Category Archives: Volume 19 Number 3 (September 2013)

Letter from the Editors: September 2013

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 19, Number 3 (September 2013)

Letter from the Editors: September 2013

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University College

Dear friends,

An altar from the Mainzer Dom (St. Martin’s Cathedral), set of the Archbishop of Mainz.

It is always a joy for me to announce the publication of a new issue of Contemporary Church History Quarterly. It has been a busy summer for the members of the editorial board of CCHQ. In late July, fourteen of the sixteen editors gathered together with a small group of German and American scholars for a conference, “Reassessing Contemporary Church History,” held on the University of British Columbia campus. Mark Edward Ruff, who led the effort to organize the conference (along with Steven Schroeder, Lauren Faulkner, and John Conway himself), has written an extensive report on the papers presented in Vancouver. It is the highlight of this issue of CCHQ.

At the conference, sponsored by both the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the editorial board took advantage of the opportunity to meet for a discussion about the future of the journal. This was a very positive exchange, the result of which is a renewed commitment to provide “news, reviews, and commentary on contemporary religious history with a focus on Germany and Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.” We want to continue John Conway’s tradition of prompt reviews of new books written in language that reaches (indeed, brings together) experts in modern German church history with members of the broader public who are interested in this subject. But we also want to gradually expand the scope of our work (as we have been doing over the past couple of years) by publishing editorials, talks, new research reports, and other similar kinds of writing.

As ever, we hope you enjoy this edition of Contemporary Church History Quarterly, even as we have already begun to plan for a full slate of reviews in our upcoming December issue.

On behalf of the editorial team,

Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University College

Review of Dietz Lange, Nathan Söderblom und seine Zeit

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 19, Number 3 (September 2013)

Review of Dietz Lange, Nathan Söderblom und seine Zeit (Göttingen and Oakville, CT, USA: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), Pp 480, ISBN 978-3-525-5701-5.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Lange-Soederblom A new biography has recently been published in Germany of Nathan Söderblom, the most prominent Protestant church leader in the decade of the 1920s. The author, Dietz Lange, is the emeritus professor of Systematic Theology in Göttingen, and in this laudatory but leisurely account of Söderblom’s career, the emphasis is placed on the evolution of Söderblom’s intellectual ideas and his relations with other scholars and theologians of his time. Lange supplements but does not supplant the standard biography in English, written nearly half a century ago by Bengt Sundkler, which concentrated on Söderblom’s main claims to fame, his championships of the peace endeavours during the first world war, and his leadership of the ecumenical movement in the aftermath.

Lange traces Söderblom’s energetic and often fervent debates about the theological novelties at the end of the nineteenth century, when the impact of German Protestant scholarship, at the hands of such men as Albrecht Ritschl and Adolf von Harnack, was at its height. Although brought up in the rather narrow evangelicalism of a Swedish pastorate, Söderblom quickly took advantage of the new and wider horizons of this contentious German Protestantism. At the same time, he retained his original attachment to the forms of Swedish piety of which he became the prime exemplar. His talents led him early in his career to take on new opportunities for service, first as chaplain to the Swedish community in Paris for seven years, and later on, for two years, as visiting Professor of Church History in Leipzig University. These postings gave him insight into the rival militaristic and nationalistic sentiments in Europe, which did so much to lead to open hostilities in 1914.

Söderblom returned from Paris in 1901 to take up the chair of Comparative Religious History in Uppsala, when, as Lange describes, his main interest was in the development of religious ideas and practices amongst earlier civilisations or societies, which led to a close examination of such themes as the godhead, eschatology, the appearance of ethical systems, or the relationship between such theologies and magic.

But in the summer of 1914, Söderblom’s career took a wholly unanticipated turn when he was appointed Archbishop of Uppsala and Primate of the Swedish established church. A few months later the outbreak of war on the continent imposed new and burdensome international responsibilities. He quickly gave his support and that of his church to Sweden’s position of neutrality. He gave strong leadership to the efforts to stop or mitigate the hostilities, and deplored the readiness of churchmen in both camps to claim that God was on their side. At no point was he prepared to believe that divine approval should be claimed for either side’s military ambitions or their effects. War to him was nothing less than a disaster. As a result he sought to mobilize the Christian churches in the neutral countries to put forward peace proposals, which however were rejected by one side or the other. But such efforts gave him an international prominence and a determination to make reconciliation and reconstruction his top priority in the post-war years.

Lange’s biography recapitulates the well-known story of Söderblom’s initiatives and leadership which resulted in the creation of the Life and Work movement of the churches. To his great regret he was unable to gain the support of the Roman Catholic Church, but effectively drew together the Protestant and the Orthodox churches in an unprecedented commitment to ecumenical co-operation, which was to become the basis for the future World Council of Churches.

The high point of Söderblom’s influence came at the notably famous Stockholm Conference of 1925, when for the first time since the end of the Great War churchmen from all different denominations and groupings were able to meet to consider how to make plans for a more harmonious and effective church witness. It was surely due to his generous and inspiring leadership that the churches were encouraged to set aside the resentments and grievances caused by the war, and to focus on the positive steps which greater ecumenical co-operation could produce. In this regard, he strongly urged that the churches support the work of the newly-established League of Nations. But the German delegation, consisting mainly of stanchly conservative nationalists, refused all such panaceas. They maintained a wholly pessimistic view of the future, and loudly protested against the so-called injustice of the Versailles Treaty. Lange lets them off very lightly.

Söderblom’s chief hope was that the ancient divisions within the churches would be replaced by a new spirit of evangelical catholicity. But, as Lange admits, neither the theological climate nor the political circumstances of the 1920s were propitious. The rise of Fascism and Nazism in the 1930s destroyed most of Söderblom’s optimistic world-view. He died in 1931 and his influence ebbed rather quickly. The renown and reputation earned by his indefatigable witness, which had brought him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1930, was all too soon forgotten. But the hope of calling the churches together for a more effective witness to Christian life and work still remains as Söderblom’s lasting legacy. We can therefore be grateful to Professor Lange for recalling the numerous contributions to this cause made by this redoubtable world churchman.

Review of Daniel Gawthrop, The trial of Pope Benedict. Joseph Ratzinger and the Vatican’s Assault on Reason, Compassion and Human Dignity

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 19, Number 3 (September 2013)

Review of Daniel Gawthrop, The trial of Pope Benedict. Joseph Ratzinger and the Vatican’s Assault on Reason, Compassion and Human Dignity (Vancouver. B.C.: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013), 315 Pp, ISBN 978-1-55152-527-3.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

It is rare, in our practice of church history, to be invited to review a book which is so filled with hostility towards its subject as is Daniel Gawthrop’s The Trial of Pope Benedict. Gawthrop was brought up in a traditional Catholic family, but as a boy and young adult was much influenced by ideas derived from the Second Vatican Council. His bishop had been appointed in 1962 as the youngest and newest Council Father, and participated fully in all its sessions. On his return to his Pacific Coast diocese, this bishop sought to implement the spirit and the reforms suggested at the Council. As a young Catholic activist, Gawthrop wanted to carry this process still further in the hopes of bringing the Catholic Church into the modern world, and rejuvenating its following. But he became disillusioned when the steps he hoped for were not taken. He now considers himself an ex-Catholic atheist. Among the changes he wanted to see were the abolition of clerical celibacy, the ordination of women, a permissive attitude towards homosexuality and same-sex marriages, the removal of the prohibition on abortion, and even the permission to engage in voluntary euthanasia. But all of these so-called “reforms” have been condemned by the Church authorities. Instead of recognising that such fantasies are derived from his own cloud-cuckooland wishful thinking, Gawthrop lays the blame on Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the one individual in the Vatican hierarchy, he believes, whose sinister policies effectively undermined the impact of the Second Vatican Council, and turned the church into a breeding ground for reactionary, ultra-orthodox conservatism.

