Category Archives: Volume 16 Number 1 (March 2010)

Letter from the editors: March 2010

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Letter from the editors: March 2010

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University College

Wittenberg’s Castle Church, birthplace of Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation.

It is with great excitement that we release the first issue of the ACCH Quarterly, which we hope will continue in the fine tradition established by its predecessor, the Association of Contemporary Church Historians Newsletter, issued faithfully via e-mail by Professor Emeritus John S. Conway for the past fifteen years.

The ACCH Quarterly is now overseen by the following international editorial board:

Victoria Barnett, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, USA

Doris Bergen, University of Toronto, Canada

Randall Bytwerk, Calvin College, MI, USA

Andrew Chandler, University of Chichester, UK

John S. Conway, University of British Columbia, BC, Canada

Robert Ericksen, Pacific Lutheran University, WA, USA

Manfred Gailus, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany

Beth Griech-Polelle, Bowling Green State University, OH, USA

Matthew Hockenos, Skidmore College, NY, USA

Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University College, AB, Canada (Managing Editor)

Christopher Probst, Howard Community College, MD, USA

Mark Ruff, St. Louis University, MO, USA

Steven Schroeder, University of the Fraser Valley, BC, Canada

Heath Spencer, Seattle University, WA, USA

A new name, publishing schedule, and editorial board are not the only changes you’ll notice. Perhaps the most obvious innovation is our new e-journal format, based on the Open Journal System software. Though it may take time to work out all the bugs, each quarter you’ll receive an e-mail notice from the ACCH Quarterly, complete with an Internet link to the journal website. There you’ll find the contents of the newest issue, complete with “pdf” links to each article to click on (on the right side of the page). Headings along the top take you to other information about the journal, including policies, contact information, and an archive of back issues. Over time, we hope to mount all of the old newsletters (volumes 1-15) on the new site. For now, you can still find old issues of the newsletter at Randall Bytwerk’s excellent website, available at http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/akz/.

Each issue of the ACCH Quarterly will be compiled by three or more members of the editorial team, on a rotating basis. We welcome your suggestions for content or any other feedback you might have about the new format. Please send these to Kyle Jantzen at kjantzen@ambrose.edu.

On behalf of all of the ACCH Quarterly editors,

Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University College and John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Review Article: The Death of Christian Britain Reconsidered

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Review Article: The Death of Christian Britain Reconsidered.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, Understanding secularisation 1800-2000, 2nd edition. London: Routledge, 2009. IBSN 13: 978-0-415-74134-3.

Jane Garnett et al., eds., Redefining Christian Britain: Post-1945 Perspectives. London: SCM Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-334-04092-7.

Keith Robbins, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales. The Christian Church 1900-2000. Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-19-826371-5.

Ten years ago, Callum Brown, who is Professor of Religious and Cultural History at Glasgow’s second university, Strathclyde, published his controversial book The Death of Christian Britain. It has now been republished in a second edition, with an additional chapter taking issue with some of Brown’s critics. This is not an ecclesiastical history. It has little to do with the churches as institutions or their theologies. Rather it is an impressionistic exposition about what Brown calls the Christian discourse amongst the British population in the period from 1800 to the present. He seeks to show that for the first 150 years, this discourse, particularly as seen in the writings and preaching of the evangelical sections of the various churches, provided an identity, a mental structure, and a moral code of behaviour for the majority of the population. This generally-held discourse, he believes, is what made Britain a Christian country. But this is no longer the case. “The culture of Christianity has gone in the Britain of the new millennium. Britain is showing the world how religion as it has known it can die.”

The impact of these challenging views was only made more strident by his claim that this ‘death’ could be precisely dated to the 1960s, i.e. had already happened, and by his assertion that the principal cause lay in the decision-making of young women. Their abandonment of the habits and thought-forms of their mothers and grandmothers, who had for so long sustained both the moral forms and the institutional life of the churches, was the key factor. In the remarkably short period of the 1960s all this was to be eroded. It was a sudden and drastic process which Brown described as the de-pietisation of femininity and the de-feminisation of piety.

These provocative assertions were part of his sub-title’s Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000. But secularisation is both a complex as well as an emotive term. There have been at least two rival and opposed assessments. On the one hand, almost all church-goers including the professional clergy and their supporters, have deplored the loss of faith, the decline in church attendance, the erosion of social and personal values, and the abandonment of the so-called Christian identity of the nation. These developments were often associated with the growth or urbanisation and modernisation so that the myth of ‘the unholy city’ with its dark satanic mills could be contrasted with the simple purity of rural life centred around the parish church or chapel on the village green.

On the other side, the champions of secularisation saw this as a revolutionary advance into the modern age, when the individual is liberated from superstition or the shackles of clericalism. Secularisation is a salute to reason, to intellect and to progress. By the mid-twentieth century, virtually all British intellectuals subscribed to this ideology. Yet it took the impetus of a social revolution in the 1960s, which freed British popular culture from what Brown believes was the misery of a restrictive Christian discourse, often backed by the state. For at least a century this discourse had governed all aspects of self-identity and expression, community-regulated leisure and domestic life. Its repressive features, in the name of adherence of Christian morality, had imposed great suffering on minorities and miscreants, such as homosexuals. It had strictly limited the range of opportunities especially for women. It was the rejection of these bulwarks of Christian piety, so Brown believes, which so rapidly led to the death of this kind of Christian culture in Britain.

