May 2009 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

May 2009 — Vol. XV, no. 5

 Dear Friends,

Contents:

1) Obituary: Albrecht Schoenherr
2) Book reviews:

a) Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 10
b) Söderblom, Letters
c) Spicer, Hitler’s Priests
d) Shea, A Cross Too Heavy

1) It is with regret that we learn of the death at the age of 97 of Albrecht Schoenherr, the retired Protestant bishop of Berlin-Brandenburg in Potsdam on March 9th.He was the last surviving student of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s illegal seminary at Finkenwalde, near Stettin in 1936-7, and subsequently was the leading figure in the postwar life of the church in what was then East Germany.
The present Bishop, Wolfgang Huber, described Schoenherr as an impressive witness to Jesus Christ whose steadfastness had enabled his church community in East Germany to resist the attacks of the Communist state authorities, and defended the integrity of the gospel from encroachments from political interests. He was born in 1911, and as a student attended both Tuebingen and Berlin universities where he met Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a young lecturer. After the Nazi seizure of power, and the outbreak of the Church Struggle, Schoenherr was influenced by Bonhoeffer to join the Confessing Church, the minority group which strongly opposed all attempts to introduce Nazi ideas into the church. He then joined the first course given under Bonhoeffer’s direction at the seminary at Finkenwalde, near Stettin in 1935, and subsequently stayed for a second year as Bonhoeffer’s assistant. In later years he referred to this experience as the most valuable in his career.

Like most of his contemporaries, Schoenherr was conscripted for the army during the war, and served in Belgium and Italy. He was there taken captive, and then became chaplain to two German POW camps until his release in 1946. On returning to East Germany he established a similar seminary for Brandenburg and led this for seventeen years. In 1963 he became General Superintendent for Berlin-Brandenburg, during the period of severe repression by the Communist government of what had become the German Democratic Republic. One of the most serious contentions arose over the continuing links between the Evangelical Church there and its partners in West Germany. Otto Dibelius, for example, who was Bishop of Berlin and Brandenburg, but resided in West Berlin, was forbidden to exercise his functions in East Germany, and militantly attacked the Communist regime in the eastern part of his diocese. Schoenherr had then the unenviable task of trying to cope with the political and pastoral problems which ensued. He recognised that the political divisions of the country were too strong for the church to overcome, and hence sought to persuade his following in East Germany to declare their independence from their western partners for the sake of their better witness to the new political reality. This came to be called “The Church in Socialism” but remained a controversial step, since it appeared to welcome the idea of collaboration with the Communist regime. In fact Schoenherr’s steadfastness was a staunch defence against any such capitulation. In 1969 he was elected founding president of the Federation of Protestant Churches in the German Democratic Republic, and in 1972 was elected to be Bishop of (East) Berlin and Brandenburg after the diocese was split. He vigorously defended his churches’ interests, and in so doing earned the respect of the political regime. In 1978, he negotiated an agreement with the then leader of the East German government, Erich Honecker, which brought the church major alleviations, and official recognition of its situation. This included permission to make religious broadcasts on radio and television, pastoral visits to prisons, and other advantages. These undoubtedly prepared the way for the church in East Germany to play such an active role in the turbulent events of 1989.

But Schoenherr retired from these church responsibilities in 1981, though he continued for twenty years to travel widely lecturing on Bonhoeffer’s legacy and teaching courses for the laity called Conversations on Faith. He was naturally active in the International Bonhoeffer Society and was a co-editor for the comprehensive German edition of Bonhoeffer’s collected works. He himself wrote his autobiography in German “But the time was not lost”.

He married twice, had six children, 20 grandchildren and 29 great-grandchildren. He will be remembered as a stalwart upholder of Protestant church orthodoxy during times of great political tensions, and a leader who set a standard of uncompromising faithfulness to the gospel of Christ.

2a) ed. C. Green (English edition), Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, New York 1928-1931. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 10) Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2008. 764 pp. ISBN -13-978-0-8006-8330-6.

The English translation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s collected works proceeds apace. The latest to appear is volume 10, which introduces us to the young Bonhoeffer, covering the period from his twenty-second birthday until he is twenty-five, i.e. from 1928 to 1931. During these years he spent two extensive periods abroad, first in Barcelona, as assistant to the Chaplain of the German Protestant community, and second, as a post-doctoral student at Union Theological Seminary in New York. In 1928, Bonhoeffer had just completed his PhD thesis for the theological faculty of the University of Berlin, and was faced with the decision whether to seek his vocation as a pastor in the German Evangelical Church, or to turn to an academic career in theology. It was in part to test this choice that he accepted the posting to Barcelona. He was in any case too young to be ordained, and a certain prompting to see beyond Germany’s borders led him to accept. His subsequent visit to the United States was far more purposeful. It arose from his agreement with his mentors’ view that any future German theologian should be aware of the theological currents in the New World.

During both of these absences from home, Bonhoeffer maintained a lively correspondence with his family and friends, almost all of which has been astonishingly preserved. Together with various surviving papers containing the texts of addresses and sermons he delivered, along with lecture notes taken in New York, this volume brings together a remarkable corpus of over 600 pages. This material has all been carefully edited by Bonhoeffer’s friend Eberhard Bethge, and is now most skilfully translated into a fluent and comprehensible English. Clifford Green adds a valuable introduction to the English edition. The volume serves to show us an interesting stage in the development of this talented, even precocious young man.

Life in the German expatriate community in Barcelona, consisting of businessmen and merchants, offered little or no stimulus to Bonhoeffer’s theological development. He commented wickedly on his Pastor’s never reading any theological book, and on the disastrous tone of his sermons. By contrast Bonhoeffer preached lengthy and dense sermons, mainly reflecting the teachings of Karl Barth. He did however make himself popular through his work with the community’s children. His lack of Spanish, of course, was a barrier to assessing conditions in Spain. But his letters contain no explicit comments on the political or social conditions he found there. It was not until he returned to Berlin a year later that he could resume work on his post-doctoral thesis, needed to qualify for an academic position in his own department of systematic theology.

His sojourn in America eighteen months later was far more productive, both personally and theologically. At first he was shocked to find how undogmatic and indeed superficial was the kind of preaching offered in most of the main-stream churches in New York. An optimistic immanentism, coupled with a pragmatic desire to build up their congregations, seemed to be the main preoccupation of the Protestant clergy. He was equally shocked by the absence of dogmatic teaching at Union Seminary. It was only when he was introduced by a fellow student of Afro-American descent to the black churches in Harlem, especially the Abyssinian Baptist Church, that his enthusiasm was aroused. Here, he said, “one could really still hear someone talk in a Christian sense about sin and grace and the love of God. The black Christ is preached with captivating passion and vividness”. This experience of the religious fervour among an oppressed people deeply affected his personal beliefs. So too he learnt much from the insights of his fellow student, the Frenchman Jean Lasserre, who confronted him with the claims of Jesus, especially those recorded in the Sermon on the Mount, which was to become so central in Bonhoeffer’s own thinking. It was the beginning of an inspiring but costly discipleship.

Bonhoeffer’s disdain for the weaknesses of American religiosity, and his condescension about the teaching of theology at Union, can be attributed to the widespread feelings of superiority held by the European elite about American life and customs. Bonhoeffer himself came from an elite academic family, he had studied at Germany’s foremost university, under Adolf von Harnack, generally acknowledged as Europe’s most notable scholar.

His theological cogitations, especially on the philosophy of religion, were highly esoteric, abstract and demanding of great intellectual comprehension. He was unlikely to find any counterpart on the other side of the Atlantic. Some of his fellow students were undoubtedly put off by his aloofness, his conservatism and his German origin. But that is what he was. His class-based political sympathies can be seen in the notes he left for an address on the subject of “Germany” given to a mass rally of schoolchildren shortly after his arrival. In this talk he rehearsed the well-worn litany of complaints by German conservatives, beginning with Germany’s disastrous loss of the war, the cruel imposition of a hunger blockade by the Allies, the scandal of the Versailles Treaty, the loss of German territory and colonies, the harshness of the burden of reparations, the economic hardships of the inflation and then of the depression, and above all the humiliation of the so-called War Guilt Clause, blaming Germany for the origins of the war. He made no mention of the sweeping German aggressions, or of the innumerable victims and sufferings these actions had caused, especially in France and Belgium. It is probable that at the time Bonhoeffer was not aware how far these views were being exploited by the Nazis.

It was only after he returned from America that he was forced to see how readily his fellow middle-class Germans were letting themselves be seduced. But his own national sympathies remained. When, eight years later in 1939 he returned to New York, and was offered a chance to escape from Nazi tyranny, he famously replied: “I shall have no right to take part in the restoration of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the tribulations of this time with my people”. Exile or emigration was not a real option. He remained rooted in his German and Christian heritage.

This volume ends when Bonhoeffer returned to Berlin in mid-1931. He was immediately caught up in new and challenging engagements in the ecumenical movement, in social work projects in the Berlin slums, and in his teaching responsibilities at the Berlin University. All made him aware of the growing crisis in Germany, which was to culminate with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power on January 30th, 1933. While it is tempting to believe that Bonhoeffer’s stay in America influenced his political stance thereafter, this would not seem to be borne out by the evidence. But this volume depicts a highly thoughtful young professional enlarging his horizons in a number of different directions, such as his newly found interest in pacifism, which later on were to have a significant impact on his subsequent career.

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2b) Dietz Lange (ed.) Nathan Söderblom: Brev – Lettres – Briefe – Letters. A selection from his correspondence, 528 pp. incl. frontispiece, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006, ISBN 13:978-3-525-60005-4; ISBN 10:3-525-60005-4

This stout volume certainly does something to maintain the presence of its illustrious subject in the modern academic catalogues. Söderblom, the prophetic guiding spirit of early twentieth-century ecumenism and the guiding spirit behind the 1925 Stockholm conference, was deeply admired in Britain and the United States. At least one official photograph of Bishop Bell of Chichester places him purposefully beside a portrait of his Swedish hero. If this long shadow has since receded, it reflects a good deal upon a decline in our interest in themes which once excited both the idealist and the scholar. It is surely time that we retrieved them.

Dietz Lange, a German scholar, here edits a great variety of materials with authority. This is a valuable compendium, designed to reveal the richness of Söderblom’s fascinations and the diversity of his friends and allies. It is, as its title pronounces, an international collection for which the committed reader will need English and German. The admirable introduction is in English; the Swedish letters are duly presented in the original and translated into English.

Lange finds his Söderblom at large in three guises: the pastor, the professor and the archbishop. In all respects, an editor has his work cut out for him: Söderblom, Lange remarks patiently, was ‘a tireless letter writer’, who would busily dictate letters even as he walked along the street (p. 9). The shelves of Uppsala University Library now stagger under the weight of no less than 38,000 letters, dairies and notes. And yet what accumulates here is not merely official and dry, but lively and rich. For Söderblom enjoyed people and he inhabited many distinct dimensions with apparent ease. Church historians might note his conviction – in contradiction to Harnack – that the history of religion belonged not solely in the history department, but in the theological faculty.

The great bulk of this collection lies, very naturally and properly, with the Söderblom’s years as archbishop of Uppsala. Although his appointment came as a shock to the politicos of his church, it was a public role for which he was brilliantly qualified. A convinced internationalist, his public work now coincided with the outbreak of the First World War and, subsequently, a new, bustling age of conferences and movements. It was in this landscape that those from the English-speaking world encountered him. In this collection, it is no surprise to find him in eager dialogue with the assorted giants of German Protestantism: Otto Dibelius, Adolf von Harnack, Rudolf Otto and Frierich Heiler (quite a collection in itself). But here, too, are the Scandinavians, Gustaf Aulén, Eivind Berggrav and Birger Forell, the American, Henry Atkinson, the Scot David Cairns and Archbishop Davidson.

Altogether, this is a valuable volume which deserves the international readership for which it is so clearly designed. Both the tenacious editor and his committed publishers have every right to our gratitude.

Andrew Chandler, George Bell Institute at the University of Chichester

2c) Kevin P. Spicer, Hitler’s Priests. Catholic Clergy and National Socialism. De Kalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008. 369 Pp. ISBN978-0-87580-380-5 (published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
(This review appeared first in the Catholic Historical Review, April 2009)

In 1933 the majority of Germans enthusiastically welcomed Hitler’s takeover of power. Amongst the Catholic population, there was a small number of priests who had already demonstrated their support of the man whom they believed would lead Germany into a new era of national greatness. Kevin Spicer has now provided us with a commendable account of the ideas and careers of 138 such men, who he designates as “brown priests”. His diligent and perceptive research in both the ecclesiastical and government archives in Germany examines these men’s motives, describes their advocacy of Nazi ideas and assesses the influence of their political activism.

Needless to say, Spicer, with all the advantages of hindsight, is highly critical of these priests, but also makes clear that, for the most part, so were their bishops at the time. Many were disciplined by their ecclesiastical superiors, not so much for their political zealotry, but for their failure to obtain the appropriate approval. Spicer gives numerous examples to show how these priests refused to give up their pro-Nazi political agitation, even when ordered to do so. And he draws attention to the difficulties such well-publicized activities caused to their bishops.

Most of these brown priests were convinced that their advocacy for the Nazi Party was fully compatible with their personal Catholic faith. And they had little difficulty in backing the Nazis’ antisemitism and racism, making use of the church’s traditional hostility towards Judaism, and their own prejudices against the alleged malevolence of German Jewry.

It is notable that over a third of these priests had doctorates in philosophy or theology, which they used to advance their mixture of German Catholicism and National Socialism. The more prominent of these promoters of the Nazi cause, such as the former Abbot Alban Schachleiter, have already appeared in earlier histories of the German Church Struggle. But Spicer gives us the fullest account in English of these individuals’ waywardness. Schachleiter, for instance, made much of his personal acquaintance with Hitler, championed an extreme German nationalism which had led to his expulsion from his abbey in Prague in 1918, was frequently the main speaker at Nazi rallies, and used his contacts to evade the restrictions placed on him by his superiors. When he died in June 1937, Hitler ordered that he should be given a state funeral, and sent his deputy, Hess, to attend.

Equally notorious were those brown priests who believed that their Nazi sympathies had thwarted their careers in the church and denied them their due recognition. Some even left the church and became ideological crusaders against their former colleagues. Albert Hartl, for example, whom Spicer scarcely mentions, held a high position in Himmler’s security intelligence service, and in 1941 was busy preparing plans for eradicating church influence in Germany once victory was achieved. (More information on Hartl’s nefarious activities can be found in the authoritative German companion volume by Wofgang Dierker, Himmlers Glaubenskrieger,Paderborn 2003).

Spicer also provides information about lesser-known figures,. many of whom were sent to obscure rural parishes, where they eagerly enough supported the Nazi Party in their pastoral ministry and parish activities for many years. Particularly difficult to assess is the extent to which these men’s fervent attachment to Nazi ideas was affected by the Nazis’ own anti-Catholic extremism. Spicer is not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt and thus perhaps exaggerates their single-minded determination to conflate Nazism and Catholicism. At any rate, as he shows, in the aftermath, many brown priests were exculpated by denazification courts, and almost all eventually made their way back into public ministry.

Writing for an English-speaking audience about events on another continent which took place seventy or more years ago presents real difficulties, all the more since Spicer clearly has no sympathy at all for his subjects. But his purpose is clear: to draw attention to the folly and danger of allowing political fervour to distort the orthodox heritage of the church, or to sanction the fanaticism which only encouraged the Nazis in their radical campaigns, especially against the Jews. Such a theological mindset, he claims, closely paralleled the designs and actions of the Holocaust’s perpetrators. He also criticizes the bishops for focusing solely on the survival of the church and its sacramental mission, and for their failure to take a stronger stand against the antisemitic tirades of these brown priests. Even though their number was small, and by no means representative, and even though their influence clearly remained marginal, Spicer’s well-argued warnings against this trahison des clercs are indeed apposite in this sad chapter of German Catholicism’s history.

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2d) Paul O’Shea, A Cross too heavy. Eugenio Pacelli. Politics and the Jews of Europe, 1917-1943. (Kenthurst, NSW, Australia: Rosenberg Publishing. 2008 Pp 392 ISBN 978-1877-058714).

Dietmar Paeschel, Vatikan und Shoa (Friedenauer Schriftenreihe. Reihe A: Theologie, Band 9) (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 2007 Pp 150. ISBN 978-3-631-56828-6).

(This review appeared first in the Catholic Historical Review, April 2009)

The flood of books about Pope Pius XII continues unabated. But since no new documentation has appeared in the last ten years, and a major indispensable source, the papers of the Vatican Secretariat of State, are still secreted in the Vatican archive and are not yet released for public scrutiny, it is clear that many of these new books are not the result of new historical analysis or research. Instead, the character and policies of Pius XII are used as part of an on-going controversy about the authority and governance of the Roman Catholic Church. The participants seek to prove either the urgent need for reform of an outdated authoritarian institution, or regard Pius as an example of prudent leadership at a time of great political and military danger. With regard to his stance towards the Nazis` persecution and mass murder of the Jews, many vocal critics have turned Pius into a scapegoat. A less silent pope, with more active engagement, they believe, could and should have prevented, or at least mitigated the Nazi Holocaust. But is there historical evidence to substantiate such far-reaching claims, or is this purely the product of wishful thinking? On the other hand, are those seeking to defend Pius doing so in order to exonerate the institution at whatever cost to historical candor?. Both books under review attempt to answer these questions.

Paul O`Shea is a young Australian scholar who rejects as superficial those widespread accusations which have depicted Pius as Hitler`s Pope, too lenient towards the Germans, an antisemitic bigot, insensitive to the fate of Hitler`s victims, or motivated only by a calculating political opportunism. Instead, O`Shea concentrates on seeing Pacelli as the inheritor of a long theological tradition, enshrined in the Vatican`s centuries-old stance, whereby the Jews were seen as a renegade people, deserving of conversion but remaining a witness to God`s eternal mercy. O`Shea`s main contention is that centuries of Christian Judeophobia and antisemitism culminated in the papal silence during the Holocaust. On the other hand, O`Shea notes, Pius cannot be dismissed as a bystander. He agonized over every word he uttered on the fate of the Jews, and his discreet actions on behalf of individuals saved many lives. But the widely-held perception that the Papal moral influence would be resolutely and loudly deployed was disappointed. And the burden of O`Shea`s critique is that he shares this disappointment. He is therefore critical of Pius for not protesting more forcefully, since `there is a moral duty to speak out in the face of evil, regardless of the consequence` (p. 28).

O`Shea is hardly the first to advance such an opinion, but he fails to point out one all-important factor. For any far-reaching, let alone successful, measures to assist the Jews in war-torn Europe, the Catholic magisterium would have had to undertake a major reversal of its theological position, to abandon its historic anti-Judaic stance, and to embrace the theology first adumbrated in 1965. But no such alteration took place. Nor is there any evidence that Pius XII would have supported such a major theological revision. This process only began after his death. O`Shea`s contribution is to show how the Vatican`s mind-set, its entrenched conservatism, and Pacelli`s own theological training, all combined to reinforce a consistent, if now regrettable, attitude of regarding Jews as second-class citizens or the victims of history. The result was a theological rather than a moral failure.

Dietmar Päschel`s short account of the relations between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people during the course of the twentieth century, is clearly designed for German students. It includes a useful German translation of some of the important documents, as well as a German bibliography. Dominated by the horrifying events of the Shoah, his narrative divides into two separate halves. The first seeks to explain the failure of the Vatican and the German Catholic hierarchy to prevent, or at least alleviate, the Nazis` ferocity against the Jews, while the second outlines the steps taken to draw up a new and more sympathetic stance by the Catholic authorities, beginning with the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

In Päschel`s view, the Nazis` radical hostility to both Jews and Catholics put the latter on the defensive. The Vatican`s attempt to obtain safeguards through the 1933 Concordat was largely a failure, and led German Catholics to concentrate on defending their own autonomy. Because of the deeply-rooted antisemitism in Catholic ranks, there was little sympathy for their fellow victims, the Jews. This reluctance was a contributing factor for the Vatican`s equal lack of strong protest against the Nazi atrocities. Those Catholic voices raised on behalf of the Jews, such as Edith Stein or Provost Lichtenberg, were too few to be effective. The Holy See maintained its silence, regarding the persecution of the Jews as a secular matter beyond its mandate. The readiness of the German Catholic hierarchy to support Hitler`s nationalist goals showed their capacity for complicit compromise. Despite the Vatican`s attempt to mobilize opposition to the errors of Nazi ideology, through its 1937 Encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, the result was poor. And the events of 1938 culminating in the November pogrom, demonstrated not only the Nazis` political mastery, but the failure of Catholics to take a stand, either through the Vatican or locally. Like O`Shea, Päschel deplores Pius` failure to protest, and is equally critical of the German Catholics` cowardice. Neither, he says, earned a halo.

In the second half of the book, the tone is warmer. Päschel presents the various stages of the far-reaching, if belated, change in Catholic attitudes, brought about by the impact of the Shoah,and also by the encouragement of Pope John XXIII. He gives an excellent summary of the debates in the Vatican Council, from which there finally emerged in October 1965, the significant document Nostra Aetate. The revolutionary achievement of this text, he rightly observes, was to remove any Catholic foundation for anti-Judaism. The ancient slander that Jews were responsible for Christ`s crucifixion was repudiated. Jews remain chosen by God. It was, Päschel argues, a unique and unprecedented paradigm change in Catholic theology.

This initiative in Catholic-Jewish relations was taken further by the decisive leadership of Pope John Paul II. During his long reign, he made dramatic visits to Israel, Auschwitz and the Roman synagogue. On each occasion he stressed the change in Catholic attitudes. But a 1998 document entitled We remember. A reflection on the Shoah seems to Päschel to be more of a Vatican bureaucratic defence than an acknowledgement of Catholic guilt. He justly criticizes the tendency to distort the lamentable record of Catholic prejudice for apologetic reasons. Much, he believes, still remains to be done. The historic guilt of the institution, rather than of individual Catholics, still remains to be acknowledged. Yet the reversal of the age-long anti-Judaic doctrines must be regarded as epochal, and hopefully irreversible. New theological impulses by the Vatican are, in Päschel`s opinion, indispensable to maintain the momentum, for improved Catholic-Jewish relations.

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With every best wish,
John Conway

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April 2009 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

April 2009 — Vol. XV, no. 4

 Dear Friends,

O Traurigkeit, o Herzeleid!
Ist das nicht zu beklagen
Gott des Vaters einigs Kind
Wird ins Grab getragen

O grosse Not!
Gotts Sohn liegt tot
Am Kreuz ist er gestorben
Hat dadurch das Himmelreich
Uns aus Lieb erworben

O Jesu, du
Mein Hilf und Ruh
Ich bitte dich mit Tränen:
Hilf, dass ich mich bis ins Grab
Nach dir möge sehnen.
Johann Rist, 1607-1667

At this Eastertide, we rejoice in the hope given to us in the Resurrection of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, but also we recall His sufferings on the Cross, and those of His Church during its long and troubled history. The Lutheran hymn above, written four centuries ago, surely attests to these two realities, as do the books reviewed below.

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) Gailus, Kirchliche Amtshilfe
b) Vromen, Hidden children of the Holocaust in Belgium
c) Heschel, The Aryan Jesus
d) Wickeri, Reconstructing China – K.H.Ting
e) Clark, Allies for Armageddon

2) Journal issue, Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte Contemoporary Church History, 2008, no. 2

1a) ed. Manfred Gailus, Kirchliche Amtshilfe. Die Kirche und die Judenverfolgung im “Dritten Reich”. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2008. 223 Pp. ISBN 978-3-525–55340-4.

One of the earliest discriminatory measures taken by the Nazis against German Jews was the passing in April 1933 of the so-called Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service. This prohibited anyone having Jewish ancestors from holding positions in the state civil service. including the judiciary, the universities, schools and hospitals. Hundreds of thousands were affected. Many of them were church-goers, who now found it necessary to seek clarification as to whether they had any Jewish forebears. The only way this could be done was by consulting the parish registers, which by long standing decrees of the Prussian monarchy, had been carefully maintained for several hundred years. Births, marriages, deaths and particularly baptisms were all recorded. So in 1933, the local parishes were inundated with requests to examine these registers, since anyone seeking a job in the public service needed to provide proof that he was of “pure” German origin. At the same time, there were various zealots among the parish clergy who wholeheartedly welcomed the Nazi attempt to “purify” German society by discovering the extent to which their congregations had become “polluted” by intermarriage with, or baptism of, “foreign elements”, particularly Jews. These pastors readily gave support to the idea that the “pure” German community of blood “should safeguard Germany’s eternal future”, or alternatively that “mixed” marriages, even in the distant past, had been a disastrous development which should now be rectified.

In the mood of 1933, when the vast majority of pastors and their congregations welcomed Adolf Hitler as Germany’s saviour from national humiliation and/or the danger of racial contamination, the search for alleged Jewish miscegenation was seen as a national duty. No pastor objected. Soon enough, the genealogical zealots, all confessing their devotion to the Nazi cause, took over the organization of this nation-wide investigation. Thousands of parish records were gathered together in centralized regional offices, where huge card indexes were prepared, carefully listing the names and dates when “alien elements’ had crept into the church. In the view of some of these fanatical pastors, this process had been part of a deliberate Jewish plot to undermine the “pure German” character of the church. Their duty was to oppose this subtle and dangerous process. As one bigoted pastor from Schleswig-Holstein declared: “it was the duty of the priest to record with diligence this past pollution of our nation’s purity, and to ensure that it never happens again.”
In most cases, pastors receiving requests to search their registers obediently complied, since they were officially the keepers of the state’s records and statistics. It was their patriotic duty to obey the law, which they then conscientiously carried out. Of course, in 1933, no one could have known what such discriminatory measures would later lead to. But none could have failed to realize the portentous effect of this kind of discrimination and exclusion from the majority in the church. It was all willingly enough undertaken.

Those who collaborated in these endeavours, which were often to have such fatal consequences for those affected, had no regrets at the time. Nor any since. After 1945, these activities were all covered over with a blanket of amnesia and the bureaucratic paper trail was carefully buried.

This is a story without any redeeming features, all the more since the majority of the pastors involved returned, after 1945, to regular parish work. Their pro-Nazi participation and/or sympathy, even if investigated, was largely brushed under the carpet. Some were even complemented on their “diligent and energetic genealogical researches”.

We therefore owe Professor Manfred Gailus and his team of authors a debt of gratitude for writing up so competently this disgraceful story, and for describing the stages by which church officials assisted the Nazi racial campaign of persecution at one of its most intrusive points. As they note, the only opposition to this Nazi-induced enterprise came from the reluctance of several pastors, especially in the rural areas, to be parted from their parish registers; alternatively some argued that they could not spare the time to undertake the necessary researches, or that they lacked the financial resources to employ people with sufficient skills in the use of dusty and long-forgotten records. In some parts of Germany, this desire to co-ordinate and centralize the discovery of Jewish forebears amongst the parishioners had only meagre results. Nevertheless the attempt remains a sad stain upon the church’s history. We can surely be grateful to Professor Gailus for his continuing efforts to undertake the task of coming to terms with this and other portions of the German Evangelical Church’s problematic past.
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1b) Suzanne Vromen, Hidden Children of the Holocaust. Belgian Nuns and their daring rescue of young Jews from the Nazis. Oxford University press, 2008. 178 Pp. ISBN 078-0-29.318128-9

The saga of the Jewish children saved from the Nazis’ persecution during the Holocaust is always heart-wrenching. In Belgium, which figures only occasionally in holocaust historiography, little is known about the rescue work undertaken mainly by nuns, who hid the children in numerous convents across the land. Suzanne Vromen’ s account breaks new ground and is therefore valuable in filling this gap.

Compiled principally from the survivors’ testimonies, Vromen has interviewed many of these, both boys and girls, whose names were later recorded. She has produced a systematic and comparative evaluation of their treatment and eventual rescue, and does so with a sympathetic stance, since she herself only narrowly escaped the same experience. She pays particular tribute to the courage and foresight of the Mothers Superior of the convents, and their readiness to extend help to these children, despite their knowledge of the risks they ran. At the same time, this was all the more unexpected, since these convents were among the most traditional institutions in a strongly Catholic country. Pre-Vatican II attitudes were widespread. Anti-semitic stereotypes were commonly expressed, but aversion to the German occupation and its repressive policies prevailed. At the same time, Vromen takes care to refute the accusations that these nuns were motivated either by the desire for financial gain, or by proselytizing motives. Certainly, as she notes, many of these hidden children were baptized so that they could more fully participate in the numerous daily Catholic rituals. But, in Vromen’s estimation this was primarily in order to make them inconspicuous, and succeeded in this attempt.

The testimonies she gathered show a wide spectrum amongst the children from those who gladly adopted a new Catholic identity to those who resisted any loss of their Jewishness. After the war very considerable efforts were made to reconnect the children with their parents. If the parents had not survived, the children were given to a Jewish agency, necessarily impersonal and eager only to preserve them as a precious remnant. Undoubtedly many of the nuns were reluctant to see their charges depart to such an uncertain future. But Vromen gives the benefit of doubt about their intentions.

The convents varied greatly in size and character. But all shared in a very traditional institutional style, laced with Catholic piety, which imposed on all inmates an often rigid conformity. Vromen estimates that approximately two hundred such institutions were involved in this rescue work. She provides an excellent account of the daily lives in war-time. Like all such schools and homes, the children and their caretakers were obliged to suffer the rigours of war-time conditions, with the oppression of the foreign occupation forces, the dangers of bombing raids, the scarcity of food, the cold of winters and the absence of recreation. For the Jewish children there were the added dangers of detection and the lack of knowledge about their parents’ fate. At the same time, accepting these children demanded special qualities and competence from the convents and their staffs. Particularly the role of the Mother Superior was crucial. The burden placed on these women for the success of their rescue missions here receives due acknowledgment.

The fact that, in later years, many of these nuns were awarded the title of “Righteous Gentiles” speaks favourably about how their loving care was remembered by their charges. Vromen was fortunate in being able to interview many of these nuns, whose memories were still sharp, despite their advanced ages, fifty or more years after the events recalled. Necessarily, since no records were kept at the time, these recollections are now indispensable. Vromen’s research therefore helps to break the silence which so long veiled the story of these hidden children and pays tribute to the courageous and steadfast nuns who sheltered and cared for them . The regrettable fact is that these women have only received belated recognition in recent years in post-war Belgium, in contrast to the men who participated in the more dramatic armed resistance. It is also regrettable that the Belgian Catholic Church has not seen fit to make any institutional commemoration of their humanitarian endeavours. Vromen’s tribute is therefore both timely and appropriate.
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1c) Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus. Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. Princeton Univ. Press. 384p $29.95

(This review appeared in America Magazine, February 16, 2009, and is reprinted by kind permission of the author)

Founded in 1939 against the background of Nazi dominance by a group of German Protestant theologians, pastors and churchgoers, the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life sought to redefine Christianity as a Germanic religion whose founder, Jesus, was not a Jew but rather an opponent of Judaism who fought valiantly to destroy Judaism but fell victim in that struggle.

This volume presents the history of that institute: how it came into being and won approval and financing from church leaders, the nature of the “dejudaized” New Testament and hymnal that it published, the many conferences and lectures that it organized, and those who joined and became active members especially from the academic world and in particular its academic director, Walter Grundmann (1906-74).

Susannah Heschel, professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College, is the daughter of the famous Jewish scholar and religious activist, Abraham Heschel. She grew up hearing from her father and his friends about the German academic scene in the 1920s and 1930s. Her interest in Grundmann’s institute was piqued in the late 1980s, and she has worked on this project for many years, especially since the pertinent archives became accessible. She has an interesting and important story to tell about the political corruption of academic Christian theological scholarship, and she tells it very well. She offers abundant quotations from the publications and correspondence of the major figures. Just when the reader feels the need for more background information about a particular person or topic, Heschel supplies it. She retains the objectivity appropriate to a historian without glossing over the horror of her topic and the scoundrels who perpetrated it.

One of the institute’s preoccupations was to dejudaize Jesus. Along with some other distinguished German biblical scholars of the time, Grundmann and his colleagues contended that Jesus descended from the non-Jewish population of Galilee, that he struggled heroically against Judaism, and finally fell into the hands of the Judean officials who had him put to death. For Germans in the 1930s and early 1940s who were struggling against what they were told was an international Jewish conspiracy, the “Aryan Jesus” was proposed as a symbol of their own struggle. Their task was to complete successfully the struggle that the Aryan Jesus had begun. As a means toward that end, some “German Christians” saw the need to divest Christianity of its Jewish elements and to produce a purified Christianity fit for the future thousand-year Reich.

The impetus for this project came first of all from the long German tradition of theological anti-Judaism. Added to that tradition were the “race” theories that had emerged more recently and the rise to political power of Hitler and the Nazi party. Moreover, there had developed within German Protestantism a split between the “German Christians” and the “Confessing Church.” The “German Christians” took more eagerly to the task of ridding Christianity of its Jewish elements and developing a new kind of Christianity supposedly more consistent with the Nazi ideology that they saw coming to power before their eyes. One of the strongholds of the German Christian movement was the region of Thuringia, and the institute dedicated to eradication of Jewish influence on the German church had its home in Jena. While not officially sponsored by the University of Jena, Grundmann and several of his co-workers were faculty members there.

Grundmann became the institute’s academic director and driving force. In his mid-30s he had been lecturing and writing about “Jesus the Galilean” and drawing parallels between Jesus’ alleged struggle against Judaism and the contemporary German situation. He was a popular teacher and lecturer, and had many contacts in the German academic world. His own teachers included Adolf Schlatter and Gerhard Kittel, very distinguished scholars whose writings were often tinged with anti-Judaism. In his work for the institute Grundmann organized conferences that attracted other scholars, and so widened the institute’s influence. Even when paper was scarce, Grundmann managed to get published his own writings and those of scholars sympathetic to the institute’s goals.

One of the institute’s first projects was the production of a dejudaized translation of the New Testament. This involved purging the Synoptic Gospels of positive references to Judaism, eliminating the biographical and autobiographical notices about Paul’s Jewishness and highlighting the negative comments about “the Jews” in John’s Gospel. Another project was a dejudaized hymnbook, in which Jewish language and concepts were eliminated and replaced by songs about war and the “fatherland.” A dejudaized catechism presented Jesus as a Galilean whose message and conduct stood in opposition to Judaism. These publications were widely circulated and had great influence.