Gawthrop-Trial Writing with considerable journalistic flair, but of course without any Vatican official documentation, Gawthrop presents us with a highly critical account of Ratzinger’s career. To be sure, he allows that, during the Council’s sessions, Ratzinger, then a theological advisor to one of the German Cardinals, supported many of the reformist ideas. But only a few years later, while he was teaching at Germany’s most prestigious university of Tübingen, he was deeply offended by the virulent student radicalism embracing a “Marxist messianism”. As a result he turned away from his colleagues such as Hans Kung and other progressive theologians. Shortly afterwards he retreated to the rural backwater of Regensburg in his native Bavaria, and began to prepare his theological counter-offensive to Vatican II.

In May 1977 Ratzinger was promoted to be Archbishop of Munich, and a month later was made a cardinal. He was thus in place to attend the two conclaves of 1978, following the death of Pope Paul VI. Gawthrop obviously has a liking for Pope John Paul I, a clerical populist, who promised to carry forward the reforms so long blocked by his predecessor. But only a month later he was found dead in the papal apartment. Gawthrop still seems to believe that this sudden death was not natural, despite the evidence produced in David Yallop’s book. Possibly this is because this development put an end to Gawthrop’s unfulfilled wishful thinking for a progressive new Catholicism.

The accession of John Paul II brought a wholly different and staunchly conservative leader to the Vatican, marking in Gawthrop’s view “a decisive turn to the right which would ultimately put the torch to Vatican II”. The new Pope soon recognized he had an ally in Ratzinger, and shortly after in 1981 summoned him to Rome to be put in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He was thus responsible for maintaining the church’s orthodoxy and blocking the introduction of novel or heretical ideas. While John Paul II played the role of a rock star, Ratzinger had to deal with liberal dissenters or undisciplined priests and professors. It was a part which he relished and played with increasing doctrinaire policies for the next twenty-four years. Over these years Ratzingrer would expel at least 107 theologians through defrocking, removal of teaching privileges, or official silencing through denouncement. Many others, including bishops, would be called to Rome and carpeted for “instruction”. Such behaviour was particularly galling to the victims, since there was no means of challenging Ratzinger’s authority, no appeal process, but only continuing disgrace and relegation in the church.

His first targets were those in Latin America who supported the ideas of liberation theology, especially Leonardo Boff and Gustavo Gutierrez. But to Ratzinger, liberation theology replaced the Christian promise of redemption with a Marxist programme for secular salvation through revolution. It also challenged the internal hierarchy of the church by aligning priests with the poor instead of with Rome. By definition, liberation theology supported leftist political movements, and in Ratzinger’s view substituted political criteria for more spiritual goals. Such tendencies had therefore to be suppressed.

Similar dogmatic rigidities were expressed in Ratzinger’s policies with regard to other Christian denominations and other faiths, most notably in the year 2000 declaration Dominus Iesus, which stated that non-Catholic Christian ecclesial communities are not “churches” in the proper sense. Such a comment was naturally ill-received by both Protestants and Orthodox churchmen, and revealed the narrowness and intolerance of Ratzinger’s approach. Even more criticism was voiced about his views on other religions, which he claimed were seriously deficient in their access to the means of salvation. His well-known gaffe in a lecture in Regensburg in 2006 when he characterized Muslims as given to violence—admittedly in a historical context—caught world attention. To be sure, he carried on with John Paul’s desire to encourage better relations with Jews, and even visited Israel. But he made no reference while there to the long history of Christian anti-Judaism which contributed at least in part to the Nazi atrocities. Gawthrop is naturally scathing about such instances.

In the same vein, Gawthrop is highly critical of Ratzinger’s attempts to maintain the orthodoxy of the Catholic faith with his suppression of such forward-looking theologians as Matthew Fox with his ideas about creation spirituality, or Thomas Reese who advocated the ordination of women in his weekly Catholic journal, America. Likewise Ratzinger’s steadfast view that homosexuality represents an “intrinsic moral evil” was drawn from “the solid foundation of a constant Biblical testimony”. Gay rights activists are, in Ratzinger’s view “guided by a vision opposed to the truth about the human person, and reflect a materialistic ideology which denies the transcendent nature of the human personality as well as the supernatural vocation of each individual”. Gawthrop inevitably differs and asks whether such a view is fitting for pastoral care in the current century.

Gawthrop’s chapter on the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church provides damning evidence of the Vatican’s official culture of denial, cover-up and shaming, going back over half a century. From his position of authority for more than thirty years, Ratzinger could have done something about this. But his responses were unconvincing, overly defensive or too little and too late. In Gawthrop’s view a married clergy and female priests would produce a healthier and more balanced Catholic theology of sexuality, and would surely do something about the rapid exodus of priests from holy orders, as particularly seen in Ireland in recent years. But the demonization of homosexuality, the attempt to suppress the truth, the denials of local bishops, the reshuffling of accused priests to another assignment have all contributed to a disastrous situation.

Finally Gawthrop turns to the latest Vatican scandals with what the Vatican officials themselves called the “Vatileaks”. Gawthrop suggests that this was the final straw which led Pope Benedict to offer his resignation. But he has little hope that the institution has the courage to put matters to rights. The policies of ultra-orthodox conservatism have clearly failed. But whether Pope Francis, who is no less doctrinally conservative than his two predecessors, and is a Vatican neophyte to boot, can possibly provide the impetus for a more sweeping reform is very much open to question. In his epilogue Gawthrop suggests that the new Pope should summon a Vatican III which would reignite the fires of reform, decentralize power, and reopen the questions of priestly celibacy and women’s ordination. Such measures, he believes would do a lot to solve the troubling issues which now beset the church and might even enable some disillusioned ex-Catholics like himself to take another look inside the church’s doors.

Conference Report: Reassessing Contemporary Church History, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, July 25-27, 2013

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 19, Number 3 (September 2013)

Conference Report: Reassessing Contemporary Church History, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, July 25-27, 2013

By Mark Edward Ruff, St. Louis University

This three-day conference brought twenty scholars from Canada, the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany to the campus of the University of British Columbia on the shores of Vancouver Bay to take stock of the current state of German church history in the 20^th century, plot out the future direction for the new electronic journal, Contemporary Church History Quarterly and to honor the eighty-three year old Anglo-Canadian scholar and pioneer in the field, John Conway.

The keynote address from Thursday evening, “The Future of World Christianity” was delivered by Mark Noll, Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. In his hour-long presentation, Noll contrasted the situation of Christianity in the Western and non-Western worlds for the years 1910 and 2010. Christianity has exploded numerically in Africa, Asia and Latin America, eclipsing its presence in what had at just a century earlier had been its European heartland. Noll began by highlighting the dramatic scope of recent changes. In 1970, there had been no legally open churches in China in 1970; China may now have more active believers attending church regularly than does Europe. Noll argued that it was raw life-and-death struggles of poverty, disease, tribal warfare, social dislocation, and economic transformation that help explain this surge in religiosity outside of the western world. He urged historians of Christianity to learn more about the work of African prophet-evangelists of the early 20^th century like William Wadé Harris and Simon Kimbangu instead of focusing exclusively on better-known western theologians and churchmen.