Brown’s critics were quick to attack him for his reductionism and for his mono-causal explanation for the demise of the Christian discourse. But it is noteworthy that Brown also took issue with much of the methodology employed by many sociologists of religion. Particularly he disputed the widespread teleological theory whereby religious decline was seen as the inevitable and linear obverse of the rise of rationality and science. Brown disputed this time line by pointing to the undeniable revival of religious life in Britain in the immediate post-1945 years. So too he challenged the views taken by many left-wing social scientists who drew their analysis from Marxist theory. According to this paradigm, Christianity’s hold was largely class-based, and would and should disappear once the class struggle was overcome and modernisation ensued. But the subsequent discrediting of Marxism and its theories of modernisation now requires now requires new coherent explanations for the apparent changes in Britain’s religious adherence.

Redefining Christian Britain. Post-1945 Perspectives is the product of an Oxford conference whose contributors sought to escape from the ideologically-based theories or the sociologically-based statistics of the proponents of secularisation. Instead they sought to stress Christianity’s continuing influence on culture through literature, art and architecture. As well, they found Christian moral ideas as forming the background for many economic developments, as well as in protest movements. Above all they seek to claim the continued relevance of Christian values in Britain’s national identity. Christian Britain is not dead, they assert. There is no corpse in the Library. Rather, these essays contain countless examples of how Christianity has continued to infuse public culture, though the authors admit that the cultural strength of religion must be separated from its institutional strength or decline. By rejecting any teleological approach, they argue for a wide variety of positive adjustments in British religious life, pointing particularly to the number of sub-cultures brought in by recent immigrants.

There is considerable mention of “transformations” in the chapters of this book. Many of the contributors rightly point out that the 1960s were indeed years of change and challenge in Britain. The national identity, and with it the many religious associations it held, were transformed in more ways than allowed by Callum Brown. The loss of empire, the spectre of nuclear annihilation, the awareness of world poverty, and the wholly new relationship with Europe, all posed questions which included a religious dimension. Above all, these were years in which religious certainty faded, to be replaced by a far more questioning discourse. It was not surprising that Bishop John Robinson’s Honest to God should prove to be the best-selling theological work of the century. The abandonment of the ideal of authority, and the disappearance of a deferential society, both clearly affected the position of the clergy. So too the rise in the general standards of education meant that many more individuals than before claimed an independence of mind which no longer looked for paternalistic guidance from the churches or their ministers. There was in fact a process of spiritual fragmentation when the institutional church, with its rituals and dogmas, no longer received automatic assent. This development proved to be far more corrosive of belief patterns than the alleged impetus of women’s sexual liberation.

There were indeed, as Mark Chapman points out, many churchmen who welcomed a transformation of their spirituality, and who looked for more relevant forms of Christian witness, stripped of the Victorian trappings of religion. Some were to welcome the abandonment of dogmatic theologizing, and were to cultivate a vaguer religion of love and service of fellow men and women. But others still recognized the need to maintain the importance of the transcendent in both personal and public life. They were to argue that the churches should continue to have a prophetic and critical role over against all idealistic political or social proposals. If the churches limited themselves to being agents of social reform, they would have lost a dimension of incomparable worth. Transformation should be achieved without sacrificing the essence of the Judaeo-Christian heritage. And institutional diminution was not necessarily a pointer to social relevance. In the view of these authors, the wishful thinking of doomsayers, predicting religious and moral decline, has to be challenged. Little evidence exists that the national standards of personal morality have declined, even when the churches’ previous emphasis on puritan-style sexual ethics has been overtaken. Instead, newer issues such as nuclear armaments, climate change, or world poverty are clearly able to arouse strong moral reactions, derived certainly from Christian roots. The discursive Christianity of the British nation still continues in a variety of different ways. A transformed view of the sacred, and an ardent desire for genuine spiritual experience, still persists, even if bearing little resemblance to the master-narrative of former years. The authors’ conclusion is that Christianity in Britain has been better able to respond to changed circumstances than grand narratives of decline or death have allowed. The picture they uncover is one of innovation and exploration not of atrophy or paralysis. In short they believe that Christian Britain is not dead but that it will continue to be reshaped and redefined in the years ahead.

How Christianity interacted with broader social and political movements in the twentieth century is the focus of Keith Robbins’ magisterial study of the Christian Church in the four countries which form part of the British Isles. Robbins is a distinguished scholar of church history, and a former university president. He is very much aware that England,Scotland,Wales and Ireland all have a long history of dialogue between Christianity and its surrounding culture. The varieties and the peculiarities of this relationship lie at the heart of his book. Christianity has been embedded in Britain for over sixteen hundred years, during which it has been shaped by numerous, frequently conflicting impulses. The dialectic between past and present has produced radically different situations and seemingly incompatible belief-systems. Yet Robbins seeks to write transnationally and transdenominationally since he believes he can see the unity in this diversity.

This is no ordinary textbook. The reader should be warned not to expect any systematic delivery of names, dates, places or statistics. Instead, it is a large-scale portrait, or rather a series of large-scale portraits in chronological order, bringing in aspects from each of the national church settings. Robbins paints with a variety of multi-coloured brush strokes, each drawn from his immense fund of knowledge and reading. His style is allusive, following in the footsteps of G.M. Young and Owen Chadwick. Readers are therefore expected to have considerable knowledge already in order to appreciate his nicely-pointed comments.

Robbins naturally takes issue with Callum Brown`s over-simplistic assessment. Rather, he believes, the churches have always lived in an ambiguous and often awkward symbiosis with their environment. The issue is how this relationship can be fully described given the complexity of the churches’ institutional life and the variety of ways in which the different sections of the population both contribute to and are drawn from the church communities. A ‘typical’ church, he believes, is elusive, but he seeks to integrate, in a comprehensive and ecumenical whole, the various strands, both from within and outside, as well as from above and below.

