of that population as a
whole. And while it is excellent to have all continents represented, was it
necessary to give Western Europe three whole chapters where Africa, Latin
America and North America (the three most quantitatively ‘most Christian’
areas today) only get one each? Good too that N.America and Australasia
provide their own authors, but why oh why could we not have African, Indian
and Latin American authors (good as their western proxies are!)?
The main word must however be of profound appreciation for what the book
does offer. None of the chapters is less than valuable, most of them
fascinating. Two whose topics are specific enough for the author to be able
to tell a key period of history as a continuous story are those on the
Reformation (Andrew Petegree) and Christianity in W.Europe from the
Enlightenment (Mary Heimann), the latter encouragingly fresh in pointing
beyond the ‘myths’ that have crept into so much contemporary interpretations
of the huge swings in her period (see her account of the 1860
Huxley-Wilberforce debate on pp 494-6).
Dismayingly frequent, though clearly in no way concerted, is an emphasis on
the disastrous effects of quarrels and splits among Christians. Hardly less
frequent are the passages, at least for this reader, where one realises that
a person or group one has regarded as key to a given area proves to be less
so – Ziegenbalg for instance is evaluated much more highly for Christianity
in India than William Carey. No reader will fail to learn a great deal,
whether of detail or of the larger movements of history, even those who
might like to think of ourselves as relatively well-informed. And the
bibliographies are magisterial.
Martin Conway, Oxford

4) Journal article: a) Oded Heilbronner, From Ghetto to ghetto: The Place of
German Catholic society in recent historiography, Journal of Modern History,
72, June 2000, pp453-495.
This 40 page review article gives an extensive analysis of a number of works
dealing with German Catholic society during the last 15o years. Heilbronner
develops his highly critical views of the current German Catholic research
establishment, accusing its participants of outdated historical and
methodological opinions. His account of the “backwardness” of Catholics
during this period is unlikely to make many friends, but some of his
strictures have merit.

b) The March issue of Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht is devoted
to the subject of Church, State and Society. The opening article by H-J
Kracht touches on Heilbronner’s subject, while Kurt Nowak (Leipzig)
contributes a masterly overview of the literature on church history, mainly
German, for the past two centuries, pp.190-207, also April issue, pp256-66.
Claudia Lipp gives a useful summary of the historiography of the divided yet
united Protestant Church 1945-95.

5) Titanically . . .
This is a transcript of an actual radio conversation of a US naval ship with
Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October 1995:

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a
collision.
Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid
a collision
Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR
course.
Canadians: No, I say again, divert YOUR course.
Americans: This is the Aircraft Carrier, USS Lincoln. The second largest
ship in the US fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers
and numerous support vessels. I demand that you change your course 15
degrees, that is one five degrees, north or counter measures will be taken
to ensure the safety of this ship.
Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

Best wishes
JohnS.Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

 

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

 

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

 

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

 

Newsletter- October 2000- Vol.VI, no. 10 

Dear Friends

Contents:

1 ) Book reviews:

a) Shapiro, Oberammergau
b) Hoover, God, Britain and Hitler in World War II
c) Kääriäinen, Religion in Russia
d) ed T.Devine, Scotland’s Shame?

2) Book Notes:

a) ed. Hutchinson/Kalu, A Global Faith
b) ed K.Koschorke, Christen und Gewürze
c) ed E.Gatz, Kirche und Katholizismus

1a) James Shapiro, Oberammergau. The troubling story of the world’s most
famous Passion Play. New York: Pantheon Books. 2000. 239pp. US$ 24.00
Fifty years ago this summer I tramped across Europe to the picturesque
Bavarian village of Oberammergau in order to see their well-known Passion
Play. The performance was impressive, especially the crowd scenes in which
several hundred villagers thronged the huge open-air stage, with its
backdrop of the Alpine foothills behind. The play itself was eight hours
long, based on the text revised by a nineteenth century priest. The emphasis
was on the drama of Our Lord’s Passion, in places going well beyond the
Gospel story, especially in the depiction of Jesus’ opponents, the Jews.
At the time, following so soon after the disastrous political events of the
Nazi period, this first post-war performance seemed to mark a welcome return
to the traditions of earlier centuries, a sign of the vitality of popular
Catholicism and an advantageous means of reviving the economy in contrast to
the ruined desperate conditions in the near-by bombed-out cities.
No one, I am sure, attending the 1950 performances could have foreseen that
shortly thereafter both the village and the Passion Play were to become
embroiled in an intense political and theological controversy, which raised
serious questions about the integrity of both. The reverberations still
continue. Now, thanks to the diligent investigations of James Shapiro, a
Professor of English at Columbia University, we can follow the course of
this debate. His book was published just in time before this year’s cycle of
performances, and provides the English-speaking reader with the kind of
background which is certainly not included in the tourist literature.
The first salvo was fired in the mid-1960s by two American Jewish
organizations who deplored the fact that the play should so openly espouse a
virulent prejudice which depicted the Jews collectively as “Christ-killers”,
an accusation virtually unchanged since the middle ages. As Elie Wiesel
said: “the artist cannot be silent when the arts are used to exalt hatred”.
Demands were issued that striking changes should be made to the traditional
text and all antisemitic elements removed. But these protests had little
success until similar views were expressed by leading Catholics, following
the Second Vatican Council and its revolutionary ‘Declaration of the
Relationship of the Church to non-Christian Religions’, commonly known as
Nostra Aetate. The Vatican now adopted a very different tone, and it became
clear that while the play had not changed, the Church’s message had. Caught
between the anvil of Vatican II and the hammering criticism of Jewish
groups, the Oberammergau authorities were grudgingly obliged to make serious
changes.
The feeling of outrage in Oberammergau was palpable. Who gave these
outsiders the right to criticize their play? Had they not faithfully
preserved the traditions established over three centuries earlier? Were they
not literally maintaining their precious heritage by fulfilling the vow of
1633? Outside interference predictably aroused defensive reactions amongst
the villagers.
But the controversy was only made more severe by the Jewish critics’ further
assertions that the kind of traditional Catholic anti-judaism found in the
Oberammergau Passion Play had played a large and formative role in preparing
the ground for the Nazis’ still more radical antisemitism, leading to the
Holocaust. Such accusations were made still more strident when details
emerged about Oberammergau under Nazism, including Hitler’s famous visit to
the 1934 performance, which he had praised as a convincing portrayal of the
menace of Judaism. Several of the more prominent actors, and a large number
of villagers, had been members of the Nazi Party. Post-war denazification
had had virtually no effect, as the same team was responsible for the 1950
as for the 1934 production. So the political legacy of the 1930s was now
combined with the theological legacy of earlier centuries to become a major
focus point of criticism and challenge.
Shapiro’s concern is how to deal with these mutual accusations of collective
guilt: first, that the Jews, as the Passion Play affirmed, were responsible
for the death of Jesus; second, that the German people collectively were
responsible for the Holocaust. His findings are that, after fifty and more
years, the passage of time has eased, though not entirely removed, these
spectres. He is well aware of the bonds which bind the villagers to “their”
play. Their vow to perform the play every ten years is compelling.
Particular roles have often been inherited in families for decades if not
longer. Only in this year’s performance are a few non-Catholics included,
but they have to pass the residency test.
At the same time, Shapiro is aware, as a Jewish writer himself, of the
compelling commitment of Jewish organizations to combat the teaching of
contempt and hatred of Jews wherever it is found. Much of his book records
the exchanges between these Jewish agencies and the Oberammergau
authorities, especially the editor of the 2000 text, and the producer.
Inevitably these conversations proved frustrating. The Jews wanted a new
play, the Oberammergauers wanted to preserve their heritage. Basically the
question is: “Can you do a good Passion Play. i.e. one without villains?”
The chapter on the staging of the play makes the point that the villagers
have always been about a century behind in their presentations. The need to
revise the highly literalist 19th century text, staging and costumes was
acknowledged only in 1970, but progress was slow, resistance substantial.
Even when the worst anti-judaic passages were omitted, and emphasis placed
instead on blaming Pilate and the Romans, this shift only raised equally
painful questions about the historical accuracy of the whole enterprise.
Most Christians, and certainly most Oberammergauers, have no doubt as to the
historical veracity of the Gospels. To accept that they were a mixture of
fact and fiction, theologically edited by their authors to meet first
century conditions, would undermine the very foundations of their faith. But
this raises issues which go far beyond the confines of a small Bavarian
village.
Shapiro’s scepticism extends to his analysis of the Oberammergau myths, both
about the play’s origins and about the spiritual otherworldliness of the
villagers. The contrast between their reputation and the reality became very
apparent during the Nazi years. He pertinently suggests that it was not just
political opportunism which led so many villagers to support the regime. To
what extent had years of proclaiming the play’s anti-judaic diatribes made
them willing accomplices in Hitler’s antisemitic crusade? The Vatican’s
current attempts to draw a distinction between Christian anti-judaism (now
repudiated) and Nazi antisemitism was certainly not apparent in Hitler’s
Bavaria. Religious fervour and racial nationalism, at least at first,
blended closely. Yet Shapiro could have noted that, as the Nazi persecution
of the Catholic Church increased, so did the traditional villagers’
hostility to the Party’s machinations. So their post-1945 claims to have
opposed the Nazi goals were not entirely a hypocritical evasion of the facts
of the past. But he is right to point out that the post-war circumstances
and the need to find new funds abroad in order to stage the play again
dictated a selective and discreet silence. By 1950 the rehabilitation of
Oberammergau had successfully taken place. But not surprisingly Shapiro
remains sceptical as to how completely the eradication of antisemitism has
been achieved.
The final chapter outlines the difficulties faced by the current director,
Christian Stückl, in trying to present the Passion Play as a relevant
up-to-date piece of theatre. This is no longer to be a peasant pageant,
stressing the villagers’ devotional piety. The clash between religious
traditions and artistic innovation is clear, as is Stückl’s intention not to
satisfy the audience’s expectations, but to challenge them. The text for
2000 now satisfies the Vatican’s desired position on the role of the Jews,
though still containing hints of Christian triumphalism and supersessionism.
Shapiro’s sympathies are clearly with the reformers. But it is notable that
a Jewish American writer of his standing should be ready to applaud, rather
than to condemn, the Oberammergauers’ continued enterprise, even to the
point of teaching the correct Hebrew pronunciation to this year’s Jesus.
JSC

1b) Arlie J.Hoover, God, Britain, and Hitler in World War II: The View of
the British Clergy, 1939-1945. Westport and London: Praeger 1999. pp xii. +
148 GPB 40.00
There is, Richard Pierard observes at the outset of this book, a great
mountain of literature about the Second World War now available to the
student and scholar, but little of it explores the religious dimension of
the conflict. This will not, of course come as news to the readers of this
Newsletter, but it does no harm to hear that particular drum banged loudly
and insistently again. In fact, this work is the third volume in a trio of
studies by Arlie Hoover of ‘clerical nationalism’ in Germany and Britain in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It surveys a quantity, by no means
exhaustive, of primary material published in Britain by Christian writers,
clerical and lay, between 1939 and 1945. It also draws some valuable
material from the archbishops’ collections at Lambeth Palace Library.
The emphases of the survey are shown by the index: here are doses of Cosmo
Lang, George Bell, William Temple, Dr.R.Davies, ‘John Hadham’ (the unexposed
James Parkes), Martyn Lloyd-Jones, William Paton, Dorothy Sayers, Leslie
Weatherhead, W.R.Matthews and V.A.Demant, all of them in lively, vocal form.
Hoover’s approach is mapped out in the table of contents: “The Legacy of the
Great War’; ‘1939:War Again?’; ‘Dealing with Pacifism’; ‘The Enemy:
Fascism-Nazism’; ‘1945: A New Order?’ The substance of the book is a
discussion of contemporary opinions, expressed and exchanged freely and
powerfully over the whole six year period.
However, the question of context is a worry. The individual writers walk
across a thematic landscape staked out by the author himself, but they do
not inhabit a very explicit historical environment. Little is said about
them, their own religious traditions or their theological backgrounds. One
might not know whether or not Davis was an Anglican or a Methodist, or what
being such things might mean to such people. Lewis Mumford, an American,
appears far more persistently than Archbishop Hinsley or Bishop Henson (who
would not have been flattered by two references). In one important sense,
this does not matter profoundly: the pro-war Christian consensus seldom if
ever spoke a denominational language. But it does suggest that the book is
not growing out of a sensitive and intimate appreciation of a particular
historical culture, which lived and breathed in particular ways. For
instance, the absence of Bell’s landmark volume Christianity and World Order
is a surprise and a disappointment. It is exactly the kind of expansive
treatment which would have deepened Hoover’s account. After all, one can
only get so much out of sermons which must be short and generalizing
themselves.
But Hoover also seeks to make bolder claims, since this a very personal,
polemical work, and its philosophical targets lie almost as much in the
present as in the past. Readers will either enjoy its robust, open manner,
or instead find it rather obscuring, and shift unhappily in their chairs.
Hoover takes aim primarily at contemporary philosophical fads. He makes his
dislikes abundantly clear in the chapter on Liberal Humanism, when he
launches a general onslaught against all kinds of cultural assumptions and
fascinations, historical and contemporary: relativism, rationalism,
materialism, modernism. Humanism, writes Hoover, was characterized by
’empirical prejudice’ (p.80); while ‘Liberal Humanists make light of sin and
evil’ (p.85). The shortcomings of such liberals or modernists were to be
seen in their treatment of the Bible and their pragmatic approach to
religion. Small wonder they were equally wrong in their politics, and failed
to recognize the Nazi threat until far too late. With all the advantage of
hindsight, Hoover declares himself firmly on the side of standing up to the
evil Nazi dictatorship, and states at the outset: ‘I shall make no apology
for my obvious pro-British stance in this book’.
The result is a lack of complexity, or at least leads to a certain
over-simplification For instance, Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy
appears a an expression of naive optimism. Then the scales fall from his
eyes. The same goes for other liberals, all in due course. Were they all
really so very dull and slow? Pacifism, meanwhile, appears but not on its
own terms. It is something that had to be ‘dealt with’. Hoover himself
describes the rationalism of ‘modern intellectuals’ as ‘ a strange state of
stupidity’ (p.81) At times, it is these intellectuals who seem to be his
principal targets. He would appear to be using the Christian writers of the
Second World War as examples for a different philosophical debate of his own
making.
But there are things of value too, The British Christian understanding of
National Socialism is described with clarity in a way not done before. And
the contributions of Christian writers and thinkers in Britain to the plans
for reconstructing the post-war world is the subject of a stronger,
better-grounded, but rather short chapter. For their part, Praeger have
published the book very handsomely. The price is not a little daunting.
Andrew Chandler, George Bell Institute, The Queen’s College, Birmingham.U.K.

 

c) Kimmo Kääriäinen, Religion in Russia after the collapse of Communism.
Religious Renaissance or secular state. Lewiston,N.York/Queenston,
Ontario/Lampeter,Wales: Edwin Mellen Press 2000 201pp
Sociological surveys on the subject of religion are notoriously inadequate.
The subject is too vast, the questions too broad, the responses too
superficial. Generalizations are necessarily too sweeping, unless some tight
control is placed on the process. These shortcomings are even more evident
in a society such as Russia, where for seventy years the topic of religion
was pronounced anathema, and public opinion surveys were unknown. So the
attempt by a Finnish author, writing in competent English, to depict the
religious situation in the lands of the former Soviet Union, ten years after
the revolutionary changes of 1989, must be judged a brave attempt, but no
more.
After an initial historical chapter which ably describes the failure of
Marxism-Leninism to establish itself as the official state ideology or
ersatz civil religion, Kääriäinen takes up the question of religious values
at the end of the Communist regime. With the help of three surveys conducted
in 1991,1993 and 1996, he charts the decline of official atheism and the
resultant religious vacuum. The increase in the percentage of attributed
believers in the early 1990s was accounted for by the reaction against
Communism, but it was hardly a major source of revival or renewal.
One of the reasons for the low levels of religious beliefs and practice
which these surveys confirm is the long absence of any systematic
presentation of Christian beliefs, so that the majority of adults no longer
profess the faith of their grandmothers, even though these latter are
credited with the active preservation of what little religion remains.
Certainly it is hardly a novelty to learn that in post-Communist Russia
there is no coherent theory or ideology which provides an explanation for
existence or the purpose of life. Although over time the number of believers
and seekers has grown, it is still notable that the highest percentage is
among people with the least education. And by digging deeper, one would find
that in most cases the professed faith in God was almost completely devoid
of content. A large variety is notable in how the nature of God is
understood, often in a non-Christian manner. The forms in which
religiousness is expressed have become idiosyncratic and eclectic.
Yet the sacred does not disappear. In response to national tragedy, recourse
to the churches was notable But what does this mean in terms of belief? The
disfunction between practice and belief characterizes a great deal of Russia
‘s religious life. Yet, as a national institution, the Russian Orthodox
Church still represents stability, and cultivates a nostalgia for the past.
Most Russians want their great cathedrals to be restored so that they can
visit them for special occasions, even while making vague and weak religious
affirmations. But such findings hardly required elaborate sociological
surveys.
The best part of the work is where Kääriäinen examines the institutional
dimension of religion, in particular the tactics of the Russian Orthodox
Church to find a new legal relationship with the state. Despite the evidence
that only a minority of Russians now claim to belong to the Orthodox Church,
its leaders nevertheless portray themselves as the upholders of a national
church establishment which deserves special privileges. Freedom of religion
for all threatened these claims. Yet the Orthodox leaders are even now
seeking the aid of the state, which persecuted them for so long, in order to
regulate the competition from other sects or communities. What a paradox!
The state authorities, including President Yeltsin, were reluctant to give
in to this pressure, and were upheld by such groups as the Russian
Protestants and Catholics. But these denominations still suffer from being
considered “foreign”, not least from the amount of foreign aid they receive.
The well-known anti-ecumenical stance of the Russian Orthodox Church has
undoubtedly made any accommodation or shift towards religious pluralism more
difficult. But by claiming the position of upholding Russia’s ethnic
traditions and defending its historic culture against international, secular
or materialist undermining, the Orthodox Church has at least gained a
positive response from 90% of the population.
Russians who consider themselves traditional believers are largely women,
while those still professing atheism are predominantly male, and
significantly more educated than the average Russian. Such features have
surprisingly remained constant despite all the political changes. The
surveys would therefore seem to confirm the view that Christian belief acts
as a compensation for lower status, or a means for attaining an inner
personal peace.
Interestingly the questions from these surveys dealing with ethical issues
show that religion plays only a minor role in Russian morality. The strict
nature of Soviet society and practice, except over abortion and divorce, may
still be the cause for the retention of high personal moral standards. But
as the author point out, the real crisis is elsewhere. The new political and
economic factors and developments cry out for the expounding of new
doctrines of social ethics. Unfortunately the Russian Orthodox Church never
had any social ethics, laying its emphasis instead on other-worldly
mysticism. In any case, to expect the Church to produce solutions for the
“moral crisis” in the current incoherence of Russia’s internal developments,
is unrealistic. In this respect Russia is not all that different from other
European countries.
Kääriäinen’s conclusions are rather similar to those of other western
observers, i.e. S. Ramet. Most Russians are seeking an eclectic mix of
religious attitudes, which make them reluctant to embrace the obligatory
doctrines or practices of any one religious institution. Nevertheless one
should not discount the influence of the Orthodox tradition as a means of en
hancing a shared ethnic identity. But this again is not a unique situation,
even though Russia is the one European country whose religious traditions
were interrupted for more than seventy years. It remains to be seen whether
the Russian Orthodox Church is capable of growing out of and beyond its past
shortcomings and restrictive attitudes in order to embrace the new
opportunities for renewal and growth in the new millennium.
JSC

d) ed.T.M.Devine, Scotland’s Shame? Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern
Scotland, Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 2000. 281 pp GBP 9.99
This is the story of James MacMillan, Scotland’s leading composer, who spoke
at the Edinburgh International Festival of 1999 on anti-Catholicism in
Scotland. All hell broke loose. Four academics rushed to the attack, none of
them having heard him or read his text, but wishing to damp down debate on a
subject usually brushed under the carpet. In fact the MacMillan speech,
which is one of no less than twenty-one papers in this book, was quite
reasonable, apart from a rather odd notion that transubstantiation leads to
artistic or musical sensibility. And that anti-Catholicism is still a strong
force must be obvious, though it is more obvious to the outsider than to the
native Scot who believes that Scotland is egalitarian and prejudice does not
exist.
For anyone who does not want to read all these articles, the one by Gerry
P.T.Finn is probably enough. And Finn does deal with the problem of Catholic
schools which are seen by most Scots as the cause of prejudice and division.
Most contributors to this volume, Catholic or Protestant, have not the
remotest idea of how they came about. Finn argues that the state schools set
up in 1872 were effectively Presbyterian, leading Catholics – mainly
immigrants from Ireland – and other minorities to set up their own schools.
It was these underfunded schools which were given state support in 1918,
thereby allowing Catholics to achieve upward social mobility and ultimate
assimilation.
There is a great deal in this book about prejudice, which may still exist,
and discrimination, which it is argued, does not. But here it refers to
discrimination in the workplace, which has disappeared as Scottish industry
and commerce came under the control of foreign managers who cared nothing
for religion. The implication is that most Scots wanted to keep Catholics
down, but were prevented from doing so, And the paper which uses statistics
most skillfully concludes that some discrimination does still exist, though
it is not nearly as bad as it was.
But other papers deal with the idea that, “To be Scottish was to be
Presbyterian .”, and there was no other way to be Scottish. To this
MacMillan answers his various critics by saying,: “Scotland needs more
consensus and conformity like it needs a hole in the head”. Amen.
Gavin White, St Andrews, Scotland.

 

 

 

2) Book Notes:
a) ed. M.Hutchinson and O.Kalu, A Global Faith. Essays on Evangelicalism and
Globalization. Sydney: Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity 1998
264pp.
This collection of stimulating, often provocative essays deserves to be
widely known, not only because three of our List-members are contributors,
but also because the subject matter has a number of historical dimensions.
Reg Ward, for instance, discusses the 18th century missionary impulse in
global terms, while Don Lewis has some pertinent things to suggest about
future historical research. Dick Pierard reviews the world-wide spread of
Protestant denominations beyond Europe in various confessional families, and
stresses the resulting tension with the ecumenical aspiration of bringing
all Christians together in one undivided church of Christ. Erich Geldbach
makes some valid points about the character of German evangelicals over the
last two centuries, while the British historian John Wolffe’s analysis of
“Historical Method and Christian Vision” pursues in greater depth some of
the concerns about the writing of church history, as voiced in last month’s
editorial in this Newsletter. As Jan Hofmeyr states: “The current challenges
for doing and writing church history in a multicultural context . . include
the need for theological consideration, ecclesiological awareness,
ecumenical openness, missiological sharpness, an indigenous realization and
scientific reliability” Some task! These essays, despite their relatively
unknown publisher, can be strongly recommended. They prompt discussion on
the significance of an increasingly global culture for Christianity as a
whole and the extent to which it has been responsible for such developments.

b) ed K.Koschorke, “Christen und Gewürze” Konfrontation und Interaktion
kolonialer und indigener Christentumsvarianten. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht 1998 296pp
Hofmeyr’s remarks quoted above can equally apply to this stimulating volume,
which will appeal to the same audience. Third World church history has for
too long been regarded as an aspect of the history of missions. But the
achievement of independence by so many former colonies of European powers
has led to a revival of indigenous Christian communities, some dating from
earlier centuries, and consequently a growth of interest in their history as
part of the search for a new identity. In 1997 a conference was held in
Germany to explore the comparative aspects of the interaction between
colonial and indigenous Christianity. the results are now published under
the jaunty title “Christians and Spices” in the first of what is hoped will
be a series of volumes, appearing in both English and German. The
contributors are all academics from different parts of the world and
different denominations. Their topics cover episodes over the past five
centuries and all parts of the globe. Their findings are highly diversified
and pluralistic, showing how the impact of European Christianity on
colonized territories and the responses of the indigenous peoples, including
those incorporated into Christian communities, was enormously varied.
Although their methodology is traditional, the results of this research are
often highly provocative in arousing an awareness of culture contacts and
conflicts hitherto not sufficiently appreciated by mission-church
historians. It marks a refreshingly novel approach towards presenting
non-European Christianity as an important subject for research and
reflection.

c) ed. E.Gatz, Kirche und Katholizismus seit 1945. Vol 1: Mittel-,West- und
Nordeuropa. Paderborn: Schöningh 1998 368pp
This is the first of a four-part series designed to give to German-speaking
readers an overview of the socio-political position of the Catholic Church
around the world in its established form over the past fifty years. This
volume supposedly covers central, west and northern Europe, but includes
neither the British Isles nor the Iberian peninsular, and stops short of
regarding either Poland or the Czech Republic as belonging to central
Europe. Each nation covered, i.e. Scandinavia (including Iceland), the
Benelux countries, France and the German-speaking lands, is given a separate
chapter, differing in length according to their importance, and ranging from
2 pages for Iceland to 100 for Germany.
The style is that of an encyclopaedia, informative, factual and precise.
Each chapter provides a bibliography and full footnotes for further
research. Controversies are mentioned but partiality avoided, as is any
description of theological argumentation. So the work will be principally
useful as a reference tool and for comparative purposes.
The major events, such as the Second Vatican Council, the erosion of the
Catholic milieu, the decline in numbers of ordained clergy and the effect of
secular trends such as feminism, are well covered from a non-critical point
of view. But by dealing with each country separately, the impression is only
strengthened that national historio-political factors are as influential, if
not more so, than a common theology. Variety and pluralism still
characterize the Catholic lands at least in this section of its homeland,
Europe.