Friday’s proceedings were divided into three distinct panels. The first, “The Changing Historiography of the Church Struggle, 1945 – 2013” highlighted the changing hermeneutics, value-systems, theological categories and historical methodologies that have been employed to instill meaning into the struggles of the churches against the National Socialist state. Mark Edward Ruff’s paper, “The Reception of John Conway’s, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches” analyzed why Conway’s pioneering work evoked profoundly different reactions in the English-speaking world and in the Federal Republic of Germany. In the Anglo-American world, it garnered praise; in Germany, it was largely met with criticism or indifference. Ruff argued that the very factors that ensured its mostly positive appraisals in the United States guaranteed its harvest of criticism and silence in Germany from those professional historians or churchmen charged with compiling the history of the churches under Nazi rule. Three dynamics contributed to the divided response to the work of a practicing Anglican – a confessional divide, a national divide and a methodological divide. Reflecting ongoing confessional fissures, non-Catholic politicians, churchmen, journalists, playwrights and scholars had shown a consistent willingness to enter into or launch public discussions about the Catholic past in the Third Reich, while their Roman Catholic counterparts in the press, ecclesia, intelligensia and academy rarely, if ever, spoke out openly about the Protestant past. Negative reviews in Germany, moreover, reflected a heightened sensitivity to criticism not just from non-Catholics but from the Anglo-Saxon world, from where the majority of the non-German critical accounts of the recent past had come. And finally, Conway’s German critics assailed him for what they regarded as deficient methodologies, and in particular, his unwillingness to show the necessary empathy for his subjects and to employ what can be described as a Quellenpositivismus and refrain from making larger moral and historical judgments not born directly out of the sources he used.

Ruff’s account of the confessional dynamics in the German historical profession of the 1960s set the stage for Robert Ericksen’s paper, “Church Historians, “Profane” Historians, and our Odyssey Since Wilhelm Niemöller.” Wilhelm Niemöller was the younger brother to Martin Niemöller, an important leader of the Confessing Church during the Nazi era and a widely known prisoner of the regime after his arrest in 1937. Martin went on to serve in various church leadership positions after 1945, while Wilhelm emerged as the most important historian of the Protestant Kirchenkampf, or “Church Struggle,” in the first postwar decades. He quite consciously styled himself a “church historian,” separating himself from those historians designated “profane” in the German usage. In the 1960s he wrote, “It almost seems as if one could be satisfied with the rather shortsighted conclusion that church history and ‘profane’ history do not differ from one another.” Ericksen argued that Wilhelm Niemöller, in his effort to bring his faith to the task of writing history, distorted the history of the German Protestant Church under Hitler. He described the history of the Confessing Church, representing approximately 20% of Protestants, as if it were the history of the entire church. He also ignored those within the Confessing Church who supported Adolf Hitler and those who shared the antisemitic prejudices of the regime. Finally, Wilhelm Niemöller ignored the fact that both he and Martin had voted for the Nazi Party, and that he had joined the Party as early as 1923. Ericksen concluded by insisting that historians of churches must work as “profane” or secular historians, if they are to create a more usable and reliable history.

Manfred Gailus’ paper, “Ist die “Aufarbeitung” der NS-Zeit beendet? Anmerkungen zur kirchlichen Erinnerungskultur seit der Wende von 1989/90,” examined how the Protestant church dealt with its own past from the Third Reich. Focusing on the state church of Berlin-Brandenburg-schlesische-Oberlausitz (EKBO), Gailus focused on how Bishop Wolfgang Huber, one of the leaders of the Protestant church, practiced a politics of the past that can be regarded as representative for the Protestant church as a whole. In November 2002, Huber delivered a committed and self-critical sermon for the annual „day of repentance,“ a sermon which he dedicated to the memory of those Christians of Jewish heritage who had suffered and died in the Third Reich. This sermon can be regarded as a sign of Huber’s committed engagement with the past, one comparable with his efforts to compensate church slave laborers from the Second World War. But his subsequent efforts to come to terms with the past began to flag almost immediately thereafter. In 2005, he chose to take up the theme of the „church and the new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s“ – and not the church struggle of the 1930s – as the major theme for the fiftieth anniversary of the „Evangelische Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte.“ He also stayed out of the longstanding debates about the future of the Martin-Luther-Memorial- Church in Berlin-Mariendorf, a church that had been built during the Third Reich, decorated with sundry Nazi symbols and now enjoyed the protective status as a „historical landmark.“ The church under Huber, Gailus concluded, has certainly come a long way forward in its approach to the Nazi past but still lags behind the standards set not only by professional historians but by the larger public. It remains in urgent need of powerful initiatives to kick-start its reassessment of the past.

The second panel, „Theology, Theological Changes and the Ecumenical Movement“ brought to the table the fruits of recent research. Victoria Barnett’s paper, “Track Two Diplomacy, 1933-1939: International Responses from Catholics, Jews, and Ecumenical Protestants to Events in Nazi Germany,” showed how events that unfolded in Nazi Germany and Europe between 1933 – 1939 sparked a number of significant and ongoing initiatives among international religious leaders. This was particularly true of religious bodies whose scope was international and touched on ecumenical or interfaith issues; such bodies included the Holy See in Rome, ecumenical offices in Geneva and New York, and the conferences of Christians and Jews in the UK and the United States. Such initiatives were also driven by individual Protestants, Catholics, and Jews who were committed to fighting against National Socialism and helping its victims. Many of these individuals, Barnett pointed out, became involved early in refugee-related issues. Other issues of common concern included the ideological and political pressures on both Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany and the desire to prevent another European war. After the war began, many of these same circles had contacts with different German resistance circles, and some of these leaders wrote “think pieces” on the necessary moral foundations for a postwar peace. Although the Catholics and Protestants involved in these activities represented a distinct minority within their respective churches, an examination of their interactions, including their contacts with representatives of Jewish organizations, offers a much fuller picture of the international religious responses to Nazism and show the extent of interreligious communication even before 1939 as an attempt at “track two diplomacy.”

Matthew Hockenos’ paper “‘Blessed are the Peacemakers, for They Shall be called Sons of God’: Martin Niemöller’s Embrace of Pacifism, 1945-55” focused on the theological transformations in the decade from 1945 to 1955 for the former Confessing Church leader and hero, Martin Niemöller. Niemöller, Hockenos showed, jettisoned the Zwei–Reiche–Lehre (Doctrine of Two Kingdoms) and championed a political role for the Church. He abandoned German nationalism and became a leader of the ecumenical movement. He denounced war and the remilitarization of Germany and gradually came to adopt pacifism. Hockenos, however, made clear that Niemöller’s embrace of pacifism did not occur over night, as Niemöller had implied in his own account of his meeting with the German scientist Dr. Otto Hahn. It was a gradual process that one can trace from the time of his liberation to 1955. It appears to have been the result of a number of factors and events. These included including his own reflection on the destructiveness of WWII and the imminent danger that the Cold War posed to Germany, the outbreak of the Korean War, contact with ecumenical-minded church leaders abroad, and the deliberate efforts of pacifists in the United States and in Europe to convince Niemöller that the only position a true Christian could take on war was to be against because it was inimical to the message of Christ. From 1954 on Niemöller made it his primary goal to expand the circle of pacifists person by person through education and example. Just as his pacifist colleagues had slowly reeled him in through conversations and dialogue, he traveled the globe, frequently visiting Communist nations, preaching the way of non-violence and extolling the teachings and example of Mahatma Gandhi.

