Category Archives: Volume 16 Number 3 (September 2010)

Letter from the editors: September 2010

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2010

Letter from the editors: September 2010

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University College

The Marienkirche, near Alexanderplatz, Berlin, alongside the Fernsehturm.

We are pleased to offer our third issue of the ACCH Quarterly, successor publication to John S. Conway’s Association of Contemporary Church Historians Newsletter. This issue, like so many of Dr. Conway’s newsletters over the years, is chiefly devoted reviewing recent literature on Christianity in modern German and European history, including the perennially popular subjects of Pope Pius XII and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. As well, we are delighted to introduce our readers to a new scholar, Tina Alice Hansen of Oxford University, who presents an overview of her doctoral dissertation on the Church of England in the immediate post-war period.

Each issue of the ACCH Quarterly is 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 ACCH Quarterly. Please send these to Kyle Jantzen at kjantzen@ambrose.edu.

It is our sincere hope as editors that you enjoy the new e-journal format and content of the ACCH Quarterly. Over time, we plan 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/.

If you are affiliated with a university or college, we would encourage you to request that the ACCH Quarterly be added to your library’s electronic resources. Our ISSN number is 1923-1725, and your librarian will know how to add our journal to your library’s existing online resources.

On behalf of all of the ACCH Quarterly editors,

Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University College

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Review of Dyron Daughrity, The Changing World of Christianity

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2010

Review of Dyron Daughrity, The Changing World of Christianity (New York, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010), 290 pp. ISBN 978-14331-0452-7.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Dyron Daughrity teaches World Christianity at Pepperdine University in southern California. He rightly believes that such a course should now be taught from a global perspective and no longer with the earlier emphases on Europe or North America. Today there are far more Christians in Africa than in Western Europe or North America. The region of Latin America and the Caribbean is easily the most Christianized part of the world. These facts represent a changing of the guard. So this new text book reflects these new positions and stresses not only the geographical spread of Christianity, but also the fact that it is the most global, most diverse and perhaps the most influential religion in history. Such a comprehensive survey in the space of less than three hundred pages requires not only a skilful absorption of secondary sources, but also an ecumenical and eirenic disposition and an ability to adopt a judicious balance between the various components of such a study. It is good to say that Daughrity admirably displays these characteristics. While there is no complete bibliography, each chapter has extensive footnotes for the sources used, as well as questions appended for analysis which are designed to prompt further discussion. Despite some passages which call for greater precision and depth, Daughrity’s lucid style makes for easy undergraduate reading.

Daughrity’s approach is geographical, dividing the world into eight regions, but beginning with the historical evolution from the Middle East and ending in Oceania, suitably for the world’s largest faith. Following the lead of such current scholars as Lammin Sanneh and Philip Jenkins, Daughrity traces the shift in numbers from the northern hemisphere to the south, when he sees the tipping point as occurring around 1980. The reception of the Christian message as brought by earlier northern missionaries made all the difference, and demography will maintain the momentum. While he warns that religious growth is uncontrollable and unpredictable, he is clearly optimistic for the future of Christianity, especially in its more free-flowing Pentecostal forms.

His survey of each region begins with a general description of the political and social background, followed by a section on the background of Christianity in this area. He then moves to an examination of present-day Christianity, followed by a short piece on each country. This allows him to make interesting and sometimes provocative comparisons. For instance, he suggests that the present weakness of Christianity in the Middle East can be traced back to the divisions in Christian ranks at the time of the Muslim conquests. The solidarity of Islam and its tighter control over its adherents has prevented any Christian resurgence. By contrast, the defeat of Muslim forces in Spain in the late Middle Ages can be attributed to the solidarity – fanaticism? – shown by the Catholics of that region. He even suggests that, had Ferdinand and Isabella failed, then the whole exploration of the New World might well have been undertaken by Muslims.

In Eastern Europe, Daughrity of course welcomes the overthrow of Communist rule with its attendant persecution of the churches, but suggests that in Russia, the residue of the Soviet oppression of faith is like a cultural mist which does not evaporate instantaneously. In Hungary, however, the overthrow of Communist rule has revived freedom of religion and made that country a leading example of religious pluralism.

Turning to Western Europe, Daughrity explores the reasons why this region, which was Christianity’s heartland for so many centuries, is presently experiencing a period of increased scepticism and secularism. Europe for so long provided the leadership corps, widened the theological and scholarly horizons and mobilized the missionary forces which carried Christianity to all corners of the globe. But in recent decades a widespread disillusionment with “organized religion” has been notable. In part, the political changes of the last two centuries have almost everywhere broken the ties between Church and State which were increasingly seen as barriers to individual freedom, or to some at least a hindrance to spiritual growth. Furthermore the rapid changes in immigration and demographic patterns have led to a pluralisation of religious allegiances in Europe. Many people now fear that Islam may become the predominant religion in twenty-first century Europe. The “De-Christianization of Europe” is already being discussed. At the same time, the two major wars of the last century undoubtedly challenged all authority patterns. Dietrich Bonhoeffer provocatively argued in favour of a religionless Christianity, one where Christian social ethics would be practised without the burden of authority or doctrine. Daughrity supports the view taken by Grace Davie that Western Europeans are in a phase of “believing but not belonging”. When humanitarian movements strikingly follow Christianity’s prophetic voice, one could argue that, in this sense, Christianity is being reinvented.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, despite the brutal even genocidal manner of Christianity’s introduction five centuries ago, this region nevertheless now encompasses the heartland of Christianity. Paradoxically, this legacy imposed by the European conquerors is now vibrant and indigenized. But it still contains overtones of injustice, especially towards the original native peoples. Predominantly Catholic,Latin America nevertheless has seen an explosive growth of Protestantism, especially Pentecostalism. This community has the advantage of a much more flexible church polity and is free from the regrettable burden of Catholic history.