With best wishes
John S.Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

 

Newsletter- September 2000- Vol.VI, no. 9 
Dear Friends,
I trust that you have had a rewarding time over the summer months, either on
holiday or busy with research. If the latter, please share some of your
ideas or findings with other members of this Newsletter. We shall be glad to
hear from you.
For our part, Ann and I had a splendid holiday in the South Tyrol, in the
shadow of the Dolomites, where I am glad to say we found Counter-Reformation
popular piety flourishing in the traditional manner. Since then, the lure of
serendipity and of Vancouver’s sun-kissed beaches has led me to Simon Schama
‘s massive but magnificent tome, Rembrandt’s Eyes, which is wonderfully
evocative of the early seventeenth century. Or, for those wedded to
detective stories, I can recommend
Antonia Fraser’s recounting of “The Gunpowder Plot Terror and Faith in
1605”, written with sympathy for the persecuted Catholics, and explicit on
the religious intolerance of those days.
Contents:
1) Editorial
2)Bonhoeffer House appeal
3) Book reviews:

a) The Gestapo and Gertrude Luckner
b) Pogany, In my Brother’s Image
c) Religionspolitik in Deutschland: Greschat Festschrift
d) Safranski, Martin Heidegger. Between good and evil

4) New articles

a) J.Moses: Bonhoeffer and Church Unity
b) G.Johnson, British Social Democracy and Religion

1) Editorial:
Our distinguished colleague, Reg Ward, once remarked that
“nineteenth-century critics were entirely mistaken in supposing that
political economy was the dismal science; it is in fact ecclesiastical
history”. From this almost Anabaptist viewpoint, the long centuries of what
Ward called “the ingrained lovelessness of organized Christianity” do not
encourage much cheerfulness. But even those of us who adopt a more balanced
stance might well want to support the thrust of his saying, at least as far
as the teaching of ecclesiastical, or as some would prefer, church history
goes.
Over the past thirty years there has been a slow melting of the frigidity
with which church history was regarded in most “secular” universities in
North America. Defended by many as a necessary adjunct to the separation of
church and state, this disdain was in fact due to the ideological hostility
of the majority of the professoriate towards religion in general, and
Christianity in particular. The controversial misinterpretation of the
alleged conflict between science and religion took its unfortunate toll. And
while, for most history departments, it was inconceivable to teach the
history of the middle ages without reference to religion, the opposite was
true for the more recent centuries. Even today, European or World Surveys
can charge through twentieth century events with no, or only the barest,
mention of religion, let alone the church.
To be sure, recent decades have also seen the growth of departments of
Religion or Religious Studies. But these have not always been a blessing to
church history. In fact, all too often, the subject has been tossed around
between History and Religion, and departmental barriers have usually
prevented any profitable collaboration. Or again, the whole matter is
regarded as one which should be left up to the nearest theological seminary.
So one may assert that the teaching of church history has not advanced in
any significant way in recent years.
Part of the problem lies in the subject’s vastness and incoherence. Anyone
faced with teaching a survey of church history in one academic year is
confronted with an overwhelming task. But to select certain periods as
singularly significant is invidious. Of course, the choice is usually made
on denominational grounds, since Catholics prefer the patristic period,
Anglicans and Lutherans have to emphasize the sixteenth century, while those
in the Puritan-Protestant tradition stress the seventeenth or later
centuries. Sadly, despite the growth of ecumenical understanding, the
plethora of rival and mutually exclusive accounts of the church history of
the past still exist, and still influence current attitudes, as can be seen
in Bosnia, Serbia or Northern Ireland. Sadly, too, in this situation, the
most recent church history of the twentieth century is often sacrificed from
the curriculum, even though a convincing case can be made for its being much
more relevant to today’s students than the niceties of earlier periods.
Paradoxically however, recent years have also seen a splendid flood of
monographs, especially in the field of contemporary church history. When I
began to edit this Newsletter nearly seven years ago, I never expected the
appearance of so many excellent and scholarly works. German church history
scholars, in both the major churches, of course, have the benefit of
established university positions, support for doctoral candidates and for
publication. But even where such advantages are not available, we have
notable studies in many different languages, exploring many different
aspects of the churches’ life. Outstanding biographies, such as Eberhard
Bethge’s unrivaled study of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, have set an impressive
standard for this genre. Alternatively, it could be argued that the
long-running and heated controversy seen in the numerous studies of Pope
Pius XII helps the cause of contemporary church history, by revealing
clearly enough the dangers of political bias and one-sided partisanship. At
least they serve to show that ecclesiastical history is not as dismal as
might be thought. In fact, one might suggest that, in the kind of
publications reviewed in this Newsletter, we have a most encouraging
testimony to the intellectual industry and integrity of contemporary church
historians. Long may it continue.

2) Bonhoeffer House appeal
A recent letter has been received inviting donations towards the upkeep of
the house in Berlin where Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived with his parents from
1935 until his arrest in April 1943. The hope is to maintain the house as a
centre of witness to the German Resistance movement, where mementos of
Bonhoeffer’s life and work can be displayed, and where seminars and
educational tours can be held. Anyone wishing to help should contact either
J.P.Kelley, International Bonhoeffer Society, 4236 White St., Lynchburg,
Virginia 24502, USA, or The Bonhoeffer House, Marienburger Allee 43, D-14055
Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany.
3a) ed. Hans-Josef Wollasch, “Betrifft: Nachrichtenzentrale des Erzbischofs
Gröber in Freiburg”. Die Ermittlungsakten der Geheimen Staatspolizei gegen
Gertrud Luckner 1942-1944. Konstanz: UVK Universitatsverlag 1999. 254pp
If I may be allowed an autobiographical note, one of the most vivid and
fascinating evenings of my career was spent dining with Gertrud Luckner,
when she recalled for me her eighteen months’ ordeal in the Nazi
concentration camp for women, Ravensbrück, from 1943 to 1945. Gertrud was
born in England, but was taken shortly afterwards to Germany until she
returned as a student at the Quaker college at Selly Oak, Birmingham. There
she was greatly attracted by the ideals of pacifism and internationalism, of
which she became a life-long champion. After she returned to Germany to take
a doctorate in social work, she joined the Catholic Church and was
subsequently employed by the main Catholic Welfare agency in Germany,
Caritas. Her humanitarian concerns, her indefatigable readiness to assist
the victims of injustice, and her often outspoken criticism of Nazism, all
joined to impel her to do what she could for those attacked by the new
regime. In particular she became the champion of those Catholics of Jewish
origin, who were often cold-shouldered by their fellow-Catholics influenced
by Nazi propaganda, but also rejected as renegades by existing Jewish
organizations. Not surprisingly she used her contacts with Quaker friends
abroad to seek help, and if necessary to assist in emigration. But as the
Nazi net tightened, such activities became more and more dangerous, and
Gertrude herself attracted the unwelcome notice and surveillance of the
Gestapo.
One of the few collections of Gestapo records to survive the war was in
Düsseldorf. Amongst them was a file several hundred pages thick dealing with
Gertrud Luckner. In 1947 she and her lawyer were allowed to see this and to
photostat some 200 pages, but the originals have since disappeared. She
hoped to make use of these copies for her own autobiography, which alas! was
never to be completed. But now Caritas’ senior archivist, Hans Josef
Woillasch, has put together a scholarly edition of the surviving pages,
which clearly record the diligent ferocity and professional inhumanity of
the Gestapo agents.
By 1942 the Gestapo was fully convinced that the Catholic Church sided with
their enemies, and that Archbishop Gröber, despite his earlier enthusiasm
for the Nazis in 1933, was now an implacable foe. In August 1942, the
Gestapo determined to follow up the news that the Catholic bishops had
decided to establish, under Gröber’s auspices, an Aid Committee for baptized
Jews, with headquarters in Freiburg. They immediately concluded that this
was a disguised espionage and information centre designed to conduct
ideological and political exchanges with enemies of the Reich both at home
and abroad, through contacts in a number of European countries, the USA and
the Vatican.
Thanks to information supplied by two employees of Caritas, it didn’t take
the Gestapo long to discover that Gröber’s principal agent for this task was
Dr Gertrud Luckner, whose background and activities were promptly
investigated and recorded in detail.
More specifically she was suspected of contacting Jewish circles throughout
the whole country and giving them support, or alternatively of helping them
to conceal their property. She was also accused of organizing measures to
let Jews escape illegally from German territory.
As a result, from September 1942, investigations were intensified. Luckner’s
mail was opened and censored, and the names of her correspondents were
noted. In January 1943, the Gestapo in Berlin ordered their agents to put
her under personal surveillance and to report on her travels around the
country. It is clear that she was already aware of the dangers involved, and
had taken various measures to avoid detection of her movements. But in the
end the trap closed. In March 1943, she was arrested on the train while
attempting to elude her pursuers by going to Berlin.
To the Gestapo’s fury, news reached Freiburg almost at once that Gertrud had
been arrested. The Archbishop protested – in vain. It was months before it
was known where she was being held, let alone why. In June 1943, the
Archbishop wrote to his superior, Cardinal Bertram, to say that he had heard
rumours that she had been “dealt with”. Personally he believed she would
survive because she was entirely innocent, and had devoted herself solely to
the welfare and charitable assistance of Catholic “non-aryans”. But the
Gestapo clearly thought otherwise.
The editor rightly notes that, although the documents do not specifically
say so, her arrest may well have been connected with the simultaneous
Gestapo investigations into illegal smuggling of endangered Jews to
Switzerland, which resulted in the incarceration of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and
his brother-in-law, Hans Dohnanyi, only two weeks later in April 1943. Small
wonder that the Gestapo demanded that this “extremely cautious and
experienced agent” should be sentenced to protective custody, since “her
behaviour is conducive to endangering the existence and safety of our people
and state, in particular by her pro-Jewish activities and connections to
circles hostile to the state. If released, she would be likely to continue
to act in a manner damaging to the Reich”.
Putting her in protective custody in a concentration camp meant that no
regular trial would take place, which might well have set off alarm bells in
the Catholic community. Instead she was held in Ravensbrück until liberated
in April 1945.
Despite, or more probably because of, the sufferings she had endured and
witnessed, Gertrud resolved to redouble her efforts on behalf of the Nazis’
victims, and successfully championed this cause for the next fifty years. At
the same time she became one of the principal advocates in Germany for a
revision of Catholic theological attitudes towards Judaism, a struggle in
which she was notably vindicated at the Second Vatican Council. It remains
to be hoped that a full biography will soon be written in order to pay
tribute to one who was truly a “righteous Gentile”, and, by her valiant
resistance, a symbol of the “other Germany” during those disastrous Nazi
years.
JSC
b) Eugene L.Pogany, In my brother’s image. Two brothers separated by faith
after the Holocaust. New York,Viking 2000, 327pp
Gyuri and Miklos were born shortly before the first world war to a Hungarian
Jewish family, but were brought up as Catholics from an early age. They
lived through the trials of inter-war Hungary, which included the rising
tensions between Jews and Christians, especially after the Nazi shadow fell
over eastern Europe. Gyuri became a priest but fortunately was allowed to
travel to Italy in 1940 and remained there for the rest of the war, acting
as secretary to the renowned faith healer, Padre Pio, in a remote rural
sanctuary where the issue of his Jewish origins never caused any problems.
Miklos, however, was caught up in the increasing hostilities in Hungary.
Treated as a Jew, despite his Catholic allegiance, he was drafted in to a
labour service battalion, was badly mistreated and eventually sent to
Bergen-Belsen, where he barely survived. The experience of the Church’s
failure to stand by him or the Jewish community as a whole led him to
renounce his Catholic faith and return to his ancestral Judaism. After the
war both men emigrated to the United States and were reunited after nearly
twenty years apart. But each came to regard the other’s religious stance as
a betrayal, so the bond between them as identical twins could never be fully
restored.
Miklos’ son, Eugene, has now recorded this tragic story on the basis of his
family’s memories. By a striking act of imaginative reconstruction, he
succeeds in recovering his relatives’ interactions and even in elaborating
the nuances of their characters. His account consists largely of
conversations, fictionally composed, but representing a genuine attempt to
participate in their lives and to explore the many critical turning points
they faced. Above all, his concern is to portray the religiously and
historically turbulent landscape of Jews and Christians in the century of
the Holocaust, by
depicting his family’s struggles to survive throughout the awful
circumstances of the war, as the Nazi antisemitic tide swept across Hungary.
The support given by so many nationalist Hungarians, and more particularly
the absence of protest by the Catholic authorities against such crimes is,
for Pogany, the central pivot of his account, symbolized by the failure to
prevent the deportation, amongst so many others, of his grandmother, a
devout Catholic, to her death in Auschwitz
The intense discussions among the survivors, as here related, serves to show
how deeply the wounds and memories of suffering continued to haunt them all
with unspoken rancour and unredeemed anguish. The basic questions remained
unresolved. And the evident inadequacy of the attempts made by both
Christians and Jews to come to terms, both personally and theologically,
with the enormity of the Holocaust is here spelled out in the fictionalized
conversations between the family members. But the author nevertheless hopes
that, with this act of filial piety to all his relatives, he may contribute
towards the eventual reconciliation of the two faiths, based on their shared
loyalty towards the peace of Jerusalem.
JSC

c) ed. A.Doering-Manteuffel and Kurt Nowak, Religionspolitik in Deutschland.
Von der fruehen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1999, 279
pp.
This Festschrift produced on the retirement of Martin Greschat, one of our
most esteemed colleagues in Germany, covers the whole range of his interests
from the Reformation to the present. Equally significant has been his
concern to link the traditional form of church history – too much concerned
with its own affairs – with the social and secular history in which the
church operates. So the essays contributed by his colleagues, including two
foreigners, one from Britain and one from Poland, seek to pay tribute to
Greschat’s fine record of publications in this genre. Predictably, a range
of occasional essays by different authors cannot claim to be systematic.
They are either detailed accounts of some particular episode, previously
unknown or neglected, or else a useful broad survey of some particular
period, analyzing the present state of debate and research. The former
category is exemplified in the piece on the churches and the cold war in the
1950s by Doering-Manteuffel, while the latter is demonstrated in
J.Thierfelder’s helpful summary of the position of the churches during the
Weimar Republic. It is a pity that no German scholar could be found to
produce a similar overview of the churches in the Nazi period, since we need
to have an update on the present state of the controversies aroused over the
“German Christians” and the Confessing Church and their respective legacies.
The essay which I thought best fulfills Greschat’s desiderata is by the
Birmingham scholar, Hugh McLeod, “Comparing secularisations: Germany and
Britain”, which examines the social factors governing church expansion and
contraction at the end of the nineteenth century. McLeod points out that a
major difference was the toleration given in Britain to so many rivals to
the established church, whereas in Germany the heavy hand of the state
proved to be a source of weakness in the long run. “British pluralism had
led to weak institutions and relatively weak confessional identities,
together with low levels of secularism and anti-clericalism, and medium
levels of individual religious participation. The German situation, with its
two ‘big churches’ had led to more powerful institutions, more strongly
developed confessional identities, higher levels of secularism and
anticlericalism, and strongly contrasted patterns of Protestant and Catholic
religious practice.” In both countries, political and social factors brought
about a significant loss of prestige and adherence, but, as McLeod shows,
for a variety of differing reasons. These kinds of international comparisons
can indeed be highly fruitful, and deserve to be promoted more fully, in
line with Greschat’s own splendid contributions to this kind of writing.
JSC

d) Ruediger Safranski, MARTIN HEIDEGGER. BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL, trans. Ewald
Osers. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 1998.

This book is a translation of EIN MEISTER AUS DEUTSCHLAND. HEIDEGGER UND
SEINE ZEIT, published by Ruediger Safranski in
1994. The book gives one of the best accounts yet of Martin Heidegger,
his life and work. There are, nevertheless, basic problems with it that
need to be addressed in any future work on Heidegger. Thus it should be
seen as a benchmark of how far research into Heidegger has progressed,
and how far it still has to go.
Heidegger was one of the leading philosophers of the 20th century, and one
of the most controversial. Major questions remain about the moral, political
and philosophical significance of his life and work. Safranski was venturing
into a large minefield with his book,and he knew it: “Heidegger’s story is a
long one–whether the story of his life or
of his philosophy. It covers the passions and disasters of a whole
century” (ix). Though Safranski’s conclusions remain unfortunately
ambiguous, his work does clarify the most prominent issues at stake.
The main threads of the story deal with Heidegger’s life and times; in this
Safranski is a good historian. He has gathered material from the most
important sources on Heidegger, and provides a largely balanced version.
There is little that is really “new” here, but Safranski does offer a
compelling overview of the man and his context..
He tells of Heidegger’s childhood in Messkirch, near Lake Constance, and of
his early commitment to the Catholic Church (1-54). Until the outbreak of
the First World War, Heidegger seemed to “have a chance of getting the
still-vacant chair of Christian philosophy” (55) at the University of
Freiburg. From 1914 until 1927, however, with the publication of
BEING AND TIME, Heidegger underwent a major transformation of his
perspective. By 1919, because of his new interest in time and history,
Catholicism had become “problematic and unacceptable” to him (107). Under
the influence of Edmund Husserl, Heidegger turned to phenomenology to deal
with “factual life” (109). In addition he began studying St.Paul and Luther,
which seems to have encouraged him in a more “Protestant” direction. By the
mid-1920s, Heidegger wanted to “tear life loose from God” (112). During this
time, he had extensive discussions with and considerable influence on the
Protestant theologian Rudolf Bultmann. He also began an affair with Hannah
Arendt, who became “his muse for BEING AND TIME” (140).
He had moved away from the strictly Catholic understanding of good and evil
of his youth, and was attempting to find a new set of values following the
leads of the Greeks, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. Though he never accepted
the label, Heidegger’s work would eventually be linked to that of Karl
Jaspers and others under the rubric of “existential philosophy” (132). The
problem with this development in Heidegger’s case was that it did not have
enough ethical content to resist the enthusiasms of the Nazi movement in the
1930s. Safranski tells the awful and mysterious story of his involvement
with Nazism in considerable detail, from the first explicit remarks in
1931-2 (226-28) to the infamous
“Rector’s Speech” in 1933 (242-47), to “denazification” under French
occupation after the war (332-52). One of the most absorbing chapters
deals with the question: “Is Heidegger Anti-Semitic?” (248-63). Safranski
reaches a split decision: “Certainly not in the sense of the ideological
lunacy of Nazism” (254); “Nor, on the other hand, did the (soon to be
revealed) brutality
of Nazi anti-Semitism deter him from the movement. He did not support its
actions, but he accepted them” (256). Furthermore there is the dubious tale
of “Heidegger’s silence” (420). He never accepted responsibility for the
crimes of Nazism, and never publicly acknowledged either his complicity with
the movement nor his change of heart against it.
One of the problems of Safranski’s book is his own ambiguity over the case,
for his formulations seem to gloss over the terrible irony of both
Heidegger’s political complicity and his philosophical greatness. In the
first place, Heidegger had enthusiastically supported the Nazi movement in
the early 1930s; later, however, he had withdrawn from his university
rectorship under its auspices. One of the greatest philosophers of the
century had gone along with one of its most criminal regimes. His case is an
example of the problems philosophers–at least since Plato–have had with
politics. Evidently, Heidegger’s career did not fall “between good and
evil”, as Safranski’s English title suggests, but rather, both in his
politics and his philosophy, he managed to exhibit a highly regrettable
ethical ambivalence.
Other problems in Safranski’s account represent the classic difficulties
that
historians have in dealing with philosophy. As he tells the story of the
life, Safranski gives an account of the writing, from the earliest to the
latest examples.
Whereas his account of the contents is clear enough, his conclusion is
that Heidegger offered little to the history of philosophy: “He did not
create any constructive philosophy in the sense of a world picture or a
moral doctrine. There are no ‘results’ of Heidegger’s thinking, in the
sense that there are ‘results’ of the philosophy of Leibniz, Kant, or
Schopenhauer” (429). Yet surely a philosophy that emphasized “authenticity”
can not be seen as basically empty. And if this work were empty, then why
has it inspired so many, from Arendt herself to Sartre, Gadamer, Derrida,
and Richard Rorty? Instead of trying to brush aside the vexed question of
Heidegger’s real significance, Safranski would have been better off to have
acknowledged that a probably very nasty person was an outstanding
philosopher, and that that very complexity could explain the significance of
the case.
Any biographer of Heidegger needs a more complicated conception of
philosophy in order to integrate more effectively the story of his life and
writings.
And any such biographer writing in German also needs a different
translator, or perhaps a different publisher. To be sure, the translation
captures the basic qualities of Safranski’s original. Yet one of the crucial
ironies of the story is lost in the mistranslation of the title. In German,
the
title is EIN MEISTER AUS DEUTSCHLAND. The words are a citation from Paul
Celan’s poem, “Death Fugue,” which reads: “Death is a master from Germany”,
and deals with an imagined concentration camp. The English subtitle,
“between good and evil,” further obscures the reference to the poem and the
Holocaust. In sum, Safranski’s work represents a step forward in our
understanding of Martin Heidegger. But the real work of synthesizing the
historical and the philosophical accounts, as well as the problem of
finding the proper title for this enterprise, remains to be done.
Steven Taubeneck, Vancouver

 

 

4) New articles:
a) John Moses, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Prioritization of Church Unity
(Oekumene) in
The Journal of Religious History (Sydney), Vol 24, no. 2, June 2000,
196-212.
This helpful analysis of the centrality of Bonhoeffer’s ideas about church
unity points out that he saw the universal ecumenical church as the
theologically correct answer to the challenge of the German Christians’
acceptance of a nationalist and racist creed. Already from 1932 Bonhoeffer
recognized that the ecumenical movement must become more than a polite
collection of liberal enthusiasts, but rather should be the chief weapon in
forging a true unity, preferably through an ecumenical council, to give
expression to the will of Christ through His church, especially in the
pursuit of peace. Ecumenical solidarity was vital for the survival of
Christianity in Germany, and the credibility of the ecumenical movement
depended on how it assessed the German church struggle. These themes were
forcibly expressed in 1934 and 1935, but the results were disappointing –
and indeed have remained so ever since. Moses joins with those who believe
the churches still need to devise a model for a peace council which not only
discusses the possibility of peace but really does establish peace.
b) Graham Johnson, British Social Democracy and Religion in The Journal of
Ecclesiastical History, January 2000, 94 ff
At the end of the nineteenth century the drive to promote social democratic
goals brought together a broad spectrum of idealists. Some were outright
secularists, others materialists of a more or less Marxist variety, others
however drew their inspiration from Christian roots. While the former group
saw organized religion, and Christianity in particular, as the enemy of the
working class, the latter section still believed it possible to derive a
political platform from the teachings of the New Testament. Johnson capably
shows how these two groups lived in considerable tension during the
formative years, and indeed how these seemingly incompatible positions were
and are still present in the British Labour Party.
With best wishes to you all
John Conway

 

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

 

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

 

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

 

Newsletter- July 2000- Vol.VI, no. 7-8 

Dear Friends,
I trust that all of you in the northern hemisphere are enjoying sunshine and
warm weather, and possibly a chance to relax with a good book on your
holidays. Here are a few to choose from for those who can’t tear themselves
away, or find detective stories intensely boring by comparison to church
history!

Contents:
1) KZG Conference 2000
2) Book reviews: a) Barnett, Bystanders
b) Furuya, Japanese Theology
c) Garrard-Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala
3) Conference Report: Religion and the Cold War
4) Film Review: Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace.

1) This year’s meeting of the Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte fraternity will take
place from 21st to 24th September in Strasbourg, France under the leadership
of Professor Frederic Hartweg. The theme is “Kirche/Religion –
Staat/Gesellschaft. Deutschland – Frankreich. Antagonismen und Annaehrung im
19 und 20 Jahrhundert.” Enquiries should be directed to dpal@umb.u-strasb.fr
The most recent issue of the journal Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Vol 12, no.
2, 1999 is devoted to the theme ‘Europabilder der Kirchen in der
Nachkriegszeit”. This contains the papers given at the 1998 KZG conference
in Sweden, and has a number of interesting articles on the period
immediately following the second world war, including analyses of the
policies of the major international church bodies such as the Vatican, the
Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches. This issue also
includes a 100-page bibliography of recent books in our field.

2) Book reviews:
a) Victoria Barnett, Bystanders. Conscience and Complicity during the
Holocaust.
Westport, Conn/London: Greenwood Press, 1999 185pp
Some years ago Victoria Barnett wrote “For the Soul of the People” which was
based on interviews with surviving members of the Confessing Church, that
section of the German Evangelical Church which had resolutely combated the
heresies and distortions of their pro-Nazi opponents, the so-called ‘German
Christians’. She had obviously expected that such staunch defenders of
theological orthodoxy would also have mobilized their forces to protest the
Nazis’ criminal actions, especially the persecution of the Jews. But to her
dismay, most of her interviewees had remained passively silent, as
bystanders.
This disappointment prompted her to undertake a more thorough examination of
the role of bystanders in general during the tragic events of the Holocaust.
She asks all the right questions about the context, not only in Germany but
throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, as well as about the motives, in so far as
they are ascertainable, and also about the ethical and theological issues
which conditioned the bystanders’ behaviour, and which she believes are not
so different today. Clearly her hope is to show how the ethical response of
caring for the welfare of one’s neighbours is essential if we are to avoid a
repetition of the Holocaust in the future.
Nazi Germany sought to impose its totalitarian will on all the population.
Yet, even in such a dictatorship, we can find instances of independent
thought and action. So the frequently-used claim that bystanders were
powerless or intimidated into silence has to be examined closely lest it be
just a convenient excuse for moral failure. How many of those bystanders
were in fact in sympathy with the Nazis’ criminal policies, even if they
were not directly involved? Or to what extent did they “redefine” their
ethical systems in order to view the persecution of the Jews as a “good”? Or
can their individual behaviour be seen as the logical result of the
abdication of free will and the glorification of an immoral state?
So too the institutional responses to Nazi crimes were frequently ambivalent
by supporting state policies and carrying out state orders, by facilitating
complicity and blocking effective resistance by individuals. Certainly, even
in the churches, the few who sought to express dissent or to show solidarity
with the victims, were evidently discouraged by the readiness of the church
leaders to side silently with state authority. On the international level,
efforts to rescue Jews from the Nazi clutches were frequently hampered by
bureaucratic short-sightedness, institutional policies, or indifference,
which were all a form of bystanders. So too was the widespread denial that
it was possible to do anything to stop what was happening. In the absence of
any overarching international institution, or more importantly of any
universally-held sense of moral obligation, the saving of Jewish lives never
gained the priority which we now think it should have had.
Of course, as Barnett skillfully points out, evaluation of the bystanders
‘conduct has to be set in its wider context. She rightly rejects simplistic
interpretations claiming that there were really no bystanders since all
Germans were “eliminationist antisemites”. On the other side, she admits
that it is impossible to calculate the extent to which the widespread
antisemitism of the day, and not only in Germany, may have impeded more
humane responses to the Jewish plight. Equally she is ready to grant that,
because of the incremental nature of the Nazi onslaught and the total
secrecy of the mass murder programme, the later claim by many Germans that
they had known nothing, cannot be dismissed as a self-serving alibi. Yet, as
Pastor Hermann Maas of Heidelberg pertinently asked: “Was not what we did
see and hear quite enough?”
The real question about bystanders in a totalitarian society is to determine
where coercion began and free will ended. Certainly we can not ignore the
ominous effect of incessant propaganda and the climate of mutual suspicion
which led to so many denunciations to the Gestapo of anyone expressing
sympathy for the Jews. Many church people, especially in the Confessing
Church, withdrew into a private sphere, creating islands of non-conformity,
in order to survive physically and psychologically, which indeed was a form
of inner resistance. But such “internal emigration” ran the danger that it
severed any signs of solidarity with the victims. And as Raul Hilberg
pointed out, such abstention could block any sense that the plight of the
Jews was linked to the bystanders’ own.
And yet, there were those who rose above this indifference and took active
steps to rescue or assist Jews. Barnett analyzes what she calls acts of
disruptive empathy, such as happened in the French village of Le Chambon
under the charismatic leadership of the pastor, Andre Trocme. Here was a
deliberate process of active resistance based on religious ethical
assumptions, drawn from the villagers’ Hugenot roots. These men and women
could no longer be bystanders, but were impelled by their moral insights to
do what was needed to save Jews. They knew that, in Christian as well as
Jewish tradition, welcoming the stranger is a metaphor for welcoming God.
And the consequences of compassion and charity connected everyone involved
in a new way and thus altered the very dynamics of society. Le Chambon’s
goodness, their ethical connectedness, stands as a prize example of how the
demonic forces of genocide, of Holocaust, can be confronted.
Victoria Barnett’s penetrating examination of individual and collective
behaviour in the face of monstrous evil will be certain to provoke
considerable reflection and debate. We can be grateful to her for raising
these issues so clearly and coherently. JSC