His task has been complicated by the fact that most church histories have been written from the perspective of one or other denomination to confirm their legitimacy and authority, and to impugn the claims of others. Robbins seeks to rise above this fray and adopts an even-handed ecumenism. He is ready to understand, though not necessarily to endorse, those viewpoints which he sees as narrowing down the Christian message because of a particular theological or social slant. All have, he believes, to be accommodated as part of Christian Britain, even when discordantly opposed to each other, as for example in twentieth-century Ireland. So his volume is irenic and suitably comprehensive, and his wide-ranging sympathies can open new horizons of insight.

For the first half of the century, the question of how the churches related to concepts of Britain’s national identity and to its military and political fortunes was a constant preoccupation. In England the established church had little debate about where its duty lay, but increasingly more about the ethical values such nationalism propagated. In Ireland, the Catholic faith had no such priority. It saw itself as the church of the victimized population, creating barriers against unwanted and alien onslaughts. But both sides saw their stance as upholding their Christian witness. The bitter divisions in doctrine and practice which had accrued since the Reformation still prevented unity. But increasingly all churches faced parallel challenges confronting what came to be known as the tide of secularisation.

Yet in 1914 all the churches in England,Wales and Scotland, and in some parts of Ireland, especially the north, enthusiastically backed the war effort including its appeal to nationalism, militarism, even jingoism. Only a tiny handful saw pacifism as the true Christian discipleship. But the subsequent mass slaughter on the battlefields thereafter was to cause a major and irreversible crisis in the credibility of the Christian witness and to lead to long-lasting disillusionment with its institutions and personnel – and not only in Britain. To many observers, myself included, this post-war disenchantment marked the onset of the death of Christian Britain.

But Robbins rightly points out that the churches were too closely integrated into their host societies to be able to develop alternative theologies or practices. The clergy particularly could not escape the role of being public cheerleaders for the war effort. But the price was fateful. During the Second World War, most church leaders were more cautious. Bishop George Bell urged the government to ensure that the war was waged in a Christian fashion on behalf of the Universal Christian Church, and not just for the advance of national interests. The Pope, in the impartiality of the Vatican, upheld the cause of peace, despite being under relentless pressure to join one side or the other. No German church leader ever opposed the regime or its wars of racial annihilation. Attempts to justify such events as Auschwitz or Hiroshima merely discredited those who tried. Such horrendous crimes only revealed the Christians’ impotence and their creeds’ irrelevance.

But, as both Brown and Robbins show, in the post-1945 period, the desire to rebuild Britain on the basis of Christian family values brought about a revival in many denominations. The more critical questions were subdued or postponed. The churches existed in a widespread state of cognitive dissonance. Only in the 1960s did these issues become insistent. Many younger people, of both sexes, then found they could no longer support the supposedly hypocritical and compromised churches, which should be left to die out. Secular scepticism was more honest.

There was, however, one part of the British Isles, in the last half of the century, where Christianity and the churches were of crucial significance, though hardly in any laudatory sense. Robbins’ treatment of the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland is brief but succinct. Undeniably, the situation in Ulster reinforced his main contentions. The province’s deep-seated religious factions and rivalries were inextricably interwoven in the political and social fabric. The conflicting religious traditions were not just a propagandistic cover for more vital economic or political struggles. Rather the intensely-held folk memories of each side’s religious traditions gave the conflict its enduring and intractable quality. Cromwell mattered.

Even more significantly the conflict continued even though the church leaders on both sides came to deplore the violence and bloodshed. But they were not heard. The clergy’s authority was one of the casualties of this un-Christian fratricidal strife.

All this was part of a wider process. In the latter part of the century authority figures in both church and state were rejected. As prosperity grew, so did the notion of self-help spirituality. Britain became a market-place for competing yet negotiating moralities. Many church leaders recognized that they had been improperly coercive in the past. And while the Pope still called for obedience in matters of personal, especially sexual, morality, he increasingly called in vain and could no longer seen as the voice of Christendom.

The final years of the century were therefore years of institutional and ethical unsettlement. Questions were increasingly posed about the identity and viability of churches, but not severely enough to overthrow the historical divisions embedded since the Reformation. The failure of church unity plans meant that the churches remained rooted, for better or for worse, in their cultural inheritances. And their discordant voices meant that they lost more of their moral authority, along with their disappearing membership. Britons became much more pluralistic in their religious views and spiritual searching.

Thus Robbins finds himself at least in partial agreement with the more guarded of Callum Brown’s assessments. “This was a period which witnessed the increasing marginalisation of religion from British public life, intellectualism and popular culture.” And yet, a wide survey conducted at the turn of the century found that 77% of the population reported themselves as having a religious affiliation, the majority of whom declared they were Christians. This was perhaps based on a diffuse understanding of what Christianity meant and entailed.. But it could indicate that the notion of the death of Christian Britain had been overstated. Christianity could still be regarded as a significant contributor to national life, even if its institutional expressions were fragile. The secular state cannot be regarded, in Robbins’ view, as the desirable terminal conclusion of two thousand years of Christian presence on Britain’s soil. The pluralistic spiritual patterns which currently prevail may yet hold out other possibilities.

Review of Raymond Cohen, Saving the Holy Sepulchre

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Review of Raymond Cohen, Saving the Holy Sepulchre. Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 0195189663.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

The most venerated church in Christendom is surely the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, or as it is sometimes known, the Church of the Resurrection. Christian pilgrims have been coming to this shrine for over seventeen hundred years. It was near this spot that the Roman Emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena, in the early years of the fourth century is reputed to have identified the hill of Calvary where Jesus was crucified. Not far away she also believed she could locate the site of His burial in the tomb, and hence the site of His Resurrection. Unfortunately both were located under a second century Roman temple dedicated to Venus. But with imperial backing, this heathen building was cleared away, and an impressive Christian basilica began to be built. From its floor, steps led to a crypt and then down to a chapel where St Helena is said to have discovered the relics of the True Cross. The chapel survives to this day.