In his account of Christianity inNorth America, Daughrity lays stress on the darker side of the impact on native peoples and the long support for slavery. Nevertheless, its ethos is very different from that found inEurope. The absence of any politically dominant state church led to an amazing plurality of Christian endeavours, particularly in revivals, which have continued to the present. This resilient tradition, he hopes, will be enough to counter the corrupting influence of acquisitive capitalism.

The remarkable fact about Asiais that Christianity, as brought by European colonialists, has expanded rapidly now that the imperial era is finished. The successful indigenization of this originally Asian faith has seemingly been able to avoid the kind of syncretism which has weakened Christian witness elsewhere. Yet Asiais still riven by religious conflicts, especially in Muslim majority areas, and the future of Christianity remains problematic.

Africa is now second to Latin America in having the most Christians in a cultural block. Again, this growth has accelerated after decolonization. While Ethiopiacan boast of a continuous Christian adherence without European intervention since the early centuries, most of the continent’s Christians resulted from the nineteenth century missionaries’ activities, both Protestants and Catholics, of such well-known figures as David Livingstone. Today,Africa as a whole struggles to find political and social models of its own. The lack of success may perhaps be attributed to past colonialism, or to the effect of the slave trade, or to the indigenous poverty which hampers the kind of developments seen in Asia. Nevertheless, the faith thrives. Daughrity’s survey of the background of African Independent Churches is very helpful. His conclusion that Africa is suffused with religion seems well documented.

Finally there is Oceania, where a multiplicity of Christian influences has spread across the many archipelagos, making Christianity the most universally accepted and integrated cultural force. But this process is severely understudied, due to the marginalization of Christian missionary work by anthropologists who concentrated on tribal indigenous cultures. Daughrity pleads for a more balanced account of Christianity’s contribution to this fascinating and far-flung area.

One hundred years ago, Protestant missionaries were calling for the “evangelization of the world in this generation”. Daughrity claims that this goal has now been achieved in that every part of the globe has heard the call of Christ and the responses are still reverberating. Christianity, in its various and sometimes conflicting forms, affects virtually every country and society. Daughrity’s survey of the various factors involved in this world-wide process will be appreciated by students as a valuable guide for further and deeper investigation.

 

 

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Review of Tanja Hetzer, “Deutsche Stunde”: Volksgemeinschaft und Antisemitismus in der politischen Theologie bei Paul Althaus

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2010

Review of Tanja Hetzer, “Deutsche Stunde”: Volksgemeinschaft und Antisemitismus in der politischen Theologie bei Paul Althaus (Munich: Allitera Verlag, 2009), 296pp.  ISBN: 978-3-86520-328-1.

By Christopher Probst, Howard Community College

Tanja Hetzer’s in-depth study of the widely published, genteel Erlangen theologian Paul Althaus originally appeared as the author’s Ph.D. dissertation for the University of Sussex.  It is a work of intellectual history in the finest sense of that term.  In addition to shedding new light on his personal development and career, Hetzer mines a broad range of Althaus’s works, providing rich analysis of his thinking about Jews and Judaism over the course of a career that spanned many decades.  The fullness of the biographical information is woven together with Althaus’s developing thought, giving the reader a full-orbed picture of this crucial but bleak aspect of his life and work.

During the Nazi era, Althaus self-consciously occupied a place in the Protestant “middle.”  That is, he did not align himself formally with either the generally Nazi-wary Confessing Church or the largely pro-Nazi German Christians.  Even so, argues Hetzer, the Protestant middle propagated many of the same völkisch and antisemitic tropes and cultural codes as did their counterparts in the German Christian movement.  This realization is heightened by the fact that Althaus sought consciously to build bridges between the middle and the more “moderate” members of the German Christian movement (17, 241).  In impressive fashion, Hetzer situates Althaus’s urbane and theologically sophisticated antisemitism in the intellectual environs of neo-conservative Lutheran theology but also in the broader cultural currents of anti-egalitarianism, anti-liberalism and the “Wilhelmine mentality of authority, power and severity” (40).  The author thus forwards the picture of a theologian who traded in antisemitic stereotypes, but whose worldview was nonetheless fairly complex.  This was no rabble-rouser on the margins of Protestant Christianity.  Althaus was a gifted and revered theologian with a public face.