b) Yasuo Furuya (editor & translator), A History of Japanese Theology (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), vi+161 pp.
Although there have been several studies of Japanese theology by
westerners, this is the first to have been written by Japanese theologians
themselves. The editor, who teaches at the International Christian
University (ICU) in Tokyo, has divided the history into four periods –The
First Generation, by Akio Dohi; the Second Generation (1907-1945), by Toshio
Sato; The Third Generation (1945-1970), by Seiichi Yagi, and Theology After
1970 , by Masaya Odagaki–each survey written by recognized theologians who
themselves appear within the history. Dr. Furuya contributes an
Introduction and Epilogue which set the context for the studies. A
bibliography and index complete the work.
Each section traces the development of Japanese theology from dependence
on western sources to greater freedom to deal with the indigenous
environment of thought. The first generation, just emerged from a
background of Shinto-Buddhism-Confucianism, made varying accommodations
between their new-found faith and the old traditions. The second generation
began a long process of dependence on German academic theology, though the
Presbyterian Uemura also encouraged his disciples to study British and Scots
like Forsyth and Mackintosh. Social Christianity arose around the middle of
this period in reaction to the individualism of the evangelical churches and
the philosophical trend taken by academic theology. Independent of the
American Social Gospel, its roots were in the student movement and sympathy
with Toyohiko Kagawa’s work with labour and the poor. Kagawa’s concept of
“redemptive love” represented a key element in the exposition of this
theology. In the thirties, however, leaders of the movement like Enkichi
Kan made a sudden switch to German dialectical theology with studies of
Brunner and Barth.
One reason for the switch, proposed by Sao, was that dialectical
theology was perceived to be “deeper” than Social Christianity. The
perception that Christian theology was not as “deep”–read “hard to
understand”–as Buddhism has plagued the history of Japanese theology down
to this day. Another reason heard during my work with students in the
sixties was that the adherents of Social Christianity were unable to stand
the growing pressure of militarism at the time and interpreted Bath’s
theology (wrongly, as it turned out: p. 124) to release them from a social
activism that had become unbearable.
‘Japanese Theology’ represents another accommodation with nationalism.
With its roots in the thought of first-generation Christian leaders like
Banjo Ebbing, this type sought to deal with the clash between State Shinto,
the Emperor-cult, and Christianity. According to the Anglican theologian
Osaka Tusked (omitted in this survey), Japanese Theology distinguished
between ‘reverence’ for the great heroes of Japan exalted in State Shinto
and ‘faith’ in the Christian God and Jesus Christ. Thus attendance at a
Shinto Shrine represented, not worship but an expression of loyalty. This
type of thinking allowed leaders of the United Church of Christ in Japan to
travel in China to defend the right of the Imperial forces to invade China.
Yogi’s survey of the Third Generation was of special interest, taking
contextual factors more seriously and written from a standpoint of personal
involvement. That is not to say that it was easier to read. Perhaps
because the author teaches philosophy of religion, the approach is basically
philosophical. Because this generation marks what Yogi and others call “the
liberation from the Barthian captivity,” attention has been transferred from
Karl Bath’s “deepness” to the even denser thought of Buddhist philosophers
like the Zen thinker, Quitter Noshed. Translation into English poses
problems here. What for instance does Nishida’s key term, “the Identity of
the Absolute Contradiction,” mean for someone not already acquainted with
the Japanese vocabulary? Yet it is fascinating to see Japanese Christian
theologians turning from European models to their own cultural heritage to
construct a theology that they hope will be more intelligible to their
compatriots. In initiating a dialogue with Zen Buddhist scholars in
particular, the third generation attempts to under-stand the nature of
Christ in terms of enlightenment and Buddha-hood.
Some theologians of this generation, however, saw this process as
verging on pluralism, endangering the claim of Christianity to absoluteness.
So they attempted to express their faith in a way that would be
understandable in Japan yet would guard that claim. In this category comes
the well-known Pain of God Theology of Kazoh Kitamori, as well as other
less famous examples like Yoshio Noro’s existential theology.
If the third generation had concentrated on Christology, theology after
1970 is mainly concerned with reflection on the nature of God. Dialogue
with Buddhism continued, but was more concerned with fundamental problems
such as dualism of subject and object, the relation between Christian belief
in God’s transcendence and absolute otherness, and the Buddhist doctrine of
‘samsara’ (nothingness). These philosophical discussions paralleled the
social unrest among students that began in the late sixties and continued
into the early seventies. Theologians were divided by this turmoil. One of
them, Kenos Tagawa, lost his job for siding with the students at ICU, where
Furuya sat on the governing body which expelled him.
Nevertheless, little attempt is made in this study to trace the
relation between social context and theological development. A theme that
runs throughout–from Ebina at the beginning to attempts to restore the
official status of Shinto in the present–is the problem of Christianity’s
stand in relation to Shinto veneration of the emperor and the authoritarian
paternalism that governs the whole of Japanese society. Although the
problem is raised in the Epilogue, its relation as the context for
theological development is never explicitly discussed. There is a certain
sense that little connection exists between the arcane discussions of the
theologians–many of them graduates of the elite Imperial University of
Tokyo–and what is going on at the grass roots in the churches. Even though
theologians may have been liberated from their German captivity, the rather
Germanic tendency to concentrate on academic theology remains. Figures like
Kagawa, who wrote from his slum experience, or Tomura and others, who have
been active in the popular struggle against the emperor-cult, are hardly
mentioned. And feminist theology does not even appear.
Another shortcoming relates to the overwhelming concentration on
Protestant theology. The editor justifies this choice by arguing the
missionaries dominate Roman catholic education until recently, so that few
indigenous theologians were produced [pp. 7-8]. The review does cover three
Roman Catholics, all of them interesting figures, but Anglican and Orthodox
are virtually neglected. One wonders if an examination of sacramental and
liturgical practices among these three groups might not have revealed some
movement toward indigenisation that could have proved profitable.
On the whole, however, this is an interesting and important book. It
raises the hope that works by the theologians covered might be translated
in the future, particularly around the Buddhist-Christian dialogue.
Cyril Powles, Vancouver

c) Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala. Living in New
Jerusalem
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998 248pp
Guatemala, indeed most of Latin America, was on the margin of the Protestant
missionary expansion of the early twentieth century. This area had none of
the romantic appeal of saving China’s millions, of following David
Livingstone through the jungles of Africa, or facing the risks of cannibals
in the South Pacific. As a result missionaries were few in number, and
resources spread very thinly. Yet only a century later, Guatemala has the
remarkable character of being at least one-third Protestant, of whom over
80% are Pentecostals or charismatics. Virginia Garret-Burnett’s historical
study is a thoughtful explanation of how this development took place, based
on an exhaustive coverage of the sources, both Spanish and English, as well
as interviews and correspondence with some of the more prominent
participants. But she fails to take seriously enough the main division
between the indigenous population and the “Ladinos”, i.e. those who speak
Spanish, adhere to “western” culture and participate in the political
processes of the country. This division is not an ethnic one, but is vital
since the two groups have increasingly little to bind them together. It
would seem that the main groups interested in Protestantism come from the
Ladino community, but that generalizations, especially on political
sentiments and sympathies, are difficult to establish with certainty.
In the early years, the Protestant missionary presence was almost
exclusively USA-based. These men and women brought with them the cultural
imperialist baggage of the time, equating “progress” with the adoption of
American religious, political and cultural ideas. Their appeal was primarily
directed against the indigenous Catholicism which they steadfastly saw as
responsible for Guatemala’s backwardness, as well as for the downtrodden
condition of the majority Mayan population.
By the 1920s, however, some Protestants began to see that their aims might
be better achieved by encouraging native ministries in their own languages.
Hence an enormous effort was put into producing suitable orthographies and
literatures for a basically illiterate population. But this meant the
necessary encouragement of local leadership, which in turn often led to
conflicts between the foreign missionary and his indigenous parishioners for
national or cultural reasons, Lacking any strong doctrinal control or
resources, these mission churches were highly susceptible to schism, and
hence the growth of independent churches, often tiny in size but locally
based and vibrant in character.
Protestants had at first been favoured by the strongly anti-Catholic Liberal
governments, culminating in the near-Marxist regime of Jacobo Arbenz, who
was finally overthrown by the US Marines in 1954. The subsequent
anti-American sentiments led to checks on US-supported activities, even
though many of the younger missionaries were in favour of Arbenz’ radical
social programmes.
By contrast, the subsequent regimes of military authoritarianism led to
decades of civil violence, street murders and mass intimidation, prompting
the rise of a guerilla movement, and consequent scorched earth tactics in
waves of repression. The destabilization of the traditional society and the
visible disintegration of the Catholic church provided a new opportunity for
Protestant growth, especially where these new churches could stress their
anti-communism and hence receive support from sympathizers in the United
States. In this sense Guatemala benefited from the effects of China and
Cuba. But Garrard-Burnett attributes this Protestant growth, and especially
the advance of Pentecostalism, to the effects of the political struggle with
its enormous casualties. These forms of Protestantism offered an apocalyptic
explanation of the miseries so many Guatemalans were suffering, but at the
same time an ecstatic and emotional outlet for their feelings, linked to
hope for a better future. Furthermore, she suggests, Pentecostalism’s
emphasis on the gift of the Holy Spirit, the spontaneous worship services,
and the enthusiastic speaking in tongues, i.e. in their own native
languages, rather than in the Latin or Spanish of Catholic rituals, had a
special resonance for the native Indian peoples.
This growth was indeed astonishing, and seems to have been only stimulated
by the catastrophic earthquake of 1976. By the 1980s there were 10,000
Protestant churches, divided into over 300 separate denominations, mostly in
unaffiliated sects headed by pastors whose essential qualification was
divine revelation. The appeal of such churches was, and is, that members
feel they give structure to what would otherwise be a chaotic and evil
world, rendering a larger meaning and cosmic plan from nearly
incomprehensible terror. They also provided the hope for vindication,
justice and empowerment for the many poor and oppressed.
Such groups were encouraged by the short-lived but vivid Presidency of Rios
Montt in 1982-3, the first acknowledged born-again Christian Pentecostal to
achieve power. He did not last long, and the results were ambiguous, since
his troops still continued their oppressive campaigns against guerillas in
the remoter countryside and the attendant forcible pacification of the
inhabitants. But the disruptions imposed on traditional Mayan society opened
the way for new churches to spring up. In the Pentecostal assemblies, the
war’s victims found solace through miraculous healings, ecstatic trances and
glossolalia. They also offered the displaced peasant a chance to improve his
or her lot by taking the Pentecostal path “from a dirt floor to heaven”. But
above all Protestant congregations offered a new community and a new
identity in place of one now vanished or no longer available.
Nevertheless Guatemala remains a fragile and broken society, under constant
threat of social unrest and horrendous economic disparities. Pentecostal or
neo-Pentecostal churches attempt to fill a spiritual void. The paradox is
that, for the Mayan inhabitants, both Catholicism and Protestantism are
foreign imports. But just as a syncretistic Mayan Catholicism emerged,
perhaps the same will be true for the already flexible Pentecostals. Perhaps
here can be found a new moral basis for the regeneration of society,
overcoming the dreadful legacy of violence and repression with a new
spirit-filled and innovative religious movement.
Virginia Garrard-Burnett teaches at the Institute of Latin American Studies,
University of Texas, Austin.
JSC

3) Religion and the Cold War Conference
Natalie Watson reports on a conference held in London in April, which can be
seen as a start of an international group of historians interested in the
field of Religion and the Cold War. This showed that the varying
interpretations of the Cold War are by no means finished, and that the
significance of religion, and Christianity in particular, needs much more
further work. The conference was organized by Dr Dianne Kirby (University of
Ulster) and the Institute of British History, and attended by scholars from
Britain, Germany, North America and Finland. Prof Aila Lauha from Helsinki
has launched her own project on this topic at Helsinki and is working with a
number of other European universities. The topic includes a revision of
historians’ attitudes, as was made clear by Prof Hartmut Lehmann (Max-Planck
Institut fuer Geschichte, Goettingen) in a most interesting paper on the
official interpretation of Luther and Thomas Muntzer in the former German
Democratic Republic. Similarly, disparate views on the Russian Church were
expressed. “The situation of the Russian Orthodox Church has worsened in
recent years rather than improving”. This was the view of a veteran of the
struggle against the Soviet regime, Fr. Georgii Edelstein, a Russian
Orthodox priest from Kostrama. The Russian Orthodox Church, Fr. Edelstein
claimed, is still run by a hierarchy appointed by the state authorities. The
Moscow Patriarchate, which has always been part of the Soviet state, should
be treated with some suspicion. He called for repentance by the church
leaders, and for the work of such bodies as Keston College, Oxford (the
leading centre for research on East European churches during the Soviet era)
to continue.
Further information can be obtained from the mailing list
cold-war-rel@mailbase.ac.uk

4) Film Review: Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace

Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace

This production of NFP teleart GmbH and Co.KG in co-production with
Norflicks
Production Ltd. (in association with Chum City Television, Oregon Public
Broadcasting, Ostdeutscher Rundfunk Brandenburg, Studio Babelsberg
Independents GmbH, and Wisconsin Public Television) is a ninety-minute
dramatization of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s final years, 1939-45. Bonhoeffer:
Agent of Grace (BAOG) was first shown in Germany, and then aired over PBS
stations in the United States on June 14. (A premier showing was held for
members of the press and selected guests, in New York City on May 17.)
Advance publicity included the honor of ‘Best Film’ it received at the Monte
Carlo Television Festival 2000.

I believe it is important to preface a review of this sort with two
precautions. First, any dramatization attempting to convey the ‘essence’ of
such a complex and dynamic figure as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in only ninety
minutes, will rarely satisfy those persons who are well-acquainted with and
already committed to a particular view of this figure’s ‘essence.’ Second,
while a critical review aims to make judgment on the effectiveness of a
production in the interest of truth, it is the case that every production
takes on a life of its own, and one only hopes that viewers are motivated to
further, more in-depth inquiry. These precautions are stated to express the
need for serious critique as well as genuine humility.

Initially, one is struck cinematographically – while viewing BAOG – with the
realization that we live in a post-Schindlerian age. Without the finances of
Hollywood and the theatrical resources symbolized in the name Spielberg,
anyone would be hard-pressed to create an engaging work in this area.
Further, the choice of color photography instead of black and white in BAOG
has serious drawbacks; an earlier documentary on Dietrich Bonhoeffer
entitled
Memories and Perspectives, (Trinity Films, Minneapolis) filmed in black and
white, like Schindler’s List, remains a classic, in part, because something
of the ‘essence’ was captured by the use of black and white film. This
choice
of medium, while not changing the content of the presentation, clearly
affects the viewing.

One could fault BAOG for straying too far from the facts of Bonhoeffer’s
biography, which were either distorted or omitted, details that are
important
for authenticity. For example, the exaggerated importance of Bonhoeffer’s
fiancé, Maria von Wedemeyer, an overemphasis on the interrogations by
Manfred
Roeder, the obvious absence of Bonhoeffer’s intellectual, spiritual, and
emotional conversation partner, Eberhard Bethge, or the final scene of his
life at Flossenburg when two primary conspirators, murdered with Bonhoeffer
on April 9, were not shown, but omitted; all these are instances of altering

the facts, but for what purpose? Director Eric Till writes: “I didn’t get
any resistance (to changing certain details in the story) . . .You can get
bogged down by the truth of it all. At the same time, one is most anxious
not to in anyway distort the essence of the real story itself.” Putting
aside now the concern about any distortion or omission of details that could
reduce the film’s authenticity, I wish to take issue with Till’s
understanding of Bonhoeffer’s ‘essence.’

After experiencing a preview of BAOG on May 17 in New York City and
following
the PBS showing on June 14, I attempted to be attentive to viewers’
impressions of the film’s essence, as well as hear views of the persona they
experienced in the character of Bonhoeffer, played by Ulrich Tukur. Further,
I wondered what was perceived as the motivating force, the faith orientation
of this ‘agent of grace?’ I consistently heard three impressions, which
followed each viewing, (Bonhoeffer’s) courage, righteousness, and resolve.
>From those viewers I encountered, these qualities were seen as the ‘essence’
of Bonhoeffer’s life and the importance of his witness.

First, the real Bonhoeffer was intensely aware of his own tristitia, his own
weakness and temptation to compromise. In contrast to any personal courage,
any strength he employed for responsible action was understood to be that
received solely from the presence of God in Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer would
resist any description of himself that emphasized his own courage.

Second, the real Bonhoeffer revolted against any notion of his – or
Germany’s
– righteousness during this time. He often spoke of Germany’s historic
guilt, of which he was an heir and participant and for which redemptive
suffering would be required. Quite the opposite of his own righteousness
regarding involvement in this justifiable deed of tyrannicide, was
Bonhoeffer’s self-conscious guilt for an apparently necessary – yet
thoroughly sinful – act against God’s command. Christ’s righteousness and
call to discipleship were the foundation and motivation for the being and
behavior of this ‘agent of grace.’ Bonhoeffer would resist any description
of himself that emphasized his own righteousness.

Third, the real Bonhoeffer struggled until the very end with the irony and
ambiguity of his involvement with the conspirators plotting Hitler’s
assassination. Questions, fears, and uncertainly were often his companions,
not so much answers, confidence, certainty, and resolve. While he lived –
and wrote about – the necessity to “step out and act” responsibly, one ought
not think of this as a sort of un-dialectical resolve in his personality.

My critical concern in Till’s rendition of Bonhoeffer is that the perceived
‘essence’ of his life and witness seems to be that of heroism, a descriptive
image Bonhoeffer would have vehemently opposed. His faith and actions were
grounded in the gratitude of a fragile, sinful, child of God whose weakness
was bolstered by God’s courage, whose self-centeredness was reoriented by
Christ’s righteousness, and whose hesitancy and faltering judgment was only
redeemed by the Spirit’s resolve.

In summary, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s real ‘essence’ must always be understood
in
the light of what God was doing, through Christ, through the Church, for
humanity, for the future. Hopefully, persons viewing Bonhoeffer: Agent of
Grace will be stirred to look further and dig deeper. We must attempt to
insure – like the figure of John the Baptist in the Isenheim altarpiece by
Grunewald who is pointing to the Christ – that the life and sacrifice of
Dietrich Bonhoeffer points to Jesus Christ and not to Bonhoeffer. He would
have it no other way.
John Matthews, Afton, Minnesota, editor Newsletter, International Bonhoeffer
Society, English lanaguage section
The most recent Newsletter no.73 (June 2000) of the International Bonhoeffer
Society, English Language Section is devoted to the memory of Eberhard
Bethge, and prints a translation of the sermon and tributes paid at his
funeral in March.

With every best wish to you all,
John Conway
jconway@interchange.ub.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- June 2000- Vol.VI, no. 6

 Newsletter – Vol VI, no 6 – June 2000

Dear Friends
The flood of new books and articles in our area of study seems never ending,
and the task of making a selection for review is correspondingly
challenging. I trust however that you continue to find the coverage broad
enough to interest most of you some of the time!
The next issue will be a double Summer Newsletter for both July and August,
which will be sent to you in the third week of July.

Contents:
1) Obituary: Joachim Mehlhausen
2) Karl Barth Prize awarded to South African academic
3) Forthcoming conference: German Studies Association
4) Book Reviews:

a) G.Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies
b) A.Vuletic, Christen juedischer Herkunft
c) J.D.Thiesen, Mennonite & Nazi?
d) F.Ludwig, Church and State in Tanzania

5) New articles –

M.Lindsay, Karl Barth’s dialectics,
J.Pollard, The Vatican and the Wall St. crash
S.P.Ramet, Religion and Politics in Germany
J.Alwell, Religious liberty in Sweden

1) It is with great regret that we learn of the death on April 3rd of
Professor Joachim Mehlhausen, Faculty of Protestant Theology, Tuebingen, the
former chairman of the Evangelische Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur kirchliche
Zeitgeschichte, after a lengthy illness. He was de facto the successor to
Klaus Scholder in Tuebingen, and gave leadership to his church’s efforts to
encourage a knowledge of the denomination’s past. His successor is to be
chosen at the next meeting of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft at Magdeburg in June.
In the meanwhile, a retired Oberkirchenrat, Prof Harald Schultze of
Magdeburg has been nominated as vice-chairman, and also chair of the special
commission dealing with the history of the Protestant churches in the
divided Germany, i.e. between 1945 and 1990.

2) Congratulations to our fellow List-member, John de Gruchy of the
Department of Religious Studies in the University of Cape Town,, who has
been awarded the prestigious Karl Barth Prize for the year 2000. It will be
presented to him at a ceremony in Berlin in August.
Professor de Gruchy, a minister of the United Congregational Church of
Southern Africa, is world renowned for his studies on the Swiss theologian
Karl Barth, as well as on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Both were noted for their
opposition to the Nazi regime in Germany, which they comprehensively
critiqued on theological grounds.
Among Professor de Gruchy’s unique contribution to theological scholarship
has been his work which drew parallels between the apartheid ideology in
South Africa and the Nazi doctrines, He applied Barth and Bonhoeffer’s
critique of Fascism to the ‘false theology’ of apartheid, and his work was
instrumental in leading the World Alliance of Reformed Churches to declare
apartheid a ‘theological heresy’ in 1982, putting pressure on all the South
African family of Reformed churches to renounce apartheid.
The Karl Barth Prize was instituted by the German Evangelical Church in 1986
to mark the centenary of Barth’s birth. Among previous winners have been the
theologians Hans Kung and Eberhard Jungel. (Source: Worldwide Faith News)

3) German Studies Association conference, Houston,Texas, October 6th-8th
2000
The following sessions of interest to our readers are announced in the
provisional programme:
Friday October 6th, 8.30 a.m., Session 2: Hitler’s Pope? Image, Imagination
and Pope Pius XII.
Cornwell and Pius XII: what the author got right, Richard Rubenstein
Sicilian Vespers Revisited, Michael Phayer
Reflections on Pius XII and the Third Reich, Hannah Decker,
Commentator, Frank Nicosia
Friday, October 6th 8.30 a.m. Session 8: The Protestant Church and the Cold
War
1945-1990
The World Council of Churches, the German churches and the Cold War, Armin
Boyens
American Protestantism and the German churches during the Cold War, Gerhard
Besier
The Christian Peace Conference and the World Council of Churches, Gerhard
Lindemann
Commentator, Robert Ericksen
Saturday, October 7th 1.45 p.m. Session 106
The Index of Forbidden books and Catholic Nationalism in Wilhelmine Germany,
Jeff Zalar, Washington.
Sunday, October 8th, 8.30 a..m. Session 133: Divergent Problems of Mischehen
and Mischlinge under National Socialism 1933-45
Victor Klemperer’s Diary of an intermarried Jew, Nathan Stolzfus
Regional aspects of persecution among Mischlinge, James Tent
Umgangsstrategien sogenannter juedischer Mischlinge mit der NS-Verfolgung,
Beate Meyer
Commentator, Doris Bergen

4) Book reviews:
a) Guenter Lewy, The Persecution of the Gypsies. Oxford: O.U.P. 2000, 360pp
Thirty five years ago Guenter Lewy wrote the first account in English of the
Catholic Church in Nazi Germany, challenging many of the apologetic alibis
about its role during that fateful time. He now has produced an equally
significant study of the Nazi persecution of the gypsies, again, apart from
one short and unimpressive study, the first academic treatment in English.
This topic has waited all these years for a suitable analysis for various
reasons. In the first place, unlike other victims of the Nazis, such a the
Jews, the gypsies do not maintain a literate culture. Their historical
memory is largely oral. They are strangers to the political advantages to be
gained as former victims of a barbaric regime. They suspect any outsiders
who seek to probe their experiences.
As a consequence this work has been largely compiled on the basis of the
official records of the time, and concentrates therefore more on the
perpetrators of this persecution rather than on the victims. It is one of
the strengths of Prof. Lewy’s account that he reinforces the view taken in
other studies of Nazi persecution that there was no prearranged or
systematic plan, but rather a plethora of competing strategies, which were
then steadily radicalized by being played off against each other.
Lewy points out that the Nazis inherited a widespread social antipathy to
the approximately 25,000 gypsies known to be in Germany. Their policy at
first was prompted by pressure from below, at the local level, leading to an
intensification of the measures for control already initiated during the
Weimar Republic. In the second phase, beginning in 1937, gypsies were caught
up in the programme of crime prevention that led to “preventive police
custody” served in concentration camps. The third phase was instituted by
Himmler in late 1938 using racial criteria to brand some gypsies as a danger
to the nation. At the outbreak of the war, itinerancy was forbidden,
compulsory labour was imposed, but gypsies were not allowed to enlist or
remain in the armed forces, and continued to be treated as social outcasts.
But Lewy makes the point that Hitler appears not to have been involved at
any time, and the evidence does not exist that the gypsies were
systematically targeted for destruction as a blanket category. Indeed, to
the contrary, “pure” gypsies were valued as examples of racially significant
types, and hence were not subject to sterilization or deportation. Much more
dangerous were those who had attempted to integrate, and thus could be
considered as “polluters”of the German “blood”.
As a result of this categorization, large numbers of gypsies were forcibly
imprisoned and/or “resettled” in the east, where their casualties resulted
in many deaths. But even Himmler’s notorious order of December 1942 to send
more than 13,000 gypsy men, women and children to Auschwitz was not just
part of a larger plan to destroy the whole gypsy race, since numerous
exemptions were given. Those dispatched eastwards were selected basically as
social misfits rather than on racial grounds. Lewy suggests that the
subsequent mass murder of these Auschwitz gypsies in the spring of 1944,
after being held there for 18 months, was probably due to the need for more
temporary space for Hungarian Jews.
No exact statistics are on record as to how many gypsies lived under Nazi
control, nor how many were so horrendously and deliberately murdered. So it
is impossible to estimate the proportion of their losses. In Lewy’s view
these mass murders do not add up to genocide, but are shocking enough. While
no direct orders can be traced for any general gypsy extermination, it is
more likely that such executions were based on the belief that the gypsies
constituted an inferior people whose lives were fully dispensable. Other
scholars however point out that the mass involuntary sterilization of
gypsies in 1943 and 1944 can be considered as an act of genocide, as a
deliberate act of preventing the future contamination of German “blood”.
In Lewy’s view, it is not helpful to try and equate the sufferings of the
gypsies with those of the Jews. He points to the continued squabbles which
have arisen over whether or not to include Sinti and Roma in the
U.S.Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. There were in fact significant
differences in Nazi policy, but the victimization of the gypsies did not,
alas, end with the overthrow of Hitler and his gang. Rather the distrust and
hostility exploited by the Nazis are still evident today. What is not
evident is any sign that the churches sought or seek to combat such
stigmatization. JSC