Wilhelm Damberg’s paper, „Vergangenheitsbewältigung und Theologie nach dem Konzil: J.B. Metz, die politische Theologie und die Würzburger Synode (1971-1975),” drew the attention of conference participants to a major theological paradigm shift in how the Roman Catholic Church in Germany came to terms with its past under National Socialism. Ironically, Damberg noted, this seismic shift has largely remained unknown to historians. It took place during the Würzburg Synod of 1971 to 1975, which was charged with implementing the resolutions and decrees of the Second Vatican Council in Germany. The central document for these changes was one bearing the name „Our Hope: A Commitment to Faith in our time.“ It prepared by the renowned German theologian, Johann Baptist Metz, and bore the hallmarks of Metz’s own so-called „Political Theology.“ This document met with the overwhelming approval of the synod. Metz shaped its content around the concept of a collective „examination of conscience,“ which confessed the guilt and failure of „a sinful church“ particularly towards the Jews of the Third Reich. In the formal debates about this document, disagreements broke out about the appropriate way to understand history. Metz defended himself against criticism of his historical judgments by insisting that historical consciousness and actual reconstructions of the past remained two separate things. For the church of the present, it was the former that matter. Metz, Damberg argued, was deconstructing historical narratives that Metz himself saw as being in direct opposition to the epochal theological change of „theology after Auschwitz.“

The third panel on Friday, “Expanding the Borders: Inter and Intra-National, Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Narratives” pointed out new directions for historical research. Thomas Großbölting led off with his paper„‚Kirchenkampf gibt es immer‘: Memory Politics as a Point of Reference for an inner-ecclesiastical Counter-culture.” Großbölting made his focus those moments in the 1960s and 1970s when special groups within the churches and individual Christians referred to the Nazi past. How, he asked, did they draw connections between themselves and the church struggle from the 1930s? He argued that the silence of the 1950s regarding the Nazi past was replaced in the second half of the 1960s by greater openness – and even bluntness. For the new social movements and special interest groups within the churches, in particular, the politics of remembrance became a major point of orientation and mobilization. Organizations as disparate as Una voce, Unum et semper, the confessional movement “No other gospel”, the German branch of Opus Dei and “Christians for socialism” all sought to find new ways of living the personal faith and to radicalize the Christian Gospel. For conservatives, radicalization meant bring the Christian Gospel back to its roots; for left-wingers, it meant rediscovering the communist ideals of the early church. Großbölting, in turn, showed how such groups like Catholic student parishes and Protestant confessional movements referred to the Nazi-past in general and to the Church struggle, in particular, as a way to realize these aims. In spite of the enormous attention they found from the media at the end of the 1960s, the impact of these movements remained limited. The Protestant counter-movement took up the battle cry, “Kirche muss Kirche bleiben” –Church must remain the Church.” But even these stirring words, Großbölting concluded, never found much resonance among the ordinary members of the Protestant and the Catholic Church.

In his paper, “Conflict and Post-Conflict Representations: Autobiographical Writings of German Theologians after 1945,” Björn Krondorfer showed how the questions of gender, and male gender in particular, and of retrospective historical representatives, are central to our analyses of the postwar church. Krondorfer argued that gendered roles and identifications allowed German men in institutions like the church to adjust to a new environment after 1945. His paper critically analyzed the autobiographies of two Protestant German male theologians published after 1945, and in particular, those of Walter Künneth ( Lebensführungen: Der Wahrheit verpflichtet; 1979) and Helmut Thielicke (Zu Gast auf einem schönen Stern; 1984.) Realizing that their autobiographical act of remembering placed them into a morally and politically charged historical context, these two theologians carefully crafted their memoirs, employing apologetic and eluding strategies when accounting for their lives during the 1930s and 1940s. The theme of “German suffering” often looms largely in these memoirs, while Jews are mostly absent; hence, the boundaries between victim and perpetrator are constantly blurred. As “helpless victims,” these men might run the risk of being effeminized, as “acting subjects” they might run the risk of being accused of moral failure. Versions of this mental split, Krondorfer argued, are to be found in almost all post-1945 autobiographies of German male theologians.

Suzanne Brown-Fleming’s paper, “Real-Time Narrative Responses to Nazism: March/ April 1933 in Germany and Rome” focused on the Catholic diplomatic response to the earliest antisemitic measures of the Nazis. On April 1, the Nazis ordered a boycott of Jewish businesses, department stores, lawyers and physicians on April 1, 1933, the first centrally directed action by the National Socialists against Jews after the Seizure of Power. The Civil Service Law of 7 April was the first to contain the so-called “Aryan Paragraph,” stipulating that only those of Aryan descent could be employed in public service. Brown-Fleming Using drew upon the recently-released records of the Vatican nunciature in Munich and Berlin during the tenure of Pope Pius XI. She discussed the exchanges between Pope Pius XI, then-Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII, 1939-1958), his diplomat in Germany, Cesare Orsenigo, German bishops, and ordinary Catholics and Jews. The elections of March 5, 1933, she argued, revealed a dissonance between the Nazi party, Catholic Center Party voters, and Catholics who hoped to find some way to be both true to their bishops and to Hitler. That dissonance, she concluded, affected the response of the Vatican Secretariat of State and German bishops to the first anti-Jewish laws in April 1933 in ways that still need to be further explored.

The third day of the conference was devoted to a discussion of the future direction of the electronic journal, Contemporary Church History Quarterly. This journal had its origins in the electronic brainchild of John Conway, what he upon his retirement from the University of British Columbia in 1995, modestly called “The Newsletter.” This was an eclectic mixture of book reviews and notices about events dealing with contemporary international and ecumenical church history. A recipient of a Humboldt Research fellowship in 1963-4 and a founding member of the Scholars’ Conference on the German Church and the Holocaust in 1970, Conway was best known for his masterwork from 1968, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933-1945, the first extensive history in English of the National Socialists’ campaign against the German churches and the responses of both the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. He developed this free monthly electronic newsletter to provide a speedier flow of information on new publications on the history of the churches in the 20th century. Traditional quarterly journals were far too slow in informing readers of new publications and works in progress. In addition, they tended to reach only specialized academic audiences – and not the lay and religious audiences just as keenly interested in the highly charged topic of the churches’ conduct during the Nazi era such as the conduct of Pope Pius XII and the responses of the churches to the Holocaust. Sent out by email to a list-serve of subscribers, Conway’s newsletter went by the name of the Association of Contemporary Church Historians (ACCH), or Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler.

In 2009, Conway turned over the helm of the Newsletter to an editorial board, which now includes sixteen theologians and historians based in Germany, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. The editorial board members, almost all of whom were gathered in Vancouver, discussed future directions for the journal, and in particular, how to further transatlantic cooperation. Kyle Jantzen, who almost single-handedly engineered the journal’s technical transformation from a newsletter sent out by an email list-serve to a web-based presence, gave an overview of the journal’s new features and the number of hits recent issues and articles have been receiving. Members also discussed the possibility of developing a continuously updated on-line data base that will compile the new publications in the field – journal articles, articles in edited volumes, edited volumes and monograph – from both sides of the Atlantic.