Althaus maintained that the Protestant churches “greeted the German turning point of 1933 as a gift and miracle of God,” ascribing theological significance to the ascent of the Nazi regime, and marveling that the German people had been saved from both “the abyss” and “hopelessness” (23).  He also co-authored the Erlangen Opinion on the Aryan Paragraph (1933), in which he and his colleague Werner Elert called for the implementation of the Aryan Paragraph in the church, demanding that Jewish Christians refrain from taking “official positions” in the Protestant church.  In the early postwar era he at first chaired the denazification committee at Erlangen, then was suspended from his university post (largely due to his anti-democratic, pro-Nazi pronouncements in Die deutsche Stunde der Kirche (The German Hour of the Church, 1933) and Obrigkeit und Führertum (Authority and Leadership, 1936)), and finally was re-instated to his chair approximately one year later (20).  Such important biographical details are coupled with detailed analysis of his theological writings and represent the book’s greatest strength.

Another strength of the book is the author’s convincing portrayal of Althaus’s long-term ideological development.  Crucial to this is her discussion of Althaus’s Weimar-era writings.  Hetzer demonstrates convincingly that “his worldview solidified far before the seizure of power of the National Socialists” (11).  A key component of this worldview is Althaus’s theologically sophisticated concept of the “orders of creation” (Schöpfungsordnungen).  In his 1934 work Theologie der Ordnungen (Theology of the Orders) Althaus described these orders, which include family, Volk and nationality, as divinely sanctioned forms which represent “essential conditions of the historical life of mankind.”  Hetzer demonstrates both that Althaus’s orders of creation theology was well-established by the time the Nazis came to power and that the Erlangen theologian connected the orders to his refined system of theological ethics (17, 143).

In the mid-1920s, German Protestantism’s relationship to the “völkisch question” was “still in many respects unsettled” (149).  Due in large part to Althaus, the issue moved from the margins of the Protestant discussion to the center.  His experiences with the German völkisch movement while he served as a military chaplain in occupied Poland during the First World War had helped to shape his views about the Volk.  Then, in 1927 the 39-year-old Althaus delivered a lecture titled “Kirche und Volkstum” (“Church and Nationality”) to a church congress at Königsberg.  The lecture, argues Hetzer, signified a “caesura” with respect to Protestant attitudes toward the Volk and indeed toward the so-called “Jewish Question” (151ff.).  Here, Althaus offered a carefully constructed new political theology in which he complained of an “invasion by foreigners” (Überfremdung) in the areas of the arts, fashion and finance which he believed had led to a disintegration of the national community (Volksgemeinschaft).  The present distress of the German Volk, he railed, was due to the “Jewish threat.”  Even while generally avoiding open and direct antisemitism, Althaus “theologically legitimized and stylized” hatred of Jews (154).

The author includes an insightful discussion of the heated controversies engendered by Althaus’s antisemitic “entanglements” during the Third Reich (15-18).  It appears that this dark facet of Althaus’s past did not really begin to come to light until at least the late 1970s.  Also included is a very helpful and thorough bibliography of Althaus’s works, arranged chronologically (266-278).

This excellent study substantially augments our previous knowledge about the Erlangen theologian – and by extension the Protestant “middle” – during Weimar and the Third Reich.  There are no radical interpretive departures from previous literature on Althaus (e.g., Robert Ericksen’s Theologians Under Hitler).  Yet, the beauty of Hetzer’s book lies in its richness, depth and breadth – all of which enhance considerably our understanding of the anti-Judaism and antisemitism present within the Protestant church during Weimar and the Third Reich.  An English translation would enable students and others without facility in the German language access to this work, which is essential reading for anyone interested in German Protestantism during the first half of the twentieth century.

 

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Review of Hubert Wolf, Pope and Devil: The Vatican’s Archives and the Third Reich

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2010

Review of Hubert Wolf, Pope and Devil: The Vatican’s Archives and the Third Reich, translated by Kenneth Kronenberg (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 325 pp.  ISBN: 978-0-674-05081-5.

By Heath A. Spencer, Seattle University

In this English translation of Papst und Teufel (first published in 2008), Hubert Wolf successfully challenges the conspiracy theories and sensationalism of a number of playwrights, novelists, journalists, and historians who have assessed the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Nazi state.  Remarkably, he does so without letting Catholic leaders off the hook or covering up their very real moral failures.  Making use of recently released materials from the Vatican Secret Archives, he has produced a provocative and highly readable account of the “view from Rome” during the turbulent decades between the two world wars, as well as new insights into the way Pope Pius XI and Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) understood, interpreted, and responded to the early stages of a catastrophe that culminated in world war and genocide after 1939.

Wolf begins with an analysis of Pacelli as nuncio in Germany from 1917 to 1929.  The failure of Benedict XV’s peace appeal in 1917 seems to have convinced Pacelli that direct papal intervention in the Great War (and future conflicts) was ill-advised.   Pacelli’s reports from this period also reveal his preoccupation with the ills of modernism (ranging from liberalism and socialism to contraceptives and coeducational sports) and his desire to make state-oriented German Catholic bishops more responsive to Vatican directives.   Although Pacelli was anti-democratic and anti-socialist, he was pragmatic enough to recognize the need for the Catholic Center Party to work with the Social Democrats in the Weimar Republic, and although he displayed a level of anti-Semitism that was typical among European Catholics in this era, he strongly condemned the virulent racism of völkisch groups he encountered in Germany during the 1920s.