b) Aleksandar-Sasa Vuletic, Christen juedischer Herkunft im Dritten Reich.
Verfolgung und organisierte Selbsthilfe 1933-1939 (Veroffentlichung d. Inst.
f.Europaische Geschichte Mainz, Abteilung Universalgeschichte Bd 169) Mainz:
Verlag Philipp von Zabern 1999, 308pp
The story of those Christians who were of Jewish or partly Jewish origin in
Germany during the Nazi era has only been touched on up to now. In the more
general accounts, their fate is discussed in the context of the ideological
debate within the Nazi hierarchy of how they should be treated, or of the
theological debate in the churches as to whether they really belonged. After
the war, the survivors themselves were only too eager to forget their
degrading classification as “non-aryans” or “Mischlinge”, and preferred to
be seen as fully Christian as everyone else. For their part, church
historians were embarrassed by the dismal lack of support given by their
leaders to these unfortunate members of their own church, so kept silent.
And, in any case, the largest body of documentation only became available
after the fall of the German Democratic Republic. So it is good that
Aleksandar-Sas Vuletic now gives us this full study, which is published by
the prestigious Institute for European History in Mainz.
Basically this work is an account of the short-lived Reich Association for
“non-aryan” Christians, later called the Paulus Bund. But first the author
has to tackle the problematical issues of numbers and nomenclature. No one
knew, or knows, for certain how many Christians of Jewish or partly Jewish
descent were in Germany in 1933, and estimates ranged from 2 million
downwards. Nor was it known how many subsequently emigrated. Equally
confusing was the plethora of overlapping but all pejorative adjectives such
as “not fully German”, “half-Jew”, “non-aryan”, “mixed blood”, which were
not so much descriptive as discriminatory and were naturally not used by
those affected.
The paradox was that, since the Nazis had no biological means of
establishing who was a Jew, they were obliged to use a religious test based
on allegiances sixty or eighty years previously. Having only one Jewish
grandparent was enough to be categorized as falling under the Nazis’
draconian racial legislation. But the implementation of these new rules for
those no longer or not fully Jewish was to provide for bureaucratic
headaches.
As for those affected, their sudden plight in being treated as no longer
only Christians and Germans was traumatic. They were frequently regarded by
the Jewish community as renegades, but were only semi-accepted by the
Christian churches, which too often shared much of the Nazis’ racial
thinking. Particularly lonely were those who had been born as Christians or
converted to Christianity but had later lapsed into free-thinking or
atheistic beliefs, who now found themselves totally abandoned by any
community to whom they might have turned.
The two major churches’ response to the Nazi persecution was ambivalent, at
best. Neither sought to mobilize their congregations to protest such
injustices, even on behalf of their own supporters. The Catholic Church
established a committee which principally sought to encourage emigration,
while the Protestant community saw the rapid rise of the pro-Nazi group, the
so-called “German Christians”, which openly called for the elimination of
all Jewish elements from their liturgies and theology, as well as the
ejection of all “non-aryan” pastors. Although these moves were resisted by
the Confessing Church on theological grounds, even so there was little
sympathy shown to their “non-aryan” members. Not until 1938 did the
Confessing Church establish a small committee under Pastor Gruber in Berlin
to assist such Jewish Protestants to emigrate. By contrast the effective aid
given by Bishop Bell of Chichester to a group of Protestant pastors and
their families, enabling them to leave for England was notable. But for
those laity like Victor Klemperer who wanted to stay in Germany and have
their rights championed, the Buro Gruber proved to be a disappointment.
Left to their own devices, in the summer of 1933, some members of this group
decided to form their own self-help group, the Reich Association. But it was
quickly overwhelmed by the number of people seeking advice or protection
from the Nazi authorities. It was necessarily both dependent on Nazi
permission to exist and seeking to challenge the unwelcome and unprecedented
measures adopted against its members. Throughout its brief existence, the
Reich Association, despite its fervent affirmations of national loyalty, was
constantly in a subordinate position to the overwhelming power of the
Gestapo, who had never any interest in furthering its objectives, unless it
was to encourage emigration. As the author makes clear, the Association’s
deferential approach to the Nazi authorities went hand in hand with the
illusion that these anti-Jewish measures were only temporary, or that
Christians would be exempted. Clinging to this vain hope was clearly a
psychological necessity as it was widely held by the membership for far too
long.
The officers of the Reich Association were all respectable bourgeois and
mainly Protestant citizens, eager to stress their German nationalism and
offering their services to forward the goals of the “national revolution”,
as for example supporting the November 1933 plebiscite on Germany’s
departure from the League of Nations. The same officers declared their lack
of sympathy for any pacifists, communists or exaggerated intellectuals, who
would not be accepted as members and whose activities were deplored. These
highly conservative and patriotic attitudes, however, did them little good.
The Nazis were not impressed.
Given the Nazis’ incessant antisemitic propaganda, the Reich Association’s
leaders had to abandon their wishful thinking about integration into the new
Germany, but instead still believed their patriotism could prevent their
being isolated in a kind of Christian non-aryan ghetto. But, inevitably,
organizing activities and community services for this special group led to
increased feelings of separation. Yet, for the growing number of unemployed
artists and writers, cultural activities undertaken on their behalf were a
significant help.
By 1935 it was clear that being Christian was of little help against the
Nazis’ discriminatory measures. Reluctantly the Association had to take up
the idea of emigration and to encourage educational and re-educational
courses which could be of practical value. Particularly the young people saw
no alternative and were increasingly disinclined to adhere to the leaders’
nationalistic appeals. At the same time, the escalation of the antisemitic
measures in 1935 with the proclamation of the so-called Nuremberg Laws
heightened the tension for the Christians of Jewish origin too.
In the subsequent two years the Gestapo stepped up its harassment and
intimidation. At the same time, a new leader, Heinrich Spiero took over the
Association, whose career is here ably depicted. But despite his highly
conservative and nationalist views and good connections, he was unable to
reverse the Nazi policy. The numbers affected by the new laws grew apace and
Spiero’s strenuous efforts to provide programmes to assist them proved
unavailing. In 1937 the Gestapo demanded a still more rigorous
interpretation of the Nuremberg Laws, forcing the eviction of all members of
the Association who were themselves born Jews, and leaving it purely for
those of “mixed blood”. Since its leaders including Spiero were all in the
first category, this effectively put an end to the organization. The rump
group was no longer to be linked by their Christian attachment, and it
became purely a means of controlling the “Mischlinge”. But the hope of
gaining more recognition by abandoning both its Jewish members and its
Christian character proved illusory. The screws continued to be tightened
and in August 1939 the organization was ordered to close down immediately.
This dismal record of bureaucratic brutality is based on an excellent
mastery of the sources. But necessarily it excludes almost entirely the
personal stories of the victims. Their exclusion from German society and
their shunning by the churches to which they belonged is another sad story
which in part has been told. by Ursula Buttner, in her book Die Verlassene
Kinder der Kirche (1998) which forms a valuable complement to Vuletic’s
study.
JSC

c) John D.Thiesen, Mennonite & Nazi? Attitudes among Mennonite colonists in
Latin America, 1933-1945. (Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History no
37) Kitchener, Ontario: Pandora Press 1999 329pp
We still lack a full English-language study of the Mennonites in the period
of the Third Reich. Possibly the sensitivity of the issues and their
emotional and divisive overtones are still felt among the survivors and
their descendants in North America. But John D.Thiesen, archivist for the
General Conference Mennonite Church from the campus of Bethel College in
Kansas has now given us an insightful examination of one very small part of
the wider picture, namely of the political attitudes found in the exiled
Mennonite communities of Latin America. In fact, since their presence in
both Mexico and Brazil was so small, the book is principally about the
situation in Paraguay. Thiesen’s basic question is: “How was it that in the
Mennonite colonies, with a deep tradition of pacifism, many people embraced
the same volkisch National Socialist assumptions that underlay Hitler’s
atrocities?”
The answer largely arises out of the context. The Mennonites were given a
grant of land on the remote western borders of Paraguay in the 1920s in
order to secure title from Bolivian ambitions. One group of settlers arrived
in 1926-7 from Canada, disaffected by the pressure there to anglicize and
modernize. Another larger group arrived in 1929-30 from Russia, where they
had been subject to increasingly distressing persecution by the Communists.
Thanks to energetic rescue efforts by the German government, they were
brought from Moscow to Germany, but in the circumstances of the growing
depression stayed there only a few weeks before proceeding onwards to their
new settlements in Latin America.
Their predominant political attitude was clearly an overwhelming hostility
towards the Soviet Communists, who had deprived them of their homelands,
wealth and prospects. At the same time, all these new settlers found
themselves stranded in a difficult environment, completely cut off from the
local inhabitants. These colonies were four days’ journey from the capital
city. Their isolation reinforced their desire to cling on to their ethnic
consciousness as Germans and to build their institutions on the basis of
their German language and their familiar ideologies, which they believed
held them together against the dangerous tides of revolution and modernity.
It was hardly surprising that, in such remote communities which lacked
communications, the influence of the few educated members, such as the high
school teachers or the editor of the colony’s newspaper, should be
disproportionate. These were the individuals whose enthusiasm for the new
Nazi regime after 1933 was to have such an impact in the Paraguayan
colonies, especially Fernheim, whose archives have luckily been preserved.
In addition to the romanticized view of Hitler as Germany’s saviour against
Bolshevism, the kind of Nazi propaganda arriving in Paraguay stressed the
essential duty of preserving the German race from all outside forces – a
kind of defensive posture which appealed to many unsophisticated Mennonites.
Furthermore these trends were actively encouraged by their Mennonite mentors
in Germany to whom the colonists looked for guidance on such political
matters. Professor Bernard Unruh and another teacher Walter Quiring both
eagerly supported the Nazi remaking of German society, and provided their
proteges overseas with justifications for upholding the great ideas of
“Deutschtum” and its volkisch destiny. Both Unruh and Quiring’s views were
extensively quoted in the colonists’ newspaper, and propagated in the high
school, where Unruh’s student, Fritz Kliewer, organized the young people in
a manner highly reminiscent of the Hitler youth.
Such few visitors as the colonists received, especially German officials,
naturally encouraged such a positive view of the new Third Reich. It was a
considerable time before alternative views about what was happening in
Germany reached Paraguay. Tales of the Nazi persecution of the churches were
frequently denied, while Unruh and Quiring continued to claim that National
Socialism and Christianity were fully compatible. But eventually a serious
division appeared in the colonies over the issue of pacifism, since the
new-found enthusiasm for the Third Reich and its militant expansionism could
hardly be combined with traditional Mennonite views. Even so, a group of
young people actually went back to Germany in 1939, full of enthusiasm. The
men, apparently willingly and following the example of their German
Mennonite counterparts, were ready to abandon their pacifist heritage. They
joined the German army, “doing their duty unto the uttermost for the German
Fatherland”, and looked for the day when Germany’s military victories in the
Ukraine after 1941 would enable them once more to return to their old
settlements. Nine of them were killed or missing in these campaigns.
The opposition to such a political stance came mainly from those American
and Canadian Mennonites, seconded to help out in Paraguay, but who were
perceived as “modernizers’ or disruptive to the Germanness of the colonies.
Nevertheless, after 1941, this factor attracted attention from outside
interests, including the American government, which brought pressure on the
Paraguayan authorities to arrest known Nazis on their territory. In the end,
the two most prominent activists were temporarily arrested and forced out of
the colonies.
After the war, those who had most ardently propagated their support of
National Socialism in the name of Germanness claimed they had been deceived
by Hitler. But, as Thiesen suggests, a better explanation for this kind of
enthusiastic encounter with Nazism is to be found in the Mennonites’ need to
create a new cohesive identity for themselves which could make sense of
their previous sufferings as refugees and offer hope for a new future even
in a strange land. We can be grateful to John Thiesen for elucidating these
problematic attitudes, even if his account may well uncover old and still
unhealed wounds.
JSC

d) Frieder Ludwig, Church and State in Tanzania. Aspects o a changing
relationship. 1961-1994. (Studies of Religion in Africa, XXI)
Leiden/Boston/Koln; Brill 1999
Since studies of the churches in Africa are uncommon, this new contribution
by a German scholar, nicely translated into English, is much to be welcomed.
Ludwig seeks to cover the story of all the churches in the newly-independent
nation from the early 6os to almost the present. This was of course the era
of Julius Nyerere as the founding father of the new nation and his bold
experiments in economic development on a communitarian scale. The strength
of this work is the careful consideration of how the various churches moved
from their former era of European missionary dominance and dependency to a
more truly African symbiosis. The comparisons Ludwig makes are insightful,
especially on the difficulties each group had with the various strains and
stresses caused by their European origins. But the transition away from
missionary control to indigenous leadership was in many respects easier than
the problem of their own profile in the new state. The churches had the
advantage that Nyerere was known to be sympathetic, so the initial stages of
the post-independence period were harmonious with the local church leaders
deferring to the President’s guidance, and obtaining his help in the new
arrangements for such things as education and health. But this relationship
did not allow for any kind of prophetic criticism. As Nyerere’s government
took on more and more authoritarian features, the churches’ silence was
notable. Only in the last few years has a more critical stance been adopted
as the failure of Tanzanian Ujamaa Socialism has been admitted. At the same
time, the church structures also need to evolve from the kind of
hierarchical patterns of the past. Ludwig’s survey is helpful and balanced –
an excellent example of the outside observer, having researched the
available sources, being able to evaluate, with sympathy but not
uncritically so, the complex developments of the past generation.
JSC

5) Articles: Mark Lindsay, Dialectics of Communion: Dialectical Method and
Barth’s Defence of Israel, has appeared in a new book, ed. K. Tonkin, Karl
Barth: a Future for Postmodern Theology (Australian Theological Forum/Open
Book 2000) Lindsay’s chapter deals with the continuing usage of dialectic
within Barth’s CD II/2 on the doctrine of election, and the way in which
this section of his Dogmatics, written between 1941-2, was in direct
opposition to Nazi antisemitism and the onset of the ‘Final Solution’.
John Pollard, The Vatican and the Wall Street crash, in The Historical
Journal, Vol 42, no 4, December 1999, pp 1074 ff. An informative account of
the Vatican’s financial strategies in the period of the great depression,
when the grant given by Italy in connection with the Lateran Treaty was
almost squandered by the grandiose building schemes of the Vatican’s leaders
Sabrina P.Ramet, Religion and Politics in Germany since 1945, in Journal of
Church and State, Vol 42, no.1, Winter 2000, pp 115 ff. This broad survey of
the political stances adopted by both the Catholic and Protestant churches
in Germany over the past half century covers a lot of ground, some of which
Prof. Ramet has already described in more detail in her books. But useful is
the listing of the current political problems encountered as the churches
have tried to deal with the new conditions created over the past ten years
since re-unification.
Jonas Alwell, Religious Liberty in Sweden. An overview, in Journal of Church
and State, Vol 42, no 1, Winter 2000, pp 147 ff. The evolution of Sweden
from a tightly-knit Lutheran church-state symbiosis to the present
secularized state with a remnant establishment of the national church is
here well described and evaluated. The author makes some interesting
observations about the place of minority religions such as the Jews and
Muslims, and the difficulties which a secularized state encounters in trying
to meet their requirements.

With best wishes to you all for a blessed Ascension Day
John S.Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

I am most grateful to the Library staff at Regent College who have now
compiled a Website for the John S.Conway Collection, books and files etc,
http://www.library.regentcollege.ubc.ca/Conway/Conway_collection.htm

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- May 2000- Vol.VI, no. 5

 
Dear Friends.

I would like to thank Doris Bergen very much on your behalf for guest
editing last month’s Newsletter, and producing such a rich and interesting
fare that we had to split it into two parts. Judging by the response, we
very much hope we can prevail on her to take up the responsibility again in
the future.

Contents: 1) New Website
2) Obituary – Dieter Albrecht
3) Book reviews a) The Holocaust and the Christian World
b) U.Werner, Anthroposophism under Nazism
c) H.Roggelin, Franz Hildebrandt
d) G.Besier, Kirche, Politik und Gesellschaft im 20 Jahrhundert
4) Book notes a) Building the Church in America
b) H.Troper, The Ransomed of God
5) Journal articles: Zalar, Borromausverein ,Jones, Catholic conservatives

1) Thanks to the generous help of Randy Bytwerk, Calvin College, Grand
Rapids, Michigan, we now have a new website. This is henceforth:
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/akz/
and contains the index of all the issues of this Newsletter since its
inception in 1995. This will now be kept up to date. By the end of the
summer, the website will also include the full text of each issue back to
January 1998, and will be searchable for key words.

2) Obituary: Dieter Albrecht
Greg Munro, Australian Catholic University, Brisbane writes:
Subscribers to this Newsletter will be sad to learn of the death of Prof.
Dr. Dieter Albrecht on 8 October 1999. Prof. Albrecht achieved international
recognition for his research in the history of the Catholic Church during
the Church Struggle against the Nazi state. His principal areas of research
were the relationship between the Third Reich and the Vatican, Bavarian
history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the history of the
Thirty Years War. Born in Munich in 1927, Dieter Albrecht studied History
and Germanistik at the University of Munich and completed his doctorate
under Max Spindler. From 1951 to 1953 he worked for the Kommission fur
bayerische Landesgeschichte. He completed his Habilitation in 1958 and
lectured at the University of Munich until 1963. From 1963 to 1967 he was
Professor of Modern History at the University of Mainz, before taking up the
chair of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Regensburg
which he held until he retired in 1992. Prof. Albrecht was one of the
founding members of the Kommission fur Zeitgeschichte in September 1962,
which quickly emerged as one of the leading research centres for the history
of the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Nazi dictatorship,
as well of Catholicism in Germany during the past two centuries. The
Kommission published a number of his works, including the massive three
volumes of Der Notenwechsel zwischen dem Heiligen Stuhl und der deutschen
Reichsregierung (1969-1980). He was a member of the Historical Commission of
the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and was awarded the Verdienstkreuz (Class
1) of the Federal republic of Germany.

3) Book reviews a)
ed. Carol Rittner, Stephen Smith, Irena Steinfeldt, The Holocaust and the
Christian World. Reflections on the past: Challenges for the future. London:
Kuperard 2000
278 pp GBP 14.95
The chief value of this collection of short essays by Christian and Jewish
scholars lies in its comprehensiveness. Virtually all those aspects of the
Holocaust in which Christians were involved, both personally and
institutionally, are here explored in a scholarly and critical fashion,
providing not only a most useful reference work, but also guidance as to the
latest findings in the continuing historical debates over the role of the
Christian community during the tragic era of Jewish persecution and death.
Excellently produced, well illustrated, sensitively edited, the book is
intended as a resource for informed church laity or study groups or visitors
to Holocaust memorial centres such as Yad Washem in Jerusalem.
What Christians did or failed to do during the Holocaust continues to haunt
and challenge the Christian world. Few Christians risked their lives to help
Jews escape the Nazi perils. Most stood aside as bystanders. The authors’
search for explanations for these stances avoids too much moralizing
lamentation, but certainly pinpoints the deficiencies in Christian
theological and ecclesiastical attitudes. Included along the edge of the
pages, in side-bars, are useful quotations, questions for reflection and
suggestions for further English-language reading. Also helpful are a
comprehensive 10-page chronology, an up-to-date videography, and a list of
international on-line resources. The editors hope this volume will spur
church members to recognize that the Holocaust was not just a Jewish event,
but one which affected Christianity too, and which should lead them to take
action on behalf of others in need, as part of the task of healing and
reconciliation shared by Jews and Christians alike.
Because the contributors are all from western countries, the articles
reflect an emphasis on the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in western
Europe, but there is a short chapter on the non-established churches and
sects, and another on the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The situation
in 1933 in both the major German churches is suitably analyzed, and
criticism expressed of the unwillingness amongst either Protestants or
Catholics to see the now-threatened Jewish community as falling within their
circle of obligation, after so many centuries of antipathy and disdain. More
pertinently, the absence of any philo-semitic tradition could have been
noted. It is this feature – a positive willingness to support Jews – which
is excellently described in the chapter entitled “A glimmer of light” which
outlines the few but heroic Christian rescue efforts in various countries.
Particularly among Reformed church members, such as the family of Corrie ten
Boom in Holland, or the French villagers of Le Chambon, this motive gave
strength and courage to these “Righteous Gentiles”. It is also good to have
recorded the actions of lesser-known figures such as Metropolitan
Chrysostomos of Greece or Mother Maria Skobtsova, a Russian nun in France,
murdered at the very end of the war.
The chapter on the reactions of the churches in Nazi-occupied Europe is
informative, especially on little-known areas such as Bulgaria, Slovakia and
Denmark. However, Norway, Greece and Yugoslavia are omitted, while Italy is
included in the chapters on the Vatican where the recurrent differences of
opinion about Pus XII’s policies are well aired.
The final part covers the post-holocaust period, showing how Christians have
responded in interfaith dialogue since the 1960s to bring about a striking
change. Both the initiative of Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican
Council, as well as equivalent measures adopted by many Protestants, have
ushered in a wholly new relationship with Judaism, which must be seen as the
most significant theological development of the twentieth century. This
clearing away of the Church’s unfortunate legacy now offers both Catholics
and Protestants an opportunity to begin a new chapter, with the shadow of
the Holocaust as a constant reminder of the dangers of the past. Several
short chapters outline the activities which could further this goal, and the
issues which remain to be confronted. These are particularly valuable for
discussion groups or parish seminars, and as such can be warmly commended.
JSC

b) Uwe Werner, Anthroposophen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus
(1933-1945).
Munich: R.Oldenburg Verlag 1999, 473 pp.
It is good to see yet another solidly researched account of the fate of a
small sect persecuted by the Nazis, namely the Anthroposophists who were the
followers of Rudolf Steiner. Before his death in 1925, Steiner had moved the
headquarters of this movement to Switzerland, leaving various small groups
in Germany to propagate his ideas, the most successful of which were the
Waldorf schools. Steiner’s views were individualistic, international and
highly ethical. Hence there was no sympathy for Nazism, even though some of
the members were overwhelmed by the apparent success of the Nazis in 1933.
For their part, the Nazis looked on antrhroposophism as an eclectic
conglomeration of exotic ideas, and its followers as sectarian and dangerous
to the regime. Consequently the Nazi radicals, especially in the SD and the
Gestapo, were soon prepared to take measures to suppress the sect’s
activities and even its existence. And even though some anthroposophists
tried to protect their institutions by stressing their national loyalty,
this did them little good. In fact, it took six years before these policies
of persecution were fully effective. But resistance from such a small group
of basically unpolitical enthusiasts could only be limited, especially as
there was no centrally directed organizational structure.
Uwe Werner has searched the relevant archives and presents his material with
flair. His task was made easier by the opening of official records
previously held in Moscow and East Berlin, but on the other hand hindered by
the evident reluctance of leading members of this group after 1945 to record
their immediate recollections or to attempt to come to terms with their
past. But the Nazis’ own files provided him with significant material to
depict their campaign of persecution. Already in 1933 accusations were
directed against Steiner and Steinerism, lumped together with Free Masonry,
Communism and Judaism. The influence of spiritism, occultism and hypnotism
which Steiner’s followers allegedly practised was enough to call forth
vehement attacks from Nazi propagandists. In November 1935 the Gestapo
prohibited the Anthroposophist Society throughout Germany as being “a danger
to the state”, even though leading members were still negotiating with
various Nazi offices about how to continue their activities. It was another
sign of Himmler’s winning the battle for totalitarian control in the Nazi
polycratic structures. Yet, the Fuehrer’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, showed some
interest in the anthroposophists’ ecological policies. So, when Hess fled to
Scotland in 1941, his opponents were quick to blame Steiner’s occultism as
the cause of his highly damaging defection. And it is clear that Hitler
ordered even more drastic measures against this sect as a result. However,
the Gestapo did not order mass imprisonments, or only for short durations.
Luckily, therefore, enough anthroposophists were able to maintain their
beliefs so that Nazism did not succeed in extinguishing the group entirely,
any more than was the case with other small prohibited sects. And after 1945
they were to reemerge to begin all over again.
JSC

c) Holger Roggelin, Franz Hildebrandt. Ein lutherische Dissenter im
Kirchenkampf und Exil. (Arbeiten zur kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte, Reihe B,
Darstellungen 11) Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1999. 350pp
Franz Hildebrandt was a close friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. They met in
1927 as young students of Adolf von Harnack, and remained close until the
outbreak of war in 1939 broke off all contact. He has often been seen as a
foil to his more famous friend, but Holger Roggelin successfully undertakes
to portray Hildebrandt in his own light. Hildebrandt was three years
younger, but came from a similar upper bourgeois academic background, and
strangely enough wanted to study theology to make sense of the confused
world of the 1920s. From 1931 the two men were drawn together by the
increasing political tensions which spilt over into the church. The rise of
the Nazis to power was particularly ominous for Hildebrandt since his mother
was of Jewish origin. The victory in mid-1933 of the pro-Nazi “German
Christians” and their demand for the purging of all “non-aryan” pastors, led
both young friends to seek a post abroad, in Bonhoeffer’s case successfully
but not so for Hildebrandt. However, he at once supported Martin Niemoeller’
s opposition group, the Pastors’ Emergency League, and sought to mobilize
church opinion against the nazification of church life, especially against
the denial of the rights of the Jewish Christians. In October 1933 he
resigned his curacy and went to London as Bonhoeffer’s guest. But in January
Niemoeller summoned him back to Berlin to help defy the ruling church
authorities. At that time, the model he sought was that of Thomas Chalmers
who had led his followers out of the Church of Scotland a hundred years
earlier to found a Free Church, based solely on biblical truth. But he was
to be disappointed. Too many of his colleagues still hankered after some
attachment to the national church, so that the dissenters had to be content
with a Confessing Church instead, which audaciously claimed to be the “true”
German Evangelical Church and condemned the “German Christians” as heretics.
Such a stance inevitably involved compromises, as the Confessing Church
members sought to reconcile their national and ecclesiastical loyalties, to
be good Germans and good Christians at the same time.
As Roggelin makes clear, Hildebrandt shared this dilemma. On the one hand he
encouraged and promoted efforts to protect the Nazis’ victims, especially
the Jews, but yet could still believe that the Nazi state could be brought
to behave along Christian ethical lines. Too many of his colleagues shared
this illusion – right up to 1945. And, with regard to the Jews, too often
the Confessing Church showed by its language and expressions how much it
participated in the Nazified atmosphere of disdain. Hildebrandt grew
increasingly dismayed by this readiness to abandon the Christian
“non-aryans”, and rightly believed this would be the test case for the
ethical stance of the Confessing Church. At the same time, he still retained
a very traditional Christian view towards the Jews in general, affirming
their eventual destiny to be converted to Christianity. Nor did he have any
particular sympathy for Zionism.
In 1937 the situation became critical. The Gestapo pounced on the leaders of
the Confessing Church. On July 1st they arrested Niemoeller, who thus began
his eight years’ incarceration. Hildebrandt was also arrested on a lesser
charge, but after a month was released. He realized he had to emigrate. So
he fled to England, where he was warmly received as a welcome reinforcement
by his staunch friend Pastor Julius Rieger, who was upholding the Confessing
Church among the German community in London. Hildebrandt quickly became
involved with other emigres and refugees, and realized how much the church
had left them in the lurch. But the Berlin church authorities threatened
reprisals if he were to preach or more actively campaign in England, a step
supported by the majority of the German pastors in Britain whose put their
national loyalties above any solidarity with the refugees. It was largely
this opportunistic behaviour and the subsequent refusal of such church
leaders to acknowledge any sense of guilt even after Hitler was overthrown
which deterred Hildebrandt from returning to Germany or ever setting foot in
Berlin again.
Attempts to find Hildebrandt a teaching post in Britain failed. But in 1939
he was enrolled as a graduate student in one of Cambridge’s theological
colleges, and at the same time was given the task of ministering to the
group of exiles and refugees gathered in this city. The local clergy gave
strong support and even arranged for joint Anglo-German services to be held,
the first of which took place on the very day war was declared. As the
English vicar noted: “The fact that two congregations of two nationalities
at war could meet together in common worship at such a moment was a pledge
that here, at any rate, the anti-German hysteria which disgraced Church and
Nation in 1914 would not occur again.”
Nevertheless in the summer of 1940 security reasons led to all enemy aliens
including Hildebrandt being interned on Whit Sunday, immediately after
preaching in Holy Trinity Church. Appointed to be “camp speaker” he was
saved from being sent to Canada or Australia, and at the same time became
even more heavily involved in pastoral work for his fellow internees for
whom the uncertainty about their future was often traumatic. Bishop Bell’s
support gave the refugees, and especially the pastors, enormous
encouragement. Thanks to his intervention, most of the clerics were
released, and in October Hildebrandt was able to return to Cambridge.
Roggelin’s account of the Christian Fellowship in wartime, along with the
inevitable nationalist and theological tensions which ensued, is excellently
done Notable was the warm reception given to these German preachers even in
places suffering from German bombing. Hildebrandt’s pacifist inclinations
were however suspect from some of the more militant English Christians. Long
debates about using him for the BBC broadcasts to Germany continued for
several months, but finally from the end of 1942 he was able to take part,
even though very well aware that such services could be misused for
political purposes. His staunch adherence to his Lutheran theological
heritage, however, increasingly separated him from Anglicanism and the
Church of England, as represented in Cambridge by Charles Raven, Master of
Christ’s College, with whom Hildebrandt had a notable theological
controversy, opposing what seemed to him to be the English sin of liberal
Pelagianism and universalism.
After the war ended, his reluctance to return to Germany, and his
unwillingness to undergo re-ordination into the Church of England, led him
to become a Methodist, all the more gladly since he noted the connection
between Luther and the Wesleys. After serving a parish in Edinburgh, he was
appointed to the Methodist Drew University in New Jersey and served there as
teacher and pastor for several years. He died in Edinburgh in 1985.
Roggelin’s final chapter is devoted to an insightful analysis of Hildebrandt
‘s complex relationship with Bonhoeffer. In the post-war years he was
frequently invited to contribute to the vigorous controversies about the
significance of Bonhoeffer’s witness and theology. But he continually
refused. “The friendship was of an intimacy which makes it impossible for me
to enter the debate about him”. But undoubtedly, Roggelin believes,
Hildebrandt was not enamoured with the more popular exploitation of
Bonhoeffer’s catchy slogans of “the world come of age” or “religionless
Christianity”, and still less with the interpretations of such commentators
as Bishop John Robinson in “Honest to God” in the 1960s. Robinson’s attempt
to replace the traditional orthodox doctrines of God he regarded as merely a
“sell-out”.
On the other hand, Roggelin asserts, Hildebrandt did have a considerable
influence on Bonhoeffer in the early years, especially through his deep
knowledge of the Bible and his pacifism. Both men were fated to become
outsiders in the Lutheran world of their day. And this characteristic marked
Hildebrandt’s career for the rest of his life. As a champion of Christian
eschatological hope and humanitarian ethical obligations, Hildebrandt
deserves to be known in his own right. This initial biography gives us an
insightful picture and a fair tribute to one who was destined to be a
continual dissenter and who thereby exemplified the cost of discipleship.
JSC