The original Byzantine structure was replaced centuries later by an even more magnificent cathedral built when the Crusaders conquered the land. This brought under one roof – actually a huge dome – the various shrines such as the rock of Calvary, the tomb or Edicule, and numerous chapels around the ambulatory, or processional corridor around the apse, But inevitably, age and climate took their toll, as did the constant wear and tear of so many thousands of pilgrims. In 1808 a devastating fire did heavy damage, and in 1927 an unprecedented earthquake in Jerusalem alerted the authorities to the fact that repairs were urgently needed.

Unfortunately, despite the basilica being so venerated, or more probably because of it, the various church communities who, over the centuries, had claimed the right to worship in the building, had never been able to agree with each other as to how this historic building should be maintained or repaired. These quarrels had been so intense that in 1757 the Turkish Sultan who ruled Jerusalem as part of the Ottoman Empire had imposed a law stating that none of the communities was to be allowed to change anything in the structure or in its furnishings and decoration. This Status Quo edict, as it was called, was enforced rigorously, so that all attempts by one or other community to undertake repairs were prohibited. The result was benign neglect, so that by the end of the nineteenth century, many observers were predicting that the building would soon collapse. But luckily in the twentieth century, it was saved, as is excellently and informatively described in a recently-published book by Raymond Cohen.

The obstacles were enormous. In the first place, over the past hundred years,Jerusalem has come under the control of four competing and incompatible political regimes. Each had its own ideas as to how to deal with the Christian Holy Places, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in particular. The four centuries of Turkish rule came to end in 1917 when the Protestant British General Allen by rode into Jerusalem, and raised great fears amongst the Catholics and the Orthodox that the heresies of the Reformation would be imposed on them. In fact the British instead established Palestine as a Mandate of the League of Nations, and were sedulously careful to uphold the now ancient Status Quo settlement. But in 1948, Jerusalem’s Old City was occupied by the Jordanian army, and for nineteen years an international boundary ran along its battlements, only a few yards from the sacred precincts of the Holy Sepulchre. In 1967, during the Six Days’ War, Israeli forces succeeded in evicting the Jordanians, luckily without any serious damage to historic monuments. Israel immediately announced its determination to protect the Holy Places and to make them open to all comers. The possibility of an international outcry at the time, and later the desire to encourage Christian tourists, has led successive Israeli governments to adopt a strict hands-off policy. But in contrast to the Jordanians, they see no reason to become involved with the fractious problems of the Holy Sepulchre’s repairs.

The initiative was therefore left to the Christian communities themselves. But it took a great many years before the age-old suspicions and rivalries could be overcome between the six groups who all claimed the right to worship in the Holy Sepulchre. The principal actors have been the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, the Latin or Roman Catholic custodians of the sanctuary also with their own Patriarch, and the Armenian Church, asserting that it was the oldest continuous community. Lesser, but often noisy, claims were maintained by the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Copts and the Abyssinians. Over the centuries each of these had sought to obtain ownership, or at least use, of particular portions of the basilica, or had established rights to use parts of the building for its processions and services, even where ownership was disputed. Since there were hardly any surviving written records, in effect the 18th century Status Quo arrangement froze matters indissolubly.

Any suggestion by one community that repairs should be undertaken was often fiercely contested – sometimes for years. Each community also suspected that, with any changes, their age-long rights might be eroded. Naturally each demanded, for reasons of prestige, that it should appoint its own chief architect. Getting these men to agree proved extremely arduous and led to many delays.

In any case there was strong disagreement as to what they were undertaking. The French Catholics sought to restore as much as possible of the mediaeval masterpiece. The Armenians, on the other hand, wanted a reconstruction in a more modern style, which could include Armenian paintings and frescoes. Compromise was exceedingly difficult. Furthermore, even when agreement on each detail was reached, it all had to be approved by the respective ecclesiastical patriarchs, who in turn had to ensure support from their homelands.

But finally, over the past fifty years, compromise agreements were reached on the need for urgent and constructive repairs on the now dilapidated basilica. Little by little, the unsightly mass of wooden scaffolding which had blocked out the great dome for decades, was removed. The interior regained its ancient splendour, and the dome was decorated anew with an ecumenical, if abstract, design. Largely due to the unprecedented co-operation of the local church leaders, the architects were encouraged to recruit skilled masons who could handle the delicate tasks of restoring the brickwork, the stone surrounds, the pilasters, and the paintings. Their work had to be carried out, of course, while below in the main body of the church, the daily services, processions and pilgrimages were conducted without ever ceasing. The result was that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which had been in real danger of collapse, was saved for posterity.

This remarkable rescue effort has now been skilfully described in Raymond Cohen’s book, using as many of the surviving records as could be found, as well as his personal knowledge of the site and his many visits to see how the rebuilding project was progressing.

Of course, as Cohen points out, this great achievement cannot be taken as evidence of any desire for closer Christian unity. Inter-church reconciliation is not on the agenda in Jerusalem. The weight of history and theological controversy still dominate ecumenical relations. These age-long conflicts have not been resolved. But, for this magnificent restoration project, co-operation and compromise prevailed and the adversaries came together in a common cause. Had they not done so, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre would today be a ruin. But now, it stands, as it has done for so many centuries, as the most venerable and sought-after pilgrimage site in all Christendom. We should indeed be grateful for the blessings bestowed on us by this unexpected and momentous restoration, and also thank Raymond Cohen for his perceptive record of how this achievement was finally brought about.