Wolf follows up with an assessment of attitudes toward Jews and Judaism in the Vatican during the 1920s.  Unlike Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, who posits a uniform and essentialist Catholic anti-Semitism, Wolf finds evidence of diverse views ranging from the philo-Semitism of Amici Israel, a Catholic organization promoting Jewish-Christian reconciliation, to the vehemently anti-Jewish orientation of Raffaele Merry del Val, head of the Holy Office under Pius XI.   Unfortunately, Pius XI took the side of the Holy Office in a controversy over reform of the Good Friday liturgy, leading to the censure of philo-Semites in the Congregation of Rites and the dissolution of Amici Israel.  Pius XI’s famous condemnation of anti-Semitism in 1928 was an attempt to deflect accusations that might emerge when he dissolved a pro-Jewish Catholic organization, as well as a way to distinguish between an “acceptable” Catholic anti-Judaism and racist anti-Semitism.   The back story Wolf reveals to Pius XI’s decree is a more nuanced story of moral failure than the one Goldhagen tells, but it still seriously undermines simplistic representations of Pius XI as a courageous opponent of anti-Semitism.

Wolf’s chapter on the Concordat of 1933 challenges the “package-deal thesis” promoted by Klaus Scholder, who suggested that Pacelli, as Papal Secretary of State, pressured German bishops to lift the ban on Catholic membership in the Nazi Party and encouraged the Center Party to support the Enabling Act—both in order to secure passage of a Concordat with the German government.   Nuncial reports as well as Pacelli’s notes on meetings with Pius XI and various ambassadors to the Holy See reveal that Pacelli was caught off guard by the German bishops when they announced they were lifting the ban.  Wolf argues persuasively that if Pacelli had been pulling the strings, he would have demanded something in return for this concession.  Instead, he had to negotiate the Concordat without some of his key bargaining chips.

In the end, both Pius XI and Pacelli made unpalatable compromises in order to preserve the Church’s ability to provide pastoral care under hostile regimes.   It was easy for them, as well as the German episcopate, to condemn Nazi ideologues like Alfred Rosenberg, but much harder to openly condemn a head of state—even Adolf Hitler.  In such cases, they preferred indirect approaches, refuting ideas that were contrary to Catholic teaching without naming the authors of those ideas.  Even in the context of race war and genocide after 1939, Pacelli (by then Pope Pius XII) indicated that he preferred public action by German bishops to direct intervention by the Vatican.   When such action was insufficient, Pius XII still considered his own hands tied.

Pope and Devil, by revealing the decision-making processes in the Vatican in such rich detail, presents us with a nuanced story that includes moral successes and failures as well as a large gray zone in between.   Wolf’s theological training, ordination, and prior years of experience in the Vatican Archives work to his advantage as he assesses the interplay of individual personalities and institutional dynamics in the Catholic hierarchy.  His ability to transmit his scholarship to specialists and non-specialists alike earned him the Communicator Award from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in 2004, and it continues to play out in his leadership of a critical online edition of Pacelli’s reports to Rome during the latter’s years as nuncio in Germany.  Some American readers will be disappointed that Wolf does not do more to engage credible scholarship on this side of the Atlantic, but perhaps his priority was to address readers who are more likely to have heard of figures like Goldhagen, John Cornwell, and Dan Brown—even though such authors make relatively easy targets.  In any case, the book is a refreshing contribution to a longstanding but still unresolved debate about the Vatican’s responses to National Socialism, particularly where Pacelli was involved.  It will not end the “Pius war,” but by demolishing the most egregious misrepresentations on both sides, it points the way toward more productive discussions in the future.

 

 

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Review of Shalom Goldman, Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, and the Idea of the Promised Land

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2010

Review of Shalom Goldman, Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, and the Idea of the Promised Land (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 367 Pp. ISBN: 9780807833445.

By Steven Schroeder, University of the Fraser Valley

In Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, and the Idea of the Promised Land, Shalom Goldman highlights the work of a wide variety of Zionist sympathizers—from diplomats, humanitarians, and literary figures, to mystics, rabbis, Christian preachers, and religious radicals—who served the goal of Jewish statehood, albeit with varied intentions. He argues that “Jewish Zionism would not have succeeded without the help of Christian Zionism” (p. 99), and illustrates this claim in six accounts; three from ca. 1850 to the founding of Israel in 1948, and three from 1948 to the present day.

An introductory chapter precedes these accounts, in which the reader will find a thorough historical overview of Christian and Jewish views of the Holy Land. Goldman stresses the less studied aspect of how the diverse, but overlapping, religious views of Christian and Jewish Zionists served the Zionist cause. He asserts that the two groups started out in very different positions in the late nineteenth century—with Christians focusing on pre-millennial dispensationalism, and Jews on the security of the Jewish people—but slowly merged their efforts in a more intentional and overt way from the 1970s on.

The first half of the book focuses on the century leading up to the creation of the state ofIsrael, highlighting the work of Christian and Jewish Zionists, the relationships forged between these two groups, and the results of their individual, and combined, efforts. The central figures in this section, and throughout the book, reveal many atypical thoughts and actions vis-à-vis the traditional views of their co-religionists, and the status quo at the time. For instance, the first chapter focuses largely on the work of British journalist and politician Laurence Oliphant, who attempted to establish a Jewish state in Palestine via Zionist settlement and diplomacy. Oliphant was a gentile humanitarian who claimed to have left Christianity in the 1850s in favor of a self-styled eclectic mysticism (p. 61). His unqualified support for the establishment of a Jewish state was an anomaly during a time when nearly all Christian Zionists assumed the accompanying conversion of Jews to Christianity.