 

d) G.Besier, Kirche, Politik und Gesellschaft im 20. Jahrhundert, Munich:
R.Oldenbourg Verlag, 2000. 184pp
This compact volume of 184 pages is in reality a handbook, one of a series
of approximately 100 titles which together comprise a vast project to
provide an Encyclopaedia of German History. Prof. Besier has already written
the volume for the churches in the 19th century, and now gives us this
concise but insightful survey of the 20th.
The book falls into three equal parts: the first 60 pages describe the major
events from 1918 to 1989 in which the churches were involved, which is
necessarily a very quick hop,skip and jump over such a turbulent and often
traumatic period.
The second 6o pages analyze the historiography and research trends, covering
the range of controversies which have sprung up over the past few decades,
as well as indicating the gaps and shortfalls in this coverage.
The third section lists the major works in this field, concentrating on the
most recent publications which have appeared in the last twenty years.
Almost exclusively this bibliography consists of German authors.
Students in our field will no doubt be interested in Prof. Besier’s views in
the central section where he examines some of the disputes among historians
of the churches, including several in which he himself has been involved.
For example, he takes issue with the kind of apologetic historiography of
the immediate post-war years, not only from the formerly pro-Nazi group of
churchmen, but also from supporters of the Confessing Church, and points out
the defects of these approaches. He outlines the debate between Klaus
Scholder and Konrad Repgen over the origins and political effect of the 1933
Reich Concordat, where the overtones of Catholic-Protestant antipathy were
unmistakable, Equally he is stringent about the defensive positions adopted
by some of the supporters of the stance adopted by the Evangelical Churches
of the now unlamented German Democratic Republic. But he also points out the
unresolved tensions in this historiography between the advocates of a less
church-centred approach, which instead argues in favour of a more integrated
stance with secular techniques and values, or those who still argue in
favour of making church history a separate endeavour with its own criteria
for evaluating events, which resists the attempt to see church history as
just another branch of social, let alone socialist, historiography. Besier
does not hide his opposition to the kind of historiography which smacks of
‘Kulturprotestantism’ with its fateful readiness to compromise with the
powers that be, whether of right or left, even with dictatorships. He points
out how readily such an approach has benefited those who collaborated with
such regimes.In place of former decisive condemnations, we now have a
pluralistic view which denies any ultimate moral values in history. The
danger of a marginalisation of theological standards is readily apparent,
and, according to Besier, should be steadfastly opposed lest church
historians once again fall into the sin of opportunistic accommodation to
modernity. He quotes with approval one of his few English-language sources:
“In the past two hundred years, many liberals have sold out under the
influence of modernity. What unites such diverse thinkers as Rudolf
Bultmann, Paul Tillich, . . . and Karl Rahner? Accommodation to modernity.
This underlying motif unites the seemingly vast differences between many
forms of existential theology, process theology, liberation theology, and
demythologization – all are searching for a more compatible adjustment to
modernity”.At the same time Besier also shows clearly enough how this debate
has been a continuing one ever since the early years of the twentieth
century. The legacy of Harnack, Troeltsch and Barth is still very much alive
and still controversial.
Such considerations lead Besier on to take up the prospects for the future –
presumably as a topic which deserves further research. His criticism of
liberal theology gives him the opportunity to point out the disastrous
tendencies of such secularizing trends, with the watering-down of doctrinal
beliefs, the substitution of secular-political social service as a major
emphasis amongst many of the clergy, the possibility of a separation of
church and state, and the rise of ersatz religions in both the political and
intellectual spheres. At the same time he can be readily critical of the
present policies of the German church leaders, both Catholic and Protestant,
designed to maintain a kind of hierarchy in church-state relations. Far from
accepting the declared freedom of religion, which would regard all
denominations as equally worthy of social acceptance, the major churches
have continued for the past fifty years to insist on a vertical scale with
themselves at the top in positions of privilege, while lower down come the
free churches, and lower still the sects and foreign imported religions, and
lowest of all such dangerous phenomena as Scientology. How long such a
system can be preserved, let alone propagated, especially when its
theological content has been so reduced, is rightly questioned.
Besier’s listing of the sources is helpful. For outsiders, even this much
abbreviated
selection shows how active the pursuit and writing of church history is in
Germany – a valid criticism of other countries’ efforts! But yet, it is also
clear that the Protestants are by far the largest contributors, and
virtually every one is masculine. This situation should indeed give us all
pause to reflect!
JSC

4) Book notes: a) ed. J.C.Linck,C.O., and R.J.Kupke, Building the Church in
America. Studies in Honor of Monsignor Robetrt F.Trisco, Washington, D.C.:
The Catholic University of America 1999, 283 pp.
This Festschrift for Fr.Trisco, the long-serving editor of the Catholic
Historical Review, exemplifies the qualities of meticulous scholarship and
broad-minded enquiry, which he himself has shown for so many years, thereby
enriching the whole Catholic constituency in North America. These essays are
written by scholars, many of whom were either pupils or colleagues at the
Catholic University, bringing a variety of interesting viewpoints to their
subjects, which range from the eighteenth century to the present.
For the historian, perhaps the most significant contribution concerns the
belated efforts of the Catholic hierarchy at the end of the 1930s to “deal
with” the problem of Father Charles Coughlin’s virulent anti-semitism. As
the object themselves of much calumny, the Catholic bishops were well aware
of the need to protect freedom of speech, and seemed to regard the
propagation of anti-Semitism as a lesser evil. By contrast, another essay
describes the sufferings of a German-American priest persecuted at the end
of the First World War for his national origins, and even convicted
evidently unjustly as a spy.
Such examples show the difficulties Catholics have had of combining their
church loyalties with their American situation, and hence the obstacles to
building the church in America.

b) H.Troper, The Ransomed of God, Toronto: Malcolm Lester Books 1999, 275pp
The title is irresistible for this Newsletter. In fact, Troper’s account
describes the indefatigable efforts of a Toronto woman, Judy Feld Carr, to
rescue Jews from Syria over twenty-five years until they were finally given
the right to emigrate in 1992. God takes a back seat in this book to the
resolute and often daring schemes undertaken to circumvent the political
barriers and heavy discriminations imposed on Syria’s Jews. Mrs Carr’s
ingenuity, as well as her capacity for raising vast sums for bribes, is
breathlessly recorded, but in the end she did manage to obtain the release
of several thousand victims of a inhuman dictatorship.

5) Journal articles:
Jeffrey Zalar, “Knowledge is Power”. The Borromausverein and Catholic
reading habits in Imperial Germany, in Catholic Historical Review, Vol
LXXXVI no 1, January 2000
This sprightly description of the work of the Borromausverein makes two
points: first, the desire of the more educated Catholics in Germany, in the
period after unification, to escape from the Protestant-led charge that they
were a backward superstitious community, still tied to clerical control and
lacking in progressive ideas. To overcome this, a huge system of Catholic
libraries was skillfully organized by the Borromausverein, which was
remarkably successful in reaching out, certainly to the urban Catholics, and
making up for earlier educational deficiencies. But secondly, the
Borromausverin sought to offset the more dangerous accusations of political
disloyalty or unreliability which their opponents had brought up during the
course of the Kulturkampf. Thus the educational work stressed their
nationalist sympathies, and as Zalar makes clear, they underwent a subtle
process of assimilation to the majority’s cultural views on political
questions. There was therefore a continual tension between the desire to
build up a separate Catholic existence, with its own identity and
institutions – as happened so successfully in Belgium and Holland – and the
desire to belong fully in the wider German nation. Zalar’s account
excellently recreates the atmosphere of these endeavours. And it is to be
hoped that he will be able to continue his study by looking at the even more
dramatic developments which happened after the downfall of the imperial
system.
Larry E. Jones, Catholic Conservatives in the Weimar Republic. The politics
of the Rhenish-Westphalian aristocracy, 1918-1933 in German History, Vol 18,
no 1, 2000
Larry Jones gives us a sweeping condemnation of the activities of the
Rhenish-Westphalian aristocrats after the first world war. Their deliberate
undermining of the legitimacy of the new republic, and their strong
influence on the local Catholic population against democracy and
parliamentarianism are here carefully but damningly outlined. It is
impossible to ignore the fact that this same reactionary group supported the
rise of Nazism and that many of these aristocrats played leading roles in
this area of Germany, at least in the initial years. By giving
respectability to the Nazi cause, they became a willing and integral part of
the conservatives’ close alliance with totalitarianism. Jones’ essay sheds
light on the political stance of Bishop Galen and his relations, which is
hardly flattering, despite the attempts after 1945 to portray them as heroes
of the Resistance.

With best wishes,
John Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- April 2000- Vol.VI, no. 4

guest editor: Doris L. Bergen, University of Notre Dame

CONTENTS:

1) Obituary for Eberhard Bethge

2) Excerpt from the foreward (by Clifford Green) to the new edition of Eberhard Bethge’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography (edited and translated by Victoria Barnett)

3) Viewpoints on the Pope’s Visit to Israel

a) Scott Appleby
b) Susannah Heschel

4) Book review of Anne Loveland, Evangelicals in the United States Military

5) Book notes:

a) John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope
b) Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus
c) Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel, eds., Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust
d) Gerhard Lindemann, “Typisch jüdisch” Die Stellung der Ev.-luth. Landeskirche Hannovers zu Antijudaismus, Judenfeindschaft und Antisemitismus 1919-1949

5) Conference Reports:

a) American Society of Church Historians, January 2000
b) Holocaust and Churches Conference, Philadelphia, March 2000
c) Military Chaplains in their Contexts, March 2000

6) Research in Progress: Victoria Barnett

 

---

 

Dear Friends

Many thanks to John Conway for inviting me to edit the newsletter for
April 2000. The last month has been an eventful one, both for scholarship
in church history and even more significantly, for the churches in the
world today. Some of the news is sad: Eberhard Bethge, biographer and
publicist of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and an influential theologian in his own
right, died in March. John Conway’s moving obituary of a man many of you
knew personally is the first item in this newsletter. Information on the
new, English-language edition of Bethge’s biography of Bonhoeffer
follows.

Pope John Paul II’s trip to Israel caused a sensation this past month,
although reactions among Christians, Jews, and Muslims have ranged from
euphoria to resentment. Not often do events connected with the churches
make top news stories all over the world; not often are scholars of
religion called on to discuss international politics on primetime
television. March 2000 saw both phenomena. I have tried to provide a
sense of that coverage by including a section called “Viewpoints on the
Pope’s Visit to Israel,” featuring reflections by Scott Appleby and
Susannah Heschel. Other items this month–book reviews, notes, conference
reports, and an account of research in progress–address matters that
were central to Eberhard Bethge (and Dietrich Bonhoeffer) and echo issues
that the Vatican and our newspapers remind us are still at stake today:
Christian antisemitism; religion and war.

I am grateful to everyone who submitted items for the newsletter. I hope
that all of you who receive it will find grounds for critical reflection.
Best regards!

Doris L. Bergen

1) Obituary for Eberhard Bethge

It is with great sorrowthat we share with you the news of the death at the
age of 90 of Eberhard Bethge. Although he had been in failing health, it is
good to know that
he was recently able to celebrate the completion of the German-language
edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s collected works, to which he and his
wife Renata had contributed so much.

Eberhard is known primarily as the pupil and then closest friend of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, and as the recipient of the Letters and Papers from Prison,
which were so carefully
preserved and later published under his auspices. Subsequently Bethge
went on to write what must be one of the most notable biographies of this
century. His portrait of Bonhoeffer is based both on his close personal
friendship and collaboration in the 1930s and 1940s, but also on his
sharing in Bonhoeffer’s striking challenges to Lutheran theology, and
rejection of Nazi pretensions. It was Eberhard’s determination to rescue
Bonhoeffer from the damaging accusations of national as well as
ecclesiastical disloyalty, which led him to undertake years of work to
make Bonhoeffer’s views and writings known to the world.
In this endeavour and in his personal commitment to endless meetings,
conferences and seminars, he was ably supported by Renata, as Bonhoeffer’s
niece. Eventually after years
of misunderstanding and even opposition within their own church, the
Bethges succeeded in changing the theological climate, not merely in
Germany but world-wide. Had it not been for their efforts, Bonhoeffer
might still be as largely unknown as he was at the time of his murder in
1945.

At times it could appear as though Eberhard was so devoted to the memory and
legacy of Bonhoeffer that he was unable to develop his own theological
stance. But in fact
his services in the cause of Christian-Jewish reconciliation deserve to
be remembered as a highly significant contribution to this very
problematical field. It was largely due to Eberhard’s persuasions that
the Rhineland Synod of the German Evangelical Church in 1980 issued a
notable declaration on this subject which demonstrated an unprecedented
readiness amongst Lutherans to acknowledge the sins of the past, and
called for a wholly new stance towards Judaism.

Immediately after the war, Eberhard had served in the London Lutheran
parishes where Bonhoeffer had preceded him. He there gained a fluency in
English and with
English-speaking theology which opened many doors. He was frequently a
welcome guest in North America, as for example at the Annual Scholars’
Conferenmce on the Holocaust and the Churches. His genial and warm
friendliness was guaranteeed to counteract any lingering anti-German
prejudices left over from the Nazi period. He and Renata were in this
sense marvellous ambassadors for the new Germany and standing rebuttals
of the exaggerated charges of such as Daniel Goldhagen. Though never
employed in a German theological faculty, it would be true to say that
his theological influence has been of enormous value to contemporary
Protestantism. He will be much missed.

– John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

2) Victoria Barnett has prepared an edition in English of
Eberhard Bethge’s _Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography_. The following is an
excerpt from the foreword by Clifford Green:
This new edition of Eberhard Bethge’s classic biography of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer brings into English for the first time the complete text of
the German edition that was first published in 1967. It includes all
material that was omitted or abridged in the 1970 English translation,
and all revisions and additions made to subsequent German editions.
This new English edition has been enhanced in other ways as well. In
addition to citing English translations of Bonhoeffer’s books in the
notes, it provides citations to the newly completed German critical
edition of his writings, the <underline>Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Werke</underline>. Because this seventeen-volume collection contains
material not published in the <underline>Gesammelte Schriften
</underline>when the biography was first published, it has been possible
to add numerous notes. Finally, Victoria Barnett has compared the entire
text of the latest German edition with the previous translation and made
numerous corrections throughout. Because of all these enhancements, this
classic of twentieth-century biography comes back into print with even
greater vitality, pertinence, and durability.
Since its first publication in Germany three decades ago, the biography
has gone through eight editions. By the fifth edition in 1983, the
research of a growing number of scholars had begun to supplement Eberhard
Bethge’s monumental work. How was the biographer to respond to this
development? While welcoming the new research, Bethge decided not to
rewrite the biography. As he wrote in the preface to the 1983 edition,
the biography should “show what its original inspiration was and
continued to be.”
Eberhard Bethge turned 90 last August. The new edition of the biography
appeared shortly before his death on March 18. It is a tribute to his
outstanding contribution to the church and to the history of our times —
not only through this book but through his decades of work as the editor
of Bonhoeffer’s writings, as a lecturer and teacher, and as a generous
friend and helper to all whose research has built on his own. Bonhoeffer
wrote eloquent theology about human community. This was embodied in his
leadership in the Confessing Church and his work in the resistance
movement on behalf of Germany and peace. It was also embodied in
friendship. “Finest and rarest blossom, at happy moment springing from
the freedom of a lightsome, daring, trusting spirit, is a friend to
friend,” wrote Bonhoeffer in Tegel Prison in his poem “The Friend.”
Without Eberhard Bethge, the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in all
likelihood would have gone unnoticed. This biography is a fruit of that
friendship, and the biographer has widened the circle and spirit of that
friendship around the world.
Now that the twentieth century has ended we can assess its achievements
and horrors from a broader perspective than was possible when this
biography was first published. In that light, the life and theology of
Dietrich Bonhoeffer have a paradigmatic significance for the church that
transcends his own lifetime and transcends this century — a witness
against humanity’s perennial temptation to idolatry and its destruction
of life, and a witness to the authentic humanity that is the fruit of a
genuine Christianity.

– Clifford Green

3) Viewpoints on the Pope’s Visit to Israel
a) Scott Appleby, University of Notre Dame:
A good deal of commentary on Pope John Paul II’s visit to the Holy Land
explored the political implications of the itinerary, and weighed the
words and actions of the pope in this light. Nonetheless, the pope did not
journey to the Holy Land to endorse specific political positions, or to
move the peace process in a partisan direction; he was hunting bigger
game-cultural/religious reconciliation and dialogue.
There will be no durable peace in the Middle East without some measure
of religious and cultural “acceptance” on the ground, the pope correctly
knows (as did the late King Hussein of Jordan, who often made a similar
claim). Shaping cultural values and promoting religious reconciliation is
the first step in achieving the kind of social and cultural receptivity to
peace accords.
The pope’s remarks and itinerary were, indeed, politically calculated, but
at this higher level of abstraction, so that the pope “kissed the soil” of
the Palestinian West Bank as well as the Jewish Galilee, visited Jewish and
Muslim as well as Christian sacred sites in Jerusalem, and identified
with the human suffering and religious/spiritual aspirations of every side
of the conflict-the Palestinians as well as the Jews, the Muslims as well
as the Christians.
Did the visit have more concrete political implications? Of
course, it did-inevitably. But an analysis of the pope’s actions and
words on this level reinforce the notion that he was more concerned with
building inclusive cultural alliances than with promoting a specific
political
outcome. His overt political references-e.g., to the Palestinian right to
a “home land” (he disappointed those who wanted him to use the word
“state”)-were in fact cautious, designed to avoid undermining his
cultural priorities. Actually he did no more than to endorse “the facts in
the
field” as they had been accepted by all major players prior to his arrival.

b) Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College
First, I believe the Pope’s visit to Israel, especially to Yad Vashem,
was deeply moving to Jews around the world. His comments at Yad Vashem
about the need for silence were very appropriate and seemed soothing to Jews
who are often wary of Christian leaders. It was clear that he spoke with
genuine empathy. The event was historic, something that will be
mentioned in the future in Jewish history textbooks.
Of course, the Pope’s audience was Catholic as well as Jewish, and for
Catholics around the world, this was an important lesson. Most are
perhaps unaware of his earlier statements about Jews and Judaism, of his
visit to
a Rome synagogue, or even of his apology the week before his trip. Not
only did Catholics learn from their Pope how one should respond to Jewish
suffering, they also heard the Pope affirm the continued validity of
Judaism, a lesson many of them need.
At the same time, some Jews were disappointed. Because this Pope has
been at the forefront of improved Catholic-Jewish relations, many Jews had
hoped he might go further while in Israel and express a sense of
responsibility for the misdeeds of the Vatican during the years of the
Holocaust. They
were disappointed. While the Pope spoke specifically about Christians
who acted heroically during the Holocaust to save Jews, he might have also
spoken about those who failed to save Jews, those who were indifferent.
Some Jews feel the Pope should apologize for the Holocaust, because,
unfortunately, there are some Jews who look at a cross and see a
swastika. They confuse the Nazis with the Vatican, Hitler with the Pius XII,
perpetrators with bystanders. Important historical and moral
distinctions are thereby lost. Personally, I don’t want an apology. For one
thing, I
don’t think that an apology is commensurate with the horror of the
Holocaust. And if the Pope were to apologize, then to whom? He would
have to apologize to the people who were murdered, which he cannot do. No
Jew today can accept an apology on their behalf. Nor are Jews really
prepared to
offer forgiveness – that, too, would be inappropriate.
We have not yet been able to determine the nature of Vatican
responsibility during the Nazi years, because the Vatican has not yet opened
its
archives to historians for their scrutiny. Far more valuable than an apology
would be for the Pope to open those archives.
Until now, many Jews, especially Israelis, have not been very interested
in Christianity or in Catholic theology. The Pope’s visit has brought
Catholicism to the attention of Israelis and to Jews around the world,
demonstrating that it is not only the religion of Crusades,
Inquisition, and the Holocaust, but also of the Second Vatican Council and
Nostra
Aetate, of a new attitude and openness.

4) Book Review
Anne C. Loveland, American Evangelicals and the United States
Military, 1942-1993. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1996. Pp.356.$55.00, hardcover.
Reviewed by Duff Crerar, Grande Prairie Regional College

During the Gulf War, rumours of revivals among the troops
thrilled American evangelicals, helping to balance other
rumours about rampant immorality within the gender – mixed forces.
Stories emerged of dedicated “Bible-believing” chaplains (who were
found in greater numbers than ever among the padres) effectively
“getting through” to their men, and evangelicals having great
influence with fellow-soldiers. While the revival tales were nothing
new to students of American wars and religion, what was new was the
high profile of evangelical Christianity over there – the culmination
of trends in both the United States military and society since the
Vietnam War. Not since the 1860s had evangelicalism so dominated the
chaplaincy – in fact the entire military establishment. How did this
come to pass?
Anne C. Loveland’s fine book provides a careful examination of this
complex but profound and growing interrelationship between fighting
Americans and evangelical Protestantism. She thoroughly and
convincingly documents the growth of evangelicalism in American
society after the Second World War and correlates it to the growing
numbers and influence of evangelicals in both the chaplaincies and
officer corps as well as the ranks of the military. Whereas other
denominations increasingly turned away from war, and
often became outrightly anti-military during the turbulent
Vietnam years, evangelicals identified military men and women
as a vital mission field, and, as loyal Cold Warriors, became
increasingly pro-military in their orientation. Whereas many secular
American soldiers found Vietnam a spiritually searing experience,
evangelicals found it an energizing crucible of faith. Loveland provides
several convincing studies of prominent chaplains, flag officers and Chiefs
of defense staff who played leading roles in
fostering this mutual reinforcement.

Such renewed interest in the soul of the military corresponded with
the increasing stake in mainline American society held by the
socially, economically and politically rising evangelical classes of
American society (remember the endorsement of the Eisenhower
presidency by the young Billy Graham?). Just as the Cold War and
Vietnam crisis hardened mainline (and we can talk about
evangelicalism becoming “mainline” in American public life by the
1980’s) evangelical militancy, so embattled officers and
soldiers, thanks to the legacy of Vietnam, came to trust and even
welcome the only segment of American Protestantism which faithfully
supported their wars. American soldiers learned that
they could count on the evangelicals, both in public life (and
controversy), and in the field. By the 1980s, even flag officers and
staff officers of the highest rank were found at prayer-breakfasts
and upholding the work of evangelicals such as James Dobson, the
Navigators, and Full Gospel Christian Businessmen among the troops.

Such close mutual relationships, however, have their weaknesses. It
is especially poignant for a scholar of First World War chaplains to
read the religious phrases and preaching sentiments of the trenches
repeated in the boonies of Vietnam, given the profound
disillusionment felt by many veterans after both wars. Chaplains,
by the 1960’s, no longer could exercize as prophetic a role as they
had when militarism and evangelicalism were mutually suspicious (a
situation before and during much of World War Two). Evangelicals
still wince when they remember how the Nixon presidency
turned the tables on them, and impaled even Billy Graham on
the horns of the religion-state policy dilemma. Parallels with
the 1980s and the Reagan administration are obvious. The alliance of
evangelicals and officers works well when American civil religion
embodies evangelical values, but what happens when (as in the early
1990s) the Commander-in-Chief wants to bring gays into the military?
As Loveland points out, the steady and stubborn resistance to the
Clinton administration on this issue may well have been the last
victory of the military evangelicals, as new secular – and religious
– movements arise to challenge the public Christianity of United
States politics and society. As evangelicalism continues to fragment
and divide in American public life, how will this affect the troops?
This, and other religious developments in and around the United
States Armed Forces, obviously bear watching.

Clearly anyone arguing that armed forces are representative cross-samples of
their host societies will find Loveland’s book of interest. Especially
provocative are the implications of the growing divorce between American
society and its increasing pluralism and the conservative military creed of
its fighting men and women. Pluralism
will certainly remain a fundamental challenge to the evangelical
military consensus. But Loveland’s book is still only a first word on
the subjects of American civil and military religion. Roman Catholics
have not by all means been anti-war through this period, and call
for detailed study. Loveland’s work concerns, primarily, officers
and chaplains, as well as public and policy relationships: what about
the effects at the level of the rank-and-file? What about “folk
religion” in United States forces: that blend of fatalism,
patriotism and the cult of honour and duty which so resembles the
Mithraism of the late Roman Army?

Loveland’s book is a dispassionate, but sensitive to the sincerity
and depth of the people who bear their creed and wear the United
States uniform. Her book will be an essential part of any study of
the U.S. military and its religions. It will have to be taken into

full account by both secular – and secularist – as well as
evangelical scholars who want to monitor the subject in future. Above
all, it profoundly adds to the growing understanding of the
interelationship of all of a society’s elements with the men
and women who guard it.