Last and most significantly, the concluding evening of the conference honored the pioneering work of John Conway, who has distinguished himself not only through his scholarly work but in his tireless efforts to bring together scholars from multiple disciplines and nations. Doris Bergen, Robert Ericksen, Steven Schroeder, Kyle Jantzen, and Gerhard Besier offered formal tributes in the course of Saturday evening.

Reflections on the Indian Residential Schools and the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 19, Number 3 (September 2013)

Reflections on the Indian Residential Schools and the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

By Steven Schroeder, University of the Fraser Valley

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) will convene in Vancouver, British Columbia for one week this month (18-21 September 2013) to hear survivors tell of their experiences in the Indian Residential Schools, and to encourage reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada.^{^[1]} The work of the TRC has exposed weighty historical problems for all Canadians, but it has also provided Canadians opportunities to re-examine their country’s colonial policies, processes of nation-building and national identity formation, and its human rights record. For Christians, this work has evoked reason for critical reflection concerning mission work, evangelism, the role of the church in society, church-state relations, and how to best atone for past misdeeds.

For over a hundred years (1880s-1996), the Canadian government partnered with the mainline churches — Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, and United (and unofficially with Mennonite and Baptist organizations) – in running the Indian Residential School system. The 140 schools that comprised the system were found in every province and territory, even the northernmost regions of the Canadian arctic. The Indian Act, which mandated that Aboriginal children attend the schools, and court injunctions that threatened parents with arrest if they did not comply, ensured school enrollments.^{^[2]} In all, over 150,000 Aboriginal children – beginning at the age of six – were forcibly removed from their homes to attend state-sponsored, church-run schools. Hundreds of lawsuits stemming from abuses in the schools have led to numerous actions, including the establishment of the TRC. The first task of the TRC was to establish and disseminate the facts regarding the school system. The 2012 book They Came for the Children: Canada, Aboriginal Peoples, and Residential Schools is a product of the commission’s work.

TRC-Report The book explains how the churches in Canada began their missionary work of converting Aboriginals to Christianity and to western cultural practices long before confederation. This foundation proved useful to Canadian government officials who found accord with the church leaders’ intent “to civilize and Christianize” Aboriginal children.^{^[3]} Together, the government and the churches expanded the existing church education infrastructure to all of Canada with the intent to, as government officials put it, “kill the Indian in the child.” The campaign to eliminate Canada’s “Indian problem” was to be achieved through assimilation, extinguishing Aboriginal culture, and eliminating Aboriginal interest in land claims. Although Canada’s population would be multi-racial, the success of the assimilation campaign would ensure that all Canadians were sufficiently “civilized” (i.e., westernized and Christian), thereby reducing the government’s treaty obligations considerably.^{^[4]}

The horrible accounts in the book reveal terrible abuses that the vast majority of these students experienced in the dysfunctional, ill-planned, and under-funded school system. Students were abused emotionally, physically, and sexually, and they were punished for using their language.^{^[5]} Tuberculosis and other serious illnesses were rampant, and the death rate was very high (at school, and after release). For instance, during the first decade of operations at the residential school at Qu’Appelle, 174 of 344 students died from a variety of illnesses.^{^[6]} Funding was woefully inadequate, leaving students undernourished and tasked with all sorts of labour jobs, thus sidelining school work. The utter failure of the residential school system was obvious to all by the early 1900s, and many people – even some government officials – supported closing the schools decades prior to their actual closure.^{^[7]}

The history of the residential schools has only partly been realized by the Aboriginal community, and has been almost entirely unknown to the non-Indigenous population in Canada. It seems that the churches and the government intended for the abuses of the failed campaign to fade away with the schools themselves. However, the Canadian Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples’ 1996 report documented the suffering of the students in the residential schools, which gave rise to hundreds of legal claims aimed at the churches and the federal government. The resulting 2007 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement totaled $1.9 billion, $60 million of which was designated for the establishment and activities of the TRC.

The mandate of the TRC – to find facts and foster reconciliation – has been frustrated from the outset of its mission due to the Canadian government’s refusal to open its archives to the commission’s researchers (They Came for the Children is based mostly on published materials).^{^[8]} Even though Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave a formal apology on behalf of the Canadian government in 2008, one has to wonder about what the apology actually addressed, and what remains overlooked. Withholding the documents has added to past indignities, deepened the distrust between Canadians and their government, and limited the scope of reconciliatory work. In response, Aboriginal writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson recently called on the Canadian government to: “Honour the apology. Release the documents. Be on the right side of history on this one. It’s the very, very least you can do.”^{^[9]}

The government’s resistance to full cooperation with the TRC has not kept other researchers from finding new information on human rights violations in the residential schools. Recent research by food historian Ian Mosby has revealed that Canadian nutritionists partnered with government agencies and church personnel in conducting nutritional and pharmaceutical experiments on malnourished Aboriginal children in six residential schools.^{^[10]} Food rations were kept low intentionally, and any useful findings were to benefit non-Indigenous Canadians (which they did). One wonders about what other accounts exist in the archival documents that have remained under lock and key, but it appears that we may soon find out. An Ontario court injunction of January 2013 forced the hand of the government, and in August 2013 the first researchers from the TRC gained access to the federal government’s records of the residential schools. The research team now finds itself on a tight schedule, as the TRC’s mandate expires in mid-2014.

The residential school system is truly Canada’s national shame. At stake is the integrity of the government, the churches, and the very fabric of Canadian society. The government’s lack of cooperation in the fact-finding stage of the TRC’s work has impeded reconciliation. How can Canadians address their past appropriately, when they don’t know the facts? Without the facts, how can all Canadians work together toward a better future? Head of the TRC, Chief Wilton Littlechild, has rightly claimed: “People just don’t know the history [of the residential schools], and once they know the history, they’ll make the connection as to why there is such a high rate of addiction, and why there is such a high rate of suicide and unemployment [in some Aboriginal communities].”^{^[11]} Also at stake is the integrity of the churches. Some Christian pacifists in Canada who claimed Conscientious Objector status during the Second World War, satisfied their alternative service requirement by joining the teaching staff in the racist, abusive residential schools. This, and related accounts of Christian reasoning for complicity in the school system brings into question aspects of Christian pacifism, Christian missions, evangelism, the role of the church in society and nation building, and the relationship between church and state. Some Christians have begun to address these issues positively, and in new ways. During 1991-1998, all of the churches involved in the schools issued formal apologies for their respective roles in the schools, and the churches have continued to work toward reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.^{^[12]} These efforts will be encouraged at the TRC events in Vancouver, where one will find church tents for conversation, healing, and reconciliation.

Even if Aboriginal survivors of the residential school system were left to initiate the processes of reconciliation through airing grievances, lawsuits, and court injunctions, the results of these actions have been promising. With the TRC publicly revealing these facts and raising awareness among Canadians, Canadians now have the opportunity to respond, and to act in keeping with their long, proud history of being “peacekeepers.” There is plenty of peacebuilding work to be done within their own communities, between peoples of diverse backgrounds, cultures, and worldviews. To date, the response in Canadian cities to the work of the TRC has been mostly positive, evident in thousands of people attending the TRC events, including walks for reconciliation. It would appear that the public is on board.^{^[13]} Sustaining and growing this interest among Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada is crucial to moving forward the reconciliatory work that is already underway.