Review of Emmy Barth, No Lasting Home. A Year in the Paraguayan Wilderness

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Review of Emmy Barth, No Lasting Home. A Year in the Paraguayan Wilderness. Rifton, NY: Plough Publishing House, 2009. ISBN 978-0-87486-945-3

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

In 1920 a Christian commune of pacifists was founded in Germany under the leadership of Eberhard Arnold, dedicated to the Anabaptist teachings of piety and non-violence, and repudiating the militarism and bloodshed which had so recently engulfed Europe. But this Brotherhood’s experiment aroused considerable opposition, which turned virulent under the Nazis. In 1937 the Gestapo expelled the community and forced them to flee to England.

They were helped to re-establish by the Quakers, and joined by a number of English pacifists who had obtained conscientious objector status. Nevertheless, after the outbreak of war in 1939, their situation became more difficult. The Brotherhood was convinced that part of their witness, both for German and English community members, was to remain together, living in love and harmony even when their two countries were at war. But as enemy aliens and pacifists they were no longer welcome. Curfews and travel restrictions were imposed. Debates as to whether the community should be allowed to exist were raised in Parliament. Late in 1940 they decided that they should all move again and seek refuge elsewhere. Since neither Canada nor the United States would accept them, they went instead to the only place which offered asylum, Paraguay. This short but vibrant reportage, drawn from the Brotherhood’s own records, is the story of their first year in the wilds of Latin America.

Emmy Barth, who is herself a descendant of these exiles, gives a wholly sympathetic picture of their experiences and the hardships they encountered in the harsh semi-tropical conditions of Paraguay. The Paraguayan government wanted more settlers in the remote and barren district of Chaco, and was prepared to offer the same privilege of exemption from military service, which had been extended to a group of German Mennonites who had moved to the Chaco some years earlier. In turn, the American Mennonite Central Committee offered the Brotherhood its support and some start-up costs.

But for these European refugees, trying to establish themselves as the guests of another tight-knit community, in the midsummer heat, and without any housing of their own, proved to be a real test of their faith. Worse still, they found, in these Mennonite communities, a considerable number of sympathisers with Hitler’s Germany, which was believed to have rescued Mennonites from the grip of Soviet Communism. The dark side of Nazi Germany was simply discounted by several leading members of the Chaco Mennonite community. So despite the close similarity of these communities’ origins and their Reformation faith, in fact tensions were constantly present. They were only resolved when the Brotherhood moved to a different and more pleasant part of Paraguay.

But the conditions were rigorous. Their numerous small children fell sick and several died. The men had to build their houses and meeting places from scratch, while the women were fully engaged in child care. Despite death and deprivation, however, the joy of building a new community in a new land was never entirely quenched. Through all the hardships, their faith in each other and in their witness was maintained. The numerous surviving photographs printed in this book, showing these home-made villages and their community activities, give a vivid portrait of this rural exile existence. Their main objective was the survival of the Brotherhood, and in this they succeeded. Twenty years later, when conditions improved, the Brotherhood emigrated to the United States where it still upholds its ideals today.

Emmy Barth is to be commended for her compassionate account of this short episode, which captures the courage and faithfulness of the community, and conveys something of the spirit which inspired and still inspires them.

Article Reprint: Iael Nidam-Orvieto, “New Research: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust”

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Article Reprint: Iael Nidam-Orvieto, “New Research: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust.” Yad Vashem Jerusalem Quarterly Magazine, Vol. 56, Tevet 5770, January 2010.

After the long-standing hostility displayed by various Israeli and Jewish authorities towards Pope Pius XII, the following article written by Dr Iael Nidam-Orvieto, Director of the Department of the Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, and printed in its January 2010 quarterly magazine, is notable:

Dilemmas, silence, active rescue, passivity. These words are often mentioned when dealing with the controversial figure of Pius XII and his papacy during WWII. The debate over his attitude and actions regarding the persecuted Jews of Europe began during the 1960s following the release of the play The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth, and continues even today, splitting public opinion as well as generations of scholars.

The critics emphasize that Pius’ main failing was his silence – his lack of a clear and direct condemnation of the annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany. Backing up this opinion is his famous radio speech of Christmas 1942, in which the Pope failed to mention the Jews or the Germans, referring more generally to the demise of hundreds of thousands of people “who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or descent, have been consigned to death or to slow decline.”

Scholars bring many explanations for this public silence: political, ideological or even personal. Some claim that Pius was pro-Nazi or antisemitic, even calling him “Hitler’s Pope.” They emphasize the failure of the Pontiff to fulfill his moral duty officially to denounce the Holocaust, or to remind the Catholic community of its ethical responsibilities.

On the other side of the debate are those who argue that Pius’ speeches clearly referred to the Jews and their suffering, and claim that the varied rescue activities carried out by Catholic clergy throughout Europe is clear proof of the inspiration they received from the Pope. These defenders maintain that the lack of a direct confrontation with the Nazi regime was a strategic choice meant to avoid worse catastrophe and enable further clandestine rescue activity.

As much of the relevant source material remains unavailable to historians – the archives of the Vatican for the period of WWII have yet to be opened – explanations on both sides are often based on assumptions or unsystematic documentation. However, over the last few years, certain archives containing relevant material have been opened, leading to an increased interest in the topic. For example, the archive of Pius XI’s papacy has been recently opened to the public, enabling research that sheds new light, among other things, on the policy of the Holy See during the 1930s and on Eugenio Pacelli’s (later Pope Pius XII) operations as Vatican Secretary of State. Documentation revealed in other archives across the world has led to the publication of new books on the topic, as well as important new insights into the existing historiography.

In March 2009, the International Institute for Holocaust Research and the Salesian Theological Institute of Saints Peter and Paul in Jerusalem organized a scholarly workshop at Yad Vashem to discuss the current state of research on Pius XII and the Holocaust.