– Duff Crerar, Grande Prairie Regional College (Canada)

5) Book Notes:

I would like to draw the following items to the attention of those
readers interested in Christian antisemitism and the churches and the
Holocaust:
a) Rainer Decker’s review of John Cornwell’s _Hitler’s Pope_ (highly
recommended by John Conway) can be found at the following addresses:
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=3D4726951832799
or
http://members.friendfactory.com/rdecker/index.html

b) Sussanah Heschel, _Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus_ (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998): Heschel’s original and very readable
study of Abraham Geiger, a nineteenth-century Jewish theologian and
historian, “reverses the gaze” to reveal the anti-Jewish content of
familiar Christian interpretations of Jesus. Anyone interested in
Christian-Jewish relations in Europe, particularly Germany, will find
this book valuable.
c) _Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust,_ edited by Robert P.
Ericksen and Susannah Heschel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999): This
collection includes essays by Ericksen, Heschel, Bergen, Shelley
Baranowski, Kenneth Barnes, Guenter Lewy, Michael Lukens, and Micha
Brumlik. Much of the material is familiar to those in the field, but
having these pieces pulled together in one volume should prove useful for
students. At least some readers of this newsletter have already assigned
parts of the book in their classes.
d) Gerhard Lindemann, _”Typisch juedisch”: Die Stellung der Ev.-luth.
Landeskirche Hannovers zu Antijudaismus, Judenfeindschaft und
Antisemitismus 1919-1949″_ (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1998): In more
than 1000 pages this book recounts the depressing history of Protestant
hostility toward Jews and converts from Judiasm to Christianity in the
Hanover region. Less detail and more analysis might have made for easier
reading, but the study is nevertheless extremely useful, in particular
for its treatment of pastors defined as “non-Aryan” under the Nazi
regime. (I will be reviewing this book at length in _The Catholic
Historical Review._ )DB

5) Reports from Conferences
a) The American Society of Church Historians
On January 6-9, 2000, downtown Chicago swarmed with historians.
Walking along Michigan Street that weekend, one could catch fragments of
intricate historiographical discussions and debates of all sorts as the
participants of the American Historical Association’s annual meeting
wandered out of
their hotels and into the brisk wind. Around the Downtown Chicaco
Marriott, these discussions tended to center around religious
themes–since there most historians participated in the meetings of the
American
Society of Church History, alongside those of the AHA.
Founded in 1888, the American Socity of Church History encompasses a
broad range of topics relating to religious history. Sessions ranging from
“Demons in Late Antiquity” to “Religion on the Edge: Heterodoxy and
Orthodoxy on Frontiers of Christianity” opened for discussion religious
topics reaching around the globe. While many sessions focused on more
traditional American church history topics, such as “Continental
Pietism and German-American Religious Traditions” and “Twentieth-Century
Biblical Exegesis,” other sessions like “Queer Theory and the Study of
Ancient
Christianity” pressed into less familiar territory.

Several of the sessions and individual papers dealt with women, gender,
and religion. Some of the established historians of women in religious
history noted during a breakfast for Women in Theology and Church History
that
this had not always been the case. They reminisced about their early years
in the organization when it was very much male dominated, and welcomed the
younger women who as graduate students or professors had joined their ranks.

The sessions gave both distinguished scholars and graduate students
opportunities to present their work. Several graduate students from=20
the nearby University of Notre Dame, as well as students from around the
country, gave papers at the conference and benefited from helpful
feedback for their continuing studies. The congenial atmosphere at the
conference made it possible for historians of all ages to share their work
and to
leave with fresh ideas for further research.

– Kristin Kobes, University of Notre Dame

b) Holocaust and the Churches Conference, Philadelphia

The highlight of this year’s Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and
the Churches, held at St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, from March
4th – 7th, was the award of an honorary degree to Elie Wiesel. As the
Conference patron, Wiesel has addressed this group frequently with
insight and inspiration. So it was highly interesting to hear his
confident opinion that “Never in history have Christian-Jewish relations
been so good”. Wiesel attributed this to the significant change in
Christian attitudes over the past generation, and the example of the
present Pope, of whom he was at first suspicious, but now admires for his
tenacity and sincerity on this matter.
Certainly the atmosphere at the conference fully reflected Wiesel’s
opinion. Over 400 registrants took part, and lively discussions followed.
Particularly notable was the larger number of women participants, some of
whom gave first-rate thoughtful papers. As usual, we had several valuable
contributions to the history of the Nazi period, which added yet further
mosaic stones to the wider picture. At the same time, the larger debates,
such as the uniqueness of the Holocaust, were revisited, and new
interpretations explored. One notable innovation was a televised
conference call to Jerusalem, so that we were able to see Professor
Yehuda Bauer on one half of the screen, and the local speakers on the
other, for nearly two hours. At this session a particularly significant
speech was made by Ward Churchill, speaking for the American native
Indian community, which reminded us that the issue of restitution and
reconciliation with this community has as yet hardly been touched. At the
same time, it was good to learn about the building of a new Holocaust
memorial centre in Britain, with the hope that the same process of
exchange of views between Christians and Jews will receive an additional
impetus in that country. As usual the conference concluded with sessions
devoted to the strategies for teaching this legacy to the next
generation. Once again we are grateful to the leadership provided by
Franklin and Marcie Littell for organising such a stimulating experience
for all comers.

John S. Conway

c) Military Chaplains in their Contexts, University of Notre Dame, South
Bend, Indiana, 18-20 March 2000

In the last twenty years, a growing interest in the experiences of
clergymen ministering to soldiers has led to a wide and disparate
body of scholarly literature on the military chaplaincy. This
conference, organized by Doris Bergen and David Bachrach of the History
Department at Notre Dame,brought together several dozen scholars, chaplains
and graduate students to focus on the oft-controversial military padre.
Papers ranged
from the medieval and late-Roman origins of the office, through to the
experiences of American chaplains in Vietnam and afterwards. Two common
themes ran through most: chaplains have consistently faced profound
role tensions as representatives of both religion and the government
on the battlefield, and they have struggled for credibility with
their own men , because most chaplains were given officer or
gentlemen status, and thus represented the establishment in the eyes
of the soldiers. As a result, modern-era observers, many of them
ex-soldiers, have portrayed chaplains as ineffective and
hypocritical, having sold out to Caesar and neglected the deepest
spiritual needs of the fighting man. These discussions prompted
distinguished writer, and veteran, Paul Fussell, to suggest that
future chaplains should be non-commissioned officers, or privates,who live
with the men and share their fighting and living conditions,
much as the way medics accompanied his unit in World War II.
Fussell’s observations were illlustrated by Thomas Kselman’s
comments on French soldier-priests in World War I, but challenged

by serving chaplains present, who pointed out that without officer
rank they were unable to minister effectively to officers, or freely
function in hierarchical military cultures. Kselman’s portrait of the
soldier-priests viewing themselves as missionaries to their own
secularized state and army was also noted by other scholars of other
chaplaincies at the conference. Their missionary zeal was added to by
the intense battles between church and state in the Third Republic,
which spurred them on, along with the xenophobic nationalism of their
times. Then, as always, padres have often felt that they had
something to prove.
During the session on late Roman and medieval chaplains (which
included passages presented by Michael McCormick from a ninth-century
sermon), discussion centred on the practical and expedient as
well as spiritual tasks: chaplains were there to pray the “liturgy of
war”, but also to foster loyalty to the king and obedience and
effectiveness in the troops. By the time of the crusades, the
desperate situation of the Franks brought renewed urgency to their
prayers, which still drew on their Carolingian forefathers.
Chaplains were not only spiritual counsellors, they provided some of
the vocabulary and ideology for the institution of chivalry. As
Patrick Geary noted in his commentary, guided by the needs of the
age, the Christian priest had gone from shyness about and shunning of
war to, aided by new forms of penance before battle, baptizing and
blessing organized killing, creating the powerful vocabulary and
controversial image of the fighting saint which endures into the
modern period. The deplorable side of this, to Geary, was the way in
which the prophetic office of the cleric was undermined, and
chaplains became mere easers of conscience, while unit officers
were the true spiritual leaders of the men.
In the discussions of the chaplaincy in the early modern era, Anne
Laurence presented the complicated picture of chaplaincy to both
Royalist and Roundhead in the English Civil War. Chaplains and
soldiers found civil war one of the most complex of contexts for
discussion of religion, as the question of “which IS the state?”
blended with the religious chaos caused by the many dissenting
denominations arrayed for battle over political supremacy. The
pluralism of the Civil Wars meant that many a Parliamentary padre
spent as much time debating with his own men over which vision of the
kingdom or Kingdom was legitimate, as he did preaching the cause of
his army or easing consciences. In such wars, where preachers were
also often in short supply or unable to visit the many small
detachments throughout England, most soldiers ended up creating
their own moral and spiritual worlds. John Lynn presented a strong
contrast, in the chaplaincy to the Royal armies of Louis XIV, who

institutionalized the army chaplaincy and wedded it to a system
which became the model for other armies of Europe. Louis’s regiments
and brigades were more likely, between battles, to have absentee
officers than absentee chaplains. Chaplains became promoters of good
discipline and responsible to officers for reporting on conduct and
morale, as well as preaching the rightness of the cause.

Just as the Bourbon, so the Hohenzollern monarchy, Hartmut Lehmann
pointed out in his paper on the Prussian chaplaincy, where the first
chaplains were chosen from the ranks of Pietism to sustain conformity
and good evangelical moral discipline in the barracks. Unfortunately,
he argued, as subsequent rulers from Frederick the Great
through to Kaiser Wilhelm II involved the armies in tumultuous and
ultimately disastrous wars, the chaplaincy evolved both an ethos and
theology which made Germany’s destiny and dominance identical with
the cause of Christ, something which would have appalled the Pietist
forefathers in chaplaincy, and which led to disastrous outcomes in
World War I. Chaplain preaching ultimately embodied rather than
challenged the hyper-nationalism of imperial society. By the
end of the Great War, Lehmann argued, many chaplains, including Paul
Tillich, had realized that a fatal and even toxic union of
nationalism with faith had undermined the validity of the office and
the chaplain’s message.
Dr. Lehmann’s comments were especially apposite in the light of a
session on the world wars. Duff Crerar argued
that the negative stereotype of the military chaplaincy in Canadian
society stemmed from post-World War I distortions by an angry and highly
articulate minority of veteran writers, and that this stereotype
persists in contemporary scholarly studies of the Canadian
chaplaincy. Despite a growing body of literature on the Canadian
military chaplaincy to the contrary, most Canadian scholars and
commentators still prefer to refer back to the negative portrait
in the inter-war literature, perhaps because Canadians view
the war and its crusading rhetoric and propaganda with profound
ambivalence, and hold the padres largely, perhaps unfairly,
responsible for it.

Doris Bergen’s paper on the German army chaplains in the Nazi era made a
profound impression on participants, as she argued that, though hated by
Hitler, disadvantaged by commanders and even ordered into suicide missions,
army chaplains ministered in the face of death, paradoxically abetting the
many appalling atrocities of the war
by their presence at the front and commitment to their men.. Though few were
diehard Nazis, they ironically furthered the Nazi cause by assisting
army morale and nationalist sacrifice. In a spiritual and moral world

turned upside down, doing their best at the front would come to haunt
the German army chaplaincy after the war, and into the present.

Irony also coloured the paper given by Gardiner Shattuck on the
American Civil War. Union chaplains were haphazardly recruited
and untrained, unsupervised and unranked in the armies of the war,
and yet were expected to represent Christ in the field. Even more
chaos existed on the Confederate side. Yet padres on both sides
consistently reported the phenomenon of revival breaking out. The
fighting power of the men and the lethal battlefield technology combined
with revival to present the tremendous irony of committed evangelical
Christians slaughtering each other by the thousands. Most padres proved to
be surprisingly effective at reassuring the men that if they died they went
to
heaven, which may have made soldiers less rather than more effective in
battle, as the promise of heaven made one’s own sacrifice (rather than
killing the enemy) the main objective. Civil war padres may indeed have made
too many
soldiers too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly military good!

Retired chaplain Joseph O’Donnell, C.S.C. brought the
conference back to earth with his honest and straightforward account of
ministry in Vietnam and afterwards. His moving stories illustrated
the many challenges contemporary pluralism, peacekeeping missions and
disastrous situations create for the modern padre. Modern
communications as well as modern technology have created new
stresses as well as advantages for chaplains: next-of-kin today are
much closer in time and space to the chaplain, thanks to technology,
than they ever were before. O’Donnell’s ministry to them, judging by
his stories, remains one of the most traumatic and yet satisfying
parts of the profession. As commentator Anne Loveland put it,
chaplains since Vietnam have surrendered the front-line
morale-building role, somewhat as a result of the critics of the
Vietnam era who attacked padres as servants of state not church.
Today this has been replaced by character formation and
transformation of military culture missions, as padres in the
American forces have become more professionalized. Padres now are
moral advisors to commanders, and guardians against atrocities: they
are affirming human values in peacekeeping and peacemaking missions
as much as on the field of conventional war. Yet, pastoral care to
men and their kin at home remains, and will continue to remain, their daily
task.

As the conference closed, comments from the audience raised new
topics for future discussion. Has the density of chaplains gone up as
armies matured, and have their social origins changed from past to
present? If so, what do theses trends mean? How do military
and ecclesiastical structures (after all, chaplains are “officers” in
both) relate to each other through the office of chaplain? What does
the ecumenical and increasingly secular pluralist nature of armies
mean for chaplains, and will historic responses be adequate for the
future? Is any armed force today training chaplains adequately, and
if so, how have they learned from the past? Can padres serve in
modern armies at war without demonizing the enemy? How has the
understanding of war, from distasteful but necessity to
apocalyptic harbinger, influenced their work. And how has the ongoing
pastoral care imperative shaped chaplaincy? All these questions
continue to call for more scholarly inquiry, and, one hopes, another
conference.

– Duff Crerar, Grande Prairie Regional College (Canada)

 

6) Research in progress:

So many of the readers of this newsletter are engaged in important
programs of research. Mindful of the themes in this month’s
contributions, I asked one of them, Victoria Barnett, to describe her
current work. In addition to her edition of Eberhard Bethge’s Bonhoeffer
biography, Barnett recently published an insightful study called
_Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity During the Holocaust_ (Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 1999). She is also the author of _For the Soul of
the People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler_ (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992). db

“There has already been research, notably that of Klemens von Klemperer,
on the communications between the German resistance and Catholic and
Protestant leaders abroad. Some of these Christian leaders not only
passed on German position papers, but reflected themselves on what kind
of society they hoped for in a post-Nazi Europe, and some of these
reflections included specific suggestions about the status of Jewish
citizens in European society after the fall of Nazism.

A deeper examination of the international Christian community’s knowledge
of, and response to, the persecution and genocide of the Jews offers a
context for understanding these ecumenical reflections and the
conclusions that were drawn. In any case, it is clear that these
discussions were affected by the communications being received from the
German resistance. It is particularly interesting in this context to
look at Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s reflections on the future of the church.=20
Several of his writings, including his fragmentary notes made for the
1943 Breslau synod (which he was unable to attend, since he had been
arrested) show how his notion of “religionless Christianity” was part of
a profound rethinking of the church’s place in civil society. It is
impossible to separate this development from the work he was doing for
the resistance. The case can be made, I think, that these writings
reveal much more about his attitude toward Judaism and the Jewish
community toward the end of his life than do his theological writings on
Judaism per se.

Several documents from the Myron Taylor papers in the Library of
Congress, the National Archives, the Henry Smith Leiper papers at Union
Seminary and the Federal Council of Churches archive in Philadelphia shed
light on this issue. In an interview I conducted with him in February,
Dr. Gerhardt Riegner in Geneva directed me toward copies of archival
documents that he sent to Willem Visser ‘t Hooft during the 1960s at the
latter’s request; these documents reveal much about the extent of Visser
‘t Hooft’s and Adolph Freudenberg’s knowledge and activities.
A preliminary paper on this research will be presented at the forthcoming
International Bonhoeffer Congress in Berlin in August”.

– Victoria J. Barnett, Arlington, Virginia

7) Technical Note (from previous newsletters):
This Newsletter comes to you free, gratis and without cost. Anyone who
is genuinely interested in contemporary church history is welcome to
subscribe.
Anyone desiring to unsubscribe should so indicate to the editor, John S.
Conway, and not to the list in general. His address:
jcopnway@interchange.ubc.ca.

With very best wishes,

Doris L. Bergen
Department of History
219 O’Shaughnessy Hall
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556-0368
fax: 219-631-4268
tel.: 219-631-7189
******************************

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- March 2000- Vol.VI, no.3

Dear Friends,

I am very happy to let you know that for next month’s Newsletter we shall have a Guest Editor, Dr Doris Bergen. Doris is well known to some of us for her fine account of the pro-Nazi German Protestants, The Twisted Cross. She now teaches at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana, but returns to her homeland Canada for the summers.

I am most grateful to her for accepting this assignment in the midst of her teaching duties, and very much hope that you will all welcome this change of viewpoints which is designed to enlarge our horizons.

Contents:

1) Forthcoming conference, Oslo, Norway, August 2000

2) Book reviews:

a) A.Wilkinson, Christian Socialism

b) ed. G.Kelly, C.J.Weborg, Reflections on Bonhoeffer

c)L.Terray, Bishop Lajos Ordass

d) A.H.Ion, Canadian Missionaries in Japan

3) Book notes, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer”, F.Thimme’s Church Struggle Mitteilungen d. Evang Arbeitsgemeinschaft f. kirchl.Zeitgeschichte 1) Forthcoming conference: CIHEC, Oslo, Norway, 11 August 2000

 

---

 

As part of the 19th International Historical Congress, to be held at the University of Oslo from August 6th -13th, the affiliated Commission Internationale d’Histoire Ecclesiastique Comparee is arranging two sessions, organized by Prof Hartmut Lehmann, Director of the Max Planck Institute for History,Gottingen. These will be held on

a) Friday morning, 11 Aug, On the Road to a History of 20th Century. Christianity: Problems, Questions, Methods, with papers by W.Brandmuller (Rome). Jeffrey Cox (Iowa), Fr.W.Graf (Munich), M.Lagree (Rennes), H.McLeod (Birmingham), Jens H.Schjorring (Aarhus), chaired by H.Lehmann.

b) Friday afternoon, 11 Aug.: Writing the history of religion under Stalinism and Marxism. 1945-1989 with papers by G.Besier (Heidelberg), A Hryckiewicz (Minsk), V.Rajsp (Ljubliiana), F.Sanjek (Zagreb), F.Smahel (Prague), chaired by B.Vogel (Strassburg). For more information, contact Prof Lehmann = lehmann@mpi-g.gwdg.de

2) Book reviews:

a) Alan Wilkinson, Christian Socialism: Scott Holland to Tony Blair. London: SCM Press 1998. 302 pp. GBP 14.95

Alan Wlkinson is one of the Church of England’s senior historians, and these insightful lectures bring us up to date with one of the significant trends in this Church’s life over the past hundred years.The opening chapters nicely recapitulate the story already told, from the early influence in Britain of F.D.Maurice, Coleridge and J.W.Ludlow with their protests against the harsh rigidities of evangelical dogmatism and laissez-faire economics, to the impact of novelists like Dickens, Mrs Gaskell and Charles Kingsley, passionately denouncing the selfishness of the rich and successful. These writers all sought to evoke a kinder, more compassionate society in Britain, arising out of a sense of Christian love, where the needs of all would be fostered rather than the profits of the few. The second stage of Christian socialism developed in the 1880s following revelations of the ghastly conditions in London’s slums. Young men and women from Oxford and Cambridge were recruited to serve in newly-founded settlements in the East End, such as Toynbee Hall, which did much to create a socially sensitive leadership for the twentieth century. At the same time the first leaders of the trade unions were almost all recruited from the nonconformist chapels, which had a strongly Christian ethical commitment, and provided their lay preachers with the skills they needed to address public gatherings. Their socialism was reformist, immanentist and optimistic, and as such outweighed the much harsher creed of the secular revolutionaries. As we all know, the Labour Party owed more to Methodism than to Marx.

For its part, the Church of England demonstrated its commitment to social justice through the work of numerous Anglo-Catholic parishes in the slum areas. The sacrificial witness of such priests as Fr Robert Dolling or John Groser created a tradition which still endures. Their liturgical services brought a richness of drama and colour to their often sordid surroundings, even if many such parishes indulged in a nostalgia for the good old mediaeval days.

The Christian Socialist movement’s theology was incarnational, seeing the material world as an object for sanctification. Its advocates placed a new emphasis on sharing the gifts of the Church, especially the Eucharist, in a democratic fellowship. Yet they remained ambivalent about the exercise of power. Frequently its supporters were idealistically utopian, suspicious of political compromise and happiest in opposition, where moral absolutes and righteous indignation were, and are, always easier to maintain.

Intellectually the movement gained much from the Church Social Union, founded in 1889 under Canon Scott Holland, which sought to apply Christian principles to social and economic life. It functioned as both an educational and a research group, undertaking down-to-earth investigations of social problems and propagating its findings through the parishes. It encouraged collective action and called for governmental intervention, no longer believing that poverty and destitution were the result of individual moral failures. It came to enjoy considerable support from both the bishops and the Liberal Party, and from its ranks came such distinguished figures as R.H.Tawney, author of the highly influential book, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, and the later Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple.

But, as Wilkinson, rightly notes, the movement was elitist, working from the top down. It never really succeeded in recruiting the working classes to whom it ministered and for whom it campaigned. Its leaders were drawn from the clergy, academics, writers and politicians whose Christian convictions led them to seek the practical realization of their social justice ideals, but who had rarely experienced unemployment, homelessness or poverty. Yet their success made England virtually the only country where Christianity and socialism were not seen as incompatible.

Wilkinson depicts the leaders, such as Holland, Gore, Tawney and Temple, as well as lesser-known figures, with sympathy, but no uncritically. By the light of later years, these were indeed giants in the land. All were moralists at heart, and were convinced that the struggle against capitalism was fundamentally ethical in character. But their Christian faith saved them from both utopianism and the worship of the all-powerful state or party. At the same time, their tradition separated them from the continental socialists. English, and especially Anglican, Christian Socialism was, and is, very much a local phenomenon. As a result, even in other English-speaking countries, such as Canada or Australia, it has had only limited success. But in Britain too, its Christian ethical basis came to be rejected by many socialists whose philosophy was entirely secular or opportunistically materialist.

In the inter-war period, William Temple lent his prestige and public relations skills to fostering the cause by advocating the principles of freedom, fellowship, service and sacrifice. But these proved too fragile to withstand the international challenge of Nazism, Fascism or Communism, or, at home, to offset the class warfare experienced on the road to Wigan Pier.

While the sponsors of the post-1945 British Welfare state, such as William Beveridge, were influenced by these views, the actual practice of the 1950’s recovery was prompted by less exalted motives, being egged on by the pursuit of materialist consumerism.

The cause of Christian socialism was not helped by the activities of such mavericks as the ‘Red’ Dean of Canterbury, Hewlett Johnson, who for years lent a religious gloss to his praise for Stalin and the Soviet system, totally ignoring even in the late 1950s the totalitarian and oppressive character of that regime. Instead, as he naively claimed, Communism was putting the New Testament into practice in the twentieth century. Just as Jesus proclaimed universal brotherhood, so did Communism. But as Adrian Hastings justly remarked: “there is a certain inherent silliness in the preaching of political revolution by a gaitered cleric from the comfort of a cathedral close”.

Far more constructive has been the influence of such men as Kenneth Leech who has ministered all his life in London’s East End. He has for years sought to make the Catholic movement an effective counter-society with cells of holy discontent, so that it can witness to the age to come amidst the structures of this fallen world. His 1997 book, The Sky is Red reasserts the need for a prophetic rather than just a reformist role for Christian Socialism. So there is a place for utopian dreams after all, as a counterbalance to the deadening effects of bureaucratic do-goodism by the state.

In 1989, the collapse of the East European political systems forced all the left to rethink their ideas about the role of the state. Christian socialists now found their suspicion of the omnipotent and omniscient state reinforced. The emphasis should revert to the earlier insight of socialism >from below, by encouraging participation in democratic structures at the local level, backed by moral commitment from engaged volunteers. At the same time, in Britain, another factor for the revival of Christian socialism , as can be seen in the stance of the present Prime Minister Tony Blair, was the revulsion against the selfish and harsh individualism of the Thatcher years.

Ethical corporatism in the Tawney tradition is presently favoured by both bishops and politicians in pursuit of the common good. In 1996, for instance, Tony Blair claimed that the Labour Party was in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets and Wilberforce, presumably stressing their concern for social justice. “the good of all depends on the good of each, but also confirms duties and responsibilities”. Libertarian individualism when “you did your own thing” is an inadequate creed for a whole society. Instead partnership, co-operation and consensus are the prime virtues, even though severely tested in the circumstances of Northern Ireland. Yet, as Wilkinson believes, by acknowledging his debt to his Christian faith, Tony Blair can draw support from the tradition derived from F.D.Maurice a century and a half ago.

Wilkinson concludes this stimulating survey by asking pertinent questions about the future. How should Christians react to the often disintegrating force of technological globalization? How should churches, long the upholders of the traditional past, react to the rapidity of seemingly unstoppable change? And particularly but not only in Britain, how should Christians react to the evolving pluralist society in which they are no longer a majority and which is sooner or later likely to renounce its Christian heritage? And where shall we find an ethical framework for a plural society in a plural world? Wilkinson clearly hopes that the Christian Socialist tradition which he has so ably described will be able to contribute to this on-going task. We can certainly be grateful for his invigorating insights.

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b) ed. G.Kelly and C.J.Weborg, Reflections on Bonhoeffer. Essys in honor of F.Burton Nelson, Chicago: Covenant Publications 1999, 357 pp

This Festschrift is in honour of our well-beloved colleague, F.Burton Nelson, who has served for many years at North Park Seminary of the Evangelical Covenant Church in Chicago. It is entirely appropriate that these essays open with a well-deserved tribute to Burton, and follow with reflections on the impact of Bonhoeffer, since Burton has done so much to teach, preach and research about this German theologian and make his findings known to so many North American students.

This collection may be seen as the parallel publication to the Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, reviewed here last December. In fact, many of the same authors contribute to both books, though on different aspects of Bonhoeffer’s significance. Even though this field is extremely well tilled, there are still nuggets to be found, and those not yet familiar with Bonhoeffer will be assisted to see his importance in the whole range of theology.

The essay by Geffrey Kelly, one of the editors, on Bonhoeffer and the Jews advances the discussion of what has been a thorny issue: when and how did Bonhoefffer leave behind the typical anti-Judaism of his Lutheran Church? Were his protests of 1933 primarily on behalf of the converted or on behalf of all Jews? And was his priority the defence of the Church’s autonomy against political interference, or the championing of human rights per se? In Kelly’s view Bonhoeffer should be given the benefit of the doubt, but only to note how exceptional his attitude was, compared to that of his colleagues. He also makes clear how embarrassing it was for the Confessing Church to be provoked into taking a stand against the State on this very issue. Even Niemoller only came to recognize the significance of standing up for the Jews after he was incarcerated in Dachau. “When they came for the Jews. . etc. . .” But Bonhoeffer’s part in the rescue of fourteen Jews who escaped to Switzerland was an integral part of his resistance to Nazi tyranny, and the immediate cause for his arrest in 1943. For that reason, Kelly argues, he deserves to be recognized as a “Righteous Gentile”, an honour so far denied by Israel’s Yad Washem Centre. In any case he cannot be denied the credit of leading the way, followed by others after his death in 1945, calling for the abandonment of Christian triumphalism and for the recognition of the need for reconciliation with our elder brothers, the Jewish people.

The later contributions cover Bonhoeffer’s legacy in ecumenical and contemporary issues. I particularly liked Keith Clemens’ autobiographical account of how Bonhoeffer’s words helped him to come to terms with his family’s and the western church’s missionary imperialism in China. In conclusion Charles Sensel warns of the danger that Bonhoeffer’s creativity may be forgotten in the pragmatic mixture of psychology and religion in the reactionary 1990s experienced in the United States. But in fact, in Germany and elsewhere, Bonhoeffer remains an icon to be revered but also learnt from. Expounding his theological witness has been Burton Nelson’s life work.

These essays help to show why it was so important and rich a legacy.

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b) Laszlo G.Terray, He Could Not Do Otherwise. Bishop Lajos Ordass 1901-1978. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1997. 171 pp.