Notes:

^{^[1]} For information on the Vancouver Truth and Reconciliation Commission events in September 2013, see: http://www.myrobust.com/websites/vancouver/index.php?p=719#. For events at universities in the Vancouver area, see: University of the Fraser Valley: http://www.ufv.ca/indigenous/day-of-learning/ University of British Columbia: http://irsi.aboriginal.ubc.ca/ Simon Fraser University: http://www.sfu.ca/reconciliation.html

^{^[2]} Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, They Came for the Children: Canada, Aboriginal Peoples, and Residential Schools. (Winnipeg: TRC, 2012), 18.

^{^[3]} TRC, They Came for the Children, 10.

^{^[4]} TRC, They Came for the Children, 6.

^{^[5]} TRC, They Came for the Children, 1,2,10,37-45

^{^[6]} TRC, They Came for the Children, 17

^{^[7]} TRC, They Came for the Children, 17, 19.

^{^[8]} Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Interim Report (Winnipeg: TRC, 2012), 15-16.

^{^[9]} Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, “Honour the Apology,” blog entry (23 July 2013): http://leannesimpson.ca/2013/07/23/honour-the-apology/#more-866 (p.3)

^{^[10]} See Ian Mosby, “Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942-1952,” Food Deprivation and Aboriginals,” Histoire sociale/Social History, vol. XLVI, 91 (Mai/May 2013): 145-172

^{^[11]} Jamie Ross, “Littlechild: Commission will uncover the truth – Residential schools: Head of commission says system tore apart families,” May 30th, 2011 http://media.knet.ca/node/11250

^{^[12]} See TRC, They Came for the Children, 81. Official apologies regarding the Residential Schools were as follows: Roman Catholic Oblate (1991), Anglican Church of Canada (1993), Presbyterian Church of Canada (1994), and United Church of Canada (1998). For publications and websites, see: The United Church of Canada, Justice and Reconciliation: The Legacy of Indian Residential Schools and the Journey Toward Reconciliation. (United Church: 2001); Jeremy Bergen, Ecclesial Repentance: The Churches Confront their Sinful Pasts. (Continuum: 2011); Mennonite websites: http://bc.mcc.org/whatwedo/TRC; http://mcbc.ca/trc-2013/ ; Anglican website: http://www.anglican.ca/relationships/trc ; Presbyterian website: http://presbyterian.ca/healing/more/; Roman Catholic website: http://www.cccb.ca/site/eng/media-room/archives/media-releases/2008/2590-launching-of-truth-and-reconciliation-commission-an-opportunity-for-healing-and-hope

^{^[13]} Environics Research Group, 2008 National Benchmark Survey, Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada

and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2008. This survey revealed that “Fully two-thirds (67%) of Canadians believe that individual Canadians have a role to play in efforts to bring about reconciliation in response to the legacy of the Indian residential schools system, even if they had no experience with Indian residential schools.” (29)

Research Note: New Works on German Roman Catholicism Published within 2012-2013

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 19, Number 3 (September 2013)

Research Note: New Works on German Roman Catholicism Published within 2012-2013

By Kevin P. Spicer, C.S.C., Stonehill College

Keeping up with the ever-expanding literature on recent German church history remains a daunting challenge. We hope this list of newer publications on the Roman Catholic Church in Germany serves to aid CCHQ readers who research or teach in this area.

Anderson, Margaret Lavinia. “Anatomy of an Election: Anti-Catholicism, Antisemitism, and Social Conflict in the Era of Reichsgründung and Kulturkampf.” In Von Freiheit, Solidarität und Subsidiarität – Staat und Gesellschaft der Moderne in Theorie und Praxis. Festschrift für Karsten Ruppert zum 65. Geburtstag. Edited by Markus Raasch and Tobias Hirschmüller. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2013: 39-95.

Bankier, David, Dan Michman, and Iael Nidam-Orvieto, eds. Pius XII and the Holocaust: Current State of Research. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2012.

Bennette, Rebecca Ayako. Fighting for the Soul of Germany: The Catholic Struggle for Inclusion after Unification. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.

Bergen, Doris L. “Speak of the Devil: Hubert Wolf on Pope Pius XI and the Vatican Archives” (Review Essay). Harvard Theological Review 105 (2012): 115-121.

Beschet, Paul, SJ. Mission in Thuringia in the Time of Nazism. Translated by Theodore P. Fraser. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2012.

Burkard, Dominik. Johannes Baptista Sproll: Bischof im Widerstand. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2013.

Cieslak, Stanislaw. “Auf der Suche nach Versöhnung. Kardinal Adam Kozlowieckis Erinnerungen an seine Zeit im KZ Dachau.” Stimmen der Zeit 230 (2012): 397-408.

Connelly, John. From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews 1933-1965. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.

Coppa, Frank J. The Life & Pontificate of Pope Pius XII. Between History & Controversy. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013.

Dahlke, Benjamin. “Zwischen Gegnerschaft und Kollaboration. Zur Geschichte der Philosoph-Theologischen Akademie Paderborn während des Nationalsozialismus.” Jahrbuch für mitteldeutsche Kirchen- und Ordensgeschichte 8 (2012): 49-82.

Deschner, Karlheinz. Mit Gott und den Faschisten: Der Vatikan im Bunde mit Mussolini, Franco, Hitler und Pavelic. Reprint (new press). Freiburg: Ahriman, 2012.

Ehret, Ulrike. Church, Nation and Race: Catholics and Antisemitism in Germany and England, 1918-45. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012.

Eisner, Peter. The Pope’s Last Crusade: How and American Jesuit Helped Pope Pius XI’s Campaign to Stop Hitler. NY: William Morrow, 2013.

Ericksen, Robert P. Complicity in the Holocaust. Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Feldmann, Christian. Einen Eid auf Hitler? Nie. Franz Reinisch: Ein Leben für die Menschenwürde. Vallendar: Patris, 2012.

Fibich, Jan Kanty. Die Caritas im Bistum Limburg in der Zeit des „Dritten Reiches“ (1929-1946). Mainz: Gesellschaft für Mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 2012.

Flammer, Thomas. Nationalsozialismus und katholische Kirche im Freistaat Braunschweig 1931-1945. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2013.

Gerber, Stefan. “Vom Barnabasbrief zum ‘Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts’: Philipp Haeuser (1876-1960).” In Von Freiheit, Solidarität und Subsidiarität – Staat und Gesellschaft der Moderne in Theorie und Praxis. Festschrift für Karsten Ruppert zum 65. Geburtstag. Edited by Markus Raasch and Tobias Hirschmüller. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2013: 427-448.

Goldstein, Phyllis. A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism. Brookline, MA: Facing History and Ourselves, 2012.

Helbach, Ulrich, ed. Akten deutscher Bischöfe seit 1945. Westliche Besatzungszonen 1945-1947. 2 Volumes. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012.

Hesemann, Michael. Hitlers Religion. Reprint (new press). Augsburg: Sankt Ulrich, 2012.

Holzbauer, Matthias. Der unselige Papst. Pius XII. und seine Verstrickung in die Verbrechen des 20. Jahrhunderts … und weshalb der Vatikan ihn seligsprechen will. Marktheidenfeld: Das Weisse Pferd, 2012.