Reverend William Hechler, Herbert Danby, and Arminius Vambery were other key Christian Zionists who stood out due to their pioneering work. Hechler, a chaplain in the British embassy in Vienna during the late nineteenth century, had joined forces with Oliphant in supporting Jewish pogrom victims in Russia during the 1880s. In Vienna, he utilized his position to further the Zionist cause by brokering meetings between his friend Theodor Herzl and the Grand Duke of Baden, as well as Kaiser William II. Unlike Oliphant but like most Christian Zionists, Hechler’s interest in Jewish affairs and Zionism was steeped in Christian dispensationalism. He declared that Jewish Zionists “were unaware that they were fulfilling Christian messianic expectations” (p. 103). Continuing in this vein in the next chapter is the work of Herbert Danby, who published works (e.g. in Bible Lands, a journal he founded) that explicated Christian Zionism. He also translated, from Hebrew to English, Rabbi Joseph Klausner’s path breaking book, Jesus of Nazareth. Klausner’s book and Danby’s translation were intended to defuse Christian-Jewish antagonism and convince Jews and Christians that they served the same God and the same political goals of the Zionist movement. Arminius Vambery held similar beliefs while serving as a British agent in the Ottoman Empire, where he furthered Hechler’s ambitions by arranging for Herzl an audience with Sultan Abdul Hamid in 1901. To be sure, Vambery, like Oliphant, was not a typical Christian Zionist, but rather a man of Jewish descent who adhered to a wide range of spiritual beliefs.

Nearly all of the Jews in this study had abandoned their assimilationist views to embrace Zionism in the wake of antisemitic pogroms throughout Europe during the late 1800s. The author stresses that these Zionists benefitted from Christian Zionist support. Jews who are highlighted in the first half of the book were mostly secularists, reflecting the majority Zionist view during the period in question, and they are presented as secondary figures to the Christian Zionists at this time. Nephtali Imber was a marginal Zionist figure, claiming fame for writing Hatikvah, a famous Zionist anthem that became the Israeli national anthem in 2004. Theodor Herzl’s and Joseph Klausner’s writings and work factored more significantly, but the author stresses that they relied heavily on gentile support (e.g. Hechler and Danby).

The second half of the book focuses on numerous individuals who continued to support the state of Israel after its founding in 1948, along with some present day figures who have taken up the cause. Most of the cases in this section reveal the significance, and continuance, of the work highlighted in the previous section and feature some individuals who broke with tradition and some who deepened it. Catholics Gilbert Keith (G.K.) Chesterton and Jacques Maritain are credited for breaking the mould of Vatican anti-Zionism and contributing to the radical shifts in postwar Catholic teaching, particularly during the 1960s (p. 198). Conversely, we find in the Protestant camp a strengthening and deepening of Hechler and Danby’s teachings in the thought and action of the likes of Pat Robertson and John Hagee, who unequivocally support the state of Israel—including the expansion of settlements in Palestinian territories—seeing it as a harbinger of the mass conversion of Jews to Christianity and the second coming of Christ. Ignoring these latter components, adherents of the Jewish settler movement (e.g., Gush Emunim, p. 286), find strong allies in these fundamentalist Christians.

Zeal for Zion is a welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship that examines both Christian and Jewish contributions to the Zionist enterprise. To be sure, some readers will question how representative of each respective group these individuals were, how cooperative Christian-Jewish Zionist work has been, and what, particularly, binds all of the disparate people and groups in the overall development of the Zionist project. Still, each account reveals important details and many surprising elements of Zionist history. Taken together with the author’s personal experiences (e.g. the influence of gentile pro-Zionist writers like Jorge Luis Borges during the 1960s and 1970s), it makes for a fascinating, significant book.

The valuable findings in this book provide numerous possibilities for future researchers, including further exploration of the ambivalent, if not antagonistic, base of this Christian-Jewish relationship in the Zionist movement. Indeed, the bases for Christian and Jewish Zionism have changed little since the nineteenth century, with each side serving its own purposes, with few exceptions. Religious radicals from both faiths have not fostered peace and mutual recognition in the Palestine/Israel conflict, or in Christian-Jewish relations. Moreover, the long-term ramifications of their views have not been explored in much depth. Within this book, Goldman has provided numerous examples of exceptional individuals who, while serving their respective goals, inadvertently engendered innovative engagement in Christian-Jewish dialogue—innovations that could be explored further and utilized for peaceful purposes.

 

 

 

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Review of Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy: A Righteous Gentile vs. the Third Reich

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2010

Review of Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy: A Righteous Gentile vs. the Third Reich (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), pp. 608, ISBN 1595551387.

By Victoria J. Barnett, General Editor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English Edition and Director of Church Relations, U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

This is a badly flawed book. On one level it is simply a popular retelling of Bonhoeffer’s life drawn from familiar sources such as the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English edition, the Bethge biography, and Love Letters from Cell 92. Metaxas has also looked at the outtakes of the Doblmeier documentary interviews with Bonhoeffer’s students, so there are a few new anecdotes here. Much of the book, however, is a familiar patchwork of lengthy direct citations from the DBWE volumes, the Bethge biography, and Love Letters. It is also a consciously evangelical (in the U. S. context) interpretation of Bonhoeffer, his life, and times.