Bishop Lajos Ordass was one of the leaders of the Lutheran Church in Hungary during the troubled years immediately after the Second World War. This tribute, originally published in Norway some years ago, has now appeared in an attractive English translation. It gives a valuable appreciation of the church-political struggles which this community endured. Ordass was born in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, where several communities of Lutherans had migrated southwards over the centuries. But that Empire’s downfall in 1918 created new rival nationalisms, and Ordass found himself separated from his wider family for years as a result. Educated in Hungary, he was fortunate to spend a year in Sweden where he found a different form of Lutheranism, more ecumenical and pietistic, and less subservient to the German tradition. It was this which saved him from being seduced, after 1933, by the allurements of the “German Christians” who sought to rally all Lutherans to the Nazi cause. He was also influenced by these contacts to play a small role in assisting the Jews of Budapest in the darkest days of 1944.

Following the end of the war, new leadership was called for, and Ordass was elected bishop for western Hungary, including Budapest, The pastoral tasks involved in restoring church life were enormous, and were only made more difficult because Lutherans were frequently regarded as agents of the now hated Germans. But luckily with the aid of the World Council of Churches and the international Lutheran community, assistance was provided from Scandinavia, Switzerland and the United States. In 1947 Ordass was able to spend several months abroad to express his gratitude and to attend the constituent assembly for the newly-formed Lutheran World Federation.

In 1948, however, the Soviet-imposed Communist party tightened its grip. Its leaders made no secret of their hostility to the churches, especially those with connections to the West. Having watched closely the church struggles, especially in Norway, during the Nazi years, Ordass was resolved not to compromise the church’s integrity. Predictably the church schools were the regime’s first target. Ordass’ declared opposition to their being taken over led to the refusal of a passport to attend the 1st Assembly of the World Council of Churches, and subsequently to his arrest in September 1948. The following mock trial sentenced him to two years imprisonment and the loss of office. The similar arrest of the Catholic Primate, Cardinal Mindszenty, clearly showed the regime’s intentions. The surviving Lutheran authorities counseled submission, and when Ordass refused to resign, he had to be deposed. Even after his release from prison in 1950, he was not allowed to return to his ministry.

The revolution in October 1956, however, led to his rehabilitation and restoration to his episcopal office. For a brief period, the church seemed to enjoy more freedom of action, and Ordass threw himself into the pastoral tasks of rebuilding congregational life. In the following summer he was allowed to attend the Lutheran World Federation meeting in Minneapolis, a most welcome recompense after years of isolation.

But subsequently relations with the Communist Party again deteriorated, and in November 1958 Ordass was again deposed. For his remaining twenty years, he lived as a pensioner, but subject to constant reproach for not identifying himself or his church with the atheistic government. For his fellow Lutherans abroad, however, he symbolized, along with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Bishop Berggrav of Oslo, the unflinching steadfastness of Christian and Lutheran resistance to state tyranny, as is reflected in this biography. Not until 1995, and only then under pressure, was his own church in Hungary prepared to acknowledge the injustice done to this valiant upholder of Luther’s tradition.

As in the other Communist countries, the role of the church leadership in Hungary during these repressive years remains hotly disputed. The author of this memoir is highly critical of the compromises which other leaders made, seeking to conform their congregations to the prevailing political climate. His praise for Bishop Ordass serves to remind us of the high price paid for such staunch witness.

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c) A. Hamish Ion, The Cross in the Dark Valley: The Canadian Protestant Missionary Movement in the Japanese Empire, 1931-1945. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1999. xvi.428 pages (B & W photos).

The author, who teaches at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, has written three volumes (of which this is the third) on British and Canadian Protestant missions in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, beginning from their beginning in 1865 . In his first volume he explains his interest in missionaries, not primarily as evangelists but rather as agents of cultural interchange between Japan and the West. So when he writes in this volume, “This book studies the end of the missionary age in the history of Japan’s international relations with the West . . .” he is telling us that with the rise of militarism based on the worship of a god-emperor the missionaries had failed in the end to act as carriers of modern, western democratic values. That process must now be taken up by other groups.

In spite of Ion’s denial that he is concerned with the religious side of the missionary movement, he provides a good deal of interesting information about the final days of missionary activity. In twelve chapters he covers every possible aspect of Anglican, Presbyterian and United Church work in the prewar empire. Of particular interest is his comparison of evangelism and social service in Japan and the colonies (chapters 2 & 3, 6 & 7). In Japan, Christianity appealed mainly to members of the middle class, which tended to identify with the establishment, whereas in the colonies, workers, farmers and indigenous minorities responded. Thus in Japan, Christians – and their missionary friends – tended to affirm their country’s nationalist aspirations. In the colonies, on the other hand, the class consciousness of the underclass converts reinforced opposition to colonial dictates, a stand usually supported by their missionary mentors.

This contrast was most marked in the controversy over Christian attendance at State Shinto shrines (chapter 4). In Japan most Christians, eager to be counted patriotic citizens and members of a ‘mainline’ religion, accepted the government argument that shrine attendance was not an act of worship but an expression of “patriotism and loyalty” [87]. Missionaries like Howard Outerbridge of the United Church agreed with this arrangement and criticized the stance of colleagues in Korea who supported indigenous resistance to shrine attendance. Both sides, though, viewed the question as a “purely religious” one without being much concerned about its political aspect. This limited perspective meant that no missionary – only a diplomat like the Canadian ambassador, Herbert Marler – was equipped to deal holistically with the relations between the religious question and the rise of militarism. Hence the ‘failure’ of the missionary movement to influence events, whether in Japan or in Canada, which Ion notes in his introduction [1].

Ion’s treatment of the closing days of prewar missions (chapters 10-12) combines skillful use of archival material with sensitivity to the emotional elements involved in the missionaries’ leaving Japan. None of the missionaries wanted to leave, and their unwillingness was supported by the ambivalent attitude of the indigenous Christians. On the one hand, old friendships made them feel needed. On the other, the identification of church leaders with their country’s nationalistic goals meant that the Canadians (as ‘British’) represented a source of suspicion on the part of police and other government agents. This reviewer remembers his father’s anguish when his license to officiate as a priest was revoked by his Japanese bishop in 1942. His lifetime of work in Japan seemed to him to have been repudiated by the very people to whom he had dedicated his life.

There are a few flaws. The context of missionary withdrawal would have been enriched by more detailed reference to the changes in theological thinking about mission: by growing insight into the relations between missions and colonialism and the moves toward devolution (the handing over of leadership to indigenous Christians) that were being encouraged by the very nationalism described. The Jerusalem Conference of 1928 and the Layman ‘s Commission (briefly mentioned) are but two examples of what was going on in the understanding of the churches in the West. There are some curious stylistic infelicities that could have been altered by closer editorial supervision. But these are minor points in a work which breaks new ground, not only in our understanding of the earliest stage in Japanese-Canadian relations, but also in the detailed information about Canadian work that has hitherto been buried in British, Canadian, and Japanese archives.

Cyril Powles, Vancouver

Book notes:

a) “Dietrich Bonhoeffer” is the title of an essay by the well-known novelist Marilynne Robinson in a collection entitled The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (Thomas Allan $19.95). This is a sympathetic analysis drawing particular notice to the tension evidently occurring in Bonhoeffer’s career through the contrasts between his transcendental theology and his immanentist ethics, which was only made more acute by being played out in the struggle against Nazi tyranny The book also contains a fine appreciation of the career of Jean Calvin, as an example of a thinker now too often disregarded, but who still has many worthwhile things to say to us all.

b) Friedrich Thimme, Briefe. Schriften des Bundesarchiv 46, Boppard 1994 Friedrich Thimme, a distinguished political historian, and editor of Germany ‘s diplomatic documents, retired just as the Nazis came to power. For the next five years, until his death in a climbing accident in 1938, he was much involved with church affairs. As a staunchly orthodox and upright Lutheran, he was from the first deeply opposed to Nazism, with its cult of violence and its totalitarian ambitions. His letters from these years, edited by his daughter,who formerly taught at the University of Alberta, show his resolute attempts, as a layman, to mobilize his fellow churchmen to recognize the Nazi danger. One of his aims was to publish an authoritative book of essays by both Catholic and Protestant authors warning of the Nazis’ neo-paganism.

Although he gained the support of several prominent Catholics, his own community were luke-warm, and even the staunch members of the Confessing Church shied away from any collaboration with Catholics. Suspicions died hard, even when both were on the same side against Nazi presumptions. At the same time, Thimme sought to convince his own immediate circle, including two brothers who were clergymen, not to indulge in wishful thinking about Hitler or to suppose that the Nazi take-over of power was a historic moment of national renewal. But largely he met with opportunistic responses, even from the leaders of the Confessing Church. (Ah, frailty thy name is Marahrens!) As a first-hand source for the early Church Struggle, these letters shed light on lay attitudes, make clear the prevarications and clash of loyalties which affected so many who should have known better, and show why the Church’s resistance to Nazism was so limited in its scope and effectiveness.

The latest Mitteilungen (18) put out by the Evangelische Arbeitsgemeinschaft für kirchliche Zeitgeschichte (Munich) contains the text of a special lecture given by Prof. Martin Greschat, now retired from the University of Giessen, on “Continuity and Crises: German Protestantism in the 1960s”, as well as a description of the publications planned by the Committee for the History of the Protestant Churches in a divided Germany since 1945. The debates over whether such history has to be written in two separate parts, corresponding to the division of the country for forty years, or as one overarching national experience, are still continuing. There are also reports on the various conferences marking the tenth anniversary of the downfall of the unlamented G.D.R.

The recently published Festschrift for Prof Ringshausen (Luneburg) entitled: Widerstehen und Erziehen im christlichen Glauben, edited by Gerhard Besier and Gunter R.Schmidt, and published in Holzgerlingen by Haenssler, 1999, includes the following items of interest to church historians: Joerg Thierfelder: “Aber Hände weg von Bibel und Kirche”. Wahlverweigerer im evangelischen Wuerttemberg bei der Volksabstimmung vom 10. April 1938, Ruediger von Voss: Der 20. Juli 1944. Anmerkungen zum Verstaendnis deutscher Geschichte, Gerhard Besier: “Efforts to strengthen the German Church”. Der Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America und die Repraesentanten der deutschen evangelischen Kirche in der Nachkriegszeit (1945-1948), Peter Steinbach: Die Ludwigsburger Zentrale Stelle und die Zukunft deutscher Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung.

 

With every best wish to you all,

 

John S.Conway jconway@unixg.ubc.ca ity, and a deep strain of anti-utopianism.

Andrii Krawchuk, Christian Social Ethics in Ukraine. The legacy of Andrei

Sheptytsky.

Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press 1997 404 pp.

Krawchuk’s doctoral thesis is a solid piece of historical scholarship

dealing with the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the first half of this

century, when the leading figure was its long-serving Metropolitan

Sheptytsky. The author’s coverage is both political and social, and

describes the attempts of the Metropolitan, up to his death in 1944, to keep

his church afloat in the midst of terrifying political persecution and

oppression. This work complements the 1996 study by B.R.Bociurkiw, The

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State, 1939-1950.

For Germans, but not only for them, the forthcoming November 9th is a date

of particular importance. I would be interested to hear from any of you how

in fact you have commemorated the events which took place in this century,

either on or around that date itself, especially if you made any specific

reference to a possible Christian interpretation of its significance. Of

even wider significance are the commemorations of November 11th.

Now that we have abandoned the kind of religiously-flavoured national

patriotic demonstrations, what kind of ceremonies can be said to be fitting,

other than a purely secular wreath-laying. Do let me know what happens in

your area.

With best wishes,

John Conway

jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

 

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- February 2000- Vol.VI, no. 2

Dear Friends,

 

Contents:

1) Obituary: Dr L.Siegele-Wenschkewitz

2) Forthcoming Conference: 30th Annual Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, March 4th – 7th

3) Book reviews:

a) S.Selinger, C.v.Kirschbaum and K.Barth

b) E.Voegelin, Hitler and the Germans

c) N.Railton, German Evangelicals and Third Reich

4)Book notes:

a) A.Lindemann, Esau’s Tears
b) B.Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front
c) ed.P.Smith, After the Wall
d) Kretschmar, Das bischoefliche Amt
e) Mensing, Pfarrer und Nationalsozialismus

5)Journal articles:

a) R.Shaffer, Japanese Internees
b) G.Besier, East German Churches
c) B.Schafer, East German Catholics
6) Correction: H.Kreutzer, Reich Church Ministry

7) Technical Note

 

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1) It is with great regret that we learn of the recent death of Frau Dr. Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz (1944-1999) in Frankfurt, Germany. As a former associate of the late Professor Klaus Scholder in Tubingen, she developed a keen interest in the history of the Church Struggle, and published her researches on this topic. most notably in her valuable study Theologische Fakultaeten im Nationalsozialismus, Goettingen 1993. From 1983 she worked as Moderator of Studies at the Evangelical Academy in Arnoldshain, near Frankfurt, of which she became the Director in 1996. The numerous conferences and seminars she helped to organize there played a significant role in the life of the church in western Germany. At the same time she was an adjunct professor at Frankfurt University, when she had an opportunity to express her interest in the role of women in the church She served for many years as a member of the Evangelical Church’s Board for Contemporary History, and since 1988 was its vice-chairman. In view of the sad illness of the chairman, she was called on to take a very active role in the Board’s affairs in the last year of her life. In 1999 she was awarded the Edith Stein Prize, and was fortunately able to go to Gottingen to receive this honour and to deliver an appropriate speech in recognition of Edith Stein on this occasion.

2) The 30th Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches will be held at St. Joseph’s University and the Adams Mark Hotel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from Saturday, March 4th to Tuesday, March 7th. The key note address on Sunday, March 5th will be delivered by Elie Wiesel. Registration and information can be obtained from the Annual Scholars’ Conference, P.O.Box 10, Merion Station, Pa 19066, FAX 610-667-0265.

3a) Suzanne Selinger, Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth. A Study in Biography and the History of Theology. University Park, Penn: Penn.State U.P. 1998. 206pp

Female theologians are still a rarity: how much more so seventy years ago! The career of Charlotte von Kirschbaum, secretary and theological assistant to Karl Barth for over thirty years, has long intrigued, and sometimes scandalized, admirers of the most prominent Protestant theologian of the 20th century. Feminists have long accused Barth of exploiting “Lollo”, as she was always known, and Suzanne Selinger, herself an accomplished theological writer, shares a lot of the anger at what she sees as Barth’s
selfishness in not promoting von Kirschbaum’s own career. On the other hand, Lollo herself was an intelligent, devoted and faithful interpreter of Barth’ s often complex theology and accepted, apparently willingly, her indispensable role as part of his household.
Suzanne Selinger recognizes that the secrets of their personal relationship are hardly recoverable and instead seeks to elucidate more about their professional links. She regrets that Lollo only published a small amount on her own account, but senses in this accomplishment signs of the kind of influence she may have had in her daily discussions with Barth. Selinger rightly sees that, in order to achieve the kind of theological writing in which he excelled, and especially in his great work Church Dogmatics,
Barth needed a dialogical partner – someone to function as sounding board and, most characteristically, someone with whom to think things through. In his earlier career, Eduard Thurneysen had played this role. But after Barth moved to Germany, and needed more direct assistance in his academic affairs, it was only natural that he should seek out someone whose sympathy for his ideas and understanding of his mental processes and doctrinal positions, was matched by an incredible capacity for more humdrum tasks. Not only did Lollo type out Barth’s drafts, answer his letters, “manage” his students, organize his timetable of meetings, lectures and speaking engagements, but even found time to compile a vast collection of useful excerpts from a huge variety of Christian writers, which could then be turned to at will.

Selinger is particularly good at tracing Lollo’s nuanced view of gender issues, in the light of the christologically-based anthropology she shared with, or adopted from, Barth. She certainly rejected the patriarchal view of much of her German tradition-bound society, as also the romanticized view of women as inherently dependent on men, or alternatively more religious than man. Such stereotyping had to be rejected in favour of the kind of relational existence of both men and women in response to God’s command. In the later chapters, Selinger examines closely Barth’s doctrines of the image of God, the gender question and his innovative theories of dialogical personalism. Lollo’s contribution to such ideas is impossible to unravel, but Selinger clearly believes she played a significant role in their eventual formulation, especially in stressing the creativity of women, including a mutual fellowship in the constructive building of community. To understand all this, a close acquaintance with Church Dogmatics is recommended.

Charlotte von Kirschbaum was criticized, both in her time and since, by feminists unable to comprehend her spiritual approach, who saw only exploitation of her undoubted gifts by the dominant male. Yet she chose to be freely herself for Barth – a perfect realisation of I – Thou relationship. It was a one-sided partnership, yet clearly rewarding for both. Perhaps, as Selinger suggets, Barth’s need to have Lollo’s constant presence was the result of a weakness, a loneliness, which demanded the company of the other. Her legacy is to be found buried in his comprehensive theological work. It is not therefore to be disparaged.

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3b) Eric Voegelin. Hitler and the Germans. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999.

This book is based on lectures Eric Voegelin gave at the University of Munich in 1964, that are being published now for the first time. The lectures were given in German, and they have been ably edited and translated into English by Detlev Clemens and Brendan Purcell. In this work, Voegelin seeks to address questions such as these: What were the spiritual conditions in Germany which allowed Hitler to rise to power and gain the support of so many average people?, Why did the Christian churches respond to Nazism so weakly?, How did a regime rooted in illegality and murder take over the legal system in Germany?, Why do intellectuals and academics in Germany after the war have such a poor understanding of Nazism as a spiritual phenomenon?, Why are many former Nazis who are war criminals living openly and prospering in Germany after the war?

Those who are already familiar with Voegelin’s philosophy will find here the basic concepts which he has developed elsewhere: human existence occurs “in between” materiality and the transcendent realm of God; human beings have a marked tendency to avoid living honestly with this reality of the “between”; this leads them to create false “second realities” in which they attempt to exist autonomously, apart from God; the flight from reality has led to the modern neo-gnostic regimes of mass murder such as Stalinism and Nazism. In these lectures, Voegelin focuses on the historical circumstances of Nazism, making this volume more concrete and accessible than his other more abstract and philosophical writings, which have a tendency toward dense argument and complex terminology. This volume would serve very well as an introduction to Voegelin for someone who has not read him.

There is a clear undercurrent of anger animating this text, which is understandable given Voegelin’s personal history of persecution at the hands of the Nazis. Voegelin doesn’t allow his anger to derail his central purpose, however, which is to analyze the various dimensions of the “abyss” into which Germany descended: the academic abyss, the ecclesiastical abyss, and the legal abyss. In the academic realm, Voegelin’s principal target of attack is P. E. Schramm, the historian who edited Hitler’s Table Talk. Voegelin pillories Schramm for producing an “anatomy” of the dictator which reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of the subject. This lack of understanding is reprehensible in Voegelin’s eyes because the intellectual tools needed for correct understanding were available to Schramm–in classical philosophy, biblical theology, and the writings of contemporaries such as Karl Kraus, Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, and Heimito von Doderer.

Voegelin comments on the ecclesiastical situation in two substantial chapters which are devoted to the Catholic and Protestant spheres. In each case his critique is very harsh, emphasizing the idea that most Christians knew of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis and either applauded it or did not care about it as long as they themselves were not being persecuted. When the reach of the Nazis’ power did begin to negatively impact the churches, then Christians all of sudden began to realize that they should be concerned about their fellow human beings who are being murdered. Voegelin reveals the narcissism at the root of this morale debacle as a massive failure of the Christian church to hold fast to the central biblical teaching regarding the creation of all people in the image of God. On pages
199-201, Voegelin puts forward a list of ten biblical and philosophical points which are necessary to teach German clerics and theologians “the elements of Christianity.” His wish for the use of this list: “Lower clergy, copy it out daily ten times; bishops and theologians, daily a hundred times; theologians who have received a Cross of Merit from the Federal Republic, daily two hundred times until they have got it.” Voegelin’s anger and sarcasm make the book lively, but they don’t set the stage for a balanced and comprehensive historical account. He pays very little attention to the Confessing Church, for example, mentioning Bonhoeffer only in passing and Karl Barth not even once. His judgment that there was “no good theology” being produced in Germany at the time seems very odd in light of Barth’s works (162). But in hindsight, the impact of the Confessing Church was minimal in stemming the tide of Nazism, and Voegelin’s portrait of the situation is generally accurate. I make this comment without being a historian of that period myself. I would be very interested to read a review of this work written by such a person. It may be that members of the historical guild will not be as favorable in their attitude toward this work as I am, representing the guild of theological ethics.

Charles Bellinger, Regent College, Vancouver

3c) Nicholas Railton, The German Evangelical Alliance and the Third Reich. An analysis of the ‘Evangelisches Allianzblatt’, Bern: Peter Lang 1998, pp. 265 £27

Railton, who has already written an assessment of the German Free Churches and the Third Reich, has now produced this revealing study of the German Bible belt. Consisting of about one million adherents in the 1930s, and stretching from the Saxon Erzgebirge through Thuringia and Hessen to Baden and Wuerttemberg, it gave a depressingly rosy response to Hitlerism as a force standing for ‘positive Christianity’. Railton shows us quite clearly how much German evangelicalism (‘evangelikal’ used in its Anglo-American sense can be dated only as far back as 1965) in its modern phase, beginning with the loose inter-denominational Gnadau Association (1897) of Lutheran, Reformed and United Church evangelicals and their new missionary press (1890: c. 5,000), owed to the early modern and habitual German home-town environment and mentality of Pietism, Moravianism and early nineteenth-century Revivalism. Wilhelmine and Weimar successors, simply put, could not adapt either spiritually or morally to the challenges posed by our modern industrial age. It appears also that authoritarian political values investing the ‘state’ and those who ran it with an almost divine aura over-rode a religious ethos associated with being ‘born again’. The ideals of 1789, western Liberalism, Marxism, Bolshevism, post-1918 democratic republicanism and an alleged Jewish ‘materialism’ were lumped together, with not so much as the odd tweak of conscience, as poisons. These supposedly contaminated a German muscular evangelical post-1918 culture which drew its main inspiration from the recent hurrah patriotism of Bismarck’s Second Reich, and the ‘ we-are-so-hard-done-by’ interwar German Nationalist Party.

It does seem extremely odd today, that the two years 1933 and 1934, marking Nazi ‘co-ordination’, should be seen by the German Free Churches and evangelicals as giving far greater freedoms and opportunities than the years of the Weimar Republic, which had awarded the Christian Churches and other religions freedoms and financial support on a scale unheard of in Germany before 1918. It repays to read again and again, however bleak one’s frame of mind, this German ‘evangelical’ way of thinking and speaking during 1930-3. Railton summarizes it in the following way: ‘Hitler talked of “God”, ” the Lord” and “Providence”, so now they began to talk of the “Zeitenwende”, the “nationaler Aufbruch” and “Vorsehung”. The language of the Third Reich was already becoming the language of German evangelicalism’ (p.27) Chapter vi, ‘Evangelical social concerns’, and chapter vii, ‘The Jewish question’, recording adulation for Hitler as Mr Clean, and overt evangelical support for Nazi public moral hygiene, meaning clearing the streets of pimps,
prostitutes, homosexuals, Jews and assorted riff-raff, and approval of Nazi anti-abortion policy, pile a murky Pelion upon Ossa. The teaching of the Bible, purged, one might add, of the Old Testament, seems to have been completely dispensed with.

Nicholas Hope. (This review appeared first in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, July 1999, p. 612-3)

Book notes:

4a) A.S.Lindemann, Esau’s Tears: Modern anti-semitism and the rise of the Jews, Cambridge University Press 1997. 568pp

The object of this large-scale history of anti-semitism is basically to take issue with the prevailing view found in simplistic surveys such as those by D.Goldhagen or Lucy Dawidowicz, which have blamed outside forces, including the Christian church, for this henomenon. Lindemann instead seeks to advance the polemical and provocative view that some aspects at least of this intolerance were due to the Jews’ own behaviour and their “rise”. On the historical role of the Church, Lindemann makes the following statement:

“One can unquestionably pinpoint Christian tendencies towards demonizing Jews, but such tendencies are balanced by others. The evidence is hardly persuasive that within Christian belief is contained a strongly determined predisposition, drawing in all Christians, to violent hatred of Jews. In modern times Christian peoples have differed enormously in their reactions to Jews, from mild philo-Semitism to murderous loathing. This range of sentiment cannot be convincingly connected to various traits within varieties of Christianity, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Greek Orthodox, sincere or lax, popular or elite.. . . Religion, though often seen as the ultimate or fundamental source of anti-Semitism, is too elastic and ambiguous a category to offer much more than conjectural, ahistorical and woolly explanations, in which the preconceptions and emotional agendas of the authors play a decisive role.” (p.xvi)

b) B.Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front. Besatzung, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Weissrussland 1941-1944 Dusseldorf, Droste Verlag 1998

This belated study of the German occupation of White Russia (Byelorussia) has a few pages dealing with the role of the church under Nazi rule (pp103ff). As in the Ukraine, the initial hopes for deliverance from the Communists led to exaggerated expectations amongst the upper Orthodox clergy which were soon enough disillusioned. As for the Catholics, who constituted some 20%, they were always regarded as hostile, and were treated accordingly. This is another mosaic in the wider picture of the fate of the Soviet churches which still remains to be written up. But B.Chiari has researched the Russian sources thoroughly as far as this aspect of his topic goes.

c) ed. Patricia Smith, After the Wall. Eastern Germany since 1989, Boulder, Colo. Westview Press, 1998

Detlef Pollack, a sociologist who teaches at Frankfurt an der Oder, contributes a chapter on the situation of religion since 1989, which draws on various interviews and samples to show that in fact the differences between religious practices and beliefs in east and west Germany are not all that great. Despite 40 years of deliberate secularization, the churches survive, though noticeably weaker in eastern Germany. On the other hand the anticipated loss to other faiths or cults has not happened. The expectations of what the churches should be like are similar, and the level of commitment, as for example to be seen in baptism or confirmation, are remarkably constant, but can not lend comfort to those who had hoped that the end of Communism would see a re-christianisation of the east German
society.

d) Georg Kretschmar, Das bischoefliche Amt. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1999 355pp

The former Professor of Church History in Hamburg and Munich, and subsequently the bishop of the revived Lutheran Church in the Baltic States, has contributed these studies in the episcopal office which cover the office of the bishop in the Early Church, its rediscovery and renewal of the ministry during the Reformation era, and its ecumenical relevance. e) The study by Bjorn Mensing, Pfarrer und Nationalsozialismus, which was reviewed here by Prof.Gerhard Besier in November 1998, has now achieved a
second edition with a new publisher, Verlag C. u. C. Rabenstein, Bayreuth. The author has taken the opportunity to make suitable corrections in the light of a vigorous response, extending from helpful additions by surviving eye-witnesses to personal attacks and threats of legal action, even anonymous denunciations.

5) Journal articles:

Jacques Kornberg, Ignaz von Dollinger’s Die Juden in Europa: A Catholic Polemic against Antisemitism, in Journal for the History of Modern Theology/Zeitschrift fur neuere Theologiegeschichte, Vol. 6 no 2, 1999, pp. 223-245

Kornberg, a professor at Toronto, brings to light a long forgotten lecture given in 1881 by this most distinguished Bavarian academic, who unfortunately had been excommunicated by the Vatican for his opposition to the policies of Pope Pius IX. Kornberg sees this attack on the kind of vulgar anti-Judaism in one persistent strain of Catholic thought as part of Dollinger’s overall campaign against the ultramontane authoritarianism being imposed by Rome. On the other hand, Dollinger still adhered to the kind of triumphalism which looked forward to the eventual voluntary conversion of Jews to (liberal) Christianity. The sentiments expressed are very reminiscent of those adopted 8o years later at the 2nd Vatican Council, and contributed to Dollinger’s recent rehabilitation.