Houlihan, Patrick J. “Local Catholicism as Transnational War Experience: Everyday Religious Practice in Occupied Northern France, 1914-1918.” Central European History 45 (2012): 233-267.

Hürten, Heinz. “50 Jahre Kommission für Zeitgeschichte: Überlegungen zu Problemen der Katholizismusforschung.” In Von Freiheit, Solidarität und Subsidiarität – Staat und Gesellschaft der Moderne in Theorie und Praxis. Festschrift für Karsten Ruppert zum 65. Geburtstag. Edited by Markus Raasch and Tobias Hirschmüller. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2013: 753-760.

Käßmann, Margot, ed. Gott will Taten sehen. Christlicher Widerstand gegen Hitler. Ein Lesebuch. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2013. Kidder, Annemarie S., ed. Ultimate Price: Testimonies of Christian who Resisted the Third Reich. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012.

Kitzmüller, Stefan. “Der österreichische Franziskaner P. Zyrill Fischer (1892-1945). Früher Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus.” Wissenschaft und Weisheit. 75 (2012): 80-101.

Lapomarda, Vincent A. The Catholic Bishops of Europe and the Nazi Persections of Catholics and Jews. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellon Press, 2012.

Lawler, Justus George. Were the Popes Against the Jews? Tracking the Myths, Confronting the Ideologues. Grand Rapids, MI: William M. Eerdmans, 2012.

Legge, Jerome S., Jr. “Resisting a War Crimes Trial: The Malmedy Massacre, the German Churches, and the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 26 (2012): 229-260.

Loth, Wilfried. “Der Katholizismus und die Durchsetzung der modernen Demokratie.” In Von Freiheit, Solidarität und Subsidiarität – Staat und Gesellschaft der Moderne in Theorie und Praxis. Festschrift für Karsten Ruppert zum 65. Geburtstag. Edited by Markus Raasch and Tobias Hirschmüller. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2013: 737-751.

Malak, Henryk Maria. Shavelings in Death Camps. A Polish Priest’s Memoir of Imprisonment by the Nazis, 1939-1945. Translated by Bozenna J. Tucker and Thomas R. Tucker. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland, 2012.

Nagel, Anne C. Hitlers Bildungsreformer. Das Reichsministerium für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung 1934-1945. Frankfurt: Fischer, 2012.

Nirenberg, David. Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition. NY: W.W. Norton, 2013.

Pfister, Peter, ed. Eugenio Pacelli – Pius XII (1876-1958): In View of Scholarship. Translated by Christof Morrissey. Regensburg: Scnhell und Steiner, 2012.

Porter-Szűcs, Brian. Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity, and Poland. NY: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Recker, Klemens-August. „Unter Preußenadler und Hakenkreuz“: Katholisches Milieu zwischen Selbstbehauptung und Auflösung. Münster: Aschendorff, 2012.

Sciolino, Athony J. The Holocaust, the Church, and the Law of Unintended Consequences: How Christian Anti-Judaism Spawned Nazi Anti-Semitism. A Judge’s Vedict. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2012.

Seeger, Hans-Karl and Herman Hösken. Dechant Josef Lodde – Coesfelds Fels in der braunen Flut. Christliche Zivilcourage zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Berlin: LIT, 2012.

Tec, Nechama. Resistance: Jews and Christians Who Defied the Nazi Terror. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Thomas, Gordon. The Pope’s Jews: The Vatican’s Secret Plan to Save Jews from the Nazis. NY: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2012.

Tomberg, Friedrich. Das Christentum in Hitlers Weltanschauung. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2012.

Ventresca, Robert A. Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Verhofstadt, Dirk. Pius XII. und die Vernichtung der Juden. Translated by Rudy Mondelaers. Aschaffenburg: Alibri, 2013.

Wolf, Hubert, ed. Eugenio Pacelli als Nuntius in Deutschland. Forschungsperspektiven und Ansätze zu einem internationalen Vergleich. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012.

——. “Reichskonkordat für Ermächtigungsgesetz? Zur Historisierung der Scholder-Repgen-Kontroverse über das Verhältnis des Vatikans zum Nationalsozialismus.” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 60 (2012): 169-200.

Zedler, Jörg. Bayern und der Vatikan. Eine politische Biographie des letzten bayerischen Gesandten am Heiligen Stuhl Otto von Ritter (1909-1934). Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2013.

Zuccotti, Susan. Pére Marie-Benoît and Jewish Rescue: How a French Priest Together with Jewish Friends Saved Thousands during the Holocaust. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013.

Review of Carsten Linden, Die Bedeutung des Beziehungsgeflechts der Osnabrücker ev.-luth. Pastoren für den Verlauf der Osnabrücker Kirchenpolitik 1907-1936

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 19, Number 3 (September 2013)

Review of Carsten Linden, Die Bedeutung des Beziehungsgeflechts der Osnabrücker ev.-luth. Pastoren für den Verlauf der Osnabrücker Kirchenpolitik 1907-1936 (Hamburg: Dr. Kovac Verlag, 2012), 2 Vol., 960 Pp.

By Hansjörg Buss, Universität des Saarlandes

Carsten Linden’s work, accepted by the University of Osnabrück as a doctoral thesis in 2012, examines the networks of protestant pastors in the Osnabrück church district in the first third of the twentieth century. As to method, it is based on social network analysis (in the sense that concept is used by German historian Wolfgang Reinhard), attributing to the interpersonal relationship between these pastors great importance in determining issues of church policy (p. 17). Despite some changes in these relationships, there was a lot of continuity: of nine pastors serving their parish in 1910, four still held their ministry in 1936.

The work is divided into four “complexes” which Linden has assigned to the years 1907-1910, 1920, 1926-1930 and 1933-1936 respectively. According to the author, these times saw greater changes in inter-pastoral relationships than did the political watersheds of 1914, 1918 and 1933. Linden explains the beginning of the time period considered by referring to comprehensive changes in the churchly life of Osnabrück, especially the increasing passivity of the laymen and therefore the increasing importance of the pastor in the parish. By contrast, why the time period ends in 1936 is not explained. According to the attached short biographies, there was no significant change to church staffing in that year with the exception of Rudolf Detering, who went to Goslar for a better position. However, Linden states at the end that the intensity of the relationships had decreased since 1935, with increasing isolation leading to fewer opportunities for networking or cooperation (p. 793).

Linden first quickly introduces the history of the Protestant Church in Osnabrück, reaching back into the reformation years in 1542/1543, and explains the standing of local Protestantism in the early twentieth century. He then describes certain main events and conflicts concerning the several chapters, which he analyzes in terms of his chosen method of social network analysis. Examples for the years 1907-1910 are the reorganisation of churchly offices and changes in church staff. For the “complex 1920”, he refers to the public conflicts between the minority of so-called churchly “Positivives” and the majority of liberal pastors. Finally, for the years 1926-1930, he refers to the reorganization of pastoral care in special care institutions, the use of the Apostles’ Creed in worship, and (once again) the staffing of pastoral offices. In the expansive fifth chapter (1933-1936), which forms the main part of the book, Linden provides an overview of the general development of church affairs in the Reich as well as the church of Hannover, before turning to their impact on the Osnabrück church district. Above all, this concerns the formation of religious and church-political groups and the attitude of the church towards the NSDAP and the Nazi state. This is followed by a short review of the position of Osnabrück superintendent Ernst Rolffs, by a survey of conflicts in the Luther-Gemeinde, a newly independent parish, in the years from 1929 to 1933, and finally by the longest sub-chapter (one single section of two hundred pages) on “process and relationship structures” during that time period. In sum, the way the book is structured is unconvincing, a problem that extends down into individual sections. Furthermore, Linden is unable to give a short and concise statement of his results beyond a repetitive and somewhat tiresome recapitulation.