The academic discussion was based on specific questions presented to specialized scholars from around the world expressing the range of opinions on Pius XII. The closed forum enabled a dynamic and open discussion, soon to be released as a pathbreaking publication on the topic.

One of the most innovative pieces of research presented at the workshop dealt with the rescue of Jews in Italy, especially in Rome. Thanks to vast material recently opened to some researchers, new insights were presented as to refuge activities of the “religious houses,” suggesting a more direct involvement of the Holy See, albeit one that also aided evacuees, orphans, partisans and soldiers of all nationalities, in the name of Christian charity.

A topic that revealed the gap between the participants concerned converted Jews who, as is shown in published documentation, were afforded much help by the Vatican. Since the Nazis considered them still Jewish, should the help given to those who converted be considered as aiding Jews? Or must one claim that this assistance is dubious, considering that those Jews who chose not to abandon their faith were less likely to receive the help of the Vatican?

Another debate was whether Pius XII was responsible for actions taken by clerics, both in the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust and in its aftermath, during the escape of Nazi criminals from Europe along the so-called “ratlines.” If Pius XII was involved in, encouraged or even initiated one activity, does that mean that he had equal involvement in the other?

What is undeniable is that the new documentation enables scholars to better understand the Pope’s background and opinions vis-à-vis Nazism and antisemitism. Much clearer is his aversion to National Socialism, which he considered one of the worst heresies of the modern age. While his upbringing was rooted in traditional anti-Judaism, his branding as an antisemite must be called into question.

Several scholars have suggested a new approach, one that views the complexity of the responses and how the Pope’s operations were understood and accepted by his followers and his contemporaries – both the Allied and Axis powers. The workshop was certainly the first step towards more open and sincere academic collaboration on the topic, albeit many questions remain unresolved and his legacy controversial. Only the full opening of the Vatican Archives and continued cooperation among the scholarly community will enable a more comprehensive understanding of Pius XII and the Holocaust.

Conference Report: “Understanding Religious Freedom in Germany, Poland and the United States”

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Conference Report: “Understanding Religious Freedom in Germany, Poland and the United States,” German Studies Association Conference, Washington, DC, October 11, 2009.

By Robert P. Ericksen, Pacific Lutheran University

This session, organized by Professor Gerhard Besier, Director of the Institute for European Studies at the Technical University of Dresden, included his paper on Germany; a paper on Poland by Katarzyna Stoklosa, also from the TU Dresden; and a paper on the United Statesby Derek Davis of Baylor University. Rebecca Bennette of Middlebury College moderated, and Robert Ericksen of Pacific Lutheran University provided commentary.

Besier began with a brief overview of church and state relations throughout Europe, noting the state church model to be found in places such as Great Britain, Denmark, Greece and Finland; the cooperative model of church and state to be found in Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Austria and Portugal; and the separation model to be found in France. He then focused on Germany, noting that the nominal principle of religious freedom appeared in the Weimar Constitution and again in the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany. Despite that, however, the two main churches in Germany, Catholic and Protestant (EKD), have managed to secure their position of dominance. For example, in the FRG these two churches are “statutory corporations.” This grants them legal rights normally reserved to the state, such as raising taxes from their members, and privileges, such as filling positions on bodies created to monitor radio and television. Free churches (Baptists, Methodists, and Quakers, for example) have also received recognition as statutory corporations, assuring them some rights, though not certain privileges reserved for Catholics and EKD Protestants, such as the right to be appointed to a theological faculty in public universities. Beneath the Free Churches, one finds a scale of reduced privilege and respect, running from “sects,” such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Scientists, through “New Age” groups, Hare Krishna, and, at the very bottom, “psycho-organizations,” such as Scientology. Besier then focused his attention on the effort of Jehovah’s Witnesses to be designated a statutory corporation. As is well known, this group suffered heavy persecution within the Nazi state. They have also faced considerable difficulties in postwar Germany, including various obstacles to their protracted effort from 1995-2009 to secure official status. This effort seemed to culminate in 2000, with a Federal Constitutional Court victory. However, since the individual German states have the right to administer their own cultural affairs, the battle had to be fought again and again, culminating in apparent victory in the spring of 2009. Throughout the process, the two main churches and their political allies fought against this development, arguing that a religious community which rejects blood transfusions, for example, “cannot be regarded as being loyal to the constitution.” Besier described religious liberty in Germany as simply the right for members of minority groups to worship as they choose. However, they will struggle to attain official recognition and they are likely to suffer social stigmatization. Legal privilege and political power reside primarily in the two mainstream churches.

Katarzyna Stoklosa described a very different situation in Poland. By the late 19^th century, Catholic faith had become a vital component of rising Polish nationalism. By the 1930s, a nationalist slogan described (with approval) a “new middle ages” to be found in the “Catholic State of the Polish Nation.” After 1945 this homogeneity tightened further, with the deportation of most non-Polish ethnic groups (Germans, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, etc.) and, of course, with the disappearance of three million murdered Jews. Non-Catholic religious groups gradually attained some rights in the 1970s and 1980s–for example, access to radio stations in 1982 and a legal status for Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1989. During the communist era, the Catholic Church nurtured its reputation as an opponent of the regime, especially in the 1980s. It thus emerged as a powerful force in Poland post-1989. The new constitution has a formal statement in support of religious freedom, and the rights of religious minorities have improved somewhat. But there is also a formal place for the Catholic Church built into the constitution and it plays a powerful political role. For example, in the political campaign of 2005, the right wing Catholic “Radio Maria” openly endorsed Lech Kaczynski’s “Law and Justice” party—and also attracted attention for making antisemitic statements. Given the powerful place of the Catholic Church, religious minorities in Poland continue to be marginalized. Stoklosa concluded that the practice of religious freedom in Poland simply does not match the ideal advocated in the West.