Neither of these factors are obstacles per se to a good new look at Bonhoeffer. A shorter biography of Bonhoeffer for the general audience is long overdue, and this one is readable enough. And there is certainly room for an evangelical examination of Bonhoeffer’s theological development in the context of his life and times. Bonhoeffer’s spirituality, his eloquent articulation of the life of discipleship in the world, and his powerful witness have always given him a wide following among evangelicals, and the trajectory of his theological and political development definitely has the character of a spiritual journey. A solid evangelical examination of Bonhoeffer in the historical context of what was happening to churches and theologians, both in this country and in Germany, would be fascinating—particularly if it dealt with the still under-researched discussions about Nazism that occurred among Baptists, Pentecostals and others at the evangelical end of the spectrum.

Unfortunately, that’s not the book Metaxas has written. There are two central problems here. The first is that he has a very shaky grasp of the political, theological, and ecumenical history of the period. Hence he has pieced together the historical and theological backdrop for the Bonhoeffer story using examples from various works, sometimes completely out of context and often without understanding their meaning. He focuses too much on minor details and overlooks some of the major ones (such as the role of the Lutheran bishops and the “intact” churches). The second is that theologically, the book is a polemic, written to make the case that Bonhoeffer was in reality an evangelical Christian whose battle was not just against the Nazis but all the liberal Christians who enabled them (in fact, Metaxas is much kinder to the secular humanists, but that’s probably because they were members of the Bonhoeffer family).

The result is a terrible oversimplification and at times misinterpretation of Bonhoeffer’s thought, the theological and ecclesial world of his times, and the history of Nazi Germany. There are numerous errors, some small, some rather stunning. The most glaring errors occur in his account of the church struggle, which is portrayed as the battle between the Nazi-controlled German Christians against Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who here leads the Confessing Church together with Martin Niemoeller. In Metaxas’ version, the Barmen declaration repudiates Nazi anti-Semitism, the Confessing Church breaks away from the Reich Church, and the neutral or intact churches are completely absent from the scene (there are not even index entries for Bishops Wurm, Marahrens, or Meiser, the last of whom is referred to but not named). Bonhoeffer of course leads the way, both in the name of true Christianity and on behalf of the Jews. This oversimplification of the battle lines and the complexities of the church struggle (and of Bonhoeffer himself) characterizes the portrayal of the entire period. National Socialism and its leaders are of course unambiguously anti-Christian. Most of the generals in the resistance against Hitler, we learn, are “serious Christians”. Luther’s anti-Semitism is attributed to his digestive troubles, and Metaxas does not address how anti-Semitism, whatever its source, had permeated the mindset of German Protestantism and the wider culture. There is a brief nod to the fact that Franz Hildebrandt is Christian but of Jewish descent according to the racial laws. Elsewhere, however, there is little distinction between converted Jews and secular or observant Jews, and his entire discussion of the persecution of the Jews and the churches’ responses is clueless. In some places it is offensive, as when Metaxas argues that supporters of the Aryan paragraph were not really anti-Semitic: “Some believed that an ethnically Jewish person who was honestly converted to Christian faith should be part of a church composed of other converted Jews. Many sincere white American Christians felt that way about Christians of other races until just a few decades ago.” (Why, some of their best friends …). Along the way Metaxas inserts shorthand summaries that range from the silly (Luther as “the Catholic monk who invented Protestantism”) to the bizarre (the difference between Barth and Harnack is compared to contemporary debates “between strict Darwinian evolutionists and advocates of so-called Intelligent Design”).

All of this, however, leads to a selective misreading of Bonhoeffer’s theological development and a profound misunderstanding of what happened to the German churches between 1933 and 1945. The failure of the GermanEvangelicalChurchunder Nazism was not that it was filled with formalistic, legalistic Lutherans who just needed to form a personal relationship to Jesus, but that it was filled with Christians whose understanding of their faith had so converged with German national culture that it tainted both their politics and their theology. (As an interesting aside, when I first interviewed Eberhard Bethge in 1985 he explicitly compared this kind of Protestantism to what he had seen of the American religious right. A thoughtful evangelical reading of the development of Bonhoeffer’s extensive writings on the church-state relationship and the public role of religion would be a major contribution to the field, but Metaxas doesn’t even mention that aspect of Bonhoeffer’s thought). What Metaxas fails to grasp is that there were many devout, well-educated, Bible-reading Christians in Germany who read their Losung each morning and fully supported National Socialism.