From this reviewer’s perspective, the main problem is that the method chosen by the author cannot carry the work. It is of course true that group building processes and networks, interpersonal relationships, the enforcement of common interests, and not least personal sympathy or antipathy play an important role in social processes, especially in a more or less clearly defined socio-moral milieu. This is well known from the research of contemporary church history. There is also no doubt that these processes strongly influence decisions and actions. But the very narrow way in which the topic is considered here, exhausting itself in an isolated and decontextualised observation of relevant actors, does not do much to help enlighten the social and historical decision-making processes. The voluminous and detailed description of the historical background does not seem to be linked to the real object of the study, the structure of relationships of protestant pastors of Osnabrück, and remains a mere accessory part. Even the pastors are hardly made tangible beyond their position as actors within a social network, since explanations for their actions are not provided.

If non-consideration of the existing results of research into social history and history of mentalities is generally a problem of Linden’s work, this is exacerbated by the fact that he does not offer any guidance or orientation, refusing to put his results into context. To give one example, Linden describes in quite some detail the social commitment of liberal pastor Friedrich Grußendorf against the widespread abuse of alcohol, which he convincingly explains as a result of the pastor’s personal experiences (pp. 134-154). But the social function of this ecclesial commitment remains unmentioned, as does its being a part of a romanticized and backward-looking utopia propagated by the church under the popular term of “morality”. This lack of context becomes quite clear in the consideration of the play ‘It will be fine in the end’ (Es wird noch werden gut), penned by Grußendorf and first shown in 1914, on the well-known closure of the mine in neighbouring Piesberg (1898). Grußendorf, in a work containing some anti-catholic undertones, had explained this closure as the result of a strike which in turn was caused by a witch seducing the coal miners with a poisoned drink (i.e. alcohol). Linden does mention contemporary criticism of Grußendorf’s “falsification of history”, but he does not state that the closure was in fact approved by the shareholders simply because the mine was not profitable anymore after several water leaks. But the social significance of the play lies precisely in the fact that it misrepresents a calculated business decision as a necessity caused by (alleged and real) alcohol abuse of the coal miners.

Such inadequate classifications as well as other assessments which invite questioning can be found throughout the work. For example, the interpretation of a local protest event of the Protestant League against a meeting of the Catholic Church (1901) as motivated “primarily” by the need to express the displeasure of Osnabrück’s liberals with the positivism of the church (i.e. as primarily motivated by intra-protestant reasons) is hardly convincing (pp. 106-108). Another example is the early (September 1917) membership of liberal pastor August Pfannkuche in the German Fatherland Party (Deutsche Vaterlandspartei, DVLP); shortly before the end of the war Pfannkuche even found himself on the national executive committee of the party. Linden describes this engagement as a change in political attitude which “gave more consideration to the interests and ideological motives of the traditional conservative centre, without however formulating a break with the working class” (p. 131). He does so unaffected by the nearly undisputed results in research literature, according to which the function of DVLP was that of a bridge between the conservative right of the German Empire and the extreme and strictly antidemocratic right of the Weimar Republic. Indeed, well-known German historian Ulrich Wehler has characterized the DVLP as the “first right-wing proto-fascist party of the masses”. Such an understanding is absolutely vital in order to define the standing and actions of the Protestant Church in Osnabrück society along with the relationships within the protestant milieu and between pastors.

The second volume, which deals with the early years of the Nazi state, also suffers from inaccuracies, lack of classification and unlinked narrative threads. This is exacerbated by a failure to consider the research literature on the topic. The big syntheses of Kurt Meier and Klaus Scholder are named, but hardly considered in fact, and numerous recent studies do not find any attention at all. For example, on the issue of the “German Christian Movement,” the standard works of by Kurt Meier, Doris Bergen, Peter von der Osten-Sacken and Manfred Gailus are not considered at all. The same holds true for the issue of “Protestantism, Jew-hatred and anti-Semitism”.

It should also be mentioned that the author employs a style of writing which this reviewer found quite exhausting. Many sections are full of details, but devoid of structure and largely have the character of a retelling, losing the sense for what’s important. Also, it would have been desirable for the summaries to include more than a repetition of what has already been said, namely a targeted synthesis and, where applicable, a few words on new questions arising from the results. The permanent description of the pastoral relationships with words like “clique”, “prestige”, “activation”, “integration”, “insurance”, “coalition building”, “disturbance”, “resource development”, “weak” and “strong ties” , “in-“ and “outdegrees”, etc. are not only exhausting to read in their almost formal-seeming clustering, they also do not help one gain a better understanding of the relationship structures considered. It seems that a nomenclature is over-used without leading to any new insights, rather ending up in the middle of nowhere.

This criticism also extends down to the smallest details of the book. In one case, Linden acknowledges a critique, formulated in 1925 by a female social democratic journalist, of a church event with former papal chaplain Bruno Doehring, known for his national-conservative and anti-catholic views and thus controversial even within the Protestant Church, with the following words: “Especially her classification of the sermon as ‘inciting the people to hatred’ was hardly suitable to begin an open-minded communication with the Osnabrück pastors” (p. 293). This fails entirely to consider the relationship between the Protestant Church and the Social Democrats, or the anti-democratic, largely nationalist and revanchist actions of prominent representatives of German Protestantism, of which Doehring was a very eloquent example. Doehring’s public appearances were no more likely to foster an “open-minded conversation” than was the coverage in the social democratic press. Indeed, neither party intended to have an “open-minded communication,” something Linden does not seem to recognize.

Elsewhere, one wonders whether certain formulations can be considered appropriate. For instance, Linden refers to Osnabrück pastor Paul Leo, who was forced into retirement by the church in 1938, was later incarcerated in Buchenwald and finally emigrated from Germany, as a “Jew” rather than as a baptized “non-Aryan” (this is still the most correct terminology), despite being aware of the importance of this difference (p. 822, 866). To give one last example, after the spate of arrests in March 1935 (at the very latest), large parts of the Protestant Church, especially in and around the Confessing Church, no longer held any illusions about the Gestapo. For many pastors, even beyond the borders of the churches of the Old Prussian Union, sometimes existential experiences and a variety of pressures would follow, to which they reacted with a variety of strategies. The author’s formulation that Osnabrück’s pastors tried, by way of “anticipatory good conduct”, to “reduce to a minimum” acts by the Gestapo (p. 810) does not do justice to this situation.

In sum, the present reviewer can find hardly anything positive in the work under review. The author has conducted intensive and meticulous research into the historical sources and he introduces many new people and events from local church history, but he does not succeed in binding his results together into a well-thought-out whole. Because he refrains from classifying his results or comparing them to others, his study floats in a vacuum and raises more questions rather than it answers. Certainly, the work did nothing to dispel this reviewer’s general doubts whether social network analysis is suitable for furthering historical research.