Derek Davis presented a paper on “the interplay of law, religion and politics in the United States,” describing four interconnected aspects: “separation of church and state, cooperation between sacred and secular, integration of religion and politics, and accommodation of civil religion.” This four-part scheme represents his attempt to explain what otherwise seems inconsistent in the American experience, for example, the refusal to allow organized prayer in public schools alongside the public prayers which open daily sessions of Congress, or the alleged “wall of separation” between church and state alongside the slogan, “In God we Trust,” printed on American money. Davis argued that separation of church and state is indeed an important part of the American system and a phrase taken seriously by the Supreme Court, but he added that it represents a “colossal overstatement” of the actual, complicated circumstances. For example, the Court assumes that children are impressionable, making it important to avoid any form of state-sanctioned religious expression in public schools. Presumably this means that members of Congress are considered old enough to ignore religious rituals in their chamber, if they so choose. He described court cases involving questions of tuition support to attend private (mostly religious) schools, whether to provide bus service, computers, or books, and whether religious charitable organizations can receive state contracts or support. He also described the pervasive rituals of civil religion practiced in America and the widespread belief that membership in and support for the nation has a divine component. In all of these matters, Davis endorsed the complexity found in practice and his belief that apparent contradictions and vigorous arguments are part of the healthy democratic experience in the questions of church and state.

Ericksen noted that one conclusion to be drawn from these three diverse examples is that churches are loath to give up power and influence. This seems most obvious with the Catholic Church in Poland and the two major churches in Germany. It also can be seen in the United States, however. For example, the banning of prayer and Bible reading in public schools has been widely resented by many churches. Even the principle of separation of church and state, which goes back more than two centuries, can perhaps be best understood as a pragmatic necessity, rather than expression of an ideal. The multiplicity of religious denominations in the Thirteen Colonies would have made the prospect of a state church quite contentious. On the other hand, is not freedom of religion an essential element of real democracy? We can see this historically in the gradual increase of voting rights and other legal rights granted to religious minorities as the idea of democracy progressed. It seems hard to imagine that the political or legal privileging of one religion over others can be consistent with equal political rights. Is this okay with churches? Can religious groups with the power to enforce their place of privilege accept the democratic implications of pluralism? A related question involves the development of secularization. If we note the trajectory from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, we see a general pattern of more religious liberty and less church attendance. Will a similar trajectory mark the twenty-first century? If so, will that be a good thing? Alternatively, can religion retain its vigor and still contribute to the “good life” in a pluralistic and democratic society, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “world come of age?” How do we expect Poland,Germany, and the United States will understand these issues fifty years from now?

Article Note: Heath A. Spencer, “Kulturprotestantismus and ‘Positive Christianity’: A Case for Discontinuity”

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Article Note: Heath A. Spencer, “Kulturprotestantismus and ‘Positive Christianity’: A Case for Discontinuity.” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Heft 2/2009: 519-549.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

The latest issue of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte commemorates a number of significant anniversaries in the life of Germany’s church and state, and is entitled “2009 – A Year of Commemoration and Jubilee”. The articles however cover a wider range of topics in recent European and American church history. Only two are in English. Most notable is the contribution of ACCH member Heath Spencer of the Department of History, University of Seattle. His article discusses “Kulturprotestantismus and ‘Positive Christianity’: A Case for Discontinuity”. In this essay he refutes the opinion advanced by Richard Steigmann-Gall in his book The Holy Reich, in which he claimed that German liberal Protestantism had a striking resemblance to Nazi conceptions of Christianity. Steigmann-Gall also believed that the pro-Nazi Protestants who so loudly acclaimed Hitler in 1933 derived their views from their predecessors in the ranks of liberal Protestantism. Spencer, while acknowledging that there were some overlapping similarities, shows that Steigmann-Gall downplayed the differences between these two groups. Most liberal Protestants, for instance, were put off by the virulence of Nazi racism and appalled by the totalitarian appeal of Nazism. They did not reject the Old Testament as a Jewish document, like the pro-Nazi “German Christians”, but saw it as a valuable source of historical knowledge. In short, liberal Protestantism contained a wide variety of opinions. Rather than these proto-Nazis inspiring or turning into pro-Nazis, the situation was much more complex. This leads Spencer to claim that the discontinuities proved to be more significant than the similarities.

Article Note: Ulrike Ehret, “Catholicism and Judaism in the Catholic Defence against Alfred Rosenberg, 1934-1938: Anti-Jewish Images in an Age of Race Science”

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Article Note: Ulrike Ehret, “Catholicism and Judaism in the Catholic Defence against Alfred Rosenberg, 1934-1938: Anti-Jewish Images in an Age of Race Science.” European History Quarterly, Vol. 40 No. 1 (2010): 35-56.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

This article examines the images of Jews and Judaism in the popular Catholic defence against Alfred Rosenberg’s anticlericalism and ‘neo-paganism’ between 1934 and 1938. It contributes to the debate on Catholic attitudes to Jews, and National Socialist anti-Semitism and racism during the Third Reich. Looking at the grassroots level of this defence, the article demonstrates how the hierarchy communicated traditional religious views on Jews and Judaism to a Catholic public, taking into account the restrictions imposed by a dictatorial regime as well as long-held anti-Jewish attitudes in German Catholicism. The article suggests that the popular literature clung to traditional creeds and values of the Catholic Church and defended biblical Jewry. Yet, at the same time, the defence was clad in the language of the time and consequently used images of Jews closer to National Socialist racial rhetoric. Taking the restrictions of the dictatorship into account, the article argues that this is to a considerable extent the result of the authors of the popular Church literature and the German bishops who failed to acknowledge that it was no longer possible to distinguish between a ‘good’ Jew and a ‘degenerate’ Jew in the face of the Third Reich’s sweeping anti-Semitism and its core ideology that made no distinction between racial and religious Jewishness.