Robert Shaffer, Opposition to Internment. Defending Japanese American rights during World War II, in The Historian, Vol 61, no. 3, Spring 1999, 597ff

This article describes the small number of sympathizers with the Japanese Americans interned in 1942, often pastors and missionaries, who had some contact with these congregations on the American West Coast, and sought to alleviate their plight.

Gerhard Besier, The German Democratic Republic and the State Churches, 1958-1989, in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol 50, no 3, July 1999, p. 523ff

Designed to bring to an English audience the results of Prof.Besier’s enormous volume of research into the fate of the East German churches under Communist rule, this article is a valuable if much abbreviated summary. For those who want to explore further, the footnotes give useful help.

Bernd Schaefer, State and Catholic Church in Eastern Germany, 1945-1989, in German Studies Review, Vol. XXII, no 3, October 1999, p. 447ff

A useful summary of the Catholic Church’s position, on similar lines to the previous item.

6) Correction: Following our notice in last November’s Newsletter of Heike Kreutzer’s 1993 MA thesis on the establishment of the Reich Church Ministry in 1935, the author has now kindly sent us her more recently completed PhD thesis from Tuebingen University on the same topic, which is to be published later this year. She has expanded her earlier work with a full analysis of the documentation relating to the Church Ministry, which was for so long unavailable in East German archives. Although her treatment essentially stops in 1938, she again emphasizes her view that the Ministry’s failure and its fate was already decided by that date. Her researches confirm in detail what was already known – that the Minister, Hanns Kerrl, was an impulsive, semi-educated, naive and bungling politician. Moreover, he was incessantly caught in the cross-fire between the rival church camps, especially in the Evangelical Churches, on the one side, and at the same time, sabotaged by his supposed colleagues in the Nazi Party, who were much more skillful than he at interpreting Hitler’s often contradictory tactics towards the churches.

Kerrl started from the “idealist” position that the Churches and the Nazi Party should be integrated more closely together. “True Christianity and true National Socialism are identical” was typical of his approach, which was found to be absurd not only by orthodox churchmen, but also by the Party radicals. While Kerrl sought to bring the churches under state control, the Party radicals sought to diminish or even to abolish them. Kerrl found his only support in a handful of “German Christians”, but already by 1937, he had been effectively outmanouevred and his grandiose plans aborted. Heike Kreutzer’s contribution is to document the lamentable career of this
hapless Nazi minister in a manner which will not need to be done again. Her viewpoint is not new, and suffers from a considerable amount of repetition. Especially revealing is her account of the extent to which Kerrl was unable to gain the loyalty of his own staff, which included at least three clergymen regularly reporting on his actvities to the Gestapo. The official in charge of Catholic affairs, a renegade priest, was a determined opponent of the Concordat, and organized an extensive campaign to weaken the Catholic Church’s institutional life, thus playing into the hands of the Nazi extremists. On the Protestant side, the ministry’s officials did seem to have more sympathy for their “clients’, but again proved ineffective against the increasingly anti-church and anti-clerical camp led by Bormann, Goebbels and Rosenberg.

Ms Kreutzer clearly shows how this Ministry and its officials were part of the internecine rivalries within the Nazi power structures, which in the end led to its complete subordination and failure. It would be nice to think that this misbegotten attempt to use state power to manipulate and coerce the churches had been defeated by the churches’ united resistance against such unwanted provocation. But the evidence shows that this was not the case. Not only did the Catholic Church, for example, welcome the close association with the state by signing the Concordat with Hitler in 1933, but successfully campaigned to have it upheld again in West Germany in the 1950s. And the experience in East Germany, where the Ministry for Church Affairs, reappeared in a communist guise, was to prove equally lamentable on both the state’s and the churches’part. It was not a chapter of church history to be proud of.

7) Technical Note:

This Newsletter comes to you free, gratis and without cost. Anyone who is genuinely interested in contemporary church history is welcome to subscribe, whether or not they have teaching responsibilities in this area. As of January 2000, we have 275 subscribers, whose geographical location is as follows:

USA 103, Canada 61, Germany 44, U.K. 22, Australia 10, Sweden 4, Norway 3, France 3, Denmark 3, Switzerland 2, Belgium, Netherlands, South Africa, Poland, Austria, Ireland, Hungary, Finland 1 each, and a few in cyberspace. The subscribers’ list is NOT made available to any other agency or organization.

The contents of the Newsletter may be freely distributed, provided that appropriate acknowledgment of the source is made.
Written contributions or comments are most welcome and can be forwarded to me at the address below.

Anyone desiring to unsubscribe should also so indicate to me, and not to the list in general.
With best wishes

John S.Conway jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- January 2000- Vol.VI, no. 1

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the New Year!

Contents:

1) Book reviews,

a) ed. G.Baum, The twentieth Century

b) J.Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope

2) G.Baum, Catholics in the Weimar Republic

3) Journal articles: O.Heilbronner, Catholic Resistance

B.Stambolis, German Catholics
M. Greschat, Churches in the GDR
M.Elliott/S.Corrado, Religion in Russia

4) Website: Karl Barth archive

 

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1) Book reviews:

 

a) ed. Gregory Baum, The Twentieth Century. A Theological Overview, Orbis Books Maryknoll, New York – G.Chapman, London 1999. 263pp

What better way to start a new century off in this Newsletter than by reviewing a stimulating book of essays, edited by one of our list-members, about the theologians’ responses to the principal political and social trends of the last hundred years? It was a splendid idea for Gregory Baum to invite some of his ecumenical colleagues to contribute to this valuable and sometimes provocative survey, which seeks to show that the story of twentieth century theology has been one of both fidelity and anguish – fidelity to God’s revealed word under changing historical conditions, and anguish over the unanswered questions and the powerlessness of truth in a sinful world.

His team comprises both Protestants and Catholics from leading North American universities, as well as some distinguished European scholars. Predictably they cover such major topics as the two World Wars, the Great Depression, the rise of Fascism, the Holocaust, as well as more far-reaching developments as the impact of the women’s movement or the ecological crisis in today’s world.

Douglas J.Hall leads off by pointing out that the catastrophes of the First World War were made more acute because the dominant liberal Christian theology of the day had so completely fostered the optimistic climate of “the religion of progress”, and had largely abandoned the vocabulary of earlier Christian (and Jewish) attempts to come to terms with disaster. It was no less fateful that the more conservative theologians so readily endorsed their nation’s war-time cause, and claimed divine approval for their side. The spectacle of such mutually exclusive pronouncements, and the incompatibility of the war’s conduct with Christian doctrines of love and peace. destroyed Christianity’s credibility for many of the survivors, and discredited much of theology as hypocrisy.

The post-1918 theological scene was marked by extreme confusion and uncertainty. Striking political events, such as the Communist Revolution in Russia or the rise of National Socialism in Germany, took their toll. Bernard Dupuis describes sympathetically the response of the Russian exiles seeking to defend Orthodoxy, while James Reimer outlines the scandalous divisions amongst the German theologians of the 1930s, when neither Paul Tillich’s religious socialism, nor Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s defence of confessing church neo-orthodoxy prevented the widespread support of Nazism by the theologians of the so-called “German Christian” movement, who indeed betrayed their craft. More notable was the renaissance of Catholic intellectual life in France where Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, Henri de Lubac and others in conjunction with literary and philosophical scholars represented what Joseph Komonchuck calls a return from exile after the bleak crisis over “modernism”. Both he and Victor Consemius see these men’s ideas as formative in the restoration of a publicly significant Catholic theology which not only held the church together during the Second World War, but provided the seed-bed for the Second Vatican Council.

Not surprisingly the recurrent crises of the capitalist order prompted North American theologians in particular to formulate their protest against the resulting injustices. Donald Schweitzer gives a splendidly succinct description of Reinhold Niebuhr’s trenchant and influential critique of the existing political circumstances, and also of the parallel movement in Canada, the Fellowship for a Christian Order. In fact, the latter, though largely unknown today, was seminal in setting the moral agenda for much of Canadian politics, both at home and abroad, and can be said to be still having an impact decades later. Certainly the Canadian political scene allowed these advocates more direct influence than was possible in the United States. The Fellowship’s champions were, and often still are, possibly too eager to see God’s Kingdom in terms of an achievable political utopia. But their debate with Niebuhr was valuable in delineating what can be hoped for in history.

In the 1950s Protestant theology lived off the massive achievements of Niebuhr and Karl Barth. But in the following decades, as described by Gary Dorrien, the challenge to all authority, and especially to Christian authority, spawned a host of liberationist, feminist and other politically radical movements which repudiated the past.

For Catholics, the sense of renewal launched by the Second Vatican Council did something to preempt many of these feelings. The Council, and equally the 1968 Medellin Conference, as analyzed by the Mexican scholar Virgilio Elizondo, expanded horizons, challenged the Roman Catholic Church’s European predominance and established the preferential option for the poor, especially of the third world. The pastoral and theological significance of these developments are still being worked out. But the impact is undeniable. For the future, claims Lee Cormie, the great themes at the heart of Jewish and Christian theologies – creation, fall, liberation/redemption, salvation – will have renewed relevance in meeting the challenges of social, political and technological globalization. The sceptic must however ask whether this is not just wishful thinking at a time when faith and ethics are so often treated as irrelevant, or reduced to the private sphere. However, Harvey Cox, in his essay, joins others in disputing the view that growing secularization would and will lead to the disappearance of religion. The evidence is just not there. Rather, even where institutional and intellectual Christianity of a traditional type has been weakened, there are many other plural forms of religion which seek a re-ordering of worldviews, with or without the Enlightenment’s blessing. This transformation allows Cox to see a continuity with his earlier book of thirty years ago.

Gregory Baum, in his own chapter, examines the impact of Marxist ideas on Christian theology, suggesting that these have strengthened the sense of outrage against structural injustices and lent impetus to the theological praxis supporting the healing and redemption of the world. In a world now dominated by neo-liberal ideologies, such ideas are still necessary. At the same time, in his concluding remarks, Baum suggests that one of the most significant shifts in the last forty years has been that “the emancipatory dimension of divine redemption has assumed, for the first time, a central place in the construction of Christian theology”.

These essays portray the intellectual creativity, the rich imagination and the passion displayed by theologians in recent decades. Baum is confident that future theologians will demonstrate similar qualities. If they do, then indeed “the Spirit will continue to speak to the churches in the coming century”

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b) John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope. The Secret Story of Pius XII, New York: Viking Press, 1999

In 1963 Rolf Hochhuth’s play Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy) led to a bitter controversy over the stand of the Pope and the Catholic Church under the Nazi regime. Debates over the role of Eugenio Pacelli (1876-1958), who was the papal nuncio in Germany between 1917 and 1929, have never been resolved. As Cardinal Secretary of State, in other words as ‘Foreign Secretary’ of the Vatican (1930-1939), and then in his role as Pope (1939-1958), Pacelli is basically accused of not having gone far enough to prevent the persecution and genocide of the European Jews. John Cornwell, a Catholic and Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, now presents this volume to support the above accusation. Cornwell is not unknown to the Vatican. In 1991, he wrote a book ‘As a thief in the night’ which showed there was no proof that Pope John Paul I, who had always suffered from poor health, experienced an unnatural death on September 28, 1978, after only 33 days in office. Even at the start of his research on Pius XII, Cornwell affirmed that he was ‘convinced’ that the latter’s pontificate and the Catholic Church would “finally be vindicated above all reproach”.

The expectations aired in Rome, and the research on John Paul I gave Cornwell access to secret material that had accumulated in connection with Pacelli’s’ beatification. The only striking revelation of this book is that he was allowed access to these documents. And yet, his findings were disappointing for both sides. The author admits that at the end of his research he found himself ‘morally shocked’. Not only Pius XII but also ‘recent papal history’ is generally accused of greed for power and of ‘dislike of Jews’.

It was mainly the latter reproach which electrified the offspring of victims and offenders alike. Pro-Vatican historians called Cornwell’s book a pejorative pamphlet and undertook refutations. Cornwell sought to defend his position by claiming that other researchers had concentrated mainly on the period of the Second World War, and/or that the documents already published are only a limited sample. (See ‘Die Welt’, November 2nd). He is here referring to the twelve volume edition, ‘Actes et documents du Saint Siege, pendant la seconde guerre mondiale’, edited by four Jesuits, Pierre Blet, Angelo Martini, Robert A.Graham and Burkhart Schneider, and published in Vatican City from 1965 to 1981. Two years ago, in 1997, the last surviving editor, Pierre Blet, wrote his own history of Pius XII during the second world war, based on the introductions to these twelve volumes as well as other documents. He repeated the claim that no significant amount of material had been omitted, although he admitted that some few of the unpublished documents would have been worth including, even though they had been mentioned and their contents summarized..

Cornwell bases his case more on the earlier period of 1933 when he suggests that Pacelli entered into fateful negotiations with Hitler in pursuit of a Reich Concordat, which seriously compromised his attitude thereafter. This aspect he believes has not been treated thoroughly enough by other historians.

Fr Peter Gumpel, SJ, has also been working on the Pacelli files since 1965, in connection with the possible beatification. But on the basis of his heated attacks on Pius’ critics, Cornwell excludes him from the circle of “historians who can be taken seriously” and puts him among “mere apologists”. So too, Cornwell takes issue with the Israeli author, Pinchas Lapide, who judged Pius XII positively in his book ‘The last three Popes and the Jews’,(1967) because, according to his findings, Pius XII had saved the lives of some 800,000 Jews. Cornwell accuses him of not having acknowledged Carlo Falconi’s workThe Silence of the Pope: a documentary report. (1970). But such a criticism reflects badly on Cornwell himself, since he is also guilty of omitting consideration of numerous German works relevant to the subject, such as the readily available biography by K-A Recker Bischof Berning im Dritten Reich (1998), even though Berning collaborated closely with Pacelli in 1933. So too Hansjakob Stehle’s valuable study The Eastern Policies of the Vatican (1981) remained unused

There are of course some prominent historians who support Cornwell’s views, for example the distinguished German Protestant church historian, Klaus Scholder, who died in 1985. It is to his “masterful scholarship” that Cornwell shows a “deep reverence”. In fact, almost all that Cornwell reports about Pacelli’s policies from 1930 to 1934 is derived from Scholder’s two volumes, The Churches and the Third Reich (Eng.trans. 1987). Cornwell’s evaluation of this period revolves around the thesis, first advanced by Scholder, that Pacelli and the loyal leader of the German Centre Party, Ludwig Kaas, had sacrificed this party and its future existence for the sake of obtaining a long-desired Concordat. Such a debate is not new, since Scholder’s advocacy of this opinion had already aroused much controversy during his life-time in the late 1970s, and was again reviewed by Scholder’s friend, Professor Karl Otmar von Aretin, in a commentary in 1988. Even though this text was translated into English a year later, Cornwell left Aretin’s opposing arguments nmentioned.

This is not the only place where Cornwell dismisses objections and contrary views to his own, and in effect suggests there can be no alternative interpretations. Even though the book is marvelously well written, this drawing of dogmatically firm conclusions, and the exclusion of all ambiguities, is certain to lead to continuing disputes. Apart from this there is not much that is really new.

The second-to-last chapter reveals that Cornwell is concerned not only about an appropriate assessment of Pius XII but also about ‘recent papal history’ in general. The chapter is entitled ‘Pius XII Redivivus’ and takes issue with the present Pope John Paul II. Cornwell does not accuse the Pole Karol Wojtyla of antisemitism but rather of seeking to restore an authoritarian, power-minded and centralist papacy. By establishing a direct continuity between Pius XII and John Paul II and their alleged propagation of these trends, Cornwell assesses current church policy matters. And in subjecting such features to striking criticism, he wants history to give a boost to the reformers in the Catholic Church.

In his opinion, “The beatification of Pius XII would be a major victory for the traditionalists over the progressives with regard to the interpretation of Vatican II. If the Papacy becomes too strong to the detriment of the people of God, the Catholic Church will suffer a loss of moral and spiritual influence to the detriment of us all”.

Gerhard Besier, Heidelberg University- first published in Die Welt, November 2,1999, and subsequently translated by the author for this Newsletter.

2) Catholics in the Weimar Republic and Walter Dirks The Weimar Republic was neither anticipated nor wanted. German Catholics, as a whole, remained attached to the monarchical principle and found it difficult to adjust to the new democratic regime. Conservative Catholic thought, in reaction to 19th century liberalism, repudiated the idea of popular sovereignty and defended monarchical authority, held to be ultimately derived from God. Even the Catholic Party, the Zentrum, strongly represented in the German parliament, was internally divided. On the other hand, German Catholics profited from the collapse of the Protestant Monarchy, in which they had been treated as second-class citizens. The door was now open for their full participation in the cultural and political life of the nation.

One of those who sought to do so was the young Walter Dirks, whose Catholic spirituality of faith and political responsibility had been fashioned by membership in a lively youth group, Quickborn. From 1922 on, he worked at the Rhein-Mainische Volkszeitung, published in Frankfurt, a progressive Catholic daily that offered strong support for the new republic and defended social democratic values. With his colleagues on this newspaper, he became the great defender of democracy with much hope for the future of Germany. (His articles and editorials from this time were published in his Gesammelte Schriften, Zurich: Ammann Verlag 1989-90). Only after the September election of 1930, when National Socialism made a sudden leap forward, did Dirks and his friends become more pessimistic.

Dirks’ writings then turned to an analysis of German fascism and, in particular, ‘the German fascist coalition’, by which he meant the classes, groups and communities that were likely to be attracted by Hitler’s National Socialism. He passionately advocated the creation of an anti-fascist coalition, the sustaining core of which was to be collaboration between Catholics and the working class. His efforts failed. After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, the Rhein-Mainische Volkszeitung was closed down. Dirks’ writings for this newspaper and several other publications in the twenties and early thirties offered detailed analyses of current events which allowed him to make predictions about the likelihood of certain developments. In the twenties he observed the growing integration of Germany into European society, Germany’s gradual economic recovery, its outstanding cultural creativity, and the spread of critical socialist ideas among many thoughtful people. But after the 1930 elections, his tone became less optimistic. He was shrewd enough to realize that Hitler’s decision to seek dictatorial powers in Germany by legal means, rather than by revolution, meant that the Nazi Party had to appeal to wider sections of the population. Hence his appeal to unsuspecting Catholics. The only way to stop the Nazis, Dirks argued, was to build a strong coalition between the Zentrum and the Social Democratic Party, both renewed. But this aim was to prove to be
wishful thinking.

In a seminal essay published in 1931, “Katholizismus und Nationalsozialismus” Dirks shows that, from a philosophical perspective, Catholicism and National Socialism were irreconcilable. The bishops too, for more pragmatic reasons, supported this stance, several of them published pastoral letters to this effect. The Bishop of Mainz even decreed that in his diocese members of the Nazi Party were to be excluded from receiving Holy Communion. Catholics were ill at ease with the revolutionary tone adopted by the leaders of the Nazi Party, with the atmosphere of hatred created by Nazi ideology, and with the lack of respect for traditional values and authorities.

Yet a more careful analysis persuaded Dirks that, under certain circumstances, the Catholic population could easily become supporters of Nazism. His fears were indeed justified after 1933. In the first place, Hitler used his first months in power skillfully to adjust the Nazis’public image. In order to consolidate his position, he needed to live at peace with the Christian churches, at least for the time being. Hence he frequently mentioned God and divine Providence in his speeches, supported the so-called German Christians in the Protestant Church, and more importantly, agreed to enter into a Concordat with the Vatican – a step the Weimar Republic had refused to take.

In the second place, many German Catholics seemed to place their material interests ahead of their spiritual concerns. Nazism appealed to the middle classes whose well-being had been shattered by the inflation and depression. The working classes were attracted by the promise of ending unemployment. The peasants believed they were unappreciated by government and public culture, while students and intellectuals were fearful of being permanently out of a meaningful job. For the great majority, Dirks believed, the turn to fascism was taken in the hope of solving their material problems. They seemed unable to recognize that democratic socialism was the only force which could create a more just society. While Dirks made these predictions on the basis of a class analysis, he was right to see that this failure to recognize the dangers was to have terrible political consequences. In the early months of 1933, Dirks was heart-broken that his dark premonitions had turned out to be correct. He kept on writing critical articles in Catholic newspapers as long as he could, including a highly interesting piece in April 1933, courageously deploring Nazi antisemitism and the persecution of the Jews, and defending the continuing vocation of God’s first-chosen people – a theological argument almost unknown in the Christian literature of that time.

Dirks was not alone in fighting for these ideals. The Catholic intellectuals of the Rhineland were more open and pluralistic in their views than was the case in other parts of Catholic Germany, such as Bavaria. And his vibrant faith, drawn from his Quickborn associations, kept him going even though he was criticized from time to time by Catholic bishops and attacked in the Catholic press. It was these qualities which enabled him to maintain his faith, and to play a significant part in the rebuilding of Germany in the post-Nazi era.

Gregory Baum, McGill University, Montreal (extracted from an article to be published shortly in a collection of essays: Why Weimar: Questioning the Legacy of Weimar from Goethe to 1999, McGill European Studies, New York: Lang)

3) Journal articles

a) Oded Heilbronner, Catholic Resistance during the Third Reich? in Contemporary European History, Vol 7 no 3 (1998) pp 409-414.

Oded Heilbronner, an Israeli scholar, has recently published a valuable study of ‘Catholicism, Political Culture, and the Countryside. A social history of the Nazi Party in South Germany’ – to be reviewed here shortly. So he is well equipped to take a very sharp look at the notion of Catholic resistance during the Third Reich. This article is in fact a review of three recent books, and takes issue with the authors for being part of the Catholic research establishment which failed to take a more critical view of their fellow Catholics under Hitler’s rule. For years this Catholic establishment has insisted that the Catholics formed the chief focus of resistance to Nazi claims, and much of its scholarship has this apologetic tone. The reason, Heilbronner, suggests is that many German Catholics have an interest in preserving the myth of the ‘Kirchenkampf’. This boosted the Catholics’ fortunes after 1945, and still needs to be maintained after the changes of 1989, when Catholics became a minority once again. But by stressing the Catholic opposition to Nazi attacks on the church as the source of their resistance, these authors evade the question Heilbronner poses: ‘If the Nazis had not taken action against the Catholic Church, would the latter have joined the war waged by the Nazis against the Jews, the Bolsheviks and the European peoples as a whole?’ His suspicion is: yes.

This raises the very touchy point of Catholic antisemitism. Up to now, Catholic apologists have emphasised the fact that their clergy were not nearly so infected as were the Protestants. But such a view, as expressed for example by Thomas Fandel in his book on the Palatinate – reviewed here, October 1998 – covers over the extent to which Catholics did in fact serve Hitler loyally throughout the war, and even if opposed to certain Nazi practices, nevertheless still wanted to uphold the Nazi state. They were possibly even more subject to the Nazis’ social control than other sections of the community. By trying to claim they were united in anti-Nazi resistance, these Catholic historians distort the record, and must be found guilty of white-washing whole areas of Catholic life especially for the war-time period. Of course, in 1945, their leaders immediately claimed they had been the first victims of Nazi persecution – and this has remained their refrain from then on. But Heilbronner knows better, and, more importantly, is prepared to say so.

JSC

b) Barbara Stambolis, (Hagen), Nationalisierung trotz Ultramontanisierung oder: “Alles fur Deutschland. Deutschland aber für Christus”. Mentalitätsleitende Wertorientierung deutscher Katholiken im 19 und 20 Jahrhundert in Historische Zeitschrift, Vol 269, no.1, August 1999, pp 57-97.

This article describes how German Catholics adopted their own version of national identity after 1870 with increasing enthusiasm until the Nazi period. Only after 1945 was this nationalist fervour replaced by a return to the ideals of the “Christian West”. Stambolis shows how easily elements in the German Catholic tradition could be manipulated for nationalist or even Nazi purposes, but also how the German Catholic mediaeval heritage could be used in the post-war attempt to re-Christianise Europe.

c) Martin Greschat, Politische Macht, Kirchen und Gesellschaft in der DDR. Ein Ueberblick in Neue Politische Literatur, Vol. 44, no 1,1999, pp 59-80

Writing for a primarily secular audience, Martin Greschat here gives a masterly survey of the major works produced over the last ten years on the churches in the former East Germany. The main problem is to know the criteria to be used in any overall assessment. Despite the fact that the initial spate of revelations, recriminations,and accusations has now died down, most of the works discussing both the churches’ life and witness, as well as those dealing with the special theologies expressed during the forty years of communist rule, still carry on the atmosphere of support or criticism of the stance taken by the churches. This is just as true of the Catholics as the Protestants. Greschat himself has sound comments to make on the shortcomings of these approaches, but nicely includes the books by two of our list members, Gregory Baum and Bob Goeckel. His general point is well taken: it is still too early to say whether this special situation should be seen as an errant episode, or as a prophetic witness, in the history of the German Church.

d) M.Elliott and S.Corrado, The 1997 Russian Law on Religion: the impact on Protestants. in Religion, State and Society, Vol 27, no 1, March 1999, 109-34

This describes the spotty impact of the new restrictive law in Russia, reversing the more tolerant ruling of 1990, and gives a partial list of incidents where Protestant churches have been subjected to discrimination.

4) The website for the Karl Barth archive and Newsletter is http://www.unibas.ch/theologie/Barth

With every best wish for the forthcoming century!
John S.Conway

jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Alphabetical list of books reviewed in 1999:

Arrington, Leonard: Adventures of a Church Historian March

Baginski, Christophe: La politique religieuse de la France en Allemagne occupee February

Blet, Pierre: Pie XII et la seconde guerre mondiale March

Booty, John: An American apostle. The life of Bishop Bayne November

Brewer, John D: Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland April

Buchanan, T. and Conway, M.: Political Catholicism in Europe 1918-65 November

Buttner, Ursula and Greschat, M.: Die verlassenen Kinder der Kirche May

Chadwick, Owen: A History of the Popes 1830-1914 Aug/Sept

Chandler, Andrew: The terrible alternative. Christian Martyrdom April

” ” ed.: The moral imperative February

Collins, Donald E: When the church bells ran racist June

Conway, Martin: Catholic politics in Europe 1918-1945 November

Coppa, Frank J.ed.: Controversial Concordats November

Deselaers, Manfred: Die biographie von Rudolf Hoess January

Drapac, Vesan: War and Relgion in occupied Paris May

Finke, Anne-Kattrin: Karl Barth in Grossbritannien October

Fritz, Hartmut: Otto Dibelius July

de Gruchy, John ed.: The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer December

Haynes, Stephen: Holocaust Education February

Hesse, Hans ed.: Am mutigsten waren immer die Zeugen Jehovahs April

Kirby, Dianne: Church, State and Propaganda. Archbishop Garbett July

Luxmoore, J. and Babiuch, J.: The Vatican and the Red Flag Aug/Sept

Melady,Tom: The Ambassador’s story January

Mueller-Rolli, Sebastian: Evangelische Schulpolitik in Deutschland 1918-58 Aug/Sept

Nagel, Anne: Martin Rade June

O’Brien, Darcy: The Hidden Pope Aug/Sept

Oldstone-Moore, Christopher: Hugh Price Hughes.Founder of a new Methodism October

Phillips, Paul: A Kingdom on earth. Social Christianity 1880-1940 January

Ramet, Sabrina: Nihil Obstat.Religion,Politics and Change in eastern Europe January

Recker, Klemens-A.: Wem wollt ihr glauben?. Bischof Berning April

Reich, Peter: Mexico’s hidden revolution May

Xi, Lian: The Conversion of missionaries in China March nis weiter. Oberkirchenrat Udo