Moreover, Bonhoeffer’s theology, precisely because it was the theology of a devout, reflective, and faithful Christian, was far more complex than the narrow ideological confines to which Metaxas tries to restrict him. While Metaxas spends a lot of time on Bonhoeffer’s role in the ecumenical movement, he ignores the fact that many of Bonhoeffer’s ecumenical allies were precisely the kinds of “social gospel” Christians (and in some cases of a “liberal” bent) that he so despises. He also ignores the pacifism that shaped ecumenical leaders throughout Europe and dismisses its influence on Bonhoeffer himself. While Bonhoeffer may not have become a complete pacifist, he took it seriously, and his reflections on pacifism decisively shaped his readings of certain texts and it certainly shaped his early ecumenical activism. Metaxas grounds much of his theological argument upon Bonhoeffer’s early critique of American theology, particularly when he was at Union Seminary in 1931-32. Yet as critical as Bonhoeffer was of his professors and fellow students, he himself acknowledged how much he had gained from that year, and it’s striking that when he returned in 1939 it was with a nuanced acknowledgment of the strengths of U. S. Christianity (in light, I think, of the failures he had witnessed within German Protestantism). His essay “Protestantism without Reformation” reflects on the strengths and weaknesses of U. S. Protestantism at all points of the American church spectrum, not just the liberal end. Nonetheless, according to Metaxas, by the time Bonhoeffer leaves New York in July 1939 he has had an epiphany: the plight of the fundamentalists in the United States is just like the battle of the Confessing Church back home. “Here they were fighting against the corrupting influences of the theologians at Union and Riverside (Church), and at home the fight was against the Reich church.”

Well. There’s something going on here, but it doesn’t have much to do with real history and it’s certainly not Bonhoeffer. This book is clearly intended as theological biography, but it fails because Bonhoeffer’s theology cannot be read ahistorically (as Andrew Chandler’s astutely noted in his 2003 review of the Bonhoeffer Werke, “The Quest for the Historical Bonhoeffer”), and it certainly can’t be understood without addressing the complexities of Bonhoeffer’s thought as he struggled with the realities of his times.

That, in fact, is both the challenge and the potential for reading Bonhoeffer. Looking at Bonhoeffer in historical context removes him from any narrow theological box, evangelical or liberal. Bonhoeffer was deeply pious in a way that some liberal Christians (again, in the contemporary U.S. sense of that word) might find hard to connect with and it’s that piety that speaks directly to evangelicals around the world. At the same time, he was a highly intellectual and critical Christian, and therein lies his appeal for Christians on other points of the spectrum. More importantly, Bonhoeffer had witnessed firsthand what happens when faith and ideology converge. Thus, during the dark war years, when some church leaders, including his ecumenical colleagues, called for a “rechristianization” of Europe and a return to Christian values, Bonhoeffer explicitly repudiated it, both in Ethics and in his prison letters. He also warned his students at Finkenwalde against the dangers of an individualistic “personal relationship” to Christ. Bonhoeffer’s central concern remained the life of Christian faith in the world, yet his understanding of Christianity had been shaken and altered by the failures of his church under Nazism. In 1942 he wrote of “a Christendom enmeshed in guilt beyond all measure” and I personally think that any interpretation of his famous discussion of “religionless Christianity” needs to start there. A thoughtful and honest evangelical analysis of the complete Bonhoeffer, not just the parts that go down easy, would be useful. But Metaxas has simply pulled together the passages he likes and ignored anything that might complicate the picture he wants to create—the same thing of which he accuses others, when he writes on page 466: “Many outré theological fashions have subsequently tried to claim Bonhoeffer as their own and have ignored much of his oeuvre to do so … (they) have made of these few skeletal fragments something like a theological Piltdown man, a jerry-built but sincerely believed hoax.” Yes, indeed.

 

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New Research: Church of England and the Early Cold War, 1945-48

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2010

New Research: Church of England and the Early Cold War, 1945-48.

By Tina Alice Hansen,Trinity College, Oxford University

Tina Alice Hansen is a D.Phil. Candidate at Trinity College, Oxford University, studying in the Department of Politics and International Relations. Here she describes her dissertation research. Ms. Hanson can be reached at tina.hansen@politics.ox.ac.uk.

This thesis investigates the role of Church of England in the early Cold War years, 1945-1948. It has an institutional focus in the Church of England itself. It sets out to explore the Church’s collaboration with British government institutions, and involvement in the rehabilitation of the British Zone in Germany and the subsequent shaping of the Cold War framework. The role of Church of England in the shaping of a ‘Spiritual Union’ established between United Kingdom and United States will be investigated with particular examination of the role of the church in the shaping of a Cold War rhetoric and mindset.

It is known that leading bishops within Church of England had a significant role in creating a Cold War strategy and culture in Britain and abroad. This thesis takes these arguments further and looks at the double role of the church as a politically powerful institutional actor in Britain itself, where the church was in a position of both autonomy and state power through its links to the British government, and as a well-established trans-national actor with strong global network ties. It thus situates itself within recent historiography on the cold war as a domestic cultural phenomenon, as well as with political-scientific scholarship on institutions.

Based on archival work in United Kingdom, Germany and the United States, three cases will be examined: the role of Church of England in the re-construction and division of Germany; the role of Church of England domestically in the shaping of a Cold War mindset and, finally, Church of England and the idea of a Western Spiritual Union as a counter force to Communism.

The case studies involve examination of the Church’s work with the Labour government and the Control Commission in Germany, as well as with other churches in the UK. It also involves examination of Church of England’s influence through the British Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches and its close collaboration with the German Evangelical Church.