Conference Announcement: Third Annual Powell and Heller Family Conference on Holocaust Education

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Conference Announcement: Third Annual Powell and Heller Family Conference on Holocaust Education, March 18-20, 2010, Pacific Lutheran University.

Host: Robert P. Ericksen, Kurt Mayer Professor of Holocaust Studies, Pacific Lutheran University

Pacific Lutheran University will host the Third Annual Powell and Heller Family Holocaust Conference, March 18-20, 2010, on the PLU campus. Professor Christopher Browning, internationally recognized author of “Ordinary Men” and a former professor at PLU, will deliver the opening Raphael Lemkin Lecture at 7 p.m. on March 18. His topic is, “Holocaust History and Survivor Testimony: Challenges, Limitations, and Opportunities.”

Other conference highlights include Professor Sara Horowitz and her ground-breaking research on “gender, genocide and Jewish memory”; Carl Wilkens, an eye-witness to the Rwandan genocide, testimony from Holocaust survivors; an exploration of the psychology of evil; and a special presentation of music from the Holocaust.

This conference is free and all sessions are open to the public. Registration is requested. The program on Saturday, March 20, is designed with educators in mind, and is focused on lessons of diversity and tolerance that can be learned through the Holocaust. Educator clock hours are available. For further information, please contact Brenda Murray at 253-535-7595 or the PLU Kurt Mayer Professor of Holocaust Studies, Robert Ericksen, at ericksrp@plu.edu.

For full details, including conference program and online registration, please visit www.plu.edu/holocaustconference.

Conference Announcement: International Symposium: Pius XII as the Nuncio in Germany

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Conference Announcement: International Symposium: Pius XII as the Nuncio in Germany, March 24-26, 2010, Münster, Germany.

By Mark Edward Ruff

The most controversial pontiff of the 20th century is serving as the subject of an international symposium sponsored by the European research network, “Pio XI” and the Excellence-Cluster, “Religion and Politics” at the University of Münster. Featuring nearly thirty speakers from a variety of nations including, Germany, the United States, Switzerland and Italy, the conference is intended to present the findings of researchers analyzing documents from the pontificate of Pius XI that were released in 2003 and 2006. According to the conference convener, Professor Hubert Wolf of the University of Münster, these documents provide a comprehensive picture of the Roman curie between 1922 and 1939 as well as new glimpses into the person and personality of Pacelli, who served as the Papal Nuncio in Germany and the Vatican Secretary of State before his appointment as Pope in 1939. They provide the basis for a major online edition of more than 6500 documents that will be culled and edited by researchers in Münster over the next twelve years and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

These documents shed new insights into the relations between the Roman curia and Catholic political parties across the European continent. One section of the conference will compare these relations between the Vatican and Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Bohemia and Austria. Another will compare Pacelli with other papal nuncios from the day in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, France and Austria.

Saul Friedländer, a historian at the University of California, Los Angeles and the author of a book, Pius XII and the Third Reich from 1965, was to have served as the keynote speaker. Because of his recent illness, however, the keynote roles have been given to Mordechay Lewy, Israeli Ambassador to the Vatican, and Romano Prodi, former President of the European Commission and former Prime Minister of Italy.

For more information, contact Mark Ruff at ruff@slu.edu.

Call for Papers: Pius XI and America – International Conference

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Call for Papers: Pius XI and America – International Conference, October 28-30, 2010, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.

The Vatican’s opening in 2006 of its archives for the period of the papacy of Pius XI (1922-1939) has prompted a burst of historical research which is not only shedding new light on the role of the Holy See and the Church in this period of extraordinary political and social turmoil, but also on some of the major world events of this period. In an effort to bring scholars from the many different countries who are working in these archives together and to highlight this emerging work to the broader scholarly community, a number of institutions have come together to create a research network. The principal sponsors of this initiative are the Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose Giovanni XIII in Bologna; the University of Münster; the École Française de Rome; the Biblioteca Ambrosiana of Milan; and Brown University (USA). Following a June 2009 conference in Milan and a March 2010 conference in Münster, a conference is planned for October 28-30, 2010 at Brown University.

A major theme of the Brown conference is the relationship between the Holy See and the Roman Catholic Church in the Americas during the papacy of Pius XI. However, other topics will also be treated, including a concluding debate focusing on the relationship between the Church and Italian Fascism. Scholars who have been working in the newly opened Vatican archives for this period are encouraged to submit proposals for papers to present at the conference to the organizing committee (listed below). Paper proposals, sent in the form of email attachments in Word, should be received by May 1. A limited number of places will also be available at the conference for scholars who are not on the program. Anyone interested in attending should contact the organizing committee for details.

As host of the conference, Brown University will cover the costs of housing and meals in Providence for those on the program. Participants will need to find other funds to cover the costs of travel. The closest international airport is Boston, approximately an hour from Providence. The Providence airport is within fifteen minutes of Brown University. Providence is also one hour by train from Boston and three hours by train from New York City.

Organizing committee (please send all communications to the chair):

David Kertzer, Brown University, USA, chair (David_Kertzer@Brown.edu)

Charles R. Gallagher, S.J., Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Switzerland

Alberto Melloni, Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose Giovanni XXIII, Bologna, Italy

John O’Malley, S.J., Georgetown University, USA

Hubert Wolf, University of Münster, Germany