Two issues central to the Christian Bible presented problems for Grundmann and his colleagues: the Old Testament and Paul. While many in the German Christian movement wanted to jettison the Old Testament, some (mainly professors of Old Testament) wanted to retain it as evidence of Jewish perfidy and degeneracy, often using the ancient Israelite prophets’ denunciations against the Jewish people of the present. Since Paul had been the theological hero in Luther’s Protestant Reformation, he could not be so easily purged. The solution was to use Paul’s general ideas and play down or omit what seemed too “Jewish” about his person and theology.

The Nazis’ reception of Grundmann’s institute was mixed. Some officials welcomed the support of the German Christians and of the institute in particular. However, other highly placed Nazis did not want to encourage a renewed German Christianity that might rival their own plans for a Nordic paganism entirely without Christian elements. For members of the Confessing Church and the Catholic Church (despite their own forms of anti-Judaism), the goals and projects of the institute and the German Christians seemed too radical. While this mixed reception was a great disappointment to Grundmann and his colleagues, it became their salvation after the defeat of the Nazis.

In the superficial “denazification” process after the war, Grundmann and his colleagues portrayed themselves as scholars of Judaism, victims of Nazi persecution and heroes responsible for the church’s survival. They wrote recommendations for one another, attested to one another’s integrity and took up former or new positions in the church and the university. Grundmann continued to publish books and articles without apology, and even turned up as an informant for the East German secret police, the Stasi.

Heschel has a remarkable story to tell. Her reliance on primary sources and her objectivity are impressive. One comes away from her account wondering how such apparently intelligent and learned Christian scholars could have been so foolish and craven. While there were several causes, Heschel’s narrative demonstrates once more the noxious power of Christian theological anti-Judaism, especially among those who should have known better.

Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., is professor of New Testament at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry and editor of New Testament Abstracts.

1d) Philip Wickeri, Reconstructing Christianity in China – K. H. Ting and the Chinese Church, Maryknoll NY, Orbis Books, 2007, 516 pp., US$ 50.00, American Society of Missiology Studies, no. 41.

(This review appeared first in the International Review of Missions, September 2008)

This is a most remarkable book, about a remarkable Christian man and leader, living through some of the most remarkable upheavals, threats and in the end resurrection developments of the Christian Church in China. It is also written by a remarkable disciple, the only foreigner to date to be ordained in China to the Christian ministry within the Chinese Protestant Church. Like many earlier studies in this North American Series, it is not quick, still less easy reading, but will deserve to be read and studied for many years.

Wickeri first met Bishop Ting in 1979, when he was invited to serve ‘as an interpreter for the Chinese inter-religious delegation at the Third World Conference on Religion and Peace’ (p.4) which took place at Princeton Theological Seminary where Wickeri was a doctoral student. The thesis he wrote became in 1988 the comparably full and important study Seeking the Common Ground – Protestant Christianity, the Three-Self Movement and China’s United Front (Maryknoll, Orbis Books) which remains a key study of the more general inter-action between Chinese Communist rule and the faith and practice of Chinese Protestant Christians over the 40 years following the Communist taking of power in 1949. The new book is all the more interesting both for covering the same history through the faith and thinking of a particular person and leader, while also continuing the story into the present when Bishop Ting, now 92 and restricted to a wheelchair, is still taking a lively interest in all that is happening in and around the Church he has served so well.

The book is a biography of a particular person, yet also takes the reader through a richly documented story of what was happening at each stage both to China as a nation and to the total Protestant community within which K. H. Ting grew up and of which he became a major leader as it was allowed to rediscover itself and its vocation under the government led by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. He was born in Shanghai, into a family attached to St Peter’s Church, a congregation of the then Anglican Church in that city’s International Settlement, where his maternal grandfather had been a deacon and priest in the early part of the century. His university studies were in the Anglican foundation, St John’s University, Shanghai, where after one year in engineering he transferred to theology, almost all of his studies being taken in the English language which he has spoken and written perfectly ever since.

The three main sections of the book take the reader through the three very different periods of Bishop Ting’s long life: that of the Japanese occupation, the Second World War, and his five years of international service in Canada, New York and Geneva during the civil war in China and the war in Korea; then the years of ‘Deconstructing Christianity in China’ while settling into living under Communist rule and the upheavals that the chaotic ‘cultural revolution’ of 1966-76 consisted of and was followed by; and then the restoration, indeed rebirth, of Christianity since the late 1970s until today. In each period we are taken deeply into Bishop Ting’s own experience and handling of all the uncertainties and tensions, thanks in particular to recorded interviews that he gave Wickeri in the early 1990s when the latter was serving in the Hong Kong office of the Amity Foundation that has proved to be one of Bishop Ting’s most creative initiatives. Wickeri insists in his Introduction that the book is ‘not an approved or authorized biography’, though Bishop Ting ‘has cooperated with me at different stages in the process of writing and research’ (p. 9), and that he takes responsibility himself for his interpretation and evaluation of major themes within it all – with 64 crowded pages of Notes and a Bibliography of 43 pages indicating just how much care he has taken !

Space forbids any attempt to enter into the fascinating detail of this whole story, for instance the crucial role in Ting’s career played more than once, above all during the ‘cultural revolution’, by Chairman Mao’s second-in-command, Zhou Enlai, whom Ting may have met in his boyhood, and whose secretary in the 1940s was a schoolmate of his wife’s (p.53) ! Or into Ting’s relationship with the Buddhist leader Zhao Puchu, a close companion in membership of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference from 1959 onwards, and whose commitment to Ting is movingly reflected in an Ode (a Ci in Mandarin) the monk wrote for him, probably at a particularly low moment in 1973, which, in English, is printed – and ‘translated’ in the appended footnote – on p. 197f.

Yet of course it is Bishop Ting’s ever-growing responsibilities in and for the Christian (which is how Protestants are identified, in distinction from Catholics, in Mandarin) Church(es) in China, which provide the bulk of the material of this rich book, from Ting’s early, short pastorate after graduation from St John’s in a wartime and occupied Shanghai, all the way through an extraordinarily demanding life, to his efforts after ‘retirement’ to re-shape the theological outlook of the Church by a long series of articles, addresses and other writings devoted to ‘Theological Reconstruction’ (see pp. 346ff.). By this, which has not been always popular among Ting’s many colleagues around the country, he means above all looking out more widely, more lovingly and more exploringly, on to the total human scene in and beyond the People’s Republic.

Throughout, the book is centrally interested in the development of Ting’s theological understanding and the practical principles and decisions to which that has led, not least in the endless weighing during most of the story of what can and cannot be openly said or done in the light of the political leadership and its sensitivities at each different stage. One would like to think that the weight of care Ting has shown throughout his life in this field could be softening in these latest years. Yet what has been happening around Taiwan, Tibet and the Olympic games in 2008 surely indicates that the Christian leaders of today and tomorrow are likely to find themselves facing a no less care-filled and sensitive set of roles to play than those faced by Bishop K.H. Ting over the 60 and more years so fully documented here.

Dr Martin Conway, Oxford, chairman of the Friends of the Church in China from 1994 – 2000.

1e) Victoria Clark, Allies for Armageddon. The Rise of Christian Zionism. New Haven an London: Yale University Press. 2007. 331 Pp. ISBN 978-0-300-11698-4

Victoria Clark is a British writer, who earlier gave us an insightful study of the Christian churches in the Balkans in the aftermath of Communist rule. She now turns to a more lurid subject, the often spectacular witness of the so-called Christian Zionists, who form part of the contemporary American Religious Right. This community with its extreme views, both theological and political, is best known for its successful mobilization of assistance for the State of Israel, and the remarkable amount of financial support it has garnered for Israel’s cause. This significant minority among American Protestant fundamentalists derives its beliefs from certain early Puritans with their addiction to taking biblical prophecies literally, if selectively. These included an unshakable eschatological belief in the immanence of Jesus’ Second Coming, along the lines fervently preached by the early nineteenth century British evangelist, John Nelson Darby. His advocacy was based on a time frame which included the restoration of all Jews to their promised biblical homeland, the rise of the Anti-Christ, the seven years of Tribulation, the devastating Battle of Armageddon, the Rapture of the saved Christians into heaven, followed by the Last Days and then the End of the World. It was all part of God’s prophetic and immutable plan.

The first part of Clark’s book is devoted to a well-researched study of the origins and development of these beliefs, and their impact on Christian society, especially in Britain and America. Even before the rise of the modern secular Zionist movement, this Protestant faction under such leaders as the Earl of Shaftesbury had fostered the idea of restoring Europe’s Jews to their ancient territories. Such concepts undoubtedly played a significant part in the British Government’s issuing of the 1917 Balfour declaration in support of a Jewish national home in Palestine, and later led to President Truman’s immediate recognition of the newly-established State of Israel in 1948. Such steps were all interpreted by this sect as proof of their correct discernment of the signs of the pre-millennial age.

The second half of the book describes Clark’s personal interviews with a number of American Christian Zionist leaders. She becomes increasingly dismayed by the rigidity and dogmatism of their biblically-based eschatology, even if the leaders are coy about the exact methods or timing when their predictions will take place. But all can agree on the American Christians’ duty to aid and abet the Jewish state, even suggesting the desirability of using nuclear strikes to attack such implacable enemies of Israel as Muslim fundamentalists or the Iranian nation. They have no sympathy at all for the Christian Arabs of the Middle East, whose plight is ignored even while huge Christian resources are deployed to sponsor new Jewish settlements in the West Bank territories, as well as to assist in the return of more Jews from exile elsewhere. Any talk of compromise with Israel’s opponents, or any suggestion that a two-state solution on the soil of Palestine would be preferable, is regarded as a sign of weakness, comparable to the appeasement of Nazism practised by the ill-fated British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938. It must be resolutely and utterly condemned.

Clark also devotes considerable space in describing the highly organized tactics of this group on the American political scene. A plethora of lobbying organizations in Washington and elsewhere has developed a significant political impact, assisted by the sympathetic hearings they received from President George W. Bush. Such agencies are backed by the effective rallying of support at the local parish level, especially in such hard-line areas as Texas and Colorado. Clark’s forays to meet such crusading pastors on their home ground only revealed the chasm in understanding between her liberal and balanced agnosticism and the dogmatic bible-based certitudes of her hosts. She rightly wonders how such flamboyant displays of religious nationalism can be described as Christian, and makes clear her increasing distaste of such apocalyptic aggressiveness. Even if the most recent political developments in the United States have seen a decline in the fortunes of these militant and dedicated campaigners, nevertheless the pressures to maintain the flow of vast American resources, both private and public, to Israel will almost certainly continue. Since the Democratic Party also gains much of its support from American Jews, no reversal of such a policy is to be expected. As Clark concludes: “If the influence of Christian Zionism on western policy continues to exert the hold it does today {2007} there is a chance that we will all become allies for Armageddon” (p. 289).
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2) Journal issue: The latest issue of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte/Contemporary Church History, Volume 21, no. 2, 2008 is devoted to the Church of England Bishop George Bell. Fifty years after his death in 1958, a commemorative conference was held in his diocesan city, Chichester, organized by the Director of the George Bell Institute, Andrew Chandler, who is also a co-editor of this journal. The papers read at this international and bilingual conference are now printed, and provide a valuable survey of Bell’s career, with particular emphasis on his international and ecumenical witness. At the same time, these scholars have been able to use a larger and more up-to-date range of sources than was possible for Bell’s official biographer, Canon Jasper, forty years ago. Charlotte Methuen (Oxford) begins by describing Bell’s early entry into the ecumenical arena in the aftermath of the first world war. Like many others, he was appalled by the disastrous consequences for Christian witness caused by the violent hatreds of the war, and drew the conclusion that all the churches should now unite in combating the evil forces which had led to this slaughter and destruction. They should also combine in binding up the wounds of war rather than keep on stressing their doctrinal differences. Such ideas led him to become involved with other leading European Protestant churchmen, such as the Swedish Archbishop, Nathan Söderblom, who was the key figure in promoting the Stockholm conference in 1925, out of which grew the Life and Work movement of the ecumenical church. Bell was to play a leading role in guiding its destinies. At the same time, he recognized that more was needed in tackling the harmful effects of unbridled nationalism, particularly in Germany. He organized a series of theological conversations between German and British theologians, which in fact only showed how far apart their theologies still were. But Bell’s liberal nature led him to hope that, with good will and the abandonment of war-time hostility, the British public could be persuaded that there was another Germany, apart from the militaristic and aggressive forces so often portrayed in British propaganda Naturally he was an ardent champion of all peace endeavours seeking to reconcile the two sides, and warmly supported Prime Minister Chamberlain throughout the Munich crisis in 1938. He had for example, made strenuous efforts to help those Germans persecuted by the Nazis, especially “non-Aryans”, and Quakers, He offered hospitality in Britain to some twenty German Protestant pastors and their families turned out by Nazi pressures, as described by James Radcliffe. When war was declared, he took a leading role in caring for the refugees, many of whom in 1940 were interned on the Isle of Man, even though they had fled from Hitler’s prisons to the supposed safety of Britain. Bell’s advocacy and personal involvement on their behalf are well described by Charmain Brinson (London). Even more notable were his public stances during the war against the Royal Air Force’s unlimited bombing campaigns and the unwarranted vilification of the enemy which he rightly feared would repeat the mistakes of the first world war, and make impossible the kind of rebuilding of a new Europe based on a new era of reconciliation and peace. Philip Coupland’s essay on Bell’s vision of post-war Europe shows both his far-sighted and idealistic stance, as well as the opposition he had to face. It was this belief that, despite all, the “better” Germans should be allowed to play their part in the reconstruction of the continent which made him argue against vindictive policies even for convicted German war criminals. In Tom Lawson’s view, this was too generous, and showed that Bell was not sympathetic enough to the victims, especially Jewish victims, and their desire for restitution and justice. In these efforts, Bell was to work closely with the General Secretary of the new World Council of Churches, the Dutchman, Visser ‘t Hooft, as described in an excellent portrait by Gerhard Besier. Both collaborated in recognizing the danger of Soviet communism. Dianne Kirby gives a clear evaluation of Bell’s stance during the Cold War, when he played a prominent part in outlining the clash between democracy and dictatorship, and identifying the Christian churches with those seeking to find a new path of mutual understanding without compromising their detestation of totalitarian regimes. As the editors suggest, Bell’s witness can be described as “Bridge building in desperate times”. JSC

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March 2009 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

March 2009 — Vol. XV, no. 3

 Dear Friends,

The approach of Lent is perhaps the appropriate time to reflect on issues in contemporary church history which still need to be addressed. Among these are the thorny and troubled problems of Christian-Jewish relations, on which topic there is all too little progress to be noted, and in which contemporary political factors clearly play a considerable role. But the collection of essays by both Jews and Christians, evaluating the twentieth century’s most significant document on this subject, Nostra Aetate, as reviewed below, will be of help. Intertwined is certainly the continuing controversy over the pontifical career of Pope Pius XII. There is still no agreement among scholars, and still less among lay people. In my view, this situation is unlikely to change, though it may possibly be helped as and when more documents from this Pope’s reign are finally revealed and new interpretations advanced. In the meantime new books continue to appear, some of which are less than helpful, being the product of preconceived opinions rather than accurate scholarship. Others however offer new insights.. One of the objects of this Newsletter has been to keep you advised of such publications, for better or for worse. So keep posted.

Finally I offer a few thoughts on the present controversy over Holocaust denial by a Catholic prelate who should know better, and the embarrassment he has caused for the Vatican at this touchy and delicate moment in Christian-Jewish relations.

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) Nostra Aetate. Origins, Promulgation, Impact 
b) R. Michael, Catholic Antisemitism
c) D. Kurzman, A Special Mission: Hitler’s plot to seize the Vatican and kidnap Pope Pius XII
d) G. Noel, Pius XII. The Hound of Hitler

2) Journal Article: Coppa, The Vatican’s Silence during the Holocaust

3) Editorial: Holocaust Heretic Disciplined

1a) Nostra Aetate. Origins, Promulgation, Impact on Jewish-Christian Relations
Ed. Neville Lamdan and A.Melloni. Munster: LIT Verlag 2007. ISBN 978-4825-80678-1
The Catholic Church and the Jewish People: Recent Reflections from Rome
Ed. P. Cunningham, N.Hofmann and J.Sievers. New York: Fordham University Press 2007
ISBN 978-0-823-22805-8
(This review appeared first in Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 95, no 1, January 2009, and is reprinted by kind permission of the author.)

These collections are the products of conferences held to observe the fortieth anniversary in 2005 of the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate, specifically its fourth section on the Church’s understanding of Jews and Judaism. Both volumes include Jewish and Catholic authors. Both have significance for historians not only of the Council but also of subsequent Jewish-Catholic relations up to the present. The books are complementary, and the student of this history should have both of them.

The volume edited by Neville Lamden and Alberto Melloni presents the proceedings of a conference held in Jerusalem from October 30 to November 1, 2005, at the Center for the Study of Christianity at Hebrew University. The book is not divided into sections, but the fifteen essays can be roughly divided into equal groups of studies of the history of the text, its impact in the short term, and reflections on it after forty years.

Melloni examines the history of the text and its significance for the Church’s reevaluation of its most ancient interreligious relationship. Marco Morselli presented the influence of Jewish historian Jules Isaac and the Amitie Judeo-Chretienne de France in framing the issues the Council would tackle. In what the editors call “the centerpiece” paper of the conference, Paulist Father Thomas Stransky, the last surviving staff member of the Pontifical Secretariat for Christian Unity that led the drafting of the declaration, presented his “Insider’s Story” of the draft’s many theological and political adventures before the world’s bishops finally enacted it by an overwhelming vote during the last session of the Council. Annarita Caponera presents the results of her two-year study of the Secretariat archives from 1962 to 1965. Uri Bialer narrates “the view from Jerusalem” during the Council and the activities of the Israeli government to influence the outcome.

Serge Ruzer discusses how the theological agenda of Nostra Aetate required and precipitated a close look at the Jewish origins of Christianity. Robert Bonfil suggests a hermeneutic of the text from a Jewish perspective that can at once acknowledge it as a “revolutionary” change of Catholic worldview while still affirming its continuity with Catholic theology over the ages. Hans Herman Henrix outlines the effects of the declaration on Catholic attitudes in Western and Eastern Europe. Didier Pollefeyt describes the state of Catholic theology that has replaced a presumption that Christianity has superseded Judaism with an affirmation of the ongoing validity of God’s covenant with the Jewish People. Mauro Velati notes the cross-fertilization between Protestant and Catholic thinking on these issues, before and after the Council. Petra Held gives a Protestant perspective on it after forty years, David Rosen provides Israeli perspectives, and Jerome Chanes shows its impact on Catholic-Jewish relations in the United States. Finally, Zwi Werblowski and Cardinal Walter Kasper, the latter president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, sum up Jewish and Catholic perspectives. The volume concludes with an index of names.

Kasper, whose essay was last in the Lamden and Melloni volume, appears first in the Cunningham, Hofmann, and Sievers volume. He discussed interfaith possibilities with Jews and Muslims in the former; in the latter, he narrates the thirty-year history of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. Also providing histories of the commission are Cardinal Jorge Maria Meji­a, Father Pierfranceso Fumagalli, and Father Norbert Hofmann, all past secretaries of the commission.

This volume is divided into sections. In the first, Riccardo di Segni (the chief rabbi of Rome) and Giuseppe Laras (the chief rabbi of Milan) give Jewish perspectives on the relationship, while Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini provides a Catholic perspective. In the second, Massimo Giuliani deals with the memory of the Shoah as “a shadow upon and a stimulus to” dialogue, as his essay title expresses.

In the third section Archbishop Bruno Forte, Erich Zenger, and Peter Hunermann establish firm foundations for a Christian theology of Judaism. In the fourth section Alberto Melloni, along with the previously mentioned papers by Mejia, Fumagalli, and Hofmann, discusses developments in “the Post-Shoah Catholic-Jewish Dialogue.” Finally, Vatican diplomat Cardinal Achille Silvestrini and Israeli diplomat Oded Ben Hur discuss the relationship between the Holy See and the State of Israel.

A helpful set of appendices to this volume includes all six drafts of what became Nostra Aetate; Joint Declarations of the International Catholic Jewish Liaison Committee from 1970, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2001, 2004, and 2006; Joint Statements of the Pontifical Commission and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel’s Delegation from 2003-06; and the 1993 Fundamental Agreement between Israel and the Holy See. The volume has a full index and an index of scriptural passages cited.

As someone who lived through much of the history narrated in these two volumes and participated in many of the theological dialogues reflected in their pages, I can only express my delight in and gratitude for them.

Eugene J. Fisher, Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs (Emeritus) United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

1b) Robert Michael, A History of Catholic Antisemitism: The Dark Side of the Church. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. Pp. ix, 282. NP. ISBN 978-0-230-60388-2.

This review appeared first in Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 95, no 1, January 2009, and is reprinted by kind permission of the author.

This book lives up to its subtitle. It presents in detail “the dark side” of Christian attitudes toward Judaism and treatment of Jews over the centuries. It occasionally mentions mitigating factors, such as St. Augustine’s argument that the Jews witness to the validity of their bible, are thus necessary to the proclamation of the gospel, and should therefore, alone among all the non-Christian religions of the Roman empire, be allowed to worship freely. But such acknowledgements are overwhelmed with negative after negative examples, to the point that readers of this book may not be able to answer the simple question: So why did Jews choose to stay in Christendom, when they could have moved to Islamic or Asian countries? This is a question the author never asks, most likely because the answer would be an acknowledgement that a true presentation of Jewish-Christian relations over the centuries would have many more bright spots in many countries over many centuries in which Jews lived peacefully and relatively prosperously with their Christian neighbors. But this shades of gray reality is, I fear, beyond the author’s intent, which is to show only “the dark side of the Church.”

In the Introduction (p. 1), the author states that Catholic “as distinguished from ‘Orthodox‘ and ‘Protestant,’ refers to those Christians who are in communion with the Holy See of Rome.” And then he immediate includes the Eastern Church Fathers, such as Chrysostum, as purveyors of “Catholic antisemitism.” Martin Luther’s anti-Jewish screeds, which were if anything even more vitriolic than Chrysostum, become a key part of the history of “Catholic” antisemitism, since the author, before devoting several pages to him, describes him simply as a “former Augustinian.” The book consistently blames the Catholic Church for the anti-Jewishness and antisemitism of all baptized Christians. I am not sure why the author feels the need to do this. Catholic sins are quite enough. One does not have to blame the Catholic Church for the sins of others. Or, alternately, the author could have admitted that what he has really written is a history of Christian, not just Catholic antisemitism.

Chapter One, “Pagans and Early Catholics,” treats the New Testament, emphasizing, of course its later and more negative passages as what it means overall, and often interweaving what the New Testament actually said with what later generations of (gentile) Christians said it said, so that most readers will find it difficult to distinguish the New Testament from the later “teaching of contempt” of the Fathers of the Church (Augustine excepted) toward the Jews. Subsequent chapters (two through five) march chronologically through the centuries, carefully culling out everything negative and for the most part ignoring what happened positively. What the author says about the Crusades in Chapter Five is summarized in the Postscript (p. 195) as “Every Crusade started out murderously attacking European Jews.” Here, he cites the classic studies by Robert Chazan and others of the First Crusade, which was qualitatively different than subsequent Crusades in its massacres of Jews and attempts to force convert them, over the protests of the local bishops, as Chazan reports but Michael fails to mention.

Chapter Six (pp. 75-100) deals with medieval “Papal Policy” while the final chapter, Ten, treats “Modern Papal Policy,” especially with regard to the Holocaust. These chapters bracket three chapters which deal, respectively, with Germany and Austria-Hungary, France, and Poland. Throughout these presentations, one is presented with mounds of details but often enough with misleading generalizations based upon them. These are too numerous to go into here. To his credit, Michael does spend more time on and attempt a more balanced approach of the question of Pope Pius XII and the Jews than many of Pius’ detractors. In my opinion, however, he does not succeed in this attempt, allowing his vision of “the Dark Side” to predominate, even when he has no evidence to back up a given claim or, indeed when what he claims happened did not in fact happen, for example that the deportations of the Jews from Rome by the Germans continued unabated after Pius’ intervention with them when, in fact, they stopped and most of the remainder of the Jews of Rome were saved, to a great extent by hiding in Catholic convents and monasteries, which Michael again fails to deal with.

One of the themes of the book, made explicit in the Postscript, entitled, “Catholic Racism,” is that there is really no distinction to be made between Patristic and Medieval Catholic anti-Jewish theological polemics and modern, racial, genocidal anti-Semitism, because he can find some quotes from some Catholics over two millennia in which Jews were disparaged even after being baptized. The limpia de raza laws against converted Jews and their descendants in Spain and Portugal are, tendentiously, portrayed as universal Catholic policy and as being given the encouragement of the bishop of Rome who, inexplicably, did not adopt them in the papal states. Yes, these Iberian laws were forerunners of Nazi laws, but they were not enacted outside their particular time and place. Likewise, neither they nor any other of the extremely numerous and noxious things that Christians did to Jews (mostly after 1096 and the First Crusade) ever came anywhere near genocide. Telling Jews that they must convert in order to stay in a country, otherwise they will have to leave, is not anywhere near the same thing as undertaking to kill all Jews no matter what they do.

The Notes to this book, pp. 205-265 are extensive and show the breadth of the author’s reading in the field. The Index, pp. 267-282, is complete and serviceable.

The author dedicates his work to “my late friend,” Fr. Edward Flannery, of blessed memory. Fr. Flannery was also my friend, as well as my predecessor in Catholic-Jewish Relations, so Michael and I have something in common. I would, however, encourage readers of this journal to stick with Fr. Flannery’ classic study on this topic, The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty Centuries of Christian Anti-Semitism, which remains the measure of the field.

Dr. Eugene J. Fisher, Retired Associate Director of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, DC

1c) Dan Kurzman, A Special Mission: Hitler’s Secret Plot to seize the Vatican and kidnap Pope Pius XII. Cambridge, Mass: Da Capo Press 2007 ISBN 978–0-306-81617-8

(This review by David Alvarez of St Mary’s College, California appeared first in the Catholic Historical Review, January 2009, and is reprinted by kind permission of the author)

Dan Kurzman asserts that Adolf Hitler, convinced that the fall of Benito Mussolini and Italy’s subsequent armistice with the Allies could have occurred only with the connivance of Pope Pius XII, decided in September 1943 to send German forces into Vatican City to seize the pontiff and his attendant cardinals and remove them to the principality of Liechtenstein along with whatever archives, gold, paintings, and sculpture the kidnappers could cart away. Concerned that the abduction of the pope and the looting of the Vatican would outrage Catholics around the world, SS General Karl Wolff, the one-time chief of staff to Heinrich Himmler selected by the Fuehrer to lead the operation, sabotaged the plan, in part by claiming that it would take time to gather the trained linguists, art historians, and archivists necessary for the success of the plot. According to this account, Wolff also saw his resistance to Hitler’s directive as an insurance policy. Seriously compromised by his leadership position in the SS and his association with the war crimes, atrocities, and genocidal programs of that organization, the general believed that, by thwarting Hitler’s plans, he could make friends inside the Vatican and create some anti-Hitler credentials-useful achievements in the event of the Third Reich’s defeat. Wolff’s plans required the pope to be aware of the threat. How else could the general place the pontiff in his debt? Furthermore, the argument that Hitler’s wrath, now barely contained by the sensible SS general, would only be fuelled by any word or gesture that could be interpreted as anti-German could be used to convince (blackmail) Pius to resist pressure from the Allies to condemn the extermination of Jews.

Rumours of threats to the pope and the territorial integrity of Vatican City had circulated in diplomatic and ecclesiastical circles since the outbreak of the war. Given the explicit hostility of the Nazi regime toward the Catholic Church, these rumours were taken seriously inside the Vatican and, as early as spring 1941, papal officials were considering contingency plans. Not surprisingly, such rumours proliferated after the German occupation of Rome. Did Vatican circles believe the threat was credible? Yes. Allied diplomats inside Vatican City burned their confidential files in anticipation of a German entry into the papal enclave, and staffers in the papal Secretariat of State kept packed suitcases next to their desks. Was there actually a Nazi plan to kidnap the pope? Hitler occasionally ranted about seizing the pope, but hard evidence of an abduction plot has eluded historians. It has also eluded Dan Kurzman.

The author’s footnotes are useless (often a single, vague footnote will cover several pages of text), but it seems that he relies primarily upon the postwar recollections of individuals, including the now-deceased Wolff, who claimed to have been involved in the events. Not surprisingly, the witnesses portray themselves as good guys. All, particularly the Germans, seem to have been anti-Nazi and secretly working to confound Hitler’s plans even if they had to hide their political opposition beneath SS uniforms. The testimony of some of these witnesses is, to put it mildly, suspect. Wolff, whose recollections form the basis for the story, is especially untrustworthy since even the author acknowledges that the SS officer was an amoral opportunist who, after the war, consistently twisted the truth of his wartime career in order to avoid conviction as a war criminal. The reader might wonder if Wolff manipulated the story of an alleged plot against the pope to further his postwar political rehabilitation. Suspect testimony might have been buttressed by documentary evidence, but the author (accepting Wolff’s assertions) assures us that the plot was so secret that no records were kept. In fact, there are two documentary sources relevant to a kidnapping operation, a diary entry by Joseph Goebbels after Mussolini’s arrest in July 1943 and a directive circulated by Martin Bormann to Nazi Party Gauleiters in November 1943, both of which undermine the claim of a plot. Additionally, there is the postwar testimony of Wilhelm Hoettl, director of the Vatican desk in the foreign intelligence division of Himmler’s Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), who asserted on several occasions that there was never a plan to seize the pope. Father Robert Graham, the acknowledged authority on the wartime Vatican who interviewed and corresponded with all of the characters in the drama (including Wolff),was always sceptical about the existence of a serious plot. After completing Kurzman’s sensational story, this reviewer remains no less sceptical. David Alvarez, Saint Mary’s College of California

1d) Gerard Noel, Pius XII. The Hound of Hitler. London: Continuum 2008. Pp 220. ISBN 978-189-708-34537.

As a young man, sixty years ago, Gerard Noel was granted a private audience by Pope Pius XII at his summer castle, Castel Gandolfo. He was naturally greatly impressed. But in his subsequent career as a British Catholic journalist and author, he has become more sceptical, and has now published an account of Pius’ career which places him firmly in the camp of the pope’s detractors. Noel claims that this is not a conventional biography, but rather concentrates on those factors which throw light on Pius’ private character and personality. However, like all other such writers, Noel has not had access to the Vatican’s own documentary sources for Pius’ reign, which still await cataloguing before they can be made available to the public. Instead, he draws on other secondary sources such as the book by his fellow British journalist, John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, even though this has by now been largely discredited, as Cornwell himself has acknowledged. On the more personal side of Pius’ life, Noel relies heavily on an even more dubious source. He makes much, for instance of the purported influence of the pope’s indomitable housekeeper, the German nun, Mother Pasqualina, who “looked after” him for over forty years. Noel’s reconstruction of personal conversations and exchanges between Pius and Pasqualina must at best be considered fictitious. In addition he claims he has received “insider” information from various Vatican habitués, now dead. The impact of these “revelations” is to stress the Pope’s physical ailments, particularly the increasingly frequent hallucinations from which Pius is supposed to have suffered in his final years. No corroborative evidence is produced for such suppositions.

At the same time, Noel goes out of his way to build up a case against both the political and personal attitudes of Eugenio Pacelli, whom he depicts as a narrowly self-interested ecclesiastic, who early on set himself a “Great Design” to strengthen and centralize the One True Church as the most powerful body in human society. This aim was systematically pursued, first through his work in revising the complete Code of Canon Law, and subsequently through his efforts to negotiate a whole series of Concordats between the Vatican and national governments. No less than 25 such Concordats were concluded between 1914 and 1958. These were all part of a triumphalist dream to enhance the power and influence of the Catholic Church.

Pacelli’s single-minded dedication to this ambitious programme, so Noel contends, led to disastrous political misjudgements. For example, the signing of a Concordat with Serbia in the summer of 1914 was, in Noel’s opinion, a slap in the face of the most important Catholic power, Austria-Hungary, and thus a significant factor leading to the outbreak of the first world war. The same misjudgements were to be repeated, largely due to similar reasons, when Pacelli, as Secretary of State, was responsible for the signing of the Concordat with Nazi Germany in 1933. Noel’s evaluation of this negotiation is invariably negative. He claims that Pacelli was misled by his deep-set hostility to Soviet Communism into being “flexible” towards the Nazi movement and its leaders. Indeed he even “invents” the myth, that, in earlier years, while Nuncio in Munich, Pacelli had actually encountered the young radical, Adolf Hitler, and had given him money while still down and out to support his budding anti-Communist movement. No evidence for such a slander is produced.

Likewise Noel’s setting up a scenario in which Mother Pasqualina is portrayed as a vigorous opponent of any concessions to the Nazis in contrast to Pacelli/Pius’ weak and vacillating attitudes, is a pure invention. His description of Pius’ war-time diplomacy is predictably critical, including his failure to condemn the Nazis’ most heinous crimes against the Jews. Noel’s stance on this issue is hardly original, including his belief that a more outspoken protest by the Pope would have mobilized the German Catholic population to oppose the killing and persecution of the Jews. He shares with others the same wishful thinking about the capacity of the Vatican to command the loyalty of its following in war-time, or about the supposed influence of the Pope to bring about any alteration in the power balances in strife-ridden Europe.

Admittedly, he acknowledges that Pius was a multi-layered personality with many contrasting facets, from urbane diplomat, to tortured neurotic, to silent ascetic. Towards the end of his life, Noel claims, he would become increasingly a despot, without the kind of human contact which might have saved him from the illusions of saintly dedication and devotion. This facet was enhanced by the fact that in the 1950s the revival of the Church in post-war Europe was remarkable. It resulted in a decade of seemingly positive advances. The public image of the Church was triumphant, omnipotent. But the private reality of the Pope’s immediate entourage was cold and authoritarian. Pius became more and more absorbed in writing speeches on all manner of subjects, which were delivered to the constant stream of visitors, especially of academics in a huge variety of intellectual fields. As well, Pius concentrated on more mystical topics and theological explorations where few could follow him, such as the enormous effort placed on the esoteric ceremonies during the Holy Year of 1950, when Pius formally defined the Catholic doctrine of the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in both body and soul to heavenly glory which was to become regarded as an absolute and infallible belief of the Church. Such recondite speculations led him, in Noel’s view, to become a spiritual megalomaniac, all too conscious of his declining physical powers. On the other hand, Noel does have certain positive things to say about Pius’ personality.

He defends Pius against accusations that he was pro-Nazi or anti-Semitic, and asserts with conviction that he was definitely not a puppet or pawn to any man, especially not Hitler. On the other hand, he acknowledges the known facts about Pius’ hypochondria and depressions. In conclusion he readily admits that Pius’ character is endlessly intriguing. So something of his earlier captivation still remains. Curiously he provides no explanation as to why his book has been given the strange sub-title, The Hound of Hitler, which seems entirely inappropriate. In essence, this interpretation will convince few scholars who have done their homework, but may titillate those readers who are addicted to accounts of scandal and intrigue in high places.
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2) Journal Article: Frank J. Coppa, “Between Morality and Diplomacy: The Vatican’s silence during the Holocaust,” in Journal of Church and State, Vol. 50, no. 3, Summer 2008, p. 541-568.

In 2006 Frank Coppa published an excellent survey of The Papacy, the Jews and the Holocaust. Inevitably this new article covers the same ground as his book’s Chapter 6, but expands and updates the footnotes. Coppa adopts a moderate position, being fully aware of the arguments for and against the policies of Pope Pius XII. He rightly explains the inherent conflict over the Pope’s preference for a diplomatic approach to world events rather than any strident denunciation based on a purely moralistic stance. This debate, as readers of this Newsletter are surely aware, remains unresolved. Coppa shares the view of your editor that the comprehensive opening of the Vatican archives for the period of Pope Pius XII’s reign, which have only in part become available for public scrutiny, will not lead to any startling revelations Nor will it stop this continuing debate. As he rightly remarks: “both advocates and adversaries have explored the [already published] volumes selectively, often only to support their pre-established positions on religious, ideological, political and psychological considerations, transcending the thought and policies of Pius XII.” However, he concludes: “access to the archives should reinforce the objective studies of this Pope and the scholarly narratives of his pontificate over the expression of both adversarial and apologetic accounts, and so play a part in bringing the ”Pius War” to an end”. (P. 568) This would indeed be a consummation devoutly to be wished.
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3) Editorial: A Holocaust Heretic Disciplined

The present furore over the regrettable remarks about the Holocaust made by Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of Saint Pius X is doubly unfortunate. The Society of Saint Pius X consists of a dwindling group of ultra-conservative and elderly men who broke away from the Vatican’s authority forty years ago. They opposed the decisions of the Second Vatican Council, fearing that the Church was about to descend the slippery slope of capitulation to modern secular values, and to abandon the time-honoured and unchanging doctrines of earlier centuries. Thanks to the leadership of Pope John Paul II and the present Pope Benedict XVI, this danger has been averted. Benedict now wishes to heal this rift. He has already showed consideration by allowing the restoration of celebrating the Mass in Latin. But the provocative utterances of one obscure and obstinate hold-out now threaten to upset the Vatican’s strategy of reconciliation over a much more important issue, namely the future of Catholic-Jewish relations.

The reckless and clearly deliberate distortions of history by this cranky and irrelevant bishop, for which he has neither the competence let alone the authority to make, have re-awoken deeply-felt resentments among many prominent Jewish agencies and commentators in Israel, Germany and elsewhere. It is a sad fact that, despite the frequent and sincere engagement of Pope Benedict on this subject, his pilgrimage to Auschwitz, and his fervent desire to visit Israel in the near future, the suspicion still remains that such Vatican pronouncements are only skin-deep, and that underneath the Roman Catholic Church may still harbour the kind of anti-Semitism which was so disfiguring a characteristic over so many centuries.

Forty years ago the Second Vatican Council’s notable statement Nostra Aetate declared that the Jews were the Christians “older brothers in faith”. The Church’s teaching ever since has consistently adopted this new and much more positive tone, re-echoed in Pope Benedict’s recent pronouncements. But clearly much more needs to be done to overcome the legacy of past antagonisms, or to ward off the suspicions so vocally expressed about the genuineness of Christian repentance. Very much the same applies to the Protestant and Orthodox Churches. Any recurrence of Christian anti-Semitism has to be repudiated. All Christians are now called to adopt a more positive and constructive engagement with their local Jewish communities in a common stance against the kind of bigotry and intolerance here demonstrated.
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With all best wishes
John Conway

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February 2009 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

February 2009 — Vol. XV, no. 2

 Dear Friends,

It is fitting that this month’s Newsletter should pay tribute to two great Christians, both having the same birthday, February 4th, Bishop George Bell of Chichester, England and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. As was made clear in my review of the Bonhoeffer letters and paper from 1933-1935 (see December 2008), these men were closely connected from the beginning of the Nazi era, and highly esteemed each other. It is therefore a particular pleasure to have Dr Schulten’s review of Professor Tödt’s penetrating and thoughtful study of Bonhoeffer’s ethics, as well as a review of the small but valuable study of Bishop Bell, written by Andrew Chandler, the Director of the George Bell Institute, now moved to Chichester University.

It seems also appropriate this month to reprint a review of the new film, Valkyrie, whose hero Count Stauffenberg shared most of Bonhoeffer’s values, and like him paid the ultimate penalty in his attempt to rid the world of Nazi tyranny.
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Contents:

1. Book reviews:

a) Chandler, Piety and Provocation. A study of George Bell
b) Tödt, Authentic Faith. Bonhoeffer’s Theological Ethics
c) Howard, Protestant theology and German universities

2) W. Doino on Valkyrie.

1a) Andrew Chandler, Piety and Provocation. A Study of George Bell, Bishop of Chichester. Chichester,The George Bell Institute: Humanitas Subsidia Series 2008. 96 Pp. ISBN 10-0-9550-558-1-4 £7.50.

During the first half of the twentieth century, the two most eminent bishops of the Church of England were William Temple and George Bell, whose combined witness did much to assist both church and nation to come to terms with the disasters of two world wars and the turbulent social upheavals of that era. Both men came from clerical families, both had been Oxford dons, both rose rapidly through the ecclesiastical ranks and held episcopal office for many years. Temple indeed achieved the highest office in the Church, becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, if only briefly before dying in office suddenly in October 1944. George Bell spent nearly thirty years as Bishop of Chichester, one of England’s oldest dioceses, in the well-endowed county of Sussex on England’s south coast. Fifty years after his death in 1958, several commemorative events were held in recent months in both Chichester and London. And Andrew Chandler, the current director of the George Bell Institute, now fittingly based in the newly-established University of Chichester, has written this short but elegant assessment.

Chandler’s work was made all the easier by his access to and knowledge of the vast array of papers which Bell had meticulously collected during his life-time, and which are now housed in the Lambeth Palace Library in London. Forty years ago, Canon Ronald Jasper wrote a full biography but used these papers only sparingly. Since then fresh viewpoints have arisen about which Bell’s papers shed much new light. So this concise update is much to be welcomed.

George Bell grew up in the latter days of Queen Victoria’s reign, when the prevalent climate, both politically and theologically, was liberal and optimistic. As a student, he was captivated by the idealism of the newly-formed Student Christian Movement with its appeal to all the churches to unite in undertaking the task of “the Evangelization of the World in this Generation”. But this was more than the pursuit of personal piety. The SCM always had a strong commitment to Christian service and witness in the political and international affairs of the day. Bell’s lifelong dedication to the cause of Christian unity also included these dimensions.

These were the qualities which led him to be selected in 1914 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, to be his domestic chaplain. He began work on the day war was declared, and was immediately engaged in confronting the moral as well as the practical challenges brought on by the outbreak of hostilities. Despite his idealism, Bell was no pacifist. He agreed with the majority of his countrymen that the German aggression against Belgium was sufficient reason to fight a just war. But he also followed his Archbishop in declaring the Church’s duty to insist that a just war must be fought by just means. At the same time, he was and remained steadfast in upholding the cause of Christian solidarity across all national lines. Thus he resisted the temptation to equate British patriotism with the cause of Christ, and was distressed when leading members of the Church of England failed to make this distinction. He upheld the ideal of Christian reconciliation, despite depressing signs of the lack of any reciprocal willingness on the German side. But for this reason, Bell became a staunch promoter of the League of Nations. He also protested against any proposals for a vindictive peace settlement, and deplored those sections of the Versailles Peace Treaty which appeared to have these characteristics.

So it was natural that Bell became a champion of European reconstruction on Christian lines. He warmly welcomed the initiative taken by the renowned Archbishop of Uppsala, Nathan Söderblom, calling on the churches to witness to justice and reconciliation in the traumatic post-war years. This ecumenical endeavour resulted in the great Stockholm conference of 1925, and led to the founding of the Life and Work Movement of the Churches, which subsequently became an integral part of the World Council of Churches. Bell was an active leader in this endeavour, recognizing the need for Christians to be united across both denominational and national boundaries. In this he differed markedly from the majority of his British colleagues, but was appreciated all the more for his courage and wisdom by the leaders of the continental churches. Together they worked for the establishment of a world-wide organization witnessing to the cause of Christian unity. The creation of the World Council of Churches can in large part be said to be due to Bell’s devoted championship of this cause.

In 1924 Bell was promoted to be Dean of Canterbury Cathedral. Here he found opportunity to encourage the wider participation of artists, musicians and writers in the cathedral’s life, and drew in such notable contributors as T.S.Eliot, Dorothy Sayers, John Masefield, Charles Williams and in the musical field, Gustav Holst. Such activities had to compete, however, with Bell’s increasing involvement in international work. Chandler does not mention the fact that Bell was often unfairly criticized, especially among the well-to-do gentry, for dashing off to meetings in Switzerland or Germany, instead of concentrating on his pastoral duties such as baptisms and confirmations amongst his flock at home.

This dilemma became all the more acute when in 1929 Bell was made bishop of Chichester, where the atmosphere was genteel and conservative. But faced with the growing crises in Europe, first economic then political, Bell’s primary witness was to uphold the cause of Christian solidarity. Especially as political and racial violence, as promoted by the Nazi Party, took over power in Germany, this situation became one of Bell’s chief concerns. He refused to believe that Hitler represented the true destiny of Germany, and consequently did all he could to support those sections of the German churches which opposed the Nazis’ totalitarian goals. He gained a close friend and supporter in the young Lutheran clergyman, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who ministered to the German churches in London from 1933 to 1935. Together they forged an alliance which kept the ecumenical movement safely in the anti-Nazi camp. Bell paid regular visits to Germany between 1933 and 1939, and even tried to influence the Nazi hierarchy through Rudolf Hess. His efforts were tireless to make the German Church Struggle better known, since he was resolutely convinced of the Church’s duty to confront the relentless barbarism of totalitarianism, and to take practical steps to assist its victims. He devised plans to offer sanctuary to refugees fleeing from Germany, and went to particular pains to find places for those German pastors evicted from their parishes, mainly because of their part-Jewish origins. Some were even offered ordination and parishes in the Church of England.

It was hardly surprising that Bell should become fervently committed to the proposition that there existed in Germany a movement of resistance, largely silenced by the Nazi oppressors, but nonetheless representing the “better Germany” from the Christian past. He was all the more persuaded after a visit he paid to Sweden in May 1942, when he was surprised to be able to renew his friendship with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer had come directly from Germany to give his friend secret details about the opposition to Hitler, and to urge him to get some promise from the British Government that they would be prepared to make a compromise peace with those seeking Hitler’s overthrow, On his return to Britain, Bell lobbied the Cabinet to offer such recognition. But despite his well-founded information, his efforts were repulsed. The Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, dismissed him as a “turbulent priest”, and poured scorn on a churchman venturing into the secret and dangerous world of international politics. Bell never forgave the British Government and understandably felt that its rejection of this opportunity contributed to the disastrous failure of the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. But he remained convinced that, once military victory over the Nazis was achieved, then the surviving members of the resistance would deserve to be supported in the rebuilding of a new Germany on Christian lines. And this was the task to which he and his colleagues in the World Council of Churches gave devoted energy in the immediate post-1945 years.

Much of Bell’s work of advocacy and intervention had necessarily to be done behind the scenes. His temperament was eirenical not theatrical or charismatic. His public personality lacked vivid qualities. He was, as Chandler only hints, an uninspiring orator and disliked large meetings where he was not a good chairman. His favourite venue was the Athenaeum Club in central London, where the elite of Britain’s scholars and clerics met to settle their business in comfortable armchairs, and where confidential discussions could be conducted in prvate. These gave Bell the information he needed to take action, as his papers voluminously attest.

His one public forum was the House of Lords. of which he became, by seniority, a member in 1938. He used this platform to give expression to his deeply-felt moral concerns, which often seemed to be provocative, particularly in their criticisms of government policy. For example, in June 1940, Bell attacked in the House of Lords what he considered was the scandalous internment of German refugees, especially of those who had fled to England to escape from Hitler`s prisons. And even more provocatively he spoke against the Royal Air Force’s policy of indiscriminate bombing of German cities in February 1944. Such views made him highly unpopular with those who believed in the guilt of all Germans and the necessity of unrestricted warfare. But Bell`s essential moral position was based on his belief that attacking civilians by such carpet-bombing raids was unjustifiable by any Christian standards.

Chandler rightly discounts the myth that Bell was denied the promotion to the Archbishopric of Canterbury after Temple`s sudden death because of these provocative speeches. In fact, his talent lay rather in being an inspirational leader upholding the ideals of Christian civilization, and calling for the churches` resources to be mobilized in the great task of reconstruction after the overthrow of totalitarianism. As he told an audience in Edinburgh in December 1941:

“We meet here to declare that the Church is larger and greater than any national Church, or denominational Church – a Church which includes men and women of all countries and races, of all classes and cultures, a Church that is suffering in the battle, a Church that can reconcile enemy with enemy through the Cross of Jesus Christ and a Church with a mission to mankind.”

His major contribution was to be found in the international ecumenical movement, resolutely facing the continuing challenge of Communism, but again distinguishing between the Soviet state and the Russian people. In all he preserved his prophetic stance, his untiring devotion to his ethical principles and his unflagging energy in writing books, pamphlets, sermons and innumerable letters, which now form his most impressive legacy.

He will be remembered as the bishop who most outspokenly opposed Nazism, not because it was a German heresy, but because it inflicted so much harm on men and women for whom he cared. Indeed his time-consuming consistency in helping those in need and his immense compassion for the victims of tyranny continue to ensure that Bell’s reputation is that of a church leader who did what he could to remedy the evils of his contemporary world.

Inevitably such a task of bringing the Church`s conscience to bear on current problems was not to be achieved by one individual or in one life-time. Thus Chandler sees his legacy as a costly failure. The cause of peaceful internationalism in the world`s political affairs is no nearer today than in Bell`s time. The Christian churches still remain divided and unreconciled. The theological witness of the Universal Church of Christ still remains marginal, at best. But Bell`s generosity and humanity are still remembered as setting a standard to be emulated. It is therefore good that we have this timely reminder, calling us to follow his example of a challenging and demanding discipleship of witness and service in the world of today.

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1b) Heinz Eduard Tödt. Authentic Faith: Bonhoeffer’s Theological Ethics in Context. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2007. 291 pages.
(This review appeared first in The Bomhoefferian, November 28th, 2008, and is reproduced by kind permission of the author)

If the ideas articulated and life lived by Dietrich Bonhoeffer have captivated your thinking and challenged your soul, then you would do well to take the time to read thoughtfully and reflectively this collection of Professor Tödt’s essays on Bonhoeffer’s theology, ethics and resistance. First published fifteen years ago in his original German, this compilation of Tödt’s insightful scholarship spans the latter half of his academic career as professor of systematic theology, ethics and social ethics at the University of Heidelberg and as the chairman of the editorial board of the German edition of The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works. Tödt’s student, Glen Harold Strassen, captured the tenor of his writings when he stated: “Tödt’s publications have an analytical sharpness, an ethical incisiveness and a genuine truthfulness that is rare even among the best.” Strassen served as the editor of the English edition of Tödt’s essays on Bonhoeffer published here in the United States in 2007. It is this new edition that is the subject of this review.

This collection of essays by Tödt makes a significant contribution to the ever-growing corpus of Bonhoeffer scholarship. Unlike that of many who have come before and after him, though, Tödt’s analysis expounds the major dimensions of Bonhoeffer’s ethics by examining the political, ecclesiastical and family context in which Bonhoeffer wrote. His essays, however, reach an even deeper level of profundity as Tödt subjects himself to scrutiny of Bonhoeffer’s ideas by transparently wrestling with issues of guilt and forgiveness about his own experience of the German context during the Third Reich when he served as a soldier at the front during the Second World War and then was subjected to detention as a prisoner-of-war in a Russian camp for five years. Above all, in his engagement with Bonhoeffer, Tödt sought an ethic that can provide wise guidance in the face of contemporary schemes to manipulate faith for ideological ends.

Fourteen of Tödt’s essays are presented. The earliest essay dates from the 1970’s, and the latest to one year before his death in 1991. A deepening of both insight into the underlying essence of Bonhoeffer’s thoughts as well as an appreciation for the authenticity of his faith-inspired actions is evident. The first eleven essays analyze themes in Bonhoeffer’s theology and ethics. For example, Tödt tackles the ever-perplexing notion of “religion-less Christianity” that marks Bonhoeffer’s later letters to Eberhard Bethge from his Tegel prison cell. In contrast with those progressive theologians who have latched on to Bonhoeffer’s language only to fill it with a self-conceived meaning inconsistent with the whole of Bonhoeffer’s thought and life, Tödt finds that Bonhoeffer was here conceiving a Christianity not confined to ideals for merely private life or to the gaps where we cannot solve problems, but rather a Christian faith that gives concrete guidance in the center of life.

In other essays, Tödt focuses attention on an important question that has not been examined by other scholars of Bonhoeffer. He asks what was about Bonhoeffer’s ethics that enabled him to discern so clearly and speak out for the Jews and against war more decisively than other theologians and church leaders even from the very onset of Hitler’s chancellorship. In his exploration of this question, Tödt demonstrates Bonhoeffer’s insights in naming the sources of evil and self-deception as well as warning against the ways and means by which the leader becomes the misleader. Tödt also clarifies Bonhoeffer’s articulation of the vocation of the churches in speaking concretely and the vocation of groups in acting concretely as an assertion of checks and balances against authoritarianism not only in the context of Nazi Germany but also with application for responsible action in the midst of contemporary expressions of authoritarianism. Tödt’s extensive analysis of the social, theological, and ethical characteristics of the resistance movement, in which Bonhoeffer and family members played integral roles, provides both information and insights that go well beyond what can be found in other scholarship to date. This comprehensiveness in his treatment of Bonhoeffer’s resistance is the product of thoroughgoing research project that Tödt led at the University of Heidelberg.

The final three essays in this collection address contemporary history, in which Tödt examines, with an authenticity born out of Bonhoeffer’s ethics, the guilt and responsibility of Christendom in Germany. What particularly marks Tödt’s approach and the insights he offers is his resolve not to be devoted to merely an interpretation of past positions, but instead to find in Bonhoeffer avenues that advance both the present tasks of theology in the church and a better understanding of our own way of life. In 1985, Tödt himself expressed the force of Bonhoeffer’s life and words upon him in this way:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has come nearer and nearer and become more and more important for me – not merely with one single flash of light – but in a continuing process over twenty years. Of his many remarkable character traits and abilities, the concentration with which he exposed his faith in Christ to the tests that life brought, all the way to the extreme situations of resistance, and then thought through theologically what happened him and those involved, occupies me most of all. I perceive this theology as deeply authentic and as showing the way for me as a theological teacher . . . . Bonhoeffer is not right in all things, but from no theologian am I now learning so much as from him, and, to be sure, with my intellect and with my heart.

Tödt, though, was greatly distressed by those self-proclaimed scholars and would-be theologians who did not follow the whole way through Bonhoeffer but would rather “tear out individual elements of life and thought and [either] progressively instrumentalize them or conservatively distort them,” and then advocate that the guilt for the deficits in the modern churches lies in Bonhoeffer’s guidance. In an effort to expose and counter these misuses and abuses, Tödt presents a thoroughly studied and attentively perceived exposition of Bonhoeffer’s theological ethics both in the context of his life experiences and for application in our own.

Although some portions in the English translation occasionally render the complexity of Tödt’s German syntax in stilted and strained constructions, the substance of the insights and analyses of Bonhoeffer offered by Tödt make any extra time required to slow down and re-read such passages abundantly rewarding. No other book has more opened my eyes or deepened my appreciation for Bonhoeffer’s guidance in living responsibly in the concrete realities of life than Tödt’s.

Cordell P. Schulten, M.A., J.D. <cschulten@fontbonne.edu>Lecturer, Contemporary Studies Fontbonne University Saint Louis, Missouri

1c) Thomas A. Howard, Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006; Pp.xiii + 468.

(This review appeared first in the Journal of Religious History, October 2008)

Ever since the advent of the Third Reich, Anglo-Saxon scholars have been intrigued by the question how the highly respected universities of Germany reacted to the blatant obscurantism and unprecedented barbarism of National Socialism. As is well known all disciplines allowed themselves to be “co-ordinated” (gleichgeschaltet) into the Nazi ideology of “blood and soil”. Such a large scale betrayal of the principles of rational scientific enquiry and apparent unquestioning acceptance, indeed endorsement, of state-authorised violence against helpless minorities demanded to be explained. Not surprisingly, in response to this grotesque situation a series of mostly excellent studies, chiefly by Anglo-Saxon scholars, focusing on the individual academic disciplines has appeared over recent years. What they all have in common is the aim to determine what it was in the German academic tradition that could so easily have led to this wide scale trahison des clercs. The natural sciences, the law, medicine, philosophy, history and especially theology all became fatally compromised.

Thomas Howard’s detailed study of the growth of Protestant theology from being a marginalized university discipline in imperial Germany to become a highly influential political-pedagogic force provides essential background on how this discipline fought to be taken seriously in an age of religious scepticism, and by the time of the First World War had become arguably (alongside History) the most ardent advocate of German expansionism. The patriotic motto of the time, Gott mit uns, was strenuously justified by Germany’s leading university theologians who had over the previous decades evolved a theology which identified the state/nation as the agency of the divine will for the world, indeed to be in fact the “Hammer of God” on earth. The indebtedness to Hegelianism was manifest.

The aim of the present wide-ranging study is to demonstrate how Protestant theology developed from “an apologetic, praxis-oriented, confessional enterprise in the post Reformation period to one increasingly ‘liberal’, expressive of the ethos of modern critical knowledge, or Wissenschaft (p.7). This is crucially important for our understanding of the ‘peculiarities’ of German history (Blackbourn & Eley). As indicated, much has been written about the ‘German mind’ and how it differed from the ‘Western mind’. And here the word ‘liberal’ to describe the dominant school of German theologians is highly significant. ‘Liberal’ for them meant something quite specific, viz. the approach to theology as the discipline which could account for the course of world history, and in nineteenth century Germany that meant recognizing that Almighty God was working out His purposes for humankind via the actions of the Machtstaat, the power state. The essential function of ‘liberal’ theology was to explain this. Expressed another way, the history of the power state was integral to the history of salvation (Heilsgeschichte).

Howard’s painstaking investigation could be summed up as very successful account of how Protestant theology at the German universities became the pre-eminent instrument for imperial apologetics. It thereby won for itself the highest academic respectability and remained largely unchallenged in this enterprise until the beginning of the Great War when the Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, vigorously and successfully refuted the ‘statist’ assumptions of his German ‘liberal’ mentors, in particular Adolf von Harnack. Barth certainly demonstrated most convincingly in a celebrated post-war confrontation with von Harnack how the great German ‘liberal’ scholars .through their arrogance, led their countrymen astray in claiming that Germany was fighting for a divine cause. In recounting how all this happened, the young American scholar has rendered a major service of the discipline. His work will be obligatory reading for all historians of modern Germany wishing to understand how the so-called Geisteswissenschaften i.e. the humanities, theology in particular, came to perceive themselves preeminently as ‘statist’ enterprises, and how theology progressed (or declined) from being the study of Heilsgeschichte to becoming the foremost advocate of Weltpolitik.

An added bonus in Howard’s research is his documentation, with far greater precision than hitherto, of the rise to international pre-eminence of the German university theological faculties and how they came to exert such influence abroad. Theological students from all over the world, not just North America and Britain, were drawn to study at the feet of German ‘super’ professors. Finally, there is much to be learned from Howard’s work that has relevance far beyond the international community of theologians. In the end it is a most instructive study about what constitutes ‘scientific theology’ and as such a major contribution to modern German intellectual history.
John A.Moses, Canberra.

2) Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise

(This review, somewhat abridged, appeared first on First Things online, Jan. 6th 2009
(<HTTP://www.firstthings.com>HTTP://www.firstthings.com) and is reprinted by kind permission of the author)

Edmund Burke once said that he did not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people, but in the case of Germany, that claim has been sorely tested. Ever since the horrors of the death camps were exposed, the world has been asking how such barbarism could have taken place in a supposedly civilized country. The answer, more often than not, has been to point an accusing finger at the German people, and to mock the Good Germans – those ordinary citizens who, though not murderers themselves, made Hitler’s crimes possible because of cowardice and passivity.

This tendency to ascribe mass accountability, however, has obscured an important fact: There really were good Germans, incredibly brave men and women who risked their lives, and even gave them, to save their country from cataclysmic ruin. There were far too few, to be sure, but its these people who represented Germany at its best, and should not be forgotten.

Among the noblest was Claus, Count von Stauffenberg, a Colonel who led a daring conspiracy to overthrow Hitler, and came very close to succeeding. Stauffenberg came from an aristocratic Catholic family whose love of God, Germany, and European culture led him to break with the Third Reich, after initially serving it. In fact, Stauffenberg who lost an eye, half an arm, and two fingers fighting in North Africa was actually slow to join the resisters. But when he did, he went further than any of them, placing himself, literally, on the frontlines. Stauffenberg’s attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944, the last of over a dozen such efforts is now the stuff of legend:

Stauffenberg has gotten surprisingly little attention in America, despite our nation’s fascination with heroes. Hollywood has practically ignored him: except for one now-forgotten cable movie, The Plot to Kill Hitler (1990), His legacy has been largely confined to an occasional reference on the History Channel.

[But see the authoritative and definitive biography by the Canadian scholar, Peter Hoffmann of McGill University, Stauffenberg: A Family History, 1905-1944, Cambridge University Press, 1995]

This situation has now changed with the appearance of the new film Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise. According to Peter Hoffmann, the leading authority in English on the German Resistance, this film is to be praised for its historical accuracy (ranking it higher than an acclaimed 2004 German production). Valkyrie opens with a voice-over from Cruise, in German, describing the horrors of the Third Reich, before segueing into English. Its 1943, and Stauffenberg (Cruise) is in Tunisia, where he suffers his traumatic injuries from an Allied air attack. After he returns home to recuperate, he meets up with other disillusioned officers, and begins measuring the level of their opposition (some had already plotted or tried to kill Hitler, unsuccessfully). Stauffenberg eventually joins an elite underground group, and becomes the catalyst to propel a new plot forward. The emerging conspiracy comes close to being discovered several times, but breathlessly advances, along a knifes edge, with everything at stake.

The challenge in this film was to sustain suspense, even with our knowledge of the conspiracy’s failure. The very fact that we know the ultimate fate of the plot gives Valkyrie a sense of tragic foreboding, and makes us empathize with the resisters all the more. Artistically, the film is striking. The script is crisp and intelligent; the production design, outstanding; and the music, engaging. Filmed on location at many historic sites in Germany, Valkyrie strives for authenticity, and is immeasurably helped by a cast of top-notch (mostly British) actors who shine in supporting roles. The film grows stronger as it goes along, and the improbable Cruise eventually blends in and manages to hold his own amongst his impressive peers. The climax and ending of the film are powerful, and viewers may find themselves unexpectedly moved.

Valkyrie is not without flaws, however. Unless one is familiar with this complex history, it is easy to get lost among the historical figures, and the reasons for their revolt. Historians still debate their motivations. Did the conspirators betray Hitler because they feared he would lose the War, or did they act out of genuine moral passion and conscience? The movie, concentrating on the suspense and action sequences, really doesn’t explore these aspects.. Had it done so, they could have utilized the latest research showing that outrage against the Holocaust was a key factor in moving them. Because Valkyrie doesn’t delve into the psychology, or moral development, of its lead characters, it misses a chance to really understand them.

Ultimately, therefore, this film lacks greatness. But to say that Valkyrie is not a great film is not to say it isn’t worthwhile. On its own terms, it is an engrossing thriller, far better than the usual Hollywood fare. Moreover, apart from its artistic and entertainment value, the film has educational and moral elements, and gratefully avoids political correctness. Certain academics have an unappealing habit of dismissing the 20 July plotters as reactionaries, while earnestly extolling the self-sacrifices of the underprivileged Communists, to quote historian Michael Burleigh. But there are no heroic Communists in Valkyrie, The film’s interpretation is clearly orthodox. The honourable Resistance, ranging from social democrats to conservative aristocrats, is correctly depicted as fighting to rescue and preserve Western civilization.

Finally, and this is a pleasant surprise, one senses something Christian about this film. The messages are subtle, but they are there: a cross around Stauffenberg’s neck; a scene in a Church, with a statue of Christ looking on; references to Scripture and the Almighty (Only God can judge us now); and an image of Nina von Stauffenberg clutching her abdomen as she realizes she might be seeing her husband for the last time: She was pregnant with the couple’s fifth child.

In a recent interview, Cruise admitted that he had no idea, until recently, about the German Resistance, and regretted that most people in the world have never even heard of Stauffenberg. Thankfully, as a result of this film, that will no longer be true. The Good Germans, at last, have finally gotten their due.

William Doino Jr. writes for <http://www.insidethevatican.com/>Inside the Vatican.

With every best wish
John Conway

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January 2009 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

January 2009 — Vol. XV, no. 1

 

Dear Friends,

My very best wishes to you all for the beginning of the New Year. It is particularly appropriate that my first Newsletter this year brings you word of the well-deserved award to our long-time mentor, Professor Gerhard Besier of Dresden University, of an Honorary Doctorate of Theology from Lund University, Sweden, for his outstanding contributions in the field of church history. I am sure our members will join me in sending you, Gerhard, our warmest congratulations. May you long continue to advance the cause of kirchliche Zeitgeschichte.

Once again I look forward to being in touch with you in 2009 even though, to my regret, I have not got the opportunity of meeting many of you in person. However do please correspond if there are points of interest which you find in these Newsletters. I am always glad to hear from you.

May I once again remind you please do NOT press the REPLY button to this message, but to communicate to me at my personal address given at the end of this message.

Contents:

1) Book review:

a) Gallacher, Hurley and Pius XII
b) Henry, We know only men. Rescuing Jews in France
c) Akinsha and Koslov, The Holy Place – Moscow’s Cathedral

2) Comment on Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania
3) Dissertation abstract – P. Latvala, Mission to the Soviet Union
4) Correction: Prof N. Stoltzfus, The Rosenstrasse protests.

List of books reviewed in Vol. XIV – 2008.

1a) Charles Gallacher, Vatican Secret Diplomacy: Joseph P. Hurley and Pope Pius XII. [Reprinted with permission from the America Press, copyright 2008, all rights reserved]

Among the movers and shakers of American Catholicism, Joseph P. Hurley (1894-1967) surely deserves a high place. As priest, bishop, Vatican envoy and ally of FDR, he was at the center of twentieth-century debates involving the Church. As influential in his day as his contemporary, Francis Spellman, Hurley remains far less known. Fortunately, with the publication of Charles Gallagher’s new work, Vatican Secret Diplomacy, this forgotten prelate finally receives the attention he deserves.

Gallagher, a Jesuit seminarian, is author of a previous work on the archdiocese of St. Augustine, Florida, which Hurley led from 1940-1967. Granted access to Hurley’s private papers, he has produced a fascinating study.As Gallagher tells it, Hurley was a classic pre-Conciliar Catholic. He believed, as did many U.S. bishops, that a “blessed harmony” existed between the Church and the United States, and thought patriotism “should have the strongest place in man’s affections.” Once ordained, a combative spirit animated him: “Dominating concepts of Catholic militarism, Americanism, patriotism, and athleticism would all be transferred to his religious outlook and his later diplomatic career….To compromise, dither, walk away from a fight, or ‘not face up to facts’ placed one in the detestable category of ‘the Catholic milksop’ ”Fighting the Good Lord’s fight­as he saw it­was Hurley’s specialty. A man of the world as well as the cloth, his abilities were recognized by his superiors, who assigned him posts in India, Japan, and finally the Vatican. That Hurley took well to all these positions­despite any formal diplomatic training­speaks to his natural talents.

Gallagher’s book is as much character study as religious biography. Hurley was a man of contradictions. Though outstanding in many respects, he sometimes allowed prejudice to overtake him. While serving in the Papal Secretariat of State (1934-1940), he sympathized with the controversial priest Charles Coughlin. When he finally took a stand against “Charlie,” as he called him, it was only because of Coughlin’s criticism of FDR, not his anti-Semitism. And yet, to Hurley’s credit, after he witnessed what was actually happening to Jews during the thirties and forties, he became their champion­delivering scorching sermons against Hitler and his “criminal effort to eradicate the Jews.” He also aligned himself with the White House, becoming “the most outspoken critic of American Catholic non-interventionism and arguably the most ardent Catholic supporter of Roosevelt’s wartime foreign policy.” At a time of rampant isolationism, this was daring. Even after America’s entry into the War, conflicts continued, especially when the United States and the Holy See differed. Invariably, Hurley took his government’s side, even promoting the State Department’s “Black Propaganda” against the papacy (meant to influence its political stands). Had the Vatican become aware of this, it could have ended Hurley’s ecclesiastical career.

Though positive toward Hurley, Gallagher offers a one-sided view of Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII). Relying upon questionable evidence, Gallagher depicts Pacelli as overly cautious; more fearful of Communism than Nazism; and not as outspoken as his predecessor, Pius XI. These are familiar but unpersuasive charges, given that Hitler’s most fervent supporters always blamed Pacelli for the anti-Nazi line taken by the Holy See. Gallagher errs when he writes that Cardinal Pacelli’s 1937 warning to American diplomat Alfred Klieforth was “arguably the only time Pacelli personally expressed his disdain for Hitler.” In fact, as early as 1923, Pacelli, then papal nuncio in Germany, wrote the Vatican (following Hitler’s failed putsch), and denounced the future dictator by name. One of Gallagher’s sources against Pius XII is Hurley himself, who revered Pius XI but doubted Pacelli. But the claim that there was a big difference between Pius XI and Pius XII is unconvincing, since Pius XI appointed Cardinal Pacelli his Secretary of State, and said the Cardinal “speaks with my voice.”

Some of Hurley’s criticisms may have been based on simple ignorance. For example, Gallagher cites an entry in one of Hurley’s papers, where he praises Pius XI’s anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge: “Ratti [Pius XI] said it in March 1937, even if Pacelli missed the point later.” Apparently, Hurley was unaware that Pacelli drafted Pius XI’s encyclical. Similarly, Hurley believed Pius XII’s wartime statements were not direct enough; but the Nazis themselves denounced Pius as a “mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals,” and many rescuers have testified that Pius inspired them. In 1940, Pius XII suddenly appointed Hurley (still stationed in Rome) the bishop of St. Augustine, a move which had the effect of placing the outspoken prelate in a “backwater” diocese. Gallagher sees this as Pius’s punishment for Hurley’s independent ways. But whatever tensions existed, the pope must have admired the feisty American on some level; for when the War ended, he surprised Hurley by reviving his diplomatic career, appointing him acting chief of the apostolic nunciature in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. There he courageously battled the Communists, even as he met with constant frustration.

Hurley experienced far more success in his St. Augustine diocese, where he returned in 1950, expanding it through savvy real estate deals and religious gusto. If only Hurley’s knack for property development had been matched by a more prophetic imagination. A staunch traditionalist, he opposed Vatican II, and even ridiculed John Coutney Murray as a “master of double-talk.” Last, though an outspoken foe of racism abroad, Hurley was less sensitive to it back home. During 1964, Rev. Martin Luther King transformed St. Augustine into “a major area of civil rights activity and media attention.” Hurley wanted no part of this. Declining to meet with King, he instead sent him an equivocal letter expressing Christian fraternity “among people of different races,” but warning against “any act which might occasion…ill will.” Mind you, this was six years after the American bishops had issued­on the orders of a dying Pius XII­a pastoral condemning the sins of racial segregation. One wonders whether anyone, observing Hurley’s failure, might have mistaken him for a “Catholic milksop.”

William Doino Jr., Weston, Connecticut

1b) Patrick Henry, We only know men. The rescue of Jews in France during the Holocaust. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007. 191 pp
[This review appeared first in Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 74, no. 3, July 2008]

In 1979 an American professor of philosophy, Philip Hallie, published an account of the notable efforts by a small group of French Reformed Protestants during the second world war to give sanctuary to Jews oppressed by the Nazis and their Vichy collaborators. This pioneering work, Lest Innocent Blood be shed. The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There, described to English-speaking audiences how these villagers, on a lonely rural plateau a hundred miles south of Lyons, undertook what is now recognized as a uniquely heroic rescue attempt. No other communal effort on this scale occurred for this length of time anywhere else in Occupied Europe. Hallie’s findings were later followed by a moving documentary film, Weapons of the Spirit, produced by a film-maker who himself, as a child, was one of those rescued. Not surprisingly, these events have been given prominence, not only to support the cause of post-war Jewish-Christian reconciliation, but also to promote the image of the French resistance to Nazi-organized tyranny.

Patrick Henry, writing a generation later, seeks to amplify Hallie’s account, to correct a few historical errors, and to put the inhabitants of Le Chambon in a wider setting. He also takes issue with some of the mythical interpretations, which perhaps inevitably had crept in. Naturally Henry has to cover a lot of the same ground, but stresses particularly the role of these Protestant Huguenots as the successors to a long history of religious persecution in that part of France. This made them sensitive to the plight of the Jews, a sentiment reinforced by their strong sympathies with the people of the Bible.

Henry is at pains to dispute the view that the villagers of Le Chambon and district were primarily motivated by economic factors. Instead he emphasizes the spiritual calling which they shared with like-minded Christians of the area, such as Quakers, and Darbyites (Brethren). Since ninety percent of the area’s population was Protestant, the Catholics were underrepresented. Their efforts to assist Jews took place elsewhere, and are not here discussed.

This Protestant determination to resist Nazi oppression and to rescue Jews was all the more notable for being linked to their equal commitment to pacifist non-violence. Henry devotes one chapter to the uplifting story of Daniel Trocme, a young cousin of the Le Chambon’s pastor, who with six of his charges was deported by the Nazis. All lost their lives in concentration camps.

Henry also records the equally self-sacrificing but unknown witness of Madeleine Dreyfus, a righteous Jew, who took enormous risks to bring fellow Jews to the sanctuary on the plateau. Arrested in November 1943, she was to spend eleven months in the horrors of Bergen-Belsen, but luckily survived. Henry believes that her story, and that of other Jews who were part of the resistance in France, has been unfairly neglected and deserves to be better known.

In his concluding chapter Henry regrets that not enough attention has been paid to these rescuers. For the first fifty years after the Holocaust, survivors stressed the evils they had endured. But there was also goodness, even love and compassion amongst those, few and far between, who saved Jews. from the death camps. Unfortunately these efforts have sometimes been disparaged, or their motives challenged. Even notable figures, such as the only American Righteous Gentile, Varian Fry,who also operated in southern France, are largely unknown. Henry’s contribution seeks to rectify this omission, and to put the heroes of Le Chambon into a European-wide context. Their legacy, whether as Jews or Christians, is that they protested against the racial hatred of the day, and because they knew only men, witnessed to the essential similarity of all humanity.

JSC

1c) Konstantin Akinsha and Grogorij Kozlov, with Sylvia Hadfield, The Holy Place: architecture, ideology and history in Russia. New York: Yale University Press 2007. 212 Pp. ISBN 978-0-300-11027-2

Two hundred years ago Napoleon’s defeat in Russia seemed to the then Czar, Alexander I, to be a miracle which deserved to be commemorated. He resolved to build a cathedral in Moscow, dedicated to Christ the Saviour. The story of this cathedral, its construction, subsequent demolition and final reconstruction, as told in this sprightly account by two Russian architectural historians, is more of a parable about Russia’s turbulent political history than an architectural treatise, but entertaining on both levels. This is the story of a holy place, where successive rulers of Russia wanted to indulge their views. Alexander yearned for a symbol of universal Christendom; Stalin wanted its replacement to be the tallest building in the world; Yeltsin rebuilt it as a reparation for seventy-four years of Soviet tyranny. Architects of all stripes created hundreds of proposals for the site, but most were doomed to remain unfulfilled. Thinkers, ideologues and artists planned grand decorations which were never realized. As the authors wryly remark: “Alexander was compared to King Solomon creating the Temple, but the history of Christ the Saviour reminds us more of another biblical construction: the Tower of Babel.”

The original site proposed for the cathedral was on the Sparrow Hills, where the University of Moscow now stands. But the vast task assigned to Alexander’s chosen architect, quarrels amongst the leading politicians, problems with the recruited labour, suspicion of Masonic influences, corruption in the procurement of building materials, all caused delays. Then Alexander suddenly died and the project was doomed.

Not until twenty years later was it to be revived. This time, the site was moved to the banks of the Moscow River, not far from the Kremlin, as being much more suitable for ceremonial parades and processions. Czar Nicholas I wanted it to become, not the symbol of European unity, but of Russia’s national superiority and its historic destiny. The decorations and furnishings reflected this new emphasis. The murals, frescoes and numerous statues, all spoke of the history of holy Russia, and included mementos of how God had granted Russia victory over the anti-Christ Napoleon. But progress was very slow, and the cathedral was still not finished in 1855 when Nicholas died from shock at his army’s defeat in the Crimea. Slowly work resumed with more and more expensive, even luxurious decorations added. More than nine hundred thousand pounds of gold were used for the dome alone. The result of these extra embellishments was stylistic cacophany, with East and West reflecting uneasily Russia’s central position in the world. The total cost exceeded more than fifteen million rubles. The Cathedral was finally consecrated in May 1883.

Despite the criticisms of the artistic elite, the cathedral was popular with the masses. Its very size, as the largest church in all Russia, was impressive, even awe-inspiring. It became the most successful mass culture project of its age, instructing the onlooker in the history of both Russia and the Bible. The visitor could be filled with wonder and pride in being Russian.

However, the Cathedral – even with a gigantic statue of Czar Alexander III erected in the 1890s and placed by the front entrance – did not long endure as the mascot of Russia’s imperial monarchy. Thirty-four years after its inauguration, the last Czar, Nicholas II, was deposed and soon after murdered by Bolshevik extremists. The revolutionary violence which engulfed the country, the mass executions of class enemies, and the wholesale confiscation of property, including the church’s, did not leave the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour unscathed. For a while it became the seat of the new Patriarch, whose sermons and decrees were aimed at arousing resistance to the new Communist rulers. He was soon enough placed under house arrest and remained so for several years. His pulpit was then occupied by a fellow-traveller with the Communists, who claimed that the teachings of Christ and Marx were identical. The kingdom of heaven would now result from the success of the Communist revolution. The Cathedral became cold, empty and bird-spattered.

On 5 December 1931, on the orders of the Soviet Politburo, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was demolished, blown up by dynamite. In its place, a Palace of Soviets was proposed. Stalin himself gave this idea his full support. Numerous avant-garde architects from all over the world entered the competition to find the appropriate style for the embodiment of the Soviet New Order. The new palace was to be the crowning glory of the Five-Year Plan, and a triumphant vindication of the Communist ideology.

Akinsha’s descriptions of the rival plans for this mammoth piece of architectural idolatry are suitably sardonic. But, as he makes clear, the ordinary Russians were not impressed. The Cathedral’s destruction had been a cruel blow. Memories of its splendour were, however, preserved for an as yet unimaginable future. Instead, under Stalin’s command, a vast and unrivalled edifice was to be built, crowned by a gigantic statue of Lenin. Once the site had been cleared, preparations began for its new fate. By 1941 only a large circular foundation had been built. Then in June the German invasion began. Men and material were immediately transferred for the war effort. The work was never resumed.

After Stalin’s death in 1953, this hole in the ground was turned into Russia’s largest swimming pool, even heated through the depths of winter. But the Cathedral was not forgotten. Its demolition came to be seen as symbolic of the Soviet crimes against civilisation, and its former richness as a sign of Russia’s long-lost heritage. Nostalgia grew for the Cathedral’s golden dome so ruthlessly destroyed by the agents of an increasingly discredited ideology. A revival of interest in religion in the 1970s and 1980s also helped.

With the downfall of the Soviet empire, Russia needed a new identity. Its new leader, Boris Yeltsin, turned to the Orthodox Church as a still viable source for national renewal. The Patriarch, Alexei II, welcomed the chance to recover from seventy years of persecution and exclusion. The price demanded was the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, on its former site, but not with the same elaborate decoration. In September 1994 a powerful committee of both church and state leaders gave the signal for plans for the reconstruction to begin.

Opposition was of course heard from those who objected to the great expense the rebuilding would incur, or from those who wanted to retain their favourite swimming pool. But the church and the city of Moscow authorities launched a large-scale public relations drive and fund-raising campaign which proved highly successful. The Cathedral now became the symbol of the renaissance of the new Russia. By 1997 the exterior was finished in time for Moscow’s 950th birthday, celebrated with passionate Russian enthusiasm. Finally in early 2000, on the Orthodox Church’s first Christmas of the new millennium, the Cathedral was opened for public worship. A few months later, an even more impressive ceremony was held during which the last Czar Nicholas and his wife Alexandra were granted sainthood. At long last, the ruined cathedral was resurrected and the murdered czar sanctified.

JSC

2) Comment on Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania (Newsletter, November 2008, Vol . XIV, no. 11, p. 8.

The following comment has been sent in by an Oxford scholar who has recently had occasion to visit Romania several times on church business:

“The two authors, L.Stan and L Turcescu, have clearly gone through
the trauma of living through the horrible stages of Ceausescu’s rule
and eventual death, then within a year or two transferring
themselves to Canada, and taking up, no doubt with considerable
enthusiasm, the freedoms and questioning that Canada allows and
encourages. In particular they have clearly adopted a good many of
the ‘assumptions’ about human society which North Americans take for
granted, but which not only looked different in Romania when they
were there because of the Communist rule and ideology, but which are
also very different in Romania and most other countries, in Europe
and in different ways in other continents. North America has had its
specific history and ideologies which have shaped a set of
assumptions which some people, including these two, find congenial
and ‘natural’, but others are more sceptical about (including me !).
The way they approach the particular questions they choose to
give their space to – church and state, religious education in
schools, homosexuality – is entirely that of a certain sort of
North Americans. They no doubt still speak and read Romanian, but write
as outsiders rather than as insiders. It is also evident that the
great majority of the ‘scholarly’ books they refer to,
understandably enough given that they are living in Canada, are by
American authors and reflect their sets of ‘values’ and assumptions.

I don’t say this ‘against’ them, but I feel sure that most Romanians
reading them will be struck by this North American-centred approach (which I
have of course all too often met in books dealing with China,
especially with China’s Christians!). For some it may be welcome,
as illustrating how they are seen, but for many others I feel pretty
sure that they will be looked at more than a little askance, as
writers who are no longer ‘one of us’ ! And I suppose that my
long-standing search and habitual starting-point has been, and
remains, to try and understand any given society, and the people I
am meeting and hoping in some way to serve, from within their
own outlook(s) and assumptions. I may well not ‘agree’ with
some, even many, of those but it’s virtually always more important
to show people that one has understood and sympathised with them
rather than to rush into showing how differently they ‘ought’ to see
things and behave, let alone how much better they could have done
this and that if only they had listened to me !

So while I find the book, of course, interesting and at points
illuminating, it isn’t the Romania I have met and begun to love in
the people I have been with ! Where are the delights of those
‘painted monasteries’ in Moldavia whose tradition is still so alive
and kicking in the Romanian Orthodox Church, where the hundreds of
young women crowding into the nunneries and offering their time and
service to the poor (of whom there are of course still many in
almost every area), where the thrill with which the people of the
city of Sibiu so evidently welcomed the big Europe-wide Ecumenical
Assembly there a year and a bit ago now … ? I don’t doubt that
most of what these authors write about is factually ‘true’, but
there’s so much more to the life and faith of Romanians than the
things they write about, even if those deserve a lot more
exploration and deeper thinking than they mostly yet get.”

3) Dissertation abstract

Piia Latvala, Valoa itään? – Kansanlähetys ja Neuvostoliitto 1967–1973 Light to the East? – The Finnish Lutheran Mission and the Soviet Union 1967–1973.

Ms Piia Latvala, of the Theological Faculty of the University of Helsinki, Finland, recently successfully defended her doctoral thesis on the above topic. We congratulate her on her success.

The Cold War affected the lives of Christian churches, especially in Europe. Besides the official ecumenical relations between east and west, there existed unofficial activity from west to east, such as smuggling Bibles and distributing information about the severe condition of human rights in the USSR.

This study examines this kind of unofficial activity originating in Finland. It especially concentrates on the missionary work to the Soviet Union done by the Finnish Lutheran Mission (FLM, Suomen Evankelisluterilainen Kansanlähetys) founded in 1967. The work for Eastern Europe was organised through the Department for the Slavic Missions. FLM was founded within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, but it was not connected to the church on an organisational level. In addition to the strong emphasis on the Lutheran confession, FLM presented evangelical theology.

The fundamental work of the Department for the Slavic Missions was to organise the smuggling of Bibles and other Christian literature to the Soviet Union and other countries behind the Iron Curtain. No exact figures are available as to how many people supported or took part in these smuggling operations. Even today many of those involved in these operations are either reluctant or do not dare to reveal the extent of their exploits.. But already within a few years, the Department reported employing some two hundred reliable and trustworthy agents. The number of bibles these individuals took with them varied between a few dozen to fifteen hundred books at a time. They also financed several Christian radio programmes produced and aired mainly by the international Trans World Radio. The Department diversified its activity to humanitarian help by distributing material help such as clothes and shoes to the unregistered evangelical and Baptist groups, which were called the “underground churches”.

In Finland the Department focused on information services. It published its own magazine, Valoa idässä (Light in the East), 5 to 6 times per year. Through the magazine and by distributing samizdat material received from the unregistered Christian groups, it discussed and reported the violations of human rights in the Soviet Union, especially when the unregistered Christian groups were considered the victims. In the Department’s opinion, the legally registered churches and communities had lost something of their genuine Christian character. Their collaboration with the Soviet system of tyranny had perverted their true witness. They now needed to be given the unpolluted Gospel truth. This resistance against the Soviet Union was therefore not so much political as religious: the staff members of the Department were keenly motivated and revivalist young people who thought, for instance, that communism was in some way an apocalyptic world power revealed in the Bible. Consequently they unequivocally denounced the religious policies of the Soviet Union as being un-Christian and despotic, and criticized as cowardly the tactical silence of the Finnish church authorities.

Smuggling Bibles was discussed widely in the Finnish media and even in parliament and the Finnish Security Police (SUPO, Suojelupoliisi) – and in the Lutheran Church. From the church’s point of view, this kind of missionary work was understandable but bothersome. Through their ecumenical connections, the bishops knew the critical situation of churches behind the iron curtain very well, but wanted to act diplomatically and cautiously to prevent causing harm to ecumenical or political relations. As a result, the openly critical attitudes towards the Soviet Union proclaimed by these ardent missionaries caused some concern. This led the church leaders to declare that such activities were not part of the official missionary engagement of the Finnish Church.

The leftist media and members of parliament especially accused the work of the Department of being illegal and endangering relations between Finland and the Soviet Union. SUPO did not consider the work of the Department as illegal activity or as a threat to Finnish national security.

The pioneer phase of this mission ended in 1973 when its chief organizer Per-Olof Malk resigned, due mainly to internal quarrels regarding the use of the financial subsidies received. Malk was clearly a skilful propagandist in whose view this controversial mission was fully justified. The Bible’s command laid upon all Christians a duty to go forth and proclaim the truth of the Gospel to the unconverted nations.
Subsequently, the bible smuggling operations continued but were undertaken less spectacularly or flamboyantly. After 1989 they were no longer necessary.
Piia Latvala

4) Professor Nathan Stoltzfus of Florida State University writes to send us the following correction to a quote attributed to him in ‘The Rosenstrasse protest reconsidered’ (item 2b in the May, 2006 newsletter):

“A friend has brought to my attention a piece in this newsletter with a short reference to Antonia Leuger’s excellent essay (<http://aps.sulb.unisaarland.de/theologie.geschichte/inhalt/2006/11.html>http://aps.sulb.unisaarland.de/theologie.geschichte/inhalt/2006/11.html). It asserted that Wolf Gruner “takes issue with the basic contention, put forward for example by Nathan Stoltzfus, that ‘if only more people had behaved like the wives of the Rosenstrasse, the mass murder of the Jews would never have taken place’.

I have not put forth this contention and would not have made the above quote attributed to me. This mistake is reminiscent, however, of one Joachin Neander corrected in the December, 2005 issue of this newsletter (item 2). Neander refuted the charge, printed in the newsletter’s review of Antonia Leuger’s edited collection, Berlin Rosenstrasse 2-4, that the authors believed that the Rosenstrasse Protest “changed the course of history.” (<http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/akz/akz2512.htm>http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/akz/akz2512.htm)

Indeed, in a review of Gruner’s latest book, Widerstand in der Rosenstrasse, I have just corrected a similar charge. Gruner wrote that I “advocate” a thesis that more protests like those on Berlin’s Rosenstrasse would have “impeded” the Holocaust. As evidence for this assertion, Gruner cited a provocative question (an important tool of scholarship) that I had put forward, asking whether further protests might have “slowed or impeded” the annihilation. Gruner also made similar charges, including one that I claim the Nazi regime could not have quelled the protest with force, although I have always argued that the regime avoided using force in this case for tactical reasons (AHR Review 112/5, 1628,

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/112.5/br_145.html>www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/112.5/br_145.html).

In fact, I have regularly presented considerations that, had more Germans protested, the regime may well have responded more harshly. For example, in Resistance of the Heart (WW Norton, 1996, p. 260), I write: “It is possible to see the release of Jews at Rosenstrasse as a small, isolatable exception the regime made in order to move forward with its larger purposes. In this view, the Rosenstrasse protesters made an isolated, limited demand the regime could agree to, a calculable cost it could pay. The regime could count the protesters, and count their demands–about 1,700 Jews. It could be certain the Rosenstrasse Protest would end with the release of these Jews, and that the regime could then proceed with the enormous program of genocide elsewhere, where there were no protests. A more general protest against the Final Solution itself, that frustrated all of the regime’s will to genocide, would have pushed the regime into responding with brutal force, one might argue. Gutterer [Goebbels’ Under Secretary of Propaganda] implied that the result of the Rosenstrasse Protest did not necessarily indicate that larger protests would have led to further liberations of Jews.” Nathan Stoltzfus

List of books reviewed in 2008.

Anglicanism and Orthodoxy May
Austin, A., China’s Millions.The China Inland Mission and the late Qing Society April
Berdahl, D., Where the world ended. Re-unification in the German borderland September
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich: London 1933-1935 December
Boyd, R., The Witness of the Student Christian Movement April
Brinkmann, H., God’s Ambassadors. The Bruderhof in Nazi Germany November
Burleigh, M, Sacred Causes February
Damberg, W., and Liedhegener, A., Katholiken in der USA und Deutschland Jul/Aug
Daughrity, D., Bishop Stephen Neill October
Dembowski, P, Christians in the Warsaw Ghetto February
Dramm, S., Dietrich Bonhoeffer. An introduction to his thought May
V-Mann Gottes und der Abwehr? Dietrich Bonhoeffer und der Widerstand May
Faltin, L. and Wright, M., eds., The religious roots of contemporary European identity December
Gailus, M., ed., Elisabeth Schmitz November
Green, Lowell C., Lutherans against Hitler. The untold story June
Hughes, M., Conscience and conflict. Methodism, peace and war in the 20th century Jul/Aug
“Ihr ende schaut an” Evangelische Märtyrer des 20 Jahrhunderts December
Jantzen, Kyle, Faith and Fatherland. Parish politics in Hitler’s Germany June
Kammerer, G., Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienst November
Kunter, K., Erfüllte Hoffnungen und zerbrochene Träume October
Lehmann, T., Blues Music and Gospel Proclamation November
McLeod, H., Saarinen, R., and Lauha, A., North European Churches. From the Cold War to Globalization December
Paldiel, M., Churches and the Holocaust, Unholy teaching, good Samaritans and Reconciliation March
Plokhy,S. and Sysyn, F., Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine January
Ringshausen, G., Widerstand und christlicher Glaube Jul/Aug
Shuff, R .N., Searching for the true church. Brethren and Evangelicals in mid-twentieth century England Jul/Aug
Silomon, A, Der Ost-West Dialog der deutschen evangelischen Kirchen 1969-1991 October
Spicer, K. Ed., Antisemitism, Christian ambivalence and the Holocaust January
Stan, L., and Turcescu, L, Religion and Politics in post-communist Romania November
Tavard, G. H., Vatican II and the Ecumenical Way September
Webb, Pauline, World-Wide-Webb October
Wolf, H., Flammer T., and Schueler, B., eds Clemens August von Galen September
Zumholz, M. A., Volksfrömmigkeit und Katholisches Milieu April

With every good wish
John Conway

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December 2008 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

December 2008— Vol. XIV, no. 12

 Dear Friends,

We are already in the Advent season and are now looking forward to the Christmas celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. So let me take this occasion to wish you all the very best as the year ends, and to hope that you will have a joyous and restful holiday, even in these troubling times. This also brings to an end Volume XIV of this Newsletter, so I want to thank all of you for your support and encouragement which has meant so much to me over this time. For example, I recently received a very generous letter from Peggy Obrecht, which she has allowed me to share with you.

At this time of year with Thanksgiving approaching, I just want to tell you once again how grateful I am for your efforts at turning out, month after month, not just insightful reviews of recent books and articles but fascinating pictures of the religious history of these past centuries. You have provided a great resource for those of us wishing to understand better how the theological and psychological views of church officials and scholars, and their subsequent actions, influenced not just the religious world in which they worked but the greater society around them as well. (Sometimes to the embarrassment of the church but, more often than not, to its credit.)

It has been as good an education as one could have, and many times over the years I have incorporated your thoughts and viewpoints, along with those of your contributing editors, into speeches or sermons I have had to deliver (giving credit where it was due-you will be glad to hear).

May you live as long as I do which, I hope, will be at least another twenty years. ”

I fear that I may not be able to live up to such kind and lengthy expectations, since my seventy-ninth birthday falls this month, but promise to do what I can so long as I am able. I particularly want to thank those who have helped with their contributions this year, especially my fellow workers over so many years now, Matthew Hockenos and Randy Bytwerk.

Some of you have asked me to define the criteria used to select books to be reviewed. The choice may seem rather haphazard (or in the eyes of some perhaps erratic). I have only three criteria: first the availability of new titles, which of course cannot be predicted in advance, and which arrive here in Vancouver in uncontrollable intervals; second, the subject matter has to be concerned with the twentieth century or later; third, I try to be as inclusive of as many branches of the Christian church as possible, regardless of denominational or geographical setting. This provides a wide and ecumenical variety of subjects, so that I hope one or other review is of interest to all of you, some of the time. I am aware that such an arrangement prevents any concentration on particular themes, or special issues limited to one topic. But I hope my preference still continues to find your favour and support. As of now, we have 503 subscribers, scattered all around the globe. May I wish every one of you the very best for 2009.

Contents:

Book reviews

1a) Dietrich Bonhoeffer London 1933-1935
1b) “Ihr Ende schaut an .. “ Evangelische Märtyrer des 20. Jahrhunderts
1c) North European Churches/ European Integration

1a) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, London 1933-1935 English translation, edited by Keith Clements. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 13) Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2007. 524 Pp. ISBN-13: 978-0-8006-8313-9.

The English translation of the seventeen volumes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings, published in German between 1986 and 1999, proceeds apace. The latest volume to appear is Volume 13, which has been skilfully translated with extra annotations added by the British editor for the benefit of English-speaking readers. It is entitled “London” since it covers the period of Bonhoeffer’s service as pastor of two German-speaking congregations in London during 1933 to 1935. This was in fact a crucial turning point in his career. He was just short of twenty-seven when the Nazis came to power, and when the whole German Protestant community was convulsed and divided along both political and theological lines. At once Bonhoeffer recognized the dangers ahead. He was one of the few. But early on in 1933 he had thrown his support behind those determined to prevent the pro-Nazi faction in the Protestant churches from gaining control of church affairs. He had witnessed with increasing anguish over the summer of 1933 the manipulation of church elections and the apparent victory of the so-called “German Christians”, who sought the whole-scale and willing identification of the Protestant Church with the goals of the Nazi Party.

Bonhoeffer’s decision to apply for the vacant post in London was in one sense a means of distancing himself from the looming church struggle in his homeland. But he certainly did not want to be an exile, or to consider emigrating on a permanent basis. Rather, he saw the posting as an opportunity to arouse concern among his contacts in the wider church world, particularly amongst those engaged in the nascent ecumenical movement. He wanted to inform them of developments in Germany, and to rally their support by making them aware of the errors and indeed heresies being preached by his clerical colleagues. He was convinced that such misguided preaching demonstrated an abandonment of the strict orthodoxy of his Lutheran heritage for the sake of temporary political advantage.

This volume therefore necessarily gives a full account of the German Church Struggle and Bonhoeffer’s continuing engagement in it, often on an almost daily basis by lengthy telephone calls to Berlin, but also by frequent short visits back to Germany. At the same time, this volume also gives details about his running of his two parishes, as well as about his wider involvement in the ecumenical movement. These latter activities culminated in his participation in the 1934 meeting in Fanø, Denmark, which was highly significant in his theological development. In addition, this volume contains the sermons he preached in London. The introduction by Keith Clements gives English-speaking readers a valuable analysis of the origins of the German Church Struggle, which was, at least to begin with, in essence an inner-church conflict over what the nature of the Christian church should be. This reached its apex while Bonhoeffer was abroad in 1934. Because of his absence in London, he was not able to attend the Confessing Church’s formative meeting at Barmen in the Rhineland in May 1934. On that occasion Karl Barth was the principal author of the famous Barmen Declaration, repudiating the claims of the “German Christians” on theological grounds. Bonhoeffer’s comments on that brave statement are highly instructive.

1934 was also the year in which Bonhoeffer began to play a more pivotal role in the ecumenical movement. Despite his young age, his qualifications were considerable. He had already had the advantage of travelling abroad in the immediately previous years. He had served for a year as a curate in the German Church in Barcelona, and then had spent a hugely formative year at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where his theological horizons widened rapidly. Here too he gained added fluency in English. Immediately after his return to Berlin in 1931, he had been chosen to go to Cambridge for a conference of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches. Here he made such an impression on the older generation of leaders that he was at once recruited to serve as a Youth Secretary of the Alliance, and was given responsibility for promoting its cause among youth throughout central Europe. It was through this work that he first met Bishop George Bell of Chichester, a leading figure in the Ecumenical Council of Life and Work, who was to become so important for Bonhoeffer in the next chapter of his life in England.

Bonhoeffer arrived in London in mid-October 1933, and almost immediately was invited to go down to Chichester for a full discussion of the events unfolding in Germany. This volume gives the background, both in Germany and in England, for such deliberations, of which unfortunately a written record was seldom made. Nevertheless it is clear that Bonhoeffer’s clear and accurate knowledge of the events unfolding in Germany was helpful not only to Bell, but also to his superior, the Archbishop of Canterbury, with whom Bonhoeffer conferred in March 1934. These church leaders hardly needed to be convinced of the seriousness of the crisis in Germany. The dictatorial steps instituted by the Reich Bishop Müller against his opponents in the Confessing Church seemed to herald the attempt to impose more radical pro-Nazi measures on the whole church. Bonhoeffer of course rightly stressed that such distortions of the universal Christian gospel had to be opposed. But it proved to be an uphill task to mobilize other branches of the church, even in the ecumenical movement, to take action. The official “German Christian” authorities naturally protested against what they considered “unwarranted interference” by such bodies as the Council of Life and Work, led by Bell. Hence difficult and tortuous diplomatic negotiations were called for.

For his part, Bonhoeffer was eager for a strong and open protest. He even refers to the need for an ultimatum, which could be a test of the ecumenical movement’s reality and vitality. In his letters to the Geneva staff of Life and Work, he deplored what he saw as prevarication or vacillation. Instead he wanted the ecumenical community to make up its mind. In April 1934, he wrote: “There is much more at stake here than just personal or administrative difficulties. Christ is looking down at us and asking whether there is anyone left who confesses faith in him” (p. 127).

Naturally he was in favour of Bishop Bell’s Ascension Day message regarding the German Evangelical Church, sent in early May, and advised Bell on how it could be strengthened. In particular the message expressed strong concern about the autocratic measures taken by the Reich Bishop and about the introduction of racial principles in determining the nature of the German Church. Shortly afterwards, the delegates of the various regional branches of the Confessing Church met in Barmen and issued their notable Declaration. This meeting gave added strength to their determination to oppose the unscriptural and indeed heretical attempts to Nazify the Church. One result was the decision to establish the Confessing Church’s own seminaries for theological ordinands, who would thus be rescued from contamination at the state-run university faculties of theology. Bonhoeffer early on came into consideration as the Director for the proposed seminary of the Berlin-Brandenburg Confessing Church – a post he was to assume in the following April. This new development meant that his hope of going out to India to spend time in one of Gandhi’s ashrams to study life together had to be abandoned. But another alternative plan – to start a Protestant monastery inspired by the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount – was in fact to be realized at least in part when he subsequently returned to Germany.

The confrontation between the ecumenical community and the officials of the German Reich Church came to a head in August at the international conference held in Denmark. Actually there were two conferences held simultaneously in the same place. The first was the Youth Conference of the World Alliance with some sixty student members from all parts of the world. Bonhoeffer had taken care to ensure that none of the Germans present supported the “German Christian” position. It was to this gathering that he gave his powerful address in favour of a church-led pacifism and called on the whole Ecumenical Council to unite in proclaiming the peace of Christ against the raging world. It was to be the apogee of his youthful and ardent pacifist idealism. The text is fortunately preserved in full in this volume.

At the same time, the larger conference organised by the Council of Life and Work, saw representatives from the official German Church , attending as duly authorized members, including the head of the Church’s foreign department, Bishop Heckel. As the documents in this volume show, Bonhoeffer had already had his confrontations with Heckel who had tried to use his office’s authority to impose control over and theological views upon the congregations in Britain. Bonhoeffer’s strong resistance against this attempt and his success in gaining the support of Bishop Bell and other leaders of the ecumenical movement now culminated in the Fanø deliberations. Despite Heckel’s vehement objections, the Council was steered by Bell to pass a strong resolution condemning the policies of the “German Christian”-dominated church government. The Council also elected one of the leading figures in the Confessing Church, Karl Koch, to join its ranks, as a strong and public indication of its support. Bonhoeffer left immediately for Germany to inform Koch and his advisors of this support.

Despite these warnings and remonstrances, the “German Christian” campaign to bring all aspects of church life into line with the Nazi ideology, was stepped up in the next few weeks, making much of Hitler’s tactic of theFührerprinzip. Bishops were placed under house arrest, dissident pastors were disciplined, mission work was throttled, and all suggested compromises were denied. In retaliation, Bonhoeffer and his colleagues in Britain resolved to get the support of their congregations to switch their allegiance from the Reich Church to the Confessing Church. Extensive correspondence followed which is reflected in the surviving papers. But how this confession-based transfer could be brought about was still unresolved even after Bonhoeffer was called back to Germany in April 1935 to take up his duties as director of the Confessing Church’s training centre in the remote Pomeranian village of Finkenwalde. Before he left England, he just had time to pay brief visits to three Church of England residential colleges where the ideal of training the future clergy in a monastic setting was still being practised. Some of his correspondence also hints at how this idea grew on him, when he envisaged a community of life together based on the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount

Inevitably, the more personal and spiritual side of Bonhoeffer’s ministry in London is only here hinted at, but the memories of survivors from those days, newly collected in Keith Clements’ appealing and beautifully illustrated memoir, Bonhoeffer and Britain, (reviewed in our Newsletter, October 2006, Vol. XII, no. 10), show that his dedication to his parishioners was much appreciated, as were his thoughtful and often inspiring sermons, several of which are here reprinted in an excellent translation. For a young pastor, who had not yet reached his thirtieth birthday, his achievements in London were to prove formative for his later development. In particular his recognition of the urgency of the Church Struggle, and his determination to reject any form of compromise for the sake of his career, or for nationalist reasons, was to make him a singular figure among his colleagues and age-cohorts. His period in London was to deepen his convictions about the vital need to relate the ethics of the Gospel to the surrounding political events of his day, and if necessary to take up arms against injustice and intimidation. Inspired by the model of the Sermon on the Mount, these were the values he sought to instil in his parishioners and students in the subsequent years. And there can be no doubt that his friendship with Bishop Bell in these few months was one of his most supportive encounters and sustained him until the end. It was to Bishop Bell that he sent his final message from Germany on the day before his execution in Flossenburg concentration camp on April 9th 1945.

“Tell him that with him I believe in the reality of the Christian brotherhood that rises above all national conflicts and interests, and that our victory is certain”.

It was therefore entirely fitting that the first memorial service for Dietrich Bonhoeffer was held in Holy Trinity Church in central London and organized by Bishop Bell only three months later in July 1945. The service was recorded by the BBC and broadcast to Germany. This was how Bonhoeffer’s parents first learnt of his death. Bishop Bell’s sermon recalled: “As one of a noble company of martyrs of differing traditions, he represents both the resistance of the believing soul, in the name of God, to the assault of evil, and also the moral and political revolt of the human conscience against injustice and cruelty.”

It is therefore also fitting that Bonhoeffer is one of the ten Christian martyrs of the twentieth century, whose statues were to be placed on the west portal of Westminster Abbey and unveiled there in the presence of the Queen in July 1998, thus making his connection with London a permanent record of his faithfulness and example of ecumenical fellowship.

JSC

1b) “Ihr Ende Schaut an. . .”. Evangelische Märtyrer des 20. Jahrhunderts, Edited by Harald Schultze and Andreas Kurschat. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2008. 811pp ISBN 978-3-374-02370-7.

This encyclopaedia of German-speaking Protestant martyrs in the twentieth century forms a counterpoint to a similar large-scale compilation published by the German Catholic authorities. The object is to record the names of those Christian witnesses put to death for their faithfulness, both in order to preserve the historical record, and to uphold the ethical impulse these sacrifices can give to later generations. At the same time, these volumes can be seen as a further attempt at coming to terms with Germany’s chequered record during the past century.

This work consists of several hundred short biographical entries, arranged in geographical groupings, such as Germany, the Baltic lands, the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, and east and south-east Europe. These entries are preceded by two hundred pages of introductory essays, which are valuable in describing the settings in which these martyrs lost their lives.

As is made clear by Professor Harold Schultze, the problem of selection was an ongoing one for the editors. The decision to limit those chosen to members of the German-speaking Evangelical Churches or affiliated communities necessitated drawing boundaries. For example, the numerous martyrs among the Jehovah’s Witnesses were excluded. On the other hand, particular note was made of those who suffered death in the Soviet Union or its satellite territories. And the martyrs who lost their lives while witnessing in the German Democratic Republic, are here included, as are martyrs from the non-established Protestant communities, such as the Mennonites.

How should martyrdom be defined in the present context? Clearly the concept has become widened beyond the early ascriptions to those who confessed their faith publicly and were burnt at the stake. In the twentieth century, both the methods of persecution became more varied, but so did the motives of the persecuted. In many – possibly in most – cases, political and social motives went hand in hand with religious convictions to spur individuals to take up resistance against tyranny of various kinds. It is often impossible to try and prioritize such impulses, but the editors have struggled to find the attestation of Christian witness before the individual was included. Certainly they have sought to avoid honouring only the clergy or office holders in the church. In the wake of the overthrow of the Nazi regime, strenuous efforts were made commemorate those men and women murdered at the hands of the Gestapo or SS, especially those involved in the fatal Putsch of 20 July 1944, whose victims indeed became the best known in this group of Protestant martyrs.

But as this case demonstrates, the mixed religious and political motives of these men and women, and in some cases their previous adherence to or support of the Nazi regime, caused highly ambivalent reactions. The famous Protestant martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer was for many years regarded with aversion, even in his own church, because he had challenged the long-held Lutheran tradition of obedience to established authority, and had even conspired to assassinate the head of state. Only when the political climate changed, and the majority of Protestants acknowledged their previous complicity with the criminal Nazi regime, was due recognition awarded to Bonhoeffer and his companions. For the same reason, an increased readiness was found to widen the definition of martyrdom so that many of the victims of political repression could be included, even though some explicit Christian witness or conviction was needed in order to be mentioned in this compilation.

At the same time, numerous physical memorials to these martyrs have been built in Germany, not only for Protestants. Particularly such striking monuments as the Holocaust Memorial in central Berlin gave added impetus to the commemoration of these martyrs. Such architectural structures, however, naturally lack the detail of the individual’s service or contribution. So such undertakings as this encyclopaedia provide a valuable and necessary addition, and will help to ensure that the names of murdered and oppressed individuals and their specific witness will not be forgotten or erased with the passing of time.

Of course, commemoration of contemporary martyrs raises troubling questions for the ir surviving successors. Why were they so few? And why did their examples not lead to much wider movements to resist the tyranny of which they were the victims? The silent majority which failed to follow them stood and still stands accused. But at least younger generations are now being enabled through such books as this volume to look at the painful and also terrifying experiences of these martyrs, and hopefully to determine not to allow such circumstances to recur.

While the heuristic value of this volume for German-speaking readers and congregations can be taken fro granted, the historian has also to consider wider issues. Particularly, in the history of the Soviet Union, it seems somewhat one-sided to focus only on the Protestant victims of Stalin’s despotism. Many thousands of other Russian Christians suffered martyrdom, and whole populations were starved to death through famine, or worked to death in the notorious Gulag camps. Should these not also be remembered? And even more controversially, questions have to be asked about those German-speaking Protestants who served in Hitler’s armies, whose ruthless atrocities contributed to the deaths of so many civilians, including Jews. Even after sixty or more years, Germans, including Protestants, have much to contemplate with penitence in the history of their impact on eastern Europe. Remembering the sufferings of these martyrs is only one stage; it needs to be accompanied by a much more comprehensive reckoning, which takes account of the behaviour of the church as a whole. Only thus will the danger of self-justification or self-glorification be avoided. Martyrs must not become an alibi, but rather an abiding witness to a higher standard of Christian discipleship.

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1c) Hugh McLeod, Risto Saarinen, Aila Lauha, North European Churches. From the Cold War to Globalization. Tampere, Finland: Church Research Institute, 2006. 135 pp. ISBN 951-693-270-3

Edited by Lucia Faltin and Melanie J.Wright, The Religious Roots of Contemporary European Identity. London: Continuum 2007. 230 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0-8264-9482-5

For the past sixty years, the European churches have been attempting to restore and reconstruct the moral and spiritual values of their civil society, which was so ruthlessly and destructively torn apart by the totalitarian powers, first by Nazi Germany and subsequently by Soviet Communism. In the southern lands, around the Mediterranean, this task was taken up principally by the Roman Catholic Church. But in northern Europe, as outlined in the first of these new books, especially in the region of Great Britain, Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic lands, it has fallen to the Protestant churches to tackle this issue. They have attempted to create a new climate of interaction between politics and religious communities in the search for viable and constructive patterns of political behaviour based on the ideals of peace, justice and the preservation of creation. They have sought to encourage the development of international institutions, in particular the fostering of post-war European political integration. This short book, co-authored by three distinguished church historians, one British and two Finnish, describes this process from a variety of national perspectives. With funding provided by the European Union, this team of historians was asked to study the political role of churches in Europe and their impact on the far-reaching project for European integration.

Given the often traumatic experiences suffered by the churches in the course of the twentieth century, some of them self-inflicted, the task of finding common ground on which to unite in binding up the wounds of war and political violence has not been easy. These Protestant churches were all closely attached to their own nations, often established as part of the national institutional structures, and saw themselves as central components of the national identity. Only a few far-sighted churchmen recognized the need to embrace new concepts of pan-European coexistence, while relegating to a back burner the supposedly glorious achievements of their own national pasts. For this purpose the nascent ecumenical movement, born after the first world war, was a valuable training ground. In Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the most notable theologian to expound such views, but he remained a lone and even suspect figure. In Britain, Bishop George Bell, and in Geneva, the Dutch General Secretary of the World Council of Churches after 1948, Visser ‘t Hooft, were similarly advocates of the new proposals for overcoming national rivalries through some form of European integration. But, on the other hand, the anguish caused by the second world war’s disasters, not only destroyed the rather naive idealism of the ecumenical movement’s founders, but also increased the influence of those who followed Karl Barth in believing that any human political institution would be bound to fail. The Church was instead called to be a prophetic voice of healthy criticism towards all worldly rulers and to throw its support decidedly behind the poor and oppressed, the victims of misused power. In the 1950s and 1960s this witness was to become particularly notable in the Third World, where the World Council aspired to become “the voice of the voiceless”.

But in Europe, even though these Protestant ecumenists thought a lot about Europe and its future, it was the Catholics who took the initiative after 1945. Largely due to Pope Pius XII, Catholics were encouraged to look for a restoration of a Christian Europe and to promote Christian cultural values. They therefore gave their support to such initiatives as the founding of the Council of Europe, which provided the ideological, background for the political moves resulting in the creation of the Common Market and subsequent developments in the economic sphere. These led successfully to the closer merging of western Europe, and were to form a model for its later expansion.
But some Protestants remained sceptical. They disliked seeing the notion of western European integration being subordinate to American-led Cold War politics. They suspected Catholic intentions in any new structures. In the Nordic countries, too, longstanding antipathies towards Catholicism were reinforced by their strongly Protestant heritage and equally strong Social Democratic political traditions. In Germany, the most notable Protestant church leader, Martin Niemöller, spoke scathingly of his West German government’s policy as being “conceived in the Vatican and born in Washington”. In such circles, the image of “Europe” was repeatedly portrayed as “capitalistic, conservative, corrupt and Catholic”.

Nevertheless, in the 1960s and 1970s, the obvious success of the European Economic Community led to a Protestant re-evaluation. Its institutions, and a more integrated European nucleus, now seemed to be an effective force for the defence of peace, security and human rights. The warmer ecumenical climate induced by the Second Vatican Council and the less rigidly dogmatic conservatism adopted by Catholics also encouraged more collaboration in pro-European initiatives. One offshoot was the founding of the Conference of European Churches which linked all denominations across the Iron Curtain in a sincere attempt to defuse the hostilities of earlier years, and encouraged a consciousness of pan-Europeanism. Another formative influence was the election to the papacy of the Polish Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian in centuries. His influence extended Catholic horizons in their understanding of a new European synthesis.

Historians are still in dispute as to how far religion, especially the Christian churches, was significant in bringing about the revolutionary events which swept over eastern Europe in 1989. But there can be no doubt that participation in religious rituals provided some of the strength for protest groups to combine and mobilize their forces against the totalitarian state’s ubiquitous control. Church members also played a highly important role in preparing the ground for new beginnings, including the proposals for becoming integrated with the successful economies of western Europe. The churches often provided a source of alternative values to those so long upheld by the previous communist rulers. In Russia, for example, the Orthodox Church was the principal link to the nation’s earlier history and culture.

In the 1990s and after the turn of the century, it became the turn of the Catholic Church to try and set the course of European integration along Christian lines. The specific proposal was to write a constitution for the whole European Union, which would explicitly spell out its Christian identity. In 2001 the Conference of European Churches and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference in Europe published a text which affirmed their willingness to participate in the building of Europe, and stated their conviction ”that the spiritual heritage of Christianity constitutes an empowering source of inspiration and enrichment for Europe”. Such a plan however ran into strong opposition. Not only was this seen as a clearly unilateral move designed to stigmatize other religions, such as Judaism or Islam, but it evoked the spectre of a revived and triumphalist Catholicism of earlier centuries. Even whether God should be mentioned in the proposed constitution was a source of discord. Catholics regarded such a statement as a very important reminder of the cultural roots and commitments of Europe. The eventual denial of this suggestion was deeply disappointing to the Vatican.

In the wider setting, this raised the heart-searching question of whether Europe had a soul, and if so what kind of a soul it was. Some European leaders believed that after the era of godless totalitarianism, the European Union needed a spiritual as well as a political and economic base. But with the incorporation of most European countries west of Russia, the demographic pattern was clearly pluralistic. And although the Christian churches were still powerful and influential institutions, they no longer held a monopoly. There were a rising number of alternatives to Christianity. Since 2001 however, there has undoubtedly been a rise in Islamophobia, which has been sufficiently strong so far to bar the possibility of Turkey joining the European Union. The process of European integration is still in progress, and it remains to be seen whether the religious factor or the attitudes of Christian churches will continue to be a significant contributor to the new patterns of political and social collaboration. The history of religious divisions in Europe is a long and often sad chapter. Has the time at last come when these faiths can decide to live in peace and mutual respect with each other?

The editors of the second book under review both teach at the Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations in Cambridge. The essays they have collected are written by scholars from different parts of Europe from a wide variety of perspectives, and range over different historical eras. Particularly helpful are the essays analysing conditions in the newly-liberated countries of eastern Europe. But they all seek to analyse the presence of religion in the development of national and continental identities, the manifestation of religion in secular society, and the role of religion in further European integration.

In the fifty years since the Treaty of Rome was signed to establish the initial cooperative measures for anew Europe, the hall-mark of such steps was pragmatism. Economic cooperation was dictated by the need to repair the destruction of the second world war, while political cooperation was prompted by the need for adequate barriers against the Communist threat. But such measures were not defended from any openly-adopted ideological stance. To be sure, the early founders of this movement were clearly aware that the traditional religious physiognomy of Europe is Christianity. But the recent experience of Nazi and Fascist ideological fanaticisms and their consequences deterred the repetition of any such far-flung rhetoric. Europe`s Christian roots were silently acknowledged, but the whole emphasis was on practical matters. At the same time, it was recognized that the sad history of Christian divisions would make impossible any attempt to synthesize some form of European identity out of such a history. Nor was it attempted. Indeed the expectation of many of Europe`s leaders was that the religious factor would soon enough be relegated to the past, or to the less controversial spheres of private life.

But with the addition of so many new members, especially those without the kind of secular traditions fostered in parts of western Europe, and with the question posed as to whether Turkey, as an Islamic state, should be invited to join, the religious issues have moved to the forefront again. Can a European identity be forged on a purely secular basis or not? Already, as can be seen over the question of inter-European immigration, questions of identity, either national or international, are continually raised. The members of the Union have adopted differing answers, some preferring a multicultural stance, others an assimilationist approach. With regard to the presence of so many Muslims in Europe today, we should perhaps note the view of one contributor, Sara Silvestri, who points out that at one period of European history, the late Middle Ages, a peaceful cohabitation and fertile interaction with Islam was both possible and practised, especially in Spain. On the other hand, she is also right that present-day Islam poses serious challenges to Europe, and shows how the legacy of European, and Christian, intolerance produced the failure of relationships which makes political as well as personal integration all the more difficult. Or, as Paul Kerry concludes in his essay: “ Just as the European experience includes multiple motivations and aspirations. . . so the recognition of this variety will allow for richer more thoughtful dialogue between those discussing the religious roots of contemporary European identity”.

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With warmest regards to you all,
John Conway

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November 2008 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

November 2008— Vol. XIV, no. 11

 Dear Friends,

This month marks the seventieth anniversary of the scandalous Nazi atrocity against the Jewish people, commonly known as the Crystal Night pogrom, during which the churches‚ failure to stand by the persecuted victims was notable, and is today seen as a symptom of their larger failure to oppose the whole Nazi system of ideological fanaticism and political oppression. But a few lone voices did protest. It is therefore perhaps fitting that this month’s reviews should be about the few courageous individuals who stood against the main stream, such as Elisabeth Schmitz, Eberhard Arnold and Pastor Paul Schneider.. Also that we should draw your attention to a new book about the striking movement in the German Evangelical Church after the war, which explicitly saw its Christian mission to bring reconciliation and repentance from Germany to the victims.

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) ed. M. Gailus, Elisabeth Schmitz
b) H. Brinkmann, God’s Ambassador. The Bruderhof in Nazi Germany
c) R. Wentorf, Paul Schneider
d) G. Kammerer, Aktion Sühnezeichen. Friedensdienst

2) Memorial Tribute to Bishop Bell by Bishop Huber of Berlin

3) Book notes,

a) Blues Music and the Gospel Proclamation
b) Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania

4) Journal issue: Religion, State and Society

1a) Ed. M .Gailus, Elisabeth Schmitz und ihre Denkschrift gegen die Judenverfolgung. Konturen einer vergessenen Biographie (1893-1977). Berlin: Wichern Verlag 2008 ISBN 978-3-88981-213-8. 230 Pp.

Heroines are seldom found in the story of the Protestant Church Struggle against National Socialism. Very probably, this is because the history was written entirely by men. But now, recognition is being given to one woman, Dr Elisabeth Schmitz, for a small but striking contribution, which was alas! ignored at the time and forgotten ever since. In 1935 she had the courage to challenge the members of her Confessing Church, led by such men as Martin Niemöller and Karl Barth, to face up the Nazis‚ increasingly violent persecution of Germany’s Jews. The Memorandum she produced for the 1935 Synod was a model of clarity and foresight, which accurately predicted the likely fate of the Jewish minority in Germany. At the same time, she called on the Church to stand by its responsibility to defend the most threatened members of society, and to protest against the criminal discrimination being practised by the Nazi government.

Such a stance was highly unpopular. Only a few colleagues in the Confessing Church shared Dr Schmitz’s views. The fact that the Memorandum was put forward by a lay woman, who held no office in the Church, cannot have enhanced her cause. It was a sign of how far Nazi propaganda had already affected church ministers that, even in 1935, the majority of the responsible pastors were averse to giving any support to Jews, or at least reluctant to show any hostility to the now increasingly popular Nazi government.

Who was Elisabeth Schmitz? These essays, written for a 2007 conference, (briefly described in a German report in our Newsletter for September 2007) provide a succinct account of her career as a school mistress, trained under such distinguished scholars as Adolf von Harnack and Friedrich Meinecke. Since women were not allowed to be ordained at that time in the Evangelical Church, she went on to teach both religion and history to senior girls in high school. Her disposition was reserved, conscientious and highly upright in the German Protestant tradition. When convinced of the correctness of her views, she could be inflexible and determined. She refused to allow her independence of mind to be compromised for the sake of personal or political advantage. With such high intellectual and moral standards, she was naturally appalled by the fanatical tone of the Nazis‚ anti-Semitic tirades, as displayed in the press, the radio and party rallies. These contradicted her sense of order, truthfulness and human compassion. These propaganda attacks and attendant violence were totally antithetical to the values she tried to teach her students. She was inspired to make her early protest particularly by the fact that a close friend of Jewish origins had been dismissed from her medical practice. Elisabeth Schmitz offered her help and hospitality, and was subsequently denounced to the Gestapo for sharing her living quarters with as member of the despised race. This accumulated poisonous atmosphere, culminating in the Crystal Night pogrom of November 1938, led to Elisabeth Schmitz’s determination to give up her teaching position, since she could no longer in conscience teach as the Nazis ordered. Fortunately she was allowed to take early retirement, and returned to teaching after the war was over.

At the time she prepared her Memorandum on behalf of the Jews in the summer of 1935, the situation of the Protestant churches, and the Confessing Church in particular, was acutely critical. The Nazis had just appointed a new Minister for Church Affairs, and threatened to seize control of church administrations. Invective and propaganda attacks against the churches, as agents of World Jewry, were increasingly common and virulent, especially in the pages of Der Stürmer, the radical newspaper distributed nation-wide by the Nazi party agencies.

Most of the conservative clergy, especially the church leaders, while deploring the extremism of Der Stürmer, sought to prove their national loyalty. None wanted an open conflict with the state, particularly not on such a unpopular and touchy subject as the treatment of the Jews. It was therefore hardly surprising that Elisabeth Schmitz’s Memorandum was not debated at the 1935 Synod meeting. Only a half-hearted resolution was passed, affirming the universal duty of the Church to offer baptism to all, regardless of race. By ignoring the wider issue of the human rights of the Jews in Germany, the Confessing Church was able to avoid the possibility of being suppressed by the Gestapo. It was a Pyrrhic victory.

Three years later, at the time of the November 1938 pogrom, Schmitz repeated her challenge. She wrote a strong letter to Pastor Helmut Gollwitzer, who was in charge of Berlin’s most prominent church in Dahlem, after the arrest and imprisonment of Pastor Martin Niemöller. In this letter she called for the mobilization of church opinion to protest against the wanton violence against the Jews, suggested that church space be made available for the orphaned or burnt-out Jewish congregations, and urged that monetary collections be taken up to alleviate Jewish suffering. None of this happened.

The text of Schmitz’s Memorandum is here printed in full, along with a postscript written some months later. Since most of the information came from the public press, it does not reveal anything new about the Nazis‚ anti-Semitic campaign. Rather, its value today consists in showing how much an engaged witness could know about the extent of the violence, hatred, intimidation and discrimination practised against the Jewish minority, and about the dire consequences being felt by these victims. It is imbued with a strong sense of indignation at the injustices being inflicted, and an equal sense of frustration that the churches failed to take timely action to put a spoke in the wheel of such outrageous activities.

This collection of essays, ably edited by Professor Manfred Gailus, is a heart-warming, if belated, tribute. But it hardly explains why Schmitz’s contribution was for so long forgotten, or even incorrectly attributed to others. Gailus suggests some of the relevant factors, but the mystery remains. It is possibly all part of that painful and reluctant process of coming to terms with the past on the part of the German Protestant Church. It is also part of the process of trying to forge a new and better relationship between the Church and the Jewish people. It is therefore good that we can now hear the pioneering but lonely voice of this courageous lay woman, Elisabeth Schmitz.

It is equally welcome news that an American filmmaker, Steven Martin, has now compiled a documentary DVD film, entitled Elisabeth of Berlin, which will shortly become available for distribution. This 60-minute English-language documentary, fills in the background of Schmitz‚ protests. Archival footage of the Crystal Night is linked to the feelings of outrage shared by such people as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Helmut Gollwitzer. The English commentary is excellently supplied by Professor David Gushee, Martin Greschat and Andreas Pangritz. An eye-witness from those days, Rudolf Weckerling, now in his 90s, makes forthrightly apt comments, and the documentary is knit together by Bishop Wolfgang Huber of Berlin. Steve Martin tells me that he is now available to show this film to interested groups or churches. Contact Vital Visions, 171a Mitchell Road, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37830, USA.

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1b) Hugo Brinkmann, God’s Ambassadors. The Bruderhof in Nazi Germany. Farmington, Pennsylvania, Robertsbridge, Sussex, England: Plough Publishing House. 2001.

Five hundred years ago, Jakob Hutter, a German Anabaptist, called on his disciples to follow the pattern of communal life described in the Acts of the Apostles, renouncing both violence and private property. These Hutterites were persecuted for their pious nonconformity and exiled. Eventually and much later, a few managed to establish colonies in remote rural areas of the United States and Canada, where they still survive.

In Germany, after the disastrous defeats of 1918, a lone but courageous and charismatic preacher, Eberhard Arnold, decided to revitalize Hutter’s ideas. He managed to establish a community, or Bruderhof, on a piece of run-down farmland in the hilly area of central Germany, near Fulda. His inspiring evangelical leadership attracted young idealists, longing to escape from the sinful world of war and capitalism, and including a number of young pacifists from Switzerland, Holland and Sweden. They eked out a living by looking after children in need, referred to them by the local authorities, or by peddling their handicrafts.

Arnold was well aware that such a ministry was both daunting and even dangerous. As he said: “To be an ambassador is something tremendous. It seems that we are nothing at all except what the King of God’s Kingdom would have us do. When we take this service upon us, we enter into mortal danger”.

This prediction was soon enough fulfilled after the Nazis took power in 1933. The Bruderhof aroused suspicion that it was a communist cell, and its declared pacifism antagonised its neighbours. Arnold’s open refusal to support the Nazis’ rearmament programme, and his declared opposition to the hate-filled antisemitism of the new regime, only led to open hostility. In November 1933, when he refused to endorse the national plebiscite requiring undying loyalty to Adolf Hitler, the result was predictable. A gang of Nazi thugs descended on the Bruderhof, searching everywhere for seditious literature or hidden armaments. By 1934 their school was forcibly closed, the foster-children’s support was cut off, their charitable status was revoked, and their assistance to homeless vagrants declared to be a menace to public order. Their economy was throttled. They were forced to evacuate their children to an Alpine refuge in Lichtenstein lest they be forcibly placed in a Nazified school.

Arnold’s apocalyptic theology had always led him to expect persecution, although he maintained a loyal attitude towards the state and its rulers. But he and his followers would not compromise on their basic beliefs. So inevitably tension rose steadily. Luckily he managed to preserve many of his sermons, addresses and letters to his supporters. These form the basis of this account, written by Hugo Brinkmann, of the Bruderhof’s sufferings at the hands of the Nazis. They have been excellently translated and published in a very small edition for an English audience by his American followers, Art and Mary Wiser, of Ulster Park, New York.

As the Nazis’ pressure on the churches to conform increased, the pastors and congregations were more and more caught in a clash of loyalties between their faith and their nation. For his part, Arnold fully shared Luther’s view of the two kingdoms: the state existed to control evil, if necessary by force; but the Church is within the sphere of absolute love. It must proclaim the spirit of unity and purity, but could have no truck with heathen Nazism.

This incompatibility became even clearer in March 1935 when Adolf Hitler reintroduced compulsory military service for all young men. In the Bruderhof, the memory of the earlier Hutterites’ sufferings for the cause of peace was evoked vividly. All the affected youth left at once for Lichtenstein, and were replaced by foreign nationals. But the Bruderhof’s prophetic witness to the power of Christian love and the need for non-violence and social justice was overwhelmed by the Nazis’ militaristic propaganda and preparations for a future war. The subsequent proclamation of the Nuremberg racial laws only increased Arnold’s sense of impending doom and disaster. And the community’s future was also imperilled by the lack of funds, the blatant hostility of the local authorities and its neighbours, and even by the failure of some of its members to live up to Arnold’s spiritual expectations.

In November 1935, Eberhard Arnold died in hospital after a botched operation to mend a broken legbone. A few months later Arnold’s successors decided to move the Bruderhof from both Germany and Lichtenstein to England. Although penniless, they were able to rent a farm property in the Cotswolds, and start all over again. Luckily the British authorities granted them refugee status and the Quakers came to their financial rescue. However, even in England, resentment and hostility against this tiny band of God’s ambassadors was evident. As the threatening clouds of war gathered, this group of Germans, pacifists and exiles was often isolated or at least cold-shouldered.

In Germany, in April 1937, by order of the Gestapo, the Bruderhof’s farm was compulsorily confiscated and the community dissolved. The few remaining members were expelled under guard, apart from three men detained in prison for alleged fraud. They were finally, after several months, released and packed off to Britain. The story of their escape to freedom makes a fitting close to this lively account of Hutterite obedience to the faith they had received and the sufferings they endured as a consequence.

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1c) Rudolf Wentorf, Paul Schneider, Witness of Buchenwald, translated by Daniel Bloesch. Vancouver: Regent College Publishing 2008. 401 Pp. ISBN 978-1-57383-417-9.

Pastor Paul Schneider was murdered by the guards in Buchenwald concentration camp in July 1939. Subsequently he became commemorated as the first martyr of the German Evangelical Church to die at the hands of the Nazis. After the war his widow published a moving and widely read memoir, Der Prediger von Buchenwald, translated into English in an abbreviated version by Edwin Robertson in 1956. Luckily a much fuller biography was later published in Germany by Rudolf Wentorf, which included an almost day-to -day account of Schneider’s valiant and persistent defiance of the Gestapo and other Nazi agencies. Thanks to his assiduous research in police, state and church archives, Wentorf is able to reproduce contemporary documents which outline the Nazi tactics to get rid of this unwanted challenger to their supremacy. Schneider was a simple Rhineland pastor, who early on raised the flag of alarm at the readiness of his colleagues and parishioners to compromise with the ideological heresies of Nazism. From 1933 onwards Schneider’s steadfastness in defence of the Gospel, and his refusal to accept any deviance, was taken as a dangerous political protest by the local Nazi authorities. In fact, Schneider belonged to the wing of the Confessing Church which was largely apolitical, but staunchly dedicated to the truth upheld in the Church’s tradition. By 1937 his controversial stance, and the denunciation of some of his parishioners, had led the Gestapo to order his eviction from his parish. But he refused to leave, and, even when expelled forcibly, returned to his pastoral charge in order to fulfil his God-given responsibilities. The result was that in November 1937 he was sent to Buchenwald and placed in solitary confinement. But he there maintained his faithful witness by shouting out his prayers and sermons to any who could hear, and thus earned the description of the Pastor of Buchenwald.

It is therefore very welcome that Wentorf’s biography has now been republished for the first time in English by Regent College Publications, Vancouver, in an excellent translation by Daniel Bloesch. This makes available to a wider audience the story of Schneider’s resistance to the subtle and relentless pressure to conform imposed by the Nazis, as well as the horrendous stages of persecution which eventually led to his death. Though not as well known as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Schneider’s faithfulness will remain highly significant for all those who seek to learn from the lessons of Nazi Germany for the life and witness of the Church.

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1d) Gabriele Kammerer, Aktion Sühnezeichen. Friedensdienst. Aber man kann es einfach machen. Göttingen: Lamuv Verlag 2008. 371 Pp. ISBN 978-3-88977-684-6

In 1945 only a handful of Germans was prepared to come to terms with the atrocities, violence and mass murders committed by their Nazi rulers in the preceding years, or to face up to their own collaboration and complicity. One of them was Pastor Martin Niemöller, newly released from eight years in concentration camps, who called his colleagues and parishioners to a mission of repentance. He became highly unpopular. And the 1945 Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, of which he was a principal author, likewise aroused negative feelings among many churchmen. The vast majority of Germans took refuge in a blanket amnesia, looked for convenient alibis, and concealed their own participation in Nazi crimes.

It was therefore many years before the full extent of the German criminal activities, especially in Eastern Europe, became known, or the consequences recognized. Only then could more positive measures begin, seeking to restore Germany’s moral reputation. One of those most actively involved was Lothar Kreyssig, whose Christian motivation led him to seek reparation for the victims of German warfare and bloodshed. He was a Saxon provincial judge, and very active in church work. By the 1950s he had been elected as President of the German Evangelical Church’s National Synod, and was thus an influential member of the church hierarchy.

In 1958 he introduced a resolution calling on the Synod to support a programme whereby young Germans would spend a year in restoration work on behalf of the Nazis‚ victims, especially in Poland, the Soviet Union and the newly-established State of Israel. For Kreyssig, this was far more than a gesture of humanitarian goodwill. Rather it was to be a dedicated mission of reparation and reconciliation by which at least some practical measures of Christian solidarity could be expressed, especially across international borders. Too often after 1945 Germans had focussed attention on their own sufferings, and had ignored those they had inflicted on foreigners. Kreyssig was determined to put this right. He was particularly concerned to attack the self-righteousness of many Germans who had turned a blind eye to the Nazis‚ crimes. Even those who now claimed they had opposed Nazism all along should remember that they had not done enough to prevent these disasters in the first place.

This moral urge for reconciliation led Kreyssig to launch his idealistic scheme and to recruit a small band of self-conscious Christians to undertake works of practical service for the survivors in the victims‚ homelands. Only such concrete activist experiences could carry credibility, and also avoid any pretence at self-congratulation. Only thus could Germany’s moral reputation be restored, and the past crimes finally be atoned for.

Naturally such an endeavour met with bureaucratic difficulties, particularly from the communist countries, including Kreyssig’s own East German authorities, who suspected the intentions of such an explicitly Christian group. A more favourable response came from ecumenical partners in both Holland and Norway. The first group of volunteers went in August 1959 to northern Norway to construct a home for the mentally and physically handicapped. These first ventures were spontaneous but ill-prepared. Not enough care had been taken to ensure that the projects were feasible, or could be executed by well-meaning but ill-trained German youth. Too little contact had been established with the local authorities, both secular and church. There were the usual language difficulties, and personality clashes. But above all, these young people only partially caught on to Kreyssig’s vision of making them ambassadors of expiation, bearing the burden of Germany’s guilt. Many of these young people were not too enamoured of the explicit piety, with morning devotions, bible study, and evening worship, which were built into the programme. And as the years went by, it was increasingly difficult for these youngsters to feel a sense of remorse for crimes committed before they were born, and for which they felt no responsibility. Many, in fact, would cheerfully have undertaken the same kind of relief work if under secular auspices. In the long run Kreyssig’s hopes for a reinvigoration of dedicated churchmanship had to be laid aside. As Ms Kammerer notes, this German venture came to resemble other similar youth programmes such as the American Peace Corps or the British Voluntary Service Overseas, whereby the motive of reparation was replaced by reconstruction.

Inevitably Aktion Sühnezeichen was caught up in the polemics and politics of the Cold War. Kreyssig’s aim was to have his young helpers, recruited from both east and west, make a common witness for peace and reconciliation across the Iron Curtain. This hope was thwarted by the politicians. The East German teams were refused exit visas even to neighbouring Poland. Likewise the deep-rooted antagonisms between Germans and Poles, even in the churches, were not easily surmounted. The first Sühnezeichen group to undertake work in Auschwitz had to travel there individually and unobtrusively by bicycle. Their work of reconciliation in this camp was a small contribution towards changing the poisoned atmosphere in both church and politics. But it was still many years before similar resentments at home in Germany were overcome. Too often these small acts of Christian witness were attacked as “befouling their own nest” or “capitulating to the communists”. And the fact that Kreyssig and his staff were based in East Berlin, and hence, after 1961, unable to visit the projects undertaken by his West German supporters, only made for unavoidable tensions. In 1968 the first work-camp in the notorious Czech fortress of Theresientstadt was cut short by the invading Soviet troops. The message of reconciliation and peace seemed threatened by overwhelming political forces, even though now more than ever necessary.

The 1970s were a period of sobering reassessment. In East Germany Aktion Sühnezeichen was hobbled by the communist authorities, and its activities increasingly watched by the Stasi. Emphasis was placed on local work on behalf of the mentally or physically handicapped, on repair of Jewish cemeteries, or on pilgrimages to former concentration camps. In the western half of the country, greater freedom existed to promote the Aktion’s peace work. But it still aroused opposition from conservative circles. Only in the 1980s did the international consensus move towards support for peace through disarmament. But criticism also came from the Aktion’s own participants. Why did so many of these social action projects seemingly prop up the status quo, instead of radically altering the corrupting social structure? Why were the founder’s pious ideals not turned into prophetic political witness? Too often, it seemed Realpolitik guided the organization.

But the call of peace through reconciliation was too important to be abandoned. And in the 1980s new horizons opened up. In West Germany, Aktion joined with other peace groups to oppose NATO’s military policies; in East Germany, many Aktion participants were to be found in the peace groups which sprang up in local Protestant churches, and which eventually grew to be a significant political force. The overthrow of the communist regime in 1989 broke all previous patterns. After the 1990 reunification of the whole country, Aktion’s call for reconciliation was much needed, especially in the controversial union of the agency’s east and west branches. Its overseas projects were to be expanded into thirteen different countries, usually with the support of local governments and churches. But Christian solidarity with the victims of war and violence is still the group’s hallmark.

Gabriele Kammerer’s well-researched and incisively written account of the organization’s fifty years is amplified by a number of well-chosen photographs, identifying the individuals and projects involved. It is much to be hoped that an English translation could be produced, since the story of this courageous German agency for reconciliation and peace deserves to be widely known as an example for others.

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2) Memorial Tribute to Bishop Bell

On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Bishop George Bell of Chichester, the following tribute was written by the German Evangelical Church’s Presiding Bishop, Wolfgang Huber of Berlin:

“Your work will never be forgotten in the history of the German Church”. This was the view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer writing to his friend George Bell, the Anglican bishop of Chichester in England in 1937. He had good reasons for such praise. No other foreign church leader had shown such a friendly and intensive, yet at times critical interest in the fate of the churches and of the Christians in Germany as had George Bell. He was a valiant campaigner for peace and truth, and did not hesitate to lend the authority of his office and personality to his convictions, including matters in the political sphere. He died on October 3rd fifty years ago – a very proper cause for remembrance.

George K.A. Bell was born on February 4th 1883, the son of a clergyman. After studying theology, he served for three years as a curate in the slums of Leeds. Then came several years as Chaplain and Tutor in Oxford until 1914 when he became the private secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and was given the special responsibility for international and inter-church relations. During the first world war he was much engaged in interdenominational action on behalf of the war orphans, and then – together with Archbishop Nathan Soderblom of Uppsala, Sweden – was active in organising the exchange of prisoners-of-war. These experiences led Bell, after the war, to become a champion of collaboration with the Lutheran churches, a strong advocate of the nascent ecumenical movement, and an organiser of international theological exchanges. In 1929 he was appointed Bishop of Chichester, and also from 1932 to 1934 he was President of “Life and Work”, one of the main branches of the new ecumenical movement.

The Bishop of Chichester took an active interest in the German Church Struggle from the beginning. In April 1933 he expressed publicly the ecumenical movement’s concern about the early stages of the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany. In September he circulated a strong resolution against the introduction of the so-called Aryan Paragraph, discriminating against Jews, and its adoption by sections of the German Evangelical Church. He first met Dietrich Bonhoeffer at a conference in 1931, and when Bonhoeffer became Pastor for the German Churches in London in 1933, the two men developed a strong and trusting relationship. Bonhoeffer was in fact Bell’s principal source of information about events developing in Germany. For his part, Bell was assiduous in bringing this information to a wider British public, particularly through his frequent letters to the main newspaper The Times. In contrast to some sections of British public opinion and also some leading members of the Church of England, Bell took a strong stand from 1933 onwards in support of the Confessing Church in its struggle, and against all forms of fascism.

Early on, he began to organize measures to assist refugees from Germany. After he became a member of the House of Lords in 1937, he continually urged the British Government to give increased support for such persecuted people. It is possible to suppose that his timely reporting to the British public about the arrest and trial of Martin Niemöller prevented the latter’s murder in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

When the second world war broke out, Bell threw himself into activities designed to help the refugees fleeing the continent, and also the resident Germans interned in England, as well as for British conscientious objectors. Bell was no pacifist, but he decisively and publicly repudiated the tactic of area bombing of German towns, through his passionate speeches in the House of Lords. These speeches were a direct challenge to the British Government and to large sections of public opinion. It was a sign of Bell’s courage and moral determination that he was not deterred to state his opinions and take such an unpopular stand.

George Bell was one of the decisive figures in the post-1945 world who enabled the German churches to return to the ecumenical family. He was one of the first to go back to Germany in 1945 to show his friendship for those “true” Germans who had survived. He gave a most moving sermon in a church service in the heavily bombed Marienkirche in Berlin, and was clearly deeply moved to see the conditions of the refugees crowding the platforms of the Lehrter Station in Berlin. Only two months after the war’s end, he organized a Thanksgiving Service in memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Holy Trinity Church, London. On this occasion he recounted to the congregation Bonhoeffer’s last message to his English friend: “Tell the Bishop that this is for me the end, but also the beginning of a new life. I believe with him in our universal Christian brotherhood which rises above all national interests”.

3a) Book note

Dick Pierard draws attention to a new book which he, together with Edwin Arnold at Clemson University, South Carolina, has translated and edited: Theo Lehmann, Blues Music and Gospel Proclamation. The Extraordinary Life of a Courageous East German Pastor, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2008. Born in 1934 and son of a distinguished German missiologist, Lehmann studied theology, was ordained and served as a pastor in a congregation in Chemnitz (then Karl-Marx-Stadt) of the Landeskirche of Saxony. An unabashed confessionalist, he also became a youth evangelist and incurred the constant wrath and surveillance of the State. Since reunification, he continues to work as an evangelist throughout Germany. His great interest in life is actually American black music – Negro spirituals, blues and jazz, and he published several things in the GDR on this topic, including a doctoral dissertation at Halle, “Negro Spirituals: Geschichte und Theologie,” which was then reprinted after reunification. His memoir, Freiheit wird dann sein: Aus meinem Leben, has sold widely in Germany. He is not shy of controversy and may not suit all opinions. But well worth reading.

CharRichP@aol.com

3b) L Stan and L.Turcescu, Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania, Oxford 2007. This husband and wife team of Romanian scholars, now both teaching in Canada, provides a useful survey of events in the religious sphere in Romania since the fall of its despotic, manic dictatorship in 1989. Romanians have been obliged to rethink and reshape all their public institutions so the churches have been engaged in what has proved to be a difficult struggle for self-identification and definition. The plurality of church life has been a barrier in the way of the Romanian Orthodox Church’s attempt to reclaim its position as the “national” or established church, and the legacy of its former subservience to the Communist regime still poisons relationships. Disputes over the property of other church bodies such as the long-forbidden Greek Catholics, have only made Romanian church life more complex and unsettled. Doubts remain about the Orthodox Church’s support for a democratic political society, as with its strong opposition to Romania’s joining the European Union, and its tactics in matters of education and morality give rise for concern.

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4) Journal Issue: Religion, State and Society, Vol. 36, no. 3, September 2008 is devoted to six articles on the relations between religion and law in various settings, viz. The European Court of Human Rights, Bulgaria, Post-Communist Russia and Hungary, Spain, Australia and the Middle East. These papers deal with the constitutional and legal problems arising between various denominations as factors in the secular states in which they interact. The authors describe a range of models from strict separation to the established and historic church-state relationship still existing in certain countries.

With every best wish to you all,
John S.Conway

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October 2008 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

October 2008— Vol. XIV, no. 10

 Dear Friends,

I am happy to tell you that the number of publications on contemporary church history continues to grow. Both Catholic and Protestant scholars seem to be excellently prolific, and not only in German! It is a pleasure to give priority this month to reviewing a new book by a young scholar from California about a much revered Anglican bishop. You should be warned, however, that this review may cause you some distress. Yet in the interests of historical accuracy, we are sometimes obliged to circumvent the worthy adage: de mortuis nil nisi bonum. The second review is of the autobiography of Dr Pauline Webb, aa noted British Methodist, whose services to the Church, both at home and abroad, are here happily recalled.

Contents

1) Book reviews

a) Daughrity, Bishop Stephen Neill
b) Webb, P., World-Wide-Webb
c) Silomon, German Evangelical Church 1969-91
d) Kunter, German Evangelical Church in the GDR 1980-93

2) Journal articles:

a) Daniel, a Russian monastic revival in the 1990s

1a) Dyron Daughrity, Bishop Stephen Neill. From Edinburgh to South India. (American University Studies, Vol. 267) New York/Bern/Oxford: Peter Lang 2008. 365 pp. ISBN 978 – 1-4331-0165-6

Missionary biographies were usually written by other missionaries; hence they were uplifting, even at times hagiographic. But with the overthrow of the colonial empires in Asia and Africa, the era of European missionaries came to an end, as did this genre of mission history. The emphasis today is quite different, and far more critical of the past, and of those whose service abroad was for so long held in high esteem. Dyron Daughrity’s biography of Bishop Stephen Neill, derived from his doctoral thesis at the University of Calgary, is a case in point. Although it deals only with the first half of Bishop Neill’s career, and ends when he left India in 1944, it is nonetheless both contentious and highly damaging to the image widely held about Neill in subsequent years.

Neill died in 1984, leaving behind a voluminous manuscript for an autobiography. It was a while before this could be edited down to a publishable size. The book finally appeared in 1991 with the title God’s Apprentice.But the general opinion was that it concealed more than it told about the author. Particularly it said all too little about the real reasons which had led in mid-1944 to Neill’s leaving his post and returning to England.

The first reviewer of God’s Apprentice was someone who, as a young missionary himself thirty years earlier, had known Neill well, and has since risen to positions of senior leadership in the church. He began by stating that the publication of this autobiography confronted him with a moral dilemma. He could either maintain the conspiracy of silence which surrounded the career of this gifted man, or throw some light on the background of events which brought this career in India to an end. He chose the latter, and now Daughrity has adopted the same course.

Specifically what is referred to was a violent assault by Neill in April or May 1944 upon an Indian schoolteacher at one of his church schools during a counseling visit. Neill demanded that this man accept, as a punishment for his purported misdemeanours, a beating with a cane on the bare buttocks, similar to that used to deal with errant schoolboys at Neill’s boarding school in England. The background and consequences of this “incident”, which were only briefly alluded to by the first reviewer, form the substance of Daughrity’s narrative. For this purpose he has made thorough use of archives in India, Britain and the United States, and a few years ago obtained personal interviews with some surviving witnesses of these events of sixty years earlier. Two of these testimonies, one from a clergyman and the other from a bishop in south India, are fully analyzed in his text, and provide a striking corroboration of the record in the paper trail. They cannot be dismissed as the product of anti-Western or anti-imperialist sentiments. The evidence, as described by Daughrity on an almost day-to-day basis, would now seem to be incontrovertible, even though there is room for debate about Neill’s motivations.

This reprehensible action by an Englishman in authority – and a bishop no less – of inflicting corporal punishment on one of his Indian employees could not long remain secret. The man’s relatives were outraged. At a time when Indian nationalist feeling against British imperial domination was escalating rapidly, this incident could only be regarded as another occasion when Indians were humiliated and subjected, for racial reasons, to the white man’s control. Demands were made for the bishop’s resignation, or else that a full public enquiry should be held by a Court of Episcopal Discipline.

Neill himself quickly recognized the inappropriateness of his behaviour, and according to one of the Indian witnesses, went personally to the teacher’s home village to apologize. But with the threat of publicity, and conscious of his own increasing ill-health, he then sought the counsel of his superior, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Calcutta. Early in June he left his diocese, which is situated at the southernmost tip of India, to take the lengthy and wearisome journey to Calcutta. On arrival, he sought the senior bishop‘s advice, offered his resignation, and asked for an immediate leave to return home for medical treatment. This last request was in fact granted, and within a month Neill had departed for England on a troopship, leaving behind his bishopric irrevocably.

This 1944 “incident” leading to the assault upon an Indian subordinate, was not, according to the first reviewer, due to Neill’s ill-health, depression or insomnia, which were the reasons he gave for his return to Britain. Rather it stemmed from a deeper and darker malady. Neill suffered, he asserted, from some version of controlled sadism throughout his whole life, and had an obsession with punishment, derived from his Victorian Evangelical background. For his part, Daughrity eschews either a medical or a theological explanation. He attributes Neill’s disastrous and repeated outbursts to the unresolved conflicts which characterized his psychological temperament. He points out that Neill’s early days, when his restless clergyman father was constantly changing parishes or going off to a missionary posting in India, deprived the boy of a stable family upbringing. At his boarding school, he was in continual dispute with the tyrannical headmaster, who lacked any sympathy for his pupils. At Cambridge, Daughrity claims, he had an internal struggle about his future, when he was faced with the rival claims of an academic or a missionary career. His first posting in India was to a small village dominated by the long-term missionary Amy Carmichael, who for 25 years had run a renowned mission to rescue abandoned children in her orphanage. But her simplistic faith and pietistic devotion were hardly on the same wavelength as the newly- elected and brash young Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. The resulting tensions were only resolved when Neill moved to a new posting. So too clashes developed when he was in charge of the diocesan seminary, between his high expectations of his ordinands in terms of their theological training, and their own humbler prospects in what was in essence a community of lower caste farm workers. Naturally Neill was caught up in the ongoing controversies over the relevance of Christianity and its theology in the wake of the first world war, but it would surely be too much to see this in conflictual terms. And certainly, like all Englishmen of his generation, he was undoubtedly affected by the shattering world-wide events which led to the outbreak of two world wars and to the decline and dissolution of the British Empire.

It would however be presumptuous to accept Daughrity’s thesis that these factors were all productive of the conflicts in Neill’s life, or that his fragile health and mental state was responsible for his indulgence in the physical punishment of others. Daughrity does not suggest that each of these elements was cumulative in effect, or led inevitably to the final chapter of his “formative years” with the loss of his bishopric. Certainly Daughrity paints a picture of a highly gifted man enmeshed with struggle and frustration. Yet Neill’s career, in almost all but the most crucial aspect – his psychological deformity – was not too different from that of other men of his class and upbringing. Many English middle-class boys went through the same kind of boarding school experiences, including corporal punishment, without noticeable harm. All talented undergraduates faced searching, but not necessarily conflictual, questions about their future careers. Many young novices found their first posting uncongenial, or were later to be involved with professional rivalries and disputes in their respective professions. All Britons were affected by the sacrifices of war, even when, like Neill, they were not directly called up for military service. And millions of imperialist Britons mourned the loss of the Jewel in the Crown. It would be hard therefore to see these as contributing factors to Neill’s sado-masochism which caused his downfall.

Despite the inadequacies of Daughrity’s thesis of conflict, which he imposes on Neill’s career and which is needlessly repeated too often throughout the book, we can be glad that he refrains from any moralistic speculations about episcopal delinquency or possible homosexuality. At the same time, he also contributes a positive assessment of Neill’s achievements. Not only does he pay tribute, as do many other commentators, to Neill’s outstanding scholarly works and academic prowess, but also uniquely gives a positive evaluation of Neill’s service as bishop in south India. “All are agreed that Neill’s leadership was strong, if at times onerous. However his concern for the diocese was evident. The progress the diocese made under his leadership was remarkable indeed”. And one of his clergymen is quoted as saying: “The people, even today, say Neill’s bishopric was the Golden Age”.

With such a balance, Daughrity makes a valuable contribution to the study of the complexities of this highly-talented individual and also to the rather neglected history of the church in the southern part of India during the tense and tumultuous days at the end of empire. Daughrity’s plan is to extend the biography in a second volume, and to further assess Neill’s notable career in very different later spheres after his Indian years of episcopal governance. Neill’s subsequent services to the wider church through the ecumenical movement, and his numerous theological and historical writings, deserve the kind of careful recording which Daughrity has already demonstrated. We can look forward to the results.

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1b) Pauline Webb, World-Wide-Webb. Journeys in Faith and Hope. Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press 2006 230pp.ISBN 1-85311-756-0/978-1-85311-756-5

Too few of the leaders of the Christian churches are women. Consequently there are too few autobiographies which describe how these women achieved their prominent positions in a profession hitherto always dominated by men. Pauline Webb’s lively story of her career over the past sixty years is therefore most welcome. She gives us a personal account of her pioneering efforts to use the various branches of the churches to seek to rectify past injustices. She particularly campaigned for those she believes have for so long been denied their full recognition and autonomy, both at home and abroad, both in the church and in secular society. Her talents as a communicator, inspirer and mediator gave her the ability to display a particular sympathy for widely differing groups of people, and a heart-warming senditivity to the needs of women in many different parts of the world.

As a student at King’s College, London, shortly after the end of the second world war, Pauline Webb hoped she might be able to follow her father’s footsteps as a Methodist minister. But, to her great disappointment, the British Methodist Conference rejected the ordination of women, and only changed its mind thirty years later. So she began as a religious education teacher, but with a strong interest in missionary work overseas. Two years later she was called to become the youth secretary for the Methodist Missionary society, and grasped the opportunity with full enthusiasm. It was a particularly exciting time when significant changes were happening in the mission field. Throughout Asia and Africa the handover of political control by the former imperial powers was matched, in the churches, by a similar devolution to local control from the European-based missionary societies. Webb’s first assignment was to go to India and write a script for a film on the newly-established Church of South India, formed out of former British-controlled denominations. This was followed by a similar experience in West Africa.

These assignments enormously widened her horizons, both politically and theologically. She came to see her mission as focussing on four areas of witness and service to which the new world conditions were calling the churches. These were to mobilize concern in the churches for the problems of world poverty, to arouse anger against the evils of racism, and particularly South African apartheid, to build up support for women’s opportunities and vocations, and to campaign for church unity. Her autobiography therefore concentrates on the part she played in these respective spheres and the leadership she courageously provided on a global scale.

Pauline Webb quickly realised the advantages provided by the new techniques in communication. She became adept in using both radio and television, and later on the internet. Hence the book’s title. And her ability to direct such communications skills to the causes she had at heart was undoubtedly the reason why she was invited to become the organizer of religious broadcasting overseas for the BBC in London, where she served for ten exciting years. At the same time she effectively developed her skills as a preacher and promoter of new ideas in furtherance of her aims.

Her opportunities to do so were greatly enhanced by her work on behalf of the World Council of Churches, based in Geneva. First established in 1948 to bring the Protestant aand Orthodox churches closer together in doctrinal unity, the WCC quickly grew with the addition of new churches overseas. And by 1968, when Webb was first sent as a British Methodist delegate to its Assembly, its horizons were expanding to see the church’s world mission in social and political, as well as merely ecclesiastical terms. This Uppsala Assembly had a prophetic ring when it called on all the member churches to unite against the evils of racism and to accept the responsibility of fighting world hunger and poverty. Since these were at the top of Webb’s priorities, it was hardly surprising that she was elected for a six-year term as the WCC’s Vice-Moderator, a leading lay position. This brought her to the heart of the organization’s affairs, and established a very close connection for the next three decades.

One of her first tasks was to assist in the establishment and promotion of the World Council’s Programme to Combat Racism, which raised consciousness as well as funds, and supported beleaguered agencies such as the African National Congress in South Africa. This campaign aroused enormous hostility among more conservative churchmen, who denounced the World Council for promoting terrorism and violence, and even accused it of using church funds to purchase weapons. Webb spent a great deal of time refuting such charges, and pointing out that the small sums sent to Africa were explicitly for humanitarian, not military, purposes. But the argument became part of the wider process of trying to involve the churches in the world’s most significant crises – a stance which many churchmen regarded as politically one-sided, and beyond the scope of any church organization even at the world level. This prophetic witness was exactly what Pauline Webb thrived on, and her engagement in such endeavours was both energetic and rewarding. She was continually on the move attending conferences in different partts of the world, from Mauritius to the Yukon, so that at times the book reads like a stimulating travelogue. But this was all part of the sincere effort of the World Council to bring the concerns and decisions of its leadership down to the ordinary women and men in the pews, and thereby to seek to overcome the barriers of language and distance from its headquarters in Geneva. Webb proved to be a most effective ambassador for such an enterprise. Her infectious enthusiasm, and her steady and unstrident advocacy, especially for women, made her a most welcome guest wherever she went. And her talks on the BBC World Service gave her a platform to share her experiences and her witness to a very wide audience.

It may perhaps be regretted that she did not include more of the substance of the numerous talks and sermons she gave, since this would surely have confirmed the impression of an impassioned and dedicated follower of Jesus Christ. So too it would have been good if she had said more about how the World Council evolved over the years from a theology mainly concerned with church order to a theology whose major emphasis was on human liberation. Inevitably not all the initiativess she so resolutely sponsored have been successful. World poverty is still unresolved. The Christian churches have also just begu to realize their need to relate to other faiths. The position of women still remains marginal in many societies. But undoubtely, Pauline Webb can take heart, and even some of the credit, for the role the World Council played in helping to dismantle apartheid in South Africa, when it offered a platform for such leaders as Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. As one who inherited great visions from the past, and contributed to their realization in the present, Webb’s legacy, now handed on to younger church members, especially women, is to inspire them to new and greater visions for the future.

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1c) Anke Silomon. Anspruch und Wirklichkeit der “besonderen Gemeinschaft”: Der Ost-West Dialog der deutschen evangelischen Kirchen 1969-1991. (Arbeiten zur Kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006. 764 pp. EUR 99.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-525-55747-1.

1d) Katharina Kunter. Erfüllte Hoffnungen und zerbrochene Träume: Evangelische Kirchen in Deutschland im Spannungsfeld von Demokratie und Sozialismus (1980-1993). (Arbeiten zur Kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006. 346 pp. EUR 59.90 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-525-55745-7.

These two books were reviewed for H-German on July 30th 2008 by Benjamin Pearson, Department of History, Northern Illinois University, and are reproduced here by kind permission of the author.

German Protestants between East and West

Between 1945 and 1989 the Protestant state churches enjoyed a unique position in German politics, society, and culture. As the German nation was divided into competing Cold War camps, churches remained among the most important bridges between the two Germanys. Until the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Protestant state churches in the FRG and the GDR maintained close institutional ties as common members of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD). Indeed, even as the Berlin Wall made it more difficult to maintain personal and institutional contacts, they maintained formal unity in the EKD until 1969, when the East German churches split off to form the Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR (BEK). Throughout this period of formal unity, the Protestant churches and their affiliated organizations played a leading role in maintaining inter-German dialogue and contact, and in giving expression to the desire of many Germans for political reunification. At the same time, the churches in East and West also developed in different directions, responding to their contrasting social and political circumstances. The creation of the BEK in 1969 offered the East German churches new leeway to reinvent themselves as a “church within socialism,” while West German Protestants were also forced to come to terms with the seeming permanence of both ecclesiastical and political German division. Yet, even after 1969, the Protestant churches in the two German states still claimed to be united in a form of “special community,” maintaining a variety of formal and informal contacts. Both of the books examined in this review deal with the nature of this “special community,” with the important bonds and the significant differences between Protestants in the West and East German states. Anke Silomon focuses on the formal relations between the EKD and the BEK at the highest levels of church leadership. Following a lengthy assessment of the scholarly literature, the book’s extended introductory section surveys developments in the churches between 1945 and 1969, paying particular attention to the process of formal institutional division that led to the creation of the BEK. The remainder of the book addresses two attempts by the leaders of the EKD and BEK to maintain some form of high-level contact, first in a Beratergruppe and from 1980-1991 in the work of the smaller and more specialized Konsultationsgruppe, which focused on the churches’ mutual responsibility to foster world peace. In both of these sections, Silomon maintains a relatively close textual focus on the discussions between group members, with a primary interest in what these interactions can tell us about the nature of the “special community” between the EKD and BEK. She concludes that the Beratergruppe was successful in maintaining the ideal of contact and communication between the West and East German churches, but that it fell short of achieving fully the claims of “special community” between the churches. The group was hindered in these pursuits by the lack of a stable membership over time–exacerbated by the restrictions facing West German church leaders on visiting the GDR–and by the failure of the EKD and BEK to invest their members with greater authority. It remained a useful sounding board for both churches, allowing them to share ideas and experiences with “brothers and sisters” on the other side of the Iron Curtain, but it failed to take on any greater significance. TheKonsultationsgruppe, in contrast, developed into a more fruitful forum for discussion and common action. Founded in 1980, in the wake of the churches’ common statement commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the onset of war, this group was a smaller, more narrowly focused forum where members of both churches could find common ground in exploring the theme of world peace. The proceedings of this group also demonstrated the gulf between the experiences and beliefs of West and East Germans. However, the members were able to engage in much more extensive and fruitful deliberations about basic theological, political, and social ideas.

An extremely well-footnoted and dense reconstruction of the work of the Beratergruppe and the Konsultationsgruppe, Silomon’s study provides an invaluable reference to others pursuing work in closely related fields. However, this high level of detail, accompanied by a reluctance to engage in broader contextualization and analysis, limits the book’s usefulness to the general reader. One cannot help but wish that Silomon had engaged more extensively with the influence of these deliberations on the world outside of the churches, or, indeed, even on the lives and beliefs of ordinary church members.

In contrast, Katharina Kunter’s Erfüllte Hoffnungen und zerbrochene Träume targets these groups explicitly. Kunter focuses not on the church hierarchy of the EKD and BEK, but on a dense, decentralized network of pastors, theologians, and lay people working in the ecumenical “Conciliar Process for Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation” in the 1980s and early 1990s. In her complex, multi-layered analysis, Kunter details the origins of this ecumenical process, examines the separate and common work of the East and West German churches, and–most importantly–explores the ways in which the ideas and basic assumptions of German participants in this movement were strongly shaped by their different religious and political experiences in the two German states.

Founded in the early 1980s, the Conciliar Process was a broad, decentralized ecumenical movement under the aegis of the World Council of Churches and European Council of Churches. Small groups of European Christians had been engaged in efforts to foster world peace and social justice since the 1960s and 1970s, and these efforts gained an especially public resonance in the protest movement against the deployment of American Pershing missiles in Europe of the early 1980s. With the failure of these efforts, a small circle of German theologians–most notably Heino Falcke in the East and Ulrich Duchrow in the West–hoped to channel the frustrations of anti-nuclear protestors into a form of positive engagement for world peace. Their joint effort came to fruition when the East German delegation to the 1983 assembly of the World Council of Churches in Vancouver issued a public call for the creation of an ecumenical peace council. This movement was given an additional boost in 1985 when–under the guidance of Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker–the German ProtestantKirchentag, the massive lay assembly of West German Protestants, chose the promotion of world peace as its overriding theme. Other large ecumenical conferences continued this work throughout the 1980s while, at the same time, countless smaller consultation and discussion groups emerged across Europe.

As Kunter persuasively argues, the activity of the Conciliar Process, especially at the local grassroots level, played an important role in energizing a generation of Protestant activists in both German states. In the West, several of these activists have since risen to prominent positions of church leadership. However, the effects of the movement were much more pronounced in the East, where ecumenical dialogue for the promotion of peace and social justice created a new, critical public space for East German Protestants. By the late 1980s this increasingly bold and public activity was broadening to include fundamental criticism of the injustice of the East German state itself. Turning their attention to the possibilities of a better, more democratic socialist system, members of Conciliar Process played a leading role in the emergence of East German civil society groups in 1989-90.

Yet, many of the members of these groups, frustrated when their efforts to theorize democratic socialism were overtaken by political events, came to see the collapse of the GDR and the reunification of Germany as a failure and a missed opportunity. In a similar way, figures on both sides were disappointed by declining interest in the movement following the events of 1989-90. Although their efforts had a lasting impact on the churches, in particular by opening up the hierarchy to new ideas and by grooming a new generation of leaders, Kunter argues that the movement failed to sustain a lasting impact on ordinary church members. This disillusionment was compounded, especially among former East Germans, by their difficulty in finding a place for themselves and their experiences in the West German church. In one of the most interesting sections of her work, Kunter locates the origins of this disillusionment in the different religious and political experiences of Protestants in the two German states. She argues that East German Protestants were strongly shaped by their experiences as outsiders in the GDR. Their religious attitudes were rooted in family and congregational life, where they found a separate space for themselves in East German society. This pietistic, oppositional perspective in turn led many to embrace a utopian form of political theology that denigrated all forms of real existing politics. The religious attitudes of their West German counterparts, by contrast, were much more overtly political from the very beginning. In describing the evolution of their beliefs, the West German Protestants in Kunter’s study only rarely referred to the influence of family and congregational life. Instead, most pointed to the formative role of a personal religious-political awaking in their teens or twenties that continued to influence their religious belief and identity as Protestant Christians. This underlying difference in religious identity formation has contributed to numerous misunderstandings within the churches since the early 1990s and remains an important factor in the mental gulf that continues to divide the reunited EKD. Both of these books offer the reader insights into the complex relations between the Protestant churches in West and East Germany both during and after the Cold War. While Silomon’s work will be of primary interest to church historians, Kunter’s has the potential to appeal to a much wider audience. By situating her work within the worldwide ecumenical movement, broadening her research to include a wide spectrum of theologians and laity, and providing a densely layered and compelling analysis of the larger significance of her findings, Kunter has written a work of church history that should appeal to anyone interested in the intellectual and cultural underpinnings of recent German politics.

Benjamin Pearson

2a) W.Daniel, Reconstituting the “Sacred Canopy”. Mother Serafima and the Novodivichy Monastery, in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol 59 no. 2, April 2008, p. 249-71.

Wallace Daniel is an American scholar who has devoted much time to studying the rebirth of Orthodoxy in Russia since 1991. His travels took him to the Novodivichy Monastery, or rather nunnery, just outside Moscow, one of Russia’s noblest shrines. There he met the Mother Superior, Serafima,, who for five years from 1994, at the age of 8o, undertook the enormous task of restoring the monastery to its former glory. Monasteries have always occupied a special place in the life of the Russian people. They preserved memory, nurtured the spirit, taught ethics and offered a special way of looking at the world. In the post-Communist society, with its rampant cult of individualism and consumerism, such a service, Mother Serafima was convinced, was badly needed. She therefore opposed the secular trend by promoting the cause of charity, not just to help the poor, but to evoke the Christian virtue of Miloserdie, dear heartedness, which should empower Christians in their relationships with others. Mother Serafima’s short years of service were filled with activity to revitalize not only the external and physical, but also the internal and spiritual vitality of this great monastery. Wallace Daniel’s tribute is therefore well deserved.

Journal note: Church History, the quarterly journal for the American Society for Church History, now edited from Florida State University, has a new pictorial coloured cover page, which is most attractive.

The contents are however the same as before. The latest issue, for June 2008, has a perceptive article by Dae Y. Ryu on “The Origins and characteristics of Evangelical Protestantism in Korea at the turn of the twentieth century” as well as reviews of the two latest volumes in the Cambridge History of Christianity, viz, Vol V: Eastern Christianity, and Vol. IX: World Christianities c. 1914 to c. 2000.

Best wishes to you all,
John Conway

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September 2008 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

September 2008— Vol. XIV, no. 9

 

Dear Friends,

I expect many of you are even now preparing to return to your lecturing duties at the beginning of the new academic year. So let me wish you all the best for your renewed endeavours. For those who had the opportunity to undertake research abroad during the summer break, I would like to offer you the chance to share your findings with our colleagues. Do send me a short precis of what you discovered or contemplated, and possibly any conclusions about the state of church history and its writing. I am always glad to provide space for younger scholars to share their findings with others. and hence to give their researches some extra and doubtless well-earned publicity.

Let me also remind you that all the texts of these Newsletters can be found in reverse chronological order on the website = www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/akz. There is also a search engine which enables you to find individual topics or personalities. We are all indebted to Randy Bytwerk for his efforts in keeping this website up to date.

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) Tavard, Vatican II and the Ecumenical Way
b) Berdahl, Where the world ended
c) eds. Wolf, Flammer and Schuler, Galen als Kirchenfurst

2) Conference Report: Bishop Bell Memorial Conference, Chichester, U.K.
3) Book note: Detlef Garbe, Between Resistance and Martyrdom. Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Third Reich.
4) Dissertation Abstract: B. Pearson, German Protestant Kirchentag 1949-69
5) Journal Issue: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte/Contemporary Church History

1a) George H.Tavard, Vatican II and the Ecumenical Way, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press 2006.
(This review appeared in the Catholic Historical Review, March 2008, and is reprinted by kind permission of the author)

During the last third of the twentieth century, the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) was a compass point not only for Catholics but also for ecumenically minded Christians. With the passage of four plus decades, however, the discussions and especially the debates and the drama behind the conciliar documents are increasingly in danger of being misinterpreted, if not forgotten altogether; it is then important to preserve the memories of the dwindling number of participants for the benefit of posterity both as a matter of historical record as well as a resource for ecclesiological interpretation.

The present volume, which is variously autobiographical, analytical, and anecdotal, presents its author’s personal reminiscences and theological reflections about the ecumenical dimensions – antecedent, concomitant, and subsequent – of the Council. In this respect George H.Tavard has been uniquely privileged: a theologian with ecumenical interests and involvement prior to the Council, when “ecumencism” was an unfamiliar, even suspect, word among Catholics; a conciliar peritus and staff member of the Secretariat for the Promotion of the Unity of Christians that was responsible for drafting ecumenical statements for the Council’s consideration; a participant in numerous official national and international postconciliar ecumenical dialogues; as well as the author of dozens of volumes on a wide range of topics: ecumenism, theology, history and spirituality.

Perhaps the major value of this short book comes from its author’s extraordinary ecumenical experience; for example, one can read elsewhere about the institutional ecclesiology that prevailed in Catholicism prior to Vatican II, but gaining a feel for an ecumenical ecclesiology of “divine presence” comes only through the experience of dialogue; in other words, ecumenical theology is not abstract, but experiential. Similarly, while one might carefully chronicle the long history of interdenominational polemics, their resolution requires a healing of memories that includes the “act of forgetting”: “the Church needs to be disencumbered from things remembered that ought to be forgotten” (p.112). One might also note the author’s candid appraisal of the postconciliar Church as torn “between gauchist deviation and reactionary conservatism” which can be attributed to (1) “a glaring lacuna at Vatican II itself,” (2) “hesitancies on the part of Paul VI”, and (3) “the heavy weight of institutional inertia” (p. 122). Ecclesiologists as well as ecumenists, might then take to heart the “problems of reception” that have plagued even the best intentioned ecumenical documents; finally theologians would do well then to give explicit attention to the author’s concluding question: “Can Theology be Non-Verbal” (pp 141-480?

Unfortunately, one finds some slips in this book: for example, the encyclical, Humanae Vitae, published on July 25, 1968, could hardly have “caused an unexpected turmoil in the Summer of 1967” (p. 126). Also the enumeration of footnotes is sometimes out of sync. In addition, some opinions are at least debatable: for example, while “the condemnation of Anglican Orders, in 1896, by Leo XIII” may have been ecumenically problematic and historically questionable, it seems a stretch to claim , “The canonical category of validity no longer provides, if it ever did, an acceptable standard to describe and evaluate the sacramental experience of other Churches than one’s own” (pp. 92-93).

Such shortcomings aside, readers who once eagerly and sometimes seriously followed the proceedings of Vatican II will be treated to a retrospective that awakens memories, if not nostalgia. Readers for whom Vatican II is a matter of historical investigation and theological reappraisal will also benefit from the insights of an influential insider.

John T. Ford, Washington, D.C.

1b) Daphne Berdahl, Where the world ended. Re-Unification in the German Borderland. Berkeley: University of California Press 1999. 294 pp. ISBN 0-520-21476-5.

Daphne Berdahl’s career as a social anthropologist was sadly cut short by her untimely death last October. So her principal legacy will be this well-researched and illuminating study of a small village in central Germany during the period immediately following the overthrow of the Communist regime in 1990.

The village of Kella in southern Thuringen was exactly on the border between East and West Germany, on the eastern side, and was hence placed in both the restricted and security zones. This fact cut its inhabitants off from most contacts with their East German neighbours, and totally isolated them from the West. Berdahl’s interest was to study what happened when suddenly both the political and geographical barriers were removed.

In fact Kella had been a border village for centuries in a much older division in Germany – that between Catholicism and Protestantism. So religious ties had long played a part in the villagers’ identity. Berdahl’s observations on the role of the Catholic church will therefore be of interest to our readers. This historic legacy was the reason why, after 1945, the villagers remained devoted to their faith, despite the resolute efforts of the Communist authorities to root out such “superstitious survivals”. In 1953 and 1954 church services were prohibited. But the villagers walked ten kilometres to the nearest available chapel, and were finally successful in having the edict overthrown. But in order to assert its authority, the state government refused to allow the use of a pilgrimage chapel because it was situated in the no-man’s-land between the security fences. It remained visible but inaccessible for more than thirty years.

The Berdahl family were the first Americans the villagers had ever seen. But the warm welcome extended by the Catholic priest did much to break down the villagers’ reserve and suspicion of these alien guests. And they soon became aware of Kella’s strong attachment to its Catholic faith, and consequent immunity to the blandishments or threats of the Socialist Unity Party (SED), or the upstart claims of the German Democratic Republic. Fewer than 6% of the villagers joined the SED, and less than half of these were natives. The church members remained an obstinate pocket of resistance, even if many of them were obliged, for opportunistic reasons, to be recruited to one or other of the state-organized activities or associations.

Chapter 3 is devoted to an analysis of the interplay between religion and identity, as well as between popular faith and institutionalized religion. As noted above, during the forty years of Communist rule, these religious traditions converged in opposition to the socialist state. But after 1989, with the state no longer hostile, there has been a renegotiation and a redefinition of religious identity and practices. In Kella, the Catholic community survived by being largely inconspicuous. As in most border areas, it clung to a highly traditional liturgical practice and concentrated on personal devotion. In fact the area was largely regarded as a religious and social backwater. These Catholics therefore played no part in promoting a climate of reform before 1989. This was left to the Protestants in the more active urban centres. In any case the small number of Catholics induced a sense of quiescence towards the state, which was abandoned only days before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

By the summer of 1990, some of the Catholic religious practices, which had been prohibited under the communists, such as pilgrimages to local chapels, had been revived. The sense of reattachment to their traditions and past seemed more potent than doctrinal convictions. The church served to create an ethnic belonging which fulfilled people’s desires. This kind of popular religion withstood both socialist political pressures, and obtrusive reformist measures by the church hierarchy. Thus the first action by the villagers in November 1989 was to replace the original statues for the Stations of the Cross leading to the now available pilgrimage chapel. The wooden cross held together by barbed wire still remains an imposing image of Kella’s suffering and a symbol of their enduring Catholic faith.

In the immediate aftermath of 1989, however, the Church lost much of its appeal and influence, Consumerism gripped most East Germans. The Church could do little but protest against the sins of covetousness. Most villagers, while still maintaining that they were “good Catholics”, were rather easily seduced. Increased mobility has also meant that the villagers could satisfy their religious inclinations elsewhere. The transfer of Kella’s energetic priest seemed to indicate a loss of interest by the higher church authorities, already remote enough from the parishioners. Many felt abandoned or even betrayed. It became clear that, in the new state, church officials could no longer assume obedience and loyalty. They needed to earn it from their congregations. Popular religion endures, but support for the wider ecclesiastical institutions remains questionable.
Ms Berdahl’s perceptive analysis shows that, in religious life, as in other spheres, the re-integration of this small village where the world ended, was a costly but creative process, which is still continuing. It is a tragedy that she will no longer be able to provide us with a sequel.

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1c) Wolf, Hubert, Flammer, Thomas and Schueler, Barbara (Eds) Clemens August von Galen. Ein Kirchenfürst im Nationalsozialismus, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007. vi + 280 incl. 3 figs. ISBN 978-3-534-19905-1.

(This review appeared first in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, April 2008)

German Catholics are still attempting to come to terms with their church’s record during the Nazi era. The facts have long since been established: Catholics failed to mobilize more than a minimal opposition against the criminal atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. The church’s officially propagated view, ever since 1945, that Catholics were amongst the first victims of Nazi discrimination and persecution is so obviously inadequate that there is still a need for more sophisticated defensive apologias. To this end, Catholics have concentrated on the career of the one bishop who did protest against the Nazi injustices and murders, although only partially and without any intention of trying to overthrow the regime itself. The heroic stand of Bishop Galen of Münster against the so-called “euthanasia” of mentally-ill patients is well-known and has been much exploited by Catholic supporters. His public protest in July and August 1941, at the height of Hitler’s military victories, was undoubtedly an extremely courageous act. Whether it should compensate for the silence with which German Catholic greeted the annihilation of the Jews is debatable. Such issues are outlined in this conference report marking the sixtieth anniversary of Galen’s death in 1946. But since the majority of the contributors are well-known defenders of the Catholic cause, the overall tone is hagiographic. Indeed, the final chapter describes the steps taken which have already led to his beatification and may eventually lead to his canonization as a saint of the church.

To be sure Heinrich Mussinghoff’s chapter on Galen and the Jews admits that he offered no protest on the occasion of the November 1938 pogrom, even though the Jews of his own see city were affected. And when he became aware of the mass murders occurring in Poland and Russia, prudence dictated a strict silence lest worse befall the Catholics too. The contrast between his image as “the Lion of Münster”, and his share in the widespread antipathy and disinterest towards the plight of Jews and foreigners is only too evident. It can be explained in part by the traditional Catholic theological prejudice against Judaism, but even more by Galen’s ingrained conservative, aristocratic and nationalist background. The remaining articles in this collection shed more light on his political and social views, his early upbringing during the years of harassment under the Bsmarckian Kulturkampf, his apprenticeship in Berlin, and his undoubted lack of sympathy for the loud-mouthed radical racialism of the Nazi movement. Like his fellow bishops, Galen’s priority was the protection and preservation of the catholic milieu. It was principally his awareness that many of those killed in the so-called “euthanasia” process were faithful Catholics which prompted his outspoken intervention. But his circle of obligation was limited. Few of the contributors to this volume seem to think that this was something which should be regretted.

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2) Bishop Bell Memorial Conference

2008 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Bishop George Bell, one of the most prominent leaders of the Church of England in the early twentieth century. The anniversary is being widely observed in Britain, with an exhibition at the House of Lords, the opening of a new George Bell House at Chichester Cathedral and a celebration at Christ Church, Oxford. It is in this context that the conference ‘Art, Politics and the Church: Bishop George Bell, 1883-1958’ took place at Chichester in 23-5 June. The academic programme was organized by Andrew Chandler, Director of the George Bell Institute, which is now based in the newly-established University of Chichester.

He reports: The conference was truly an international gathering, bringing together scholars from the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland, India, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the United States. It was inaugurated by the present bishop of Chichester, John Hind. Sessions on Politics, Art, Education, Ecumenism and the Refugee Crisis were chaired by Professor Michael Hughes, head of the Department of History at the University of Liverpool, the Revd Canon Alan Wilkinson at Portsmouth cathedral, Rachel Moriarty of Chichester Cathedral, Dr Katharina Kunter of the University of Karlsruhe, Professor George Wedell, formerly of Manchester University (a godson of Dietrich Bonhoeffer) and Dr Kenneth Wilson (formerly Oxford and Birmingham).

Bell’s career led him after 1914 to become heavily involved with the affairs of Germany, and particularly with those of the German Protestant Churches. From the 1925 Stockholm Conference onwards, he took a very close interest in the political developments and attitudes developing in the German churches. He was greatly disturbed by the rise of Nazism, and therefore was particularly glad to strike a warm friendship with Dietrich Bonhoeffer when the latter arrived in Britain in late 1933. Bell and Bonhoeffer’s friendship meant much to both men. Professor Gerhard Besier (Dresden) proceeded to explore Bell’s relationship with Visser ‘t Hooft, the first General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, in the context of the burgeoning ecumenical movement, a defining friendship which remains fundamental in this international landscape. Joseph Mutharaj (Bangalore) explored Bell’s relationship with Indian independence and the creation of the Church of South India.

It was Bell who invited Gandhi to spend a weekend at Chichester in October 1931, and Bell who took on the British opponents of the church union in India after 1945. In his paper Geoffrey Chorley (Liverpool Hope University) discussed Bell’s position in the education debates which took place in British politics before the passing of the 1944 Butler Act. Here, he found Bell ‘going underground’ in his attempts to conserve some place for the Church of England in the life of the country’s schools. At the end of the afternoon the conference went to a reception at the Bishop Otter Gallery to celebrate the visiting Art in Exile exhibition, presenting work by Dachinger, Bilbo, Meidner and Feibusch, curated by Jutta Vinzent and Jenny Powell at the University of Birmingham. In the evening the religious drama group, RADIUS, gave a presentation of readings drawn from the Bell archives and from works by John Masefield and TS Eliot in the university chapel.

In a second day committed to the Arts and international politics, Peter Blee (Berwick, Chichester diocese) discussed Bell’s patronage of artists from the Bloomsbury circle and from further afield. This paper set Bell’s work in a wider context of the church’s relationship with creative art and public life at large, something which Bell himself saw divorced by the Protestant Reformation. The brilliant and productive friendship between Bell and the exiled German Hans Feibusch was a strand further developed by Michael Ford (Chichester) in his presentation of a succession of Chichester commissions executed by Feibusch between 1939 and the 1970s. These remain intact today, but the closing of churches has also created dilemmas of preservation. One of Feibusch’s grandest and largest commissions – a mural based on Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress – is today falling apart in a redundant church in Eastbourne. A third paper by Peter Webster (Institute of Historical Research, London) discussed Bell’s place in the revival of religious drama during the first half of the twentieth century, with particular reference to The Coming of Christ, a production which combined the gifts of John Masefield and Gustav Holst, performed at Canterbury Cathedral when Bell was Dean there.

Three subsequent papers explored Bell’s significance in the landscapes of the second World War and the Cold War. Philip Coupland (Wellingborough) examined Bell’s contribution to the new European movement during the war and after. Bell was, indeed, distinctive in repudiating national priorities and pressing the claims of Europe as a political and religious whole. Dianne Kirby (Ulster) explored Bell’s Cold War role within the context of Church-State relations in Britain itself. Here, she argued, church leaders were constantly used by politicians to fortify various policies of their own, and, for their part, church leaders were ready to lend weight to a contest between democracy and dictatorship on official visits and with publications. Tom Lawson (Winchester) discussed Bell’s opposition to a number of war crimes trials in Germany in the wake of the war, arguing that his debatable understanding of the relationship between the Nazi regime, the churches and the German armed forces led him to a succession of misjudgments. He suggested that Bell’s desire to see reconstruction in post-war Germany eclipsed his perception of the justice owed to the victims of the Nazi state. The day was concluded by a public lecture at Chichester Cathedral given by Dame Mary Tanner, a president of the World Council of Churches, an event attended by almost 300 people.

On 25 June James Radcliffe (Chichester; formerly British Foreign Office) told the story of the various refugee organizations at work inside Germany between 1933 and 1939, with which Bell worked to extricate a number of ‘Non-Aryans’ in the churches there. Charmian Brinson (Imperial College, London) discussed Bell’s support for refugees from Germany and Austria, with particular reference to the Internment controversy during the war. Here, she found Bell a constant advocate, and also an apparently inexhaustible practical friend to those in need of pastoral support. Accordingly, the conference glimpsed the refugees both as emigrants and as immigrants. Two final papers returned to the ecumenical theme. Jaakko Rusama (Helsinki) explored Bell’s ecumenical theology and looked to its legacy since 1958, with particular reference to Anglican-Lutheran understanding. Tamara Grdzelidze (Georgia and Geneva) sought to apply Bell’s ecumenical arguments to present ecumenical issues and approaches at Geneva and found it a very different landscape indeed.

A final plenary session looked to the future of Bell research in an international context. There is much now to be done. The Bell archive at Lambeth Palace Library in London is vast and its significance within international church history is, potentially, immense. There are now plans for a new collected edition of Bell’s letters and papers, overseen by Andrew Chandler. But further financial resources must be raised for this work and this is something is best attempted within a explicit international framework of supporting institutions. If Chichester now offers a viable centre for such research in Britain itself, it remains to be seen what other bases can be found for such an enterprise in other countries, particularly in North American colleges. Much of great value could now be accomplished by some simple, strategic alliances. If you have an interest in jumping onboard, please contact Andrew Chandler at A.Chandler@chi.ac.uk

3) Book Note:

Detlef Garbe, Between Resistance and Martyrdom. Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Third Reich. (translated by Dagmar Grimm) Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, in association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum 2008. 834 pp ISBN 0-299-20790-0 cloth, 0-299-20794-3 pbk

It is welcome that at last an English translation has appeared of Garbe’s masterly account of the fate of the Jehovah’s Witnesses at the hands of the Nazis, which originally came out in German in 1993. It was reviewed at some length and favourably in this Newsletter in the issue for December 1995, section 5: Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Nazi period. You are asked to turn to our web-site: www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/akz and use the Search engine to locate it.
Apart from a few pages of illustrations, the text is the same as in the original edition, which is undoubtedly the most comprehensive account of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ sufferings during the traumatic years 1933-1945, but leaves unsettled the issue of whether the Witnesses can be considered part of the anti-Hitler resistance movement.

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4) Dissertation abstract

Benjamin Pearson, who is about to join the University of Northern Illinois, last December completed his dissertation entitled “Faith and Democracy: Political Transformations at the German Protestant Kirchentag, 1949-1969” under the direction of Konrad Jarausch at the University of North Carolina.

During the 1920s, the German Protestant churches were among the strongest opponents of the democratic political system of the Weimar Republic. Socially and culturally reactionary, politically authoritarian, and virulently nationalist, they contributed strongly to the discrediting of the Weimar system. In the process, they helped to pave the way for the Third Reich. However, the experiences of the Nazi dictatorship and Second World War caused many Protestants to question their traditional social and political assumptions. In the decades following World War II, West German Protestants struggled to make sense of the lessons of their past, reforming their own religious and political traditions. In the process, they became important contributors to the ultimate stability and success of the democratic Federal Republic.

My dissertation examines this transformation at the meetings of the German Protestant Kirchentag, one of the largest and most diverse postwar forums for the Protestant laity. Meeting every year from 1949 until 1954, and every second year thereafter, the Kirchentag regularly drew crowds in the tens- and hundreds-of-thousands to its five-day program of teaching, preaching, worship, and celebration. Until 1961 its audience was drawn from both East and West Germany, and its role as a bridge between the two German states gave it an especially prominent place in public life. As an organization specifically devoted to promoting the responsibility and activity of the Protestant laity in all aspects of church and public life, the Kirchentag addressed a wide variety of religious, political, and social issues in its meetings. Officially independent from the state churches, it also enjoyed the unique freedom to pioneer new topics of discussion and to approach old topics in new ways.

Drawing on material from the Kirchentag, my dissertation focuses on three broad areas of change in postwar German Protestantism. First, it examines changing understandings of the role of churches and religious belief in postwar society. The early postwar years were marked by optimism that the renewal of popular religious belief would thoroughly transform German life: an optimism that helped to draw large numbers of Protestants into the political process. However, this attitude became harder to maintain as the economic recovery of the mid-to-late 1950s led to renewed religious complacency. In response to these developments, Protestants at the Kirchentag continually experimented with new ways to maintain the churches’ social relevance, embracing economic and social modernization in the late 1950s and more radical religious, social, and political reforms in the 1960s.

Second, my dissertation looks at efforts to come to terms with the legacies of German nationalism, military aggression, and mass murder. These efforts began in the early 1950s along two different tracks. On the one hand, many church leaders worked to promote Christian faith and Christian “brotherhood” as alternatives to the virulent nationalism of the past, proclaiming that the church itself was a new “Heimat” [homeland] for those displaced by the war and its aftermath. At the same time, however, others pointed out the churches’ own complicity in the Nazis’ crimes, calling for a thorough rethinking of the National Protestant tradition. By the end of the 1950s, self-critical voices had come to dominate at Kirchentag gatherings, as evidenced in prominent discussions of German guilt and Jewish-Christian relations. By the middle of the 1960s, this self-critical perspective was giving rise to a new, international sense of German Protestant identity founded on the promotion of world peace and social justice.

Finally, my dissertation examines Protestant efforts to understand and promote democratic political activity. In the early 1950s, these efforts revolved around the ideas of “Christian Democracy” and the “public responsibility” of the churches. While Protestants found themselves divided on a number of political issues, nearly all agreed that the churches needed to overcome their tradition of political passivity, playing a bigger role in public and political life. As the 1950s progressed, this unity began to recede, as prominent Protestant leaders took opposing positions on major issues such as inter-German relations and West German rearmament. Forced to come to terms with these irreconcilable political differences, Protestants in the late 1950s and early 1960s gradually began to accept and promote the ideal of liberal democratic political pluralism. Although threatened by the emergence of the radical youth movement in the late 1960s, this liberal democratic consensus was able to survive. Indeed, Kirchentag leaders enjoyed considerable success in their efforts to reach out to the representatives of the New Left, laying the foundation for future cooperation.

By demonstrating the important role played by the churches in the postwar transformation of West Germany, this dissertation asserts the continued relevance of religious categories of analysis in the history of the Federal Republic. Drawing attention to competing voices for change within the churches, focusing on the diversity of lessons drawn from the Nazi past and the variety of prescriptions offered for the future, it offers a complex and multi-dimensional view of West Germany’s postwar transformation. Looking at the diversity of political opinion within the Protestant churches, it argues that the Christian Democratic politics of the early 1950s were neither as monolithic nor as one-sidedly reactionary as they have often been portrayed. At the same time, by tracing the changes in Protestant religious and political discourse across the 1950s and 1960s, it highlights the process of democratization not only on the Protestant Left, but also in more conservative circles of the Federal Republic. Finally, this study re-evaluates the impact of late-1960s Protest movements in West German society. Rather than seeing the emergence of these movements as a radical break with Germany’s “fascist” past, it places them within the context of gradual liberalization across the 1950s and 1960s. It argues that their major contribution to postwar democratization did not lie not in exposing the lack of true democracy in West German society, but in prompting more moderate, liberal figures in the older generation to work within the existing system to promote a new set of social and political values.

Benjamin C. Pearson@gmail.com

4) Journal issues

a): Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte/Contemporary Church History. The latest issue of this journal continues the steps taken to make it a bilingual production, including the provision of black-and-white illustrations for the first time.. This bi-ennial is now in its 20th year under the editorship of Professor Gerhard Besier of Dresden, which is a most impressive service. The focus of this issue are the papers from a conference held in Budapest in October 2007 as part of the European Union’s Project: “Overcoming Dictatorships – an Encounter between Poets, Artists and Writers”. Among the articles in English is the notable contribution of Andrew Chandler, director of the George Bell Institute in Chichester, Sussex. This was the paper he gave at the Bell memorial conference outlined above, and outlined the support given by Bishop Bell to the arts during the 1920s and 1930s, particularly by his sponsorship of the revival of religious drama with such plays as T.S.Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral” which was first performed in Canterbury Cathedral. For Bishop Bell, as Chandler states, the Church needed to learn from the artist in order to see again the gift of its gospel and to enhance its own power of proclamation. This was a task which had acquired a new urgency in the age of rival ideologies and fanatic dictators. Bell found encouraging support in the poems of W. H. Auden and Edith Sitwell, and for his part, gave commissions to artists.such as Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell or Hans Feibusch to paint murals in churches in his diocese. It was all part of a search for a new unity between religious faith and artistic expression in the context of Europe’s disastrous decline into dictatorship and war.

Another of Bishop Bell’s contributions is outlined in the article by Charlotte Methuen on the Anglo-German theological conferences 1927-1931. These were clearly intended to be part of the attempt to find a basis for international Christian reconciliation and to overcome the still virulent public antipathy between Germans and Britons. Bell brought together some of the most distinguished theologians to discuss finding possible agreement on basic doctrines of the Christian faith, such as on the Kingdom of God, Christology and the Holy Spirit. But the debates only revealed that the differences were not so much between the nations, as between different doctrinal traditions within each nation. Nor did this series of meetings prevent Gerhard Kittel or Paul Althaus giving their enthusiastic support to National Socialism.

With best wishes
John Conway

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July-August 2008 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Return to index.

July/August 2008— Vol. XIV, no. 7-8

 

Dear Friends,

I very much hope that all of you in the northern hemisphere are now enjoying this holiday season, but that you will still find time to read this issue of our Newsletter. In the interests of denominational and ecumenical equality, I include in this issue two reviews about the German churches, one about Catholics and one about Protestants, as well as two about different kinds of British Protestantism. I hope that these prove to be of interest. I am always glad to have your reactions, but PLEASE remember NOT to press the reply button above unless you want your remarks to be shared by all of our 500 members.

Contents:

1) Conference Announcement: Regent College History Conference, Vancouver: July 25-26, 2008 – beginning at 1 p.m. – registration at door
“Exploring new frontiers in Evangelical History” Speakers: George Marsden, Mark Noll, David Jones, David Hempton, Bruce Hindmarsh
All welcome

2) Book reviews:

a) ed Damberg and Liedhegener, Katholiken in den USA und Deutschland
b) Ringshausen, Widerstand und christlicher Glaube
c) Shuff, Searching for the true church
d) Hughes, Conscience and Conflict. Methodism, peace and war in the twentieth century

2a) Wilhelm Damberg and Antonius Liedhegener, eds. Katholiken in den USA und Deutschland. Kirche, Gesellschaft und Politik. Münster: Aschendorff. 2006. Pp. vii, 393. Euros 24.80. This review appeared first in the Catholic Historical Review, and is here reprinted by kind permission of the author.

At the time of the Second Vatican Council Germany exercised a powerful attraction for Americans seeking doctorates in Catholic theology. German theologians like Karl Rahner, Hans Küng, Walter Kasper, Joseph Ratzinger, and Johann Baptist Metz all counted Americans among their students. Today the tide runs in the other direction. Astonished at full churches in the United States, and impressed with the vitality of American parish life, German Catholics now come in increasing numbers to the United States to investigate a level of religious practice inconceivable in Germany today.

One of those impressed by American church life is the German businessman, Dr. Karl Albrechts, whose Aldi supermarkets can be found on both sides of the Atlantic. His generous grant provided funding for a conference in Berlin in May 2004, at which reports on church life in Germany and the United States were given by eighteen experts from both countries. Delivered in English, the papers have now been translated into German and are published in this volume. Several of the presenters report on the situation in the other country ­ a happy example of two-way cooperation and enrichment.

Despite their great differences, Catholics in both Germany and the United States share elements of a similar history. In both countries Catholics are a minority, suspected by the majority from the mid-nineteenth century to the eve of the Second Vatican Council of owing primary allegiance to the Roman pontiff. German Catholics responded to this challenge by forming a flourishing milieu consisting of numerous Catholic organizations including a political party. American Catholics lived largely in a self-imposed ghetto, dismantled by Vatican II’s opening to the world, and by the entry of increasing numbers of American Catholics into their country’s social, cultural, and educational mainstram.

In other respects church life in the two countries is dissimilar. American parishes and other church institutions have always been voluntary associations, founded and supported by their members. This imposes heavier financial burdens than those borne by Catholics in Germany, whose parishes, church buildings, and other institutions are provided “from above,” and supported generously from public funds. The need for self-support gives American Catholics a greater sense of ownership than those in Germany.

Paradoxically, however, the Catholic Church in Germany has been, since Vatican II, more democratic than that in the United States. Germany’s National Synod from 1972 to 1975, with both lay and clerical representation and enjoying legislative and not merely advisory power, is inconceivable in this country. Parish Councils and diocesan Pastoral Councils are found throughout Germany. In the United States their existence depends on the local pastor or bishop. Also dissimilar is the educational system in the two countries. Schooling, from kindergarten to university, is a state monopoly in Germany. Home-schooling, a small but flourishing feature on the American educational scene, is forbidden by law in Germany under penalty of heavy fines or imprisonment. The German state accommodates Catholic interests through church-supervised religious instruction for Catholic students in state schools, and by public support for state regulated Catholic schools, including the faculties of Catholic theology at the state-supported universities. Of special interest for German readers is the flourishing system of adult catechesis in the United States (the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults), still in its infancy in Germany.
The book will be of greater interest for German readers than for Americans. The view of American Catholicism which it presents is colored by the selection of American presenters. They include such well known authorities as Andrew Greeley, Margaret and Peter Steinfels, and Leo O’Donovan SJ. Unfortunately missing are others no less distinguished who could have presented a more balanced picture: Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and George Weigel.

John Jay Hughes, St Louis.

2b) Gerhard Ringshausen, Widerstand und christlicher Glaube angesichts des Nationalsozialismus, Berlin: LIT Verlag 2007. 509 pp ISBN -104/22/08 3-8258-8306-X

The reputations of those Germans who joined the anti-Nazi resistance movement, or who participated in the abortive plot to assassinate Hitler on July 20th 1944, have fluctuated wildly over the past sixty-five years. At the time, they were regarded by the Nazis, and by many of the established elites, as traitors. Their immediate arrest, summary trial and brutal execution were accepted as being duly deserved for such a heinous crime. But after 1949, the new government of the Federal Republic, based in Bonn, made strenuous efforts to revise this verdict. Instead these men were portrayed as heroes who had sacrificed their lives for the honour of the nation, and as such absolved others of the guilt of having served Nazism without protest. Indeed large-scale and deliberately organized campaigns were launched to show these men as being in continuity with a “better Germany”, which looked back to an aristocratic past worthy of current emulation. This was all part of an attempt to find a usable history on which to base the new West German democratic experiment. These resistance figures could be held to embody positive attributes and traditions, especially if they were aristocrats by birth or practising Christians by conviction.

Such propagandistic attempts often lent themselves to hagiographic overtones. So it was hardly surprising that in more recent years the sceptical work of a younger generation of historians has had a corrosive effect on such glossy portrayals. It is now widely known that many of the July 1944 conspirators had earlier held pro-Nazi sympathies, or had even belonged to the Party. Others, particularly many of the more conservative members, had loyally served in the Nazified German army, and even, at least to begin with, had failed to realize the nihilistic ambitions of their Leader.

So the arguments still continue about the motives of these men; (they were almost all men); also about the political goals they planned to implement in any post-war settlement; but above all about their religious beliefs, as one strong source of their fateful opposition. This is the particular emphasis in Gerhard Ringshausen’s ten biographical case studies of Protestant actors in these traumatic events. He is careful to eschew any attempt to see their careers though the prism of post-war political or religious “correctness”, and instead concentrates on the contemporary evidence available through letters and papers preserved principally by family members. The picture he presents is therefore rich in detail and sympathetic to the crucial dilemmas they all faced.

Religion undoubtedly played a large part in both the indictments and also in the defence statements of these men at their trials after the July plot had failed. To the Nazis, these convictions, if sincere, were proof of the conspirators’ disloyalty to the regime. The defendants’ pleas that their religious obligations had a superior claim was rejected outright, or as a mere pretence to be dismissed out of hand. But others, including historians, have found the validity of such claims to be problematic. The Protestant Church had great difficulty in justifying political murder, especially of the head of state. However evil the Nazi regime and its totalitarian pseudo-religion may have been, the church authorities and their theologians still found it a difficult assignment to abandon centuries of state-affirming Lutheran theology. Attempts to justify the conspirators’ action on Christian grounds – and thereby to separate them from any taint of being influenced by communism – were ardently made, but sceptically received, in the immediate post-war years. Later when historians began to depict a more differentiated pattern of resistance activities, they also perceived a wider range of ethical or religious motivations. With the passage of time, the earlier self-justifications of the resistance participants, or even the cult of “martyrs”, has been replaced by a more sober assessment of the complexity of their situation. Ringshausen places his individual case histories within this broader perspective.

For this reason he avoids the often-used but misleading categorizations which depict the members of the resistance movement as “national conservatives” or “Prussian Protestants”. Instead he draws out the variety of influences which brought these men together to pursue the common goal of ridding Germany of the Nazi tyranny. As the only theologian in the group, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had probably the most coherent religious motivation, connected with his abiding emphasis on ethics. But Ewald von Kleist, a leading landowner and layman, was equally fervent in opposing Nazism from a traditional Lutheran perspective. Moltke, the great-nephew of the famous general, and owner of the Kreisau estate in Silesia, had an American mother who espoused Christian Science beliefs. Elisabeth von Thadden was strongly influenced by the ideas of Christian pacifism, until she was denounced to the Gestapo and executed in September 1944. To the Nazis, of course, the particular variety of Christian motivation was of no account. Their determination to liquidate all opposition was only exacerbated by their virulent bias against the members of the aristocracy or resolute churchmen.

Ringshausen’s contribution is to draw out the variety of often conflicting attitudes and influences of the resisters and to present a detailed account of their political and religious stances. But he also makes clear the cost of the processes by which these men had to overcome many religious scruples, and eventually to assent to being agents of political revolution and assassination. In many cases, these men’s crises of conscience were not resolved before they met their deaths. The failure of their attempts to assassinate Hitler was followed by a widespread rejection among their fellow churchmen. So Ringshausen’s depiction of the convoluted relationship between faith and political resistance will be helpful for future discussions of these complex issues.

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2c) Roger N.Shuff, Searching for the true church. Brethren and Evangelicals in mid-twentieth century England. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Strick Publishers/Paternoster 2006 Pp 296. ISBN 1-59752-794-7.

The Brethren community is a branch of English evangelical Protestantism, which was founded under the influence of an early nineteenth-century preacher, John Nelson Darby. He gained a substantial following in Devonshire – hence the commonly attributed name, Plymouth Brethren. In the wake of the Napoleonic wars, Darby was strongly convinced of the imminence of the Second Coming of Christ, and hence called on his followers to separate themselves from the evil world, and to prepare themselves by prayer and witness for the final rapture. This world-renouncing piety was also repelled by the corruption of the existing churches, and hence rejected any professional ordained ministry in their assemblies. Instead they placed, and still place, great emphasis on the weekly service of communion among their believers. Despite the disappointment of their eschatological hopes, the Brethren established themselves across Britain, the United States, in Australia and New Zealand, and even founded assemblies in Europe. Their history in the twentieth century has now been succinctly, but not uncritically, described by two parallel books, both published by Paternoster. As well as the above, there is now the account by Tim Grass, Gathering in His Name. The story of Open Brethren in Britain and Ireland(2006) Roger Shuff, who writes as a detached insider, has as his main concern to trace the influence of Brethren ideas on the wider English Evangelical movement, especially in the middle of the twentieth century. He contends that the revival of evangelicalism, particularly after the end of the second world war, owed much to the vital association of many key Brethren individuals. But he also argues that this resurgence of evangelical fortunes led to increased tensions within the Brethren community, and has in fact led to a serious decline in its support in Britain.

Because Brethren refused to accept any theologically-trained or professional leadership, they relied instead on the spirit-filled gifts of laymen or senior elders in their assemblies. But this often led to schismatic tendencies. Early on, there was a major split between those who sought exclusively to isolate themselves from the world and other religious bodies, or even to deny fellowship to non-Brethren in their own families. In the 1960s these tensions caused by this seemingly intolerant behaviour led to a parliamentary enquiry, though fortunately a proposed Bill to penalize this sect was turned down on grounds of the wider desirability of religious freedom. On the other hand, there were also those “independents” who were eager to participate in wider evangelical and missionary activities.

In the dark days before and during the second world war, the former group gained adherents from those who sought religious security in a reassuring spiritual environment. On the other hand, the more open-minded members promoted a pan-denominational expression of evangelicalism, which was to play a considerable role in the success of the post-war evangelical “crusades” of a young American preacher Billy Graham.

Brethren, and many Evangelicals, were naturally sceptical about the kind of ecumenical endeavours undertaken at this period by the main-line churches, such as those connected to the World Council of Churches. Instead they sought to strengthen such clearly evangelical associations as the Inter-Varsity Fellowship, or, with some reservations, the Keswick Convention. They gave strong support to academically credible scholarship in biblical studies, as undertaken in such colleges as Tyndale House, Cambridge, the London Bible College, or Regent College, Vancouver.

But, as Shuff shows, these endeavours only widened the gulf between the external-looking and the introspective or “isolationist” elements of Brethrenism. Their respective views of the true church proved critically divisive, and have remained so. For the more open-minded Brethren, the revival of evangelical fortunes also proved problematic. They had long assumed that all other religious life beyond their own assemblies could only decline until the parousia. But the evangelical resurgence cast doubts on this assertion. Coupled with this was the serious threat of the 1960s counter-culture, especially among youth with its rampant optimism and hedonism. In the evangelical community, this found expression in the charismatic movement with its vibrant ecstatic exhortation to spiritual encounters. To many conservative Brethren , these phenomena, such as speaking in tongues, and the clearly antinomian atmosphere, were too much of a challenge. Yet they lacked an attractive alternative which could offset these enthusiasms. The result has been an undoubted decline in numbers, as many younger members have been drawn away to more accommodating evangelical gatherings.

Shuff also describes the sad story of how the hard-liners fell under the sway of an American preacher who finally misused his powers and was publicly disgraced. The result was a sharp accentuation in the contrast between the different sections of the Brethren community. The isolationist group is greatly reduced, while the more progressive “independents” still struggle to find an appropriate relationship to other branches of the evangelical fraternity. Having tacitly abandoned their eschatological expectations, the issue of the group’s relationship to the wider world and its future course still remains to be tackled.

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2d) Michael Hughes, Conscience and Conflict. Methodism, Peace and War in the twentieth century. Peterborough, U.K.: Epworth Press 2008, 336 pp.

Michael Hughes, a professor of modern history at the University of Liverpool, has given us a lucid account of the attitudes of British Methodists towards the issues of war and peace during the dramatic and conflict-ridden twentieth century. Why Methodists? Because they formed a cohesive group in British public life whose members, both clergy and laity, gave a remarkably consistent lead on these issues, both orally and in writing. Their sermons and speeches, and the columns of the Methodist newspapers, provided Hughes with an abundance of raw material and a clear picture of the significant issues which recurred again and again across these years. He also seeks to repair an omission in most secular histories of this period, which entirely ignore the religious dimension of public opinion, or dismiss the views of churchmen as irrelevant.

By tradition, Methodists are not obligated to give support to secular governments. Their political stances were, and are, instead drawn from the impulses of conscience and a reading of the Bible, especially the Sermon on the Mount. Methodist politics were therefore based on the morality of the pursuit of peace, and an abhorrence of war and its destructive capacities. Their continuing difficulty was, and still is, how to fit such lofty ideals into the contingencies of world politics. A shared moral passion does not lead easily into agreement when faced with the complexities of practical policy, especially in international affairs. This fact was largely responsible for the lack of effective influence by such religious groups as the Methodists as the champions of the “Nonconformist Conscience”.

Already before the first world war this high-minded tradition of pursuing peace and non-intervention in the affairs of others was becoming increasingly outmoded in a world of imperial rivalry and European alliances. The need to deal with situations in which the use of force alone could offer the prospect of preserving peace, or preventing gross injustices, was to become a source of heartfelt contention in the Methodist ranks. A minority, out of conscience, maintained that the Gospel of Jesus Christ could not be compatible with the practice of war, and called on its supporters to adopt an unequivocal refusal to bear arms. But, on the other side, the majority had been persuaded that loyalty to their beliefs was not compromised by a readiness to defend their nation against any aggressors. Many were also supporters of Britain’s far-flung military and naval commitments. Or they were convinced of the civilizing mission of the British Empire, where so much of their missionary endeavour was engaged. Most Methodists, when confronted with Germany’s aggressive tactics, agreed, reluctantly, with the British naval response, but were highly uncomfortable with Britain’s alliance with the despotic regime of Czarist Russia. Nevertheless, the German aggression against Belgium in August 1914 was clearly a moral issue and relieved many consciences.

A significant minority of Methodists dissented from the popular display of jingoism and excitement which enthusiastically hailed the outbreak of war. For the followers of the Prince of Peace, war could solve nothing. This led many to advocate and even practise conscientious objection. But the intolerant treatment of such men when summoned to appear before recruitment tribunals only increased tension. At least a hundred Methodists were imprisoned and subjected to harsh, even brutal treatment, including three who were later ordained.

In the aftermath of the war, Methodist consciences were smitten with remorse. Understandably they eagerly supported political platforms offering a different ordering of international affairs, such as the League of Nations. As a result they became susceptible to the allurements of an idealistic optimism, and used their limited political influences in such causes as international reconciliation, disarmament or even the attempt to secure the abolition of war.

The drawback of such a stance, Hughes rightly points out, led to their agreeing that the 1919 Peace of Versailles was based on vengeance rather than on justice. But what they did not realize, and what Hughes does not explain, was that this moral approach played into the hands of the German conservatives united in their belief in the Versailles Treaty’s iniquity. Methodists blamed the Allied governments, but failed to note that Germany had never expressed any regrets about its aggressions in Belgium or elsewhere. They never asked what sort of peace settlement the Germans would have accepted as being non-vindictive. The answer is none, since most Germans continued to believe that they deserved to win the war, and had only been sabotaged by enemies at home, such as the Jews.

Much of the Methodist controversy of the 1920s and 1930s was essentially wrong-headed, being born of a refusal to believe in the essential evil of international conditions. Even if only a minority of the church’s members were involved, the heat of the debate, especially in the Methodist Peace Fellowship, gave it a feverish pitch. But the failure of the idealists’ efforts over international disarmament in the 1930s, when Britain’s delegation to the Disarmament Conference was led by a prominent Methodist as Foreign Secretary, was to become a bitterly disillusioning process. Religious groups such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation or the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches redoubled their efforts to promote the cause of peace. But apart from passing vague and moralistic resolutions, which stressed Christian brotherhood, they could achieve little. In many cases this minimal and ineffective approach seemed to be enough to relieve their consciences.

Hughes might well have made more of the recurrent impotence of church opinion, most notably in the inter-war period, but also in the great debate over nuclear weapons in the 1960s. One reason was undoubtedly the fact that the fervour of religious pacifism was not matched by any realistic appreciation of the underlying political and international factors. Pacifists like to wrap themselves in the unassailable garments of morality, but had to be reminded that they did not have a monopoly of hatred of war or enthusiasm for peace. It was not enough to accuse politicians who advocated rearmament of being warmongers, or to assume that disarmament, especially of nuclear weapons, would issue in an unprecedented era of (Christian) peace. As Hughes, notes, a strong dose of Christian realism, such as delivered by Reinhold Niebuhr in the United States, never reached the Methodists – at least not in the 1930s, or for many others, not even later.

In 1939, the awful character of the Nazi regime with its ideology of aggression and racial supremacy, helped to simplify ethical dilemmas. On the other hand, as the second world war progressed, the realization grew that the new military technologies raised even more radical ethical dilemmas. The question was not whether to fight the war, but how to conduct it within some moral framework. The final apotheosis of dropping of atomic bombs on Japan, and murdering thousands of bystanders and civilians, could hardly be consistent with any traditional doctrine of “just wars”.

The outbreak of war in 1939 crystallized still further the tensions between pacifists and non-pacifist members of the Methodist Church. The former had played too large a role since 1919 to abandon their cause. But by the dark days of 1940 only the extreme wing which favoured submission as the most Christian way still adhered to any belief in the possibility of reconciliation with Nazi Germany, now poised to invade Britain’s shores.

In practice, Methodists bore their full share of the miseries inflicted by German bombing of British cities and towns. They met the challenge of meeting the pastoral needs of so many conscripts on the battle front or behind the lines. Such an emphasis on practical service did not however deter debate about the wider issues of war and peace. The church leaders upheld their newly-adopted commitment to defend the rights of conscientious objectors, though others were fearful lest Methodism become a refuge for “pacifists, peace cranks or c.o.s.” Once more the majority gave support to the national war effort, but were heavily criticized for calling it a “sacred cause”. The Methodist Peace Fellowship still retained several thousand members, though these were now obliged to face unequivocally, because of the incessant war-time propaganda, the horrors they would potentially have to accept if their pacifist position had been adopted.

Hughes noted that there was less debate in Methodism than in Anglicanism about the relationship between means and ends in modern warfare. Most accepted the government’s argument that bombing German cities was necessary to hasten the end of hostilities. The same applied to Japan. From the relative safety of Britain, few were able to imagine the extent of the sufferings inflicted on distant peoples, let alone on whole races such as the Jews. Only afterwards did the realization sink in that such actions required the rethinking of ideas of Christian pacifism.

In the post-war world the threat of apocalyptic destruction through atomic weapons induced a more sober climate. There were still some like the sometime President of Conference, Donald Soper, who combined moral fervour with political naiveté, especially with regard to the Soviet Union. But the majority, though not pacifist, became charged with the responsibility of formulating ethically tenable positions on nuclear weapons. Many Methodists supported the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament because they saw that the use of such weapons was highly disproportionate to the ends desired. But this insight was not confined to Methodists alone.

These debates led on to wider issues in which Methodists joined, particularly in the pursuit of global justice. Hughes’ able survey shows how concerned this group of Britons was about the background issues of world peace, and how the Methodist tradition of social activism led to a more critical view of the economic and political structures on the international level. Moral obligations did not end at the nation’s frontier.

Until the end of the century, a strong segment of Methodism continued to hold that the morality of the Sermon on the Mount ought to be reflected in the nation’s policies, and justified civil disobedience if they were not. But a larger majority had learnt that the complexity of international relations could not be so easily resolved. So too, the increasing emphasis in Methodist discussion on global poverty obliged a deeper examination of the basic causes of global injustice. Such issues came to occupy Methodist attention, overshadowing even the spectacular and welcome collapse of the Communist empire.

In the 1990s, the wars in Iraq and the Balkans aroused predictable reactions from church circles. Was foreign intervention morally justified in the interests of a wider international security? After September 2001, the American retaliations against both Iraq and Afghanistan, and the British Labour government’s subsequent support, caused enormous controversy. The resulting civil wars have only added to the difficulty of finding any secure moral compass. Indeed Hughes comes to the conclusion that the nature of modern conflict now seems irreconcilable with traditional Christian teachings about just wars.

Despite the clear decline in Methodism’s numbers in Britain, its adherents still maintain much of their traditional ethos on issues of war and peace. Many are still influenced by an optimistic belief that an individual commitment to oppose war will transform the world. Even though Christian pacifism has remained marginal, and has never affected government policy, nevertheless the basic moral concerns of most Christians has been a significant factor in public debate throughout the century. At its best such witness pointed to the standards of international behaviour to which all Christians aspired. At its worst it fell back on moral platitudes.

Hughes naturally disagrees with those who, in recent years, have seen all religions as malign forces undermining rational solutions to international problems. His thoughtful account of the Methodist experience in the past hundred years, shows, to the contrary, how their consistent commitment and witness have sought to promote peace, despite all the obstacles involved. Their debates on how such ends should be achieved echoed much of the wider society’s concerns. But theirs was a voice which needed to be heard, and was in fact often heard. We can be grateful to Professor Hughes for this valuable and dispassionate analysis.

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With every best wish to you all
John Conway

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June 2008 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

June 2008— Vol. XIV, no. 6

 

Dear Colleagues,

John Conway is on vacation this month. He has asked me to edit the
Newsletter in his absence, which I am pleased to do. Below you will
find a brief note on the death of Bishop Krister Stendhal by John and
two reviews by me on Lutherans and the Church Struggle. Should you have
any comments please feel free to e-mail me at mhockeno@skidmore.edu.

Best Wishes,

Matthew Hockenos
History Department
Skidmore College

Contents:

1) Bishop Krister Stendhal

2) Book reviews

a) Kyle Jantzen, Faith and Fatherland: Parish Politics in Hitler’s
Germany (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008).

b) Lowell C. Green, Lutherans Against Hitler: The Untold Story (Saint
Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2007).

1) Death of Bishop Krister Stendhal (1921-2008)

John Conway writes: It is with sadness that we learn of the death of
Bishop Krister Stendhal, a renowned church leader in both his native
Sweden and the United States. I first met Krister in 1954 in Uppsala
when he was defending his doctoral thesis on “The School of St.
Matthew”, which demonstrated already his early interest in the Jewish
roots of the Christian gospels. Some years later he emigrated to the
United States, and taught at Harvard, where he rose to become a notable
Dean of the Divinity School. While at Harvard, Stendhal developed his
scholarly interests in Pauline theology, and wrote the landmark essay
“The Apostle Paul and the introspective conscience of the west” which
became a chapter in his book Paul among Jews and Gentiles. At
Harvard, it was natural that Stendhal gave a lead to numerous circles
concerned with Christian-Jewish relations, and also served as the
Director of the Centre for Religious Pluralism at the Shalom Hartman
Institute in Jerusalem. In 1984 he was called back to Sweden to become
the Bishop of Stockholm where he served for five years until retirement.
His distinguished leadership there followed in the footsteps of such
fine Swedish churchmen as Archbishops Soederblom and Brilioth, and gave
valuable help to many in calling for a new ecumenical approach and
commitment to Christian-Jewish dialogue.

2a) Kyle Jantzen, Faith and Fatherland: Parish Politics in Hitler’s
Germany (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008).

Kyle Jantzen’s Faith and Fatherland: Parish Politics in Hitler’s Germany
is a superb contribution to the historiography of the Church Struggle.
Through a detailed examination of three Lutheran church districts
Jantzen provides readers with fascinating glimpses of the Church
Struggle from the perspective of parish clergy, local church patrons,
and district superintendents. This “bottom up” approach allows Jantzen
to examine how familiar events in the Church Struggle at the national
level, such as the formation of the Pastors Emergency League and the
establishment of Hans Kerrl’s church committees, were experienced by
regional and local church authorities. Faith and Fatherland is a most
welcome addition to a field dominated by national studies that focus on
leading figures in the Confessing Church or the German Christian
Movement. “Entering into the daily world of German Protestants,” Jantzen
rightly contends, “illuminates many gradations within the
church-political spectrum, as well as the inconsistencies with which
pastors and parishioners thought and acted, shifting their positions and
living in ways that defy our subsequent attempts to pigeonhole them into
neat theological or church-political categories” (13).

While many of the same issues that dominated the Church Struggle on the
national level filtered down to the parish level, such as whether to
recognize German Christian authorities in the “destroyed” churches, the
responses to these issues were incredibly varied from district to
district and parish to parish. Moreover, the Church Struggle at the
parish level often took on characteristics quite unique from the
struggles on the national level – the struggle over pastoral
appointments being a case in point. For both these reasons, our
historical understanding of the Church Struggle is broadened and
diversified by a history “from below.”

Located in three different regional churches, the church districts
Jantzen investigates are Nauen on the outskirts of Berlin in the
Brandenburg Church Province of the Church of the Old Prussian Union,
Pirna southeast of Dresden in the Saxon Lutheran Church, and Ravensburg
just north of Lake Constance in the southeastern corner of the
Wuerttemberg Protestant Church. Whereas the districts of Nauen and Pirna
were located in regional churches that were taken over by German
Christians, Ravensburg remained under the control of the powerful
Lutheran bishop, Theophil Wurm. Despite the proximity of Nauen and Pirna
to large cities, all three districts were rural or semi-rural and church
life played a prominent role in many of the small towns and villages in
these regions. Nauen consisted of twenty-five parishes, Pirna
thirty-nine, and Ravensburg just eleven.

Jantzen’s first two chapters address what motivated Protestant ministers
in Nauen, Pirna, and Ravensburg to support Hitler’s ascent to power and
how Hitler’s goal of “national renewal” translated into a “Protestant
renewal” in many local parishes. He attributes clerical support for
National Socialism to the belief that Hitler would partner with the
churches in generating a national and moral renewal that would
revitalize church life and stem the tide of workers leaving the churches
for the Communist Party. In addition to their nationalism and
anti-communism, Lutheran clergymen, Jantzen believes, were predisposed
to the authoritarian character of the Nazis by their understanding of
Lutheran theology, especially the law/gospel dualism, the doctrine of
two kingdoms, and the theology of the orders of creation.

The belief that Hitler and a National Socialist government would be
beneficial to the churches was at first confirmed by a surge in new
church members in Nauen and Pirna after Hitler assumed power. Jantzen
argues that this wave of religious enthusiasm illustrates the way in
which the political-nationalist momentum of National Socialism propelled
a parallel religious-nationalist momentum in many of the Protestant
regional churches. The German Christians, who swept to power in Nauen
and Pirna, led the charge, spurring the churches on to support Hitler’s
national renewal. However, as the influence of the German Christians
waned in the mid-1930s so did the new found interest in the churches.
Frustrated new members abandoned them in droves. In the eleven parishes
in Ravensburg in southern Germany, however, there were no membership
surges in or out of the churches and markedly less excitement about the
National Socialist seizure of power. This can be explained in part
because Protestants were a small minority in the region of Upper Swabia,
where the district of Ravensburg lay. Catholics were the overwhelmingly
majority in Upper Swabia and they tended to support the Catholic Center
Party. In all likelihood the politicization and disruption of church
life in Nauen and Pirna was the rule for most parishes across Germany.

Jantzen’s analysis of pastoral appointments in chapter three is a novel
approach to understanding exactly how parish politics was conducted in
Nazi Germany. In small towns and villages pastors were often more
important than mayors. They baptized, confirmed, married, and buried
their parishioners, educated children, led Bible studies, preached
sermons at weekly services, counseled those in need, chaired parish
meetings, and wrote for and edited parish newsletters. Although the
appointment of a pastor to a particular parish was often a routine
affair, in the Third Reich the process could just as often erupt into a
battle between supporters of the Confessing Church and the German
Christians or between rival factions of the Confessing Church. When a
pastoral position opened–and they opened frequently during the chaotic
years of the Nazi era–parishioners, church patrons, clergy, and
district and regional church authorities all had interests at stake. One
of the many intriguing conclusions that Jantzen reaches is that the
Confessing Church in Nauen was far more adept at getting their clergy
appointed than the German Christians because parishioners and local
church officials, who were quite influential in the appointment process,
were angry about the overt politicization of church life by German
Christians. They believed that Confessing Church pastors were more
likely to be responsible servants of the church and to recognize the
authority of the Bible and the Reformation Confessions. Whereas the
appointment process in Nauen was usually a local affair, in Pirna and
Ravensburg Land Bishops Coch, a German Christian, and Wurm, a
conservative Lutheran in the Confessing Church, centralized control of
the appointment process and appointed pastors whose views were
compatible with those of the bishops.

Although local pastors aligned with the German Christians and Confessing
Church could be fierce opponents in the realm of parish politics, they
diverged very little in their views on Nazi racial policy. Jantzen
writes that, “there is no evidence from the correspondence,
publications, or actions of Protestant clergy in Nauen, Pirna, and
Ravensburg to suggest that they were significantly affected by or
preoccupied with the euthanasia crisis or the “Jewish question” (93).
Most clergymen in the Confessing Church were too preoccupied with
defending the autonomy of the churches from encroachments by the German
Christians and the Nazis to pay much attention to racial policies that
did not directly affect the churches. The anti-Judaic traditions in the
church, the antisemitism of many of the pastors, and the desire to forge
a strong bond between the church and the state all contributed to
pastoral complacency toward, and at times complicity in, the mass
extermination of Jews. There were, of course, churchmen and women who
struggled in vain to convince the church to defend the victims of the
Nazi killing machine, but they were indeed exceptions.

The last three chapters of Jantzen’s monograph examine the course of the
Church Struggle in Nauen, Pirna, and Ravensburg. These chapters are
filled with fascinating sketches of individual pastors, church patrons,
and district superintendents as they try to negotiate their way through
the many trials and tribulations of the Church Struggle. Occasionally
the knowledgeable reader may come across a familiar name but for the
most part the stories recounted by Jantzen depict pastors and
parishioners whose lowly status within the churches did not warrant
their appearance in the more nationally oriented literature of the
field. By reconstructing the subjective experiences of individuals
toiling away in the parishes Jantzen challenges the neat stereotypes of
anti-Nazi Confessing clergy and pro-Nazi German Christians. A much more
nuanced picture emerges, especially of the Confessing Church, that
reminds us of the rich diversity of opinions and experiences in the
Church Struggle and confirms the value of a parish-level approach to
church history.

MDH

2b) Lowell C. Green, Lutherans Against Hitler: The Untold Story (Saint
Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2007).

Lowell C. Green’s study, Lutherans Against Hitler: The Untold Story
(2007), is reminiscent of the hagiographic histories written about the
Confessing Church several decades ago. The difference is that Green
replaces the old heroes of the Church Struggle, Martin Niemoeller, Karl
Barth, and their colleagues from the “destroyed” churches, with a new
group of heroes, Confessional Lutherans and leaders of the “intact”
churches including Paul Althaus, Werner Elert, Hans Meiser, and Hermann
Sasse. Green argues that these churchmen, armed only with their
steadfast loyalty to the Lutheran Confessions, successfully countered
attacks on the confessional integrity of the Lutheran churches by the
German Christians and Nazis, on the one hand, and the Barthians and
supporters of the Prussian Union churches, on the other hand. Repeatedly
Green argues that the political theology of Barth and the “radicals” in
the Dahlem-wing of the Confessing Church provided an opening for
Nazi-backed German Christians to takeover most of the regional churches.
By failing to adhere firmly to the central tenets of the Lutheran
Confessions – the distinction between Law and Gospel, the doctrine of
two kingdoms, the natural theology of the orders of creation – the
Barthians and Dahlemites weakened Lutheran resolve, caused a schism in
the churches, and damaged Protestant resistance to the German Christians
and the Nazi Party. After 1945, says Green, these same radicals grabbed
power, established the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), and blamed
Lutheran Confessionalists for the churches’ complacency in the Third
Reich.

Central to Green’s thesis is his assertion that the merging of Lutheran
and Reformed doctrine and practices, whether at the behest of the German
Christians or the Confessing Church, undermined the ability of the
churches to stand firmly on Lutheran doctrine in opposition to Nazi
church policy. “The Confessional Lutherans,” he writes, “found
themselves faced with a threefold threat to their independence during
the Third Reich: the German Evangelical Church or Reich Church, the
Confessing Church, and the Barmen declaration” (28). Green contends that
the forced merger of Lutherans and Calvinists into the Church of the Old
Prussian Union in 1817 destroyed the Lutheran churches in the Prussian
Union and set a precedent for Hitler’s goal of one united Reich church.
The Barmen declaration is, in Green’s estimation, an egregious example
of the confessional mishmash propagated by Barth and the Confessing
Church. Authored by Barth–a Calvinist and the arch enemy of
Confessional Lutheranism,–the declaration’s most serious offense was
that it sacrificed Lutheran doctrinal integrity for unionism. Green
maintains that the August 1933 Bethel Confession, drafted by the
Lutherans Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hermann Sasse, was a much stronger
statement than the Barmen declaration and that had it been adopted the
churches’ resistance to Hitler would have been more resolute.

While a study of the Confessional Lutherans during the Nazi era is
certainly a welcome addition to the one-sided historiography of the
Church Struggle, Green’s monograph is problematic for three reasons: his
methodology and use of sources, his relentless polemics, and his narrow
focus on the churches’ struggle for autonomy.

As a theologian with expertise in the Reformation period and the
Lutheran Confessions, Green cannot be expected to be familiar with every
book and article in the field of the Church Struggle. However, his
failure to recognize in his bibliography, footnotes, or the pages of his
monograph the extensive and easily accessible scholarship that directly
relates to his topic is perplexing, to say the least. As one might
expect,, much of this unacknowledged scholarship contradicts Green’s
thesis, but to ignore it entirely gives the impression that he does not
believe it is even worthy of mention. A study of Lutheran theology and
Lutheran resistance during the Third Reich should certainly make some
mention of, even if only to refute their theses, the work of Doris
Bergen, Gerhard Besier, John Conway, Robert Ericksen, Richard
Gutteridge, Wolfgang Gerlach, Martin Greschat, Susannah Heschel,
Jochen-Christoph Kaiser, Bjoern Mensing, Kurt Nowak, Eberhard Roehm,
Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz, Joerg Thierfelder, and many others.
Green’s tendency to rely primarily on published collections of
documents, a limited selection of secondary sources, and the archive of
the theological faculty at the University of Erlangen contradicts his
claim that this book is an impartial study of “the untold story” of
Lutherans against Hitler.

Scholars of the Church Struggle, including many of those named above,
have been critical, even harsh, in their evaluation of the actions and
inaction of Confessional Lutherans during the Nazi era. These historians
charged the Confessional Lutherans with theological inflexibility,
ultra-nationalism, antisemitism, and even support for many of Hitler’s
goals. Green states that he felt compelled to answer these derogatory
charges and, in so doing, redeem the reputations of Confessional
Lutherans, some of whom he had studied under at the University of
Erlangen in the 1950s. Indeed, Green succeeds in providing an entirely
different picture–but at a cost. His monograph is so polemical and
one-sided that it undermines his own argument. A case in point is
Green’s treatment of Karl Barth and the Confessing Church. In the
chapter on Theocratic Enthusiasm Green makes the patently absurd and
offensive claim that, “There were uncomfortable similarities between
Hitler and Barth” and then goes on to compare Hitler’s worldview to
Barth’s (236). He also likens the Confessing Church to a totalitarian
movement. To be sure, Barth and the members of the Dahlem-wing of the
Confessing Church should not escape the scrutiny of scholars nor should
their efforts to protect the churches from Nazi and German Christian
encroachments be mocked.

By focusing disproportionately on the struggle for church autonomy in
the Third Reich, particularly the success that Lutheran Bishops
Marahrens, Meiser, and Wurm had in preserving the independence of their
regional churches, Green directs the reader’s attention away from issues
that shine a less favorable light on the Confessional Lutherans. The
unflattering record of Confessional Lutherans, especially Althaus,
Elert, Marahrens, and Meiser on the Jewish question is virtually ignored
by Green. They may have opposed militant antisemitism but their
statements and silences throughout the Nazi period indicate a latent
antisemitism and insensitivity to the Third Reich’s Jewish victims.
Green’s exculpatory analysis of the 1933 Erlangen response to the Aryan
paragraph, the 1934 Ansbach memorandum, and the 1939 Godesberg
declaration is indicative of his allegiance to the leading figures of
Confessional Lutheranism and his unwillingness to acknowledge the
damaging role they played in undermining Protestant resistance to the
German Christians and the Nazi Party.

A balanced study that neither excoriates Confessional Lutherans for
distancing themselves from the Niemoeller-wing of the Confessing Church
nor extols them for their rigid adherence to the principles of Lutheran
Confessionalism is needed now more than ever.

MDH

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May 2008 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

May 2008— Vol. XIV, no. 5

 

Dear Friends,

Contents:

1) DVD review: Theologians under Hitler, Storm Troopers of Christ
2) Book reviews

a) Dramm, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. an introduction to his thought
b) Dramm, Dietrich Bonoeffer: und der Widerstand
c) Anglicanism and Orthodoxy

3) Dissertation Research – Reconciliation efforts in post-1945 Germany
1) Two new hour-long documentary films now available on DVD, and produced by Steve Martin of Vital Visuals Inc of Oak Ridge Tennessee, depict in an excellently scholarly mannner the more regrettable side of the Protestant church in Germany during the Nazi regime. Theologians under Hitler is virtually an illustrated version of the book with the same title written by Robert Ericksen of Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. Ericksen himself introduces the film and is assisted by an expert team of scholars, both German and American. He describes the careers of three of Germany’s most illustrious theologians, Paul Althaus, Emanuel Hirsch and Gerhard Kittel. Photographs from the archives are melded in with the campus scenery, along with commentary on their writings by today’s church historians. These men backed the Nazi cause as the answer to Germany’s political problems in an effort to restore the national self-confidence after the humiliation of the Versailles Treaty. Hitler’s energetic leadership appeared to them. the long-sought-after remedy. At the same time they urged German Protestants to abandon their engrained pietistic distaste for politics and to become relevant to the vibrant national community being forged by the Nazis. These views undoubtedly gave support to the Nazi cause, including its racial antisemitism.

None of these men were to express remorse in the post-war situation or to have changed their views. The commentators naturally deplore this scandalous heresy. They share a presentist view which points out the dangers of theologians providing justifications for nationalist or imperialist aggressions. They likewise warn against the intolerance displayed by these German Christians towards members of other faiths, especially Jews. They call for the lessons of the Church Struggle in Nazi Germany to be learnt by today’s Christians, especially in the United States. Storm Troopers of Christ records an even sadder chapter of the Protestant experience in the Nazi era. Its subject is the betrayal of true Christian values by the so-called “German Christians” and particularly their attempt to root out all Jewish influences and elements from the church. These pro-Nazi forces, led by their Reich Bishop Ludwig Mueller and by such theologians as Walter Grundmann, argued that only a Germanized Christianity could attract their fellow Germans back to the churches, and restore the church’s credibility by following Hitler’s political lead against the pernicious effects of Jewry. Church archives were therefore diligently searched to discover long-lost Jewish ancestors and to treat these Jewish-Christians as second class, expel them from leadership roles, or even turn them over to the Gestapo. Only a few brave souls stood out against this heretical tendency. Among them was Pastor Martin Niemöller who early on recognized the centrality of the issue of baptism. If the church capitulated to Nazi demands and excluded baptized Jews, then the Gospel’s validity would be destroyed. But the majority of German Protestants placed their national loyalties above sympathy with their fellow Christians of Jewish origins. The film’s commentators are undertandably indignant at this lamentable capitulation to Nazi pressures, which they rightly see as a deplorable breach of faith and a warning to others. JSC

2a) Sabine Dramm. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, An introduction to his thought. Peabury, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers 2007. 255 pp. ISBN-13: 978-1-56563-762-7.

In 2001, Sabine Dramm published this book in German, which has now appeared in English in a most attractive translation, put out unchanged by a small publisher in Massachusetts. This forms a prequel to her second book reviewed below by Victoria Barnett, which deals more specifically with Bonhoeffer’s role in the German resistance.

The present volume is indeed an introduction to Bonhoeffer’s ideas, and the story of his life is only tangentially referred to. But Dramm acknowledges that the exceptional features of his career were due more to his experiences in Nazi Germany than to the development of his thought. However, she provides an excellent summary of his theological progress, beginning with the bases of his Christian creed, and then giving short summaries of his writings, She follows, in the main, the interpretations given by Bonhoeffer’s premier biographer, Eberhard Bethge. But in the forty years since that biography appeared, times have moved on. Dramm shares today’s majority view, which finds it increasingly difficult to understand why so many German Protestants supported Nazism. So Bonhoeffer’s refusal to pay allegiance to that system of terror no longer has to be justified. On the other hand she is also aware that, as we enter the twenty-first century, there is a danger that Bonhoeffer and his theology may be written off as passé, or no longer relevant. But her succinct introduction should help to off-set such considerations. It will be of value especially to theological students or those new to Bonhoeffer. One problem is that, where she cites Bonhoeffer’s writings, the references are taken from the 17 volumes of the German edition of Bonhoeffer’s complete works. Not all of these have yet been translated into English, while the complete German set is not readily available abroad. But her translator has done such a good job that the original sense is neatly captured. So too the footnotes are nicely translated but include no references to any of the numerous English-speaking commentators, who are equally excluded from the bibliography. Since the book is intended to be sold to English readers, this omission is curious. JSC

b) V-Mann Gottes und der Abwehr? Dietrich Bonhoeffer und der Widerstand. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2005. (This review appeared first in the Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 2007/2 and is reprinted by kind pemission of the author.)

Bonhoeffer’s path into the resistance tends to be viewed either as the logical culmination of his theological course through the Kirchenkampf or as a politically grounded decision that contradicted his early theology. At least some of those who studied under him in the early 1930s and the Finkenwalde period didn’t know what to make of Bonhoeffer’s resistance activities or his prison writings. In the context of the Kirchenkampf, of course, Bonhoeffer’s resistance stands in stark contrast to most of his Protestant colleagues, and is read back into his early writings and actions, giving them a greater political clarity and significance than they may have actually had. In the popular literature, as well as most films on Bonhoeffer, his resistance provides the dramatic frame that has led all too often to a kind of mythology that portrays him as a central figure in the German resistance. As Dramm notes, the role of Bonhoeffer’s friend and biographer Eberhard Bethge has decisively shaped our understanding of Bonhoeffer the resistance figure, giving Bonhoeffer a centrality in this story (particularly in the portrayals of ecumenical and resistance circles) that is not always borne out by the historical literature. In his later writings and lectures, Bethge was actually more circumspect about Bonhoeffer’s role.

In this book Sabine Dramm explores “the story behind the story”: what did Bonhoeffer actually do in the resistance, and what does this mean for our understanding of Bonhoeffer, theologically and historically? Dramm has read and incorporated most of the pertinent literature in the field, drawing both on Bonhoeffer’s own writings from the 17-volume Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke and on newer research, including the works by Klemens von Klemperer, Marikje Smid, Christine-Ruth Müller, and Winfried Meyer, as well as earlier publications by Bonhoeffer’s contemporaries, such as Jørgen Glenthøj and Josef Müller. Much of the book is simply a recapitulation of the relevant material from these various sources – a useful and very readable synopsis of Bonhoeffer’s resistance activities.

The concluding chapter, in which Dramm identifies ten main issues that deserve further study and research, is actually the strongest section of the book, and one wishes that she had focused more on developing each of these points throughout the narrative. Here, Dramm’s conclusions offer some provocative but very legitimate points for further discussion. There may be some truth to her conclusion that Bonhoeffer’s entry into the resistance was essentially a ploy developed by Hans von Dohnanyi to keep his brother-in-law out of military service, yet surely the central involvement of other family members in the conspiracy (not just Dohnanyi, but Bonhoeffer’s brother Klaus and his other brother-in-law Rüdiger Schleicher), was also a factor. This, as well as Bonhoeffer’s own wartime writings, would suggest a more deliberate decision to participate in the conspiracy. Regarding his resistance activities, Dramm correctly notes that while Bonhoeffer was indeed involved in the “Operation 7” rescue of 14 “non-Aryans” to Switzerland, his actual role was peripheral. The July 20 resistance circles in which he moved were indeed largely “national conservative” and tend to be treated more critically by historians of the period than by the theologically-trained Bonhoeffer scholars, and I would also concur with her that these conservative tendencies inform many of the passages in Bonhoeffer’s Ethics. Given this latter fact, Dramm is intrigued by the way in which his theological legacy has shaped progressive and liberation movements in the Christian world. As she notes, the political consequences drawn by the Protestant left after 1945 differ considerably from the worldview of many of Bonhoeffer’s fellow resisters. Dramm also notes the critique