Although the analysis will be mainly of the church, the focus of the study will also need to be upon the British government as well, given my interest in the dialectic relationship between these two institutions and the institutional implications of decisions reached among them. The aim of this study is not to establish an academic account of the relationship between state church and state in Britain in general, but to come to an understanding of how they got to a mutual understanding of how to confront the challenges of the beginning Cold War, based on their experiences from total war, Nazi atrocities, the rise of Communism, and a shifting power balance in Europe, as well as their institutional relationship within the UK power structure. Further, I am interested in how the church managed its spiritual obligations while performing as a political and diplomatic institution; how the Cold War shaped the mindset of the Christian churches; how the British state managed to ‘harness the power of Christianity’ for political purposes; and how their joint strategy fitted into the larger puzzle of western political strategy-making in this period.

 

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Conference Announcement: Intellectual Freedom and the Church

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2010

Conference Announcement: Intellectual Freedom and the Church: A Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte/Contemporary Church History  Symposium, November 19-21, 2010, George Bell House, Chichester Cathedral.

By Andrew Chandler, University of Chichester

The George Bell Institute of the University of Chichester is pleased to host a Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte/Contemporary Church History Symposium on “Intellectual Freedom and the Church,” this coming November 19-21 at George Bell House, Chichester Cathedral. Scholarly contributions will be made by Gerhard Besier, Robert Ericksen, Charlotte Hansen, Torleiv Austad and others.

For details, please contact Dr. Andrew Chandler, George Bell Institute, University of Chichester, PO19 6PE email: A.Chandler@chi.ac.uk.

 

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Conference Announcement: Secularization and the Transformation of Religion in the U.S. and Germany after 1945

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2010

Conference Announcement: Secularization and the Transformation of Religion in the U.S. and Germany after 1945, March 17-19, 2011, German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.

By Mark Edward Ruff

At first glance, the religious landscapes of the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States would seem to be worlds apart. Religion appears to play a much more significant role in the American public arena than in the German. Televangelists, radio evangelists, Roman Catholic bishops and evangelicals have flexed their political muscle and have become important players in American political life. The United States records higher rates of attendance at church and mass. In fact, however, religious institutions in both societies have had to struggle with similar challenges—emerging multi-religious realities, strong secular movements and declining membership rosters, processes that they often subsume under the heading of “secularization.” Religious bodies in both nations have had to recognize that they operate in a competitive media-driven cultural and religious marketplace, even if the transformations emerging in this new environment are not as outwardly visible inGermanyas in theUnited States.

This international conference seeks to explore the history and meaning of secularization and the transformation of the religious landscape of both the United States and Germany after 1945. It will challenge traditional narratives that focus on the disappearance of religion in modernity and instead highlight the transformation of religion within larger societal changes. Our approach is transnational, inter-disciplinary, and multi-confessional.

The conference will focus on modernization processes in U.S. and German religious life after 1945, when churches in both countries were increasingly challenged by rapid changes in the societies around them. The rise of television, the development of new forms of public discourse, and processes like democratization, liberalization and the increased influence of science all influenced and transformed the self-understanding of religious bodies and produced new forms of religious life and discourse.

For more information, contact Dr. Uta Andrea Balbier, German Historical Institute, 1607 New Hampshire Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20009-2562, U.S.A., or at balbier@ghi-dc.org

and www.ghi-dc.org.

Conveners:

Uta A. Balbier, German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.

Wilhelm Damberg, Bochum University

Lucian Hoelscher, Bochum University

Mark Ruff, Saint Louis University

Contact:

Mark Ruff, St. Louis University

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Conference Announcement: Celebrating the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English Edition

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2010

Conference Announcement: Celebrating the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English Edition, November 13-15, 2011, Union Theological Seminary, New York.

By Victoria J. Barnett, General Editor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English Edition and Director of Church Relations, U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Intellectual Freedom and the Church

A Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte/ Contemporary Church History Symposium

Hosted by the George Bell Institute, University of Chichester,

19-21 November 2010

At George Bell House, Chichester Cathedral

 

With contributions from Gerhard Besier, Robert Ericksen, Charlotte Hansen, Torleiv Austad and others.

For details please contact Dr Andrew Chandler, George Bell Institute, University of Chichester, PO19 6PE email: A.Chandler@chi.ac.uk

With the publication this summer of Letters and Papers from Prison in the Bonhoeffer Works English Edition, the twenty-year project approaches completion. Volume 15 (covering the period from 1937-1939) will be published next year and the files of the final two volumes will be at Fortress Press. An electronic edition is also being planned.

The Editorial Board is pleased to announce that an international conference to celebrate this monument of theological publishing will be held November 13-15, 2011, at Union Theological Seminary, New York.

In addition to honoring translators, editors, donors and other supporters of the project, the conference will feature two days of presentations and discussion about new insights learned from the edition and new perspectives on Bonhoeffer interpretation.

One day of the conference will focus on the Bonhoeffer Lectures in Public Ethics, which have been held on alternating years in Germany and the United States for about fifteen years. Sessions on this day will examine how Bonhoeffer’s legacy has engaged public issues such as peace, poverty, racism, genocide and church-state issues over the last sixty years; speakers will also address emerging public issues and new research.

The conference is a public event, open to all interested in Bonhoeffer’s life, theology and ethics. More details about program, speakers, accommodation, and cost will be announced in coming months. Official registration will begin in 2011. The conference coordinator is Dr. Guy Christopher Carter. For initial expressions of interest and inquiries he may be reached at: drguychrcarter@comcast.net, phone 717 938 1098.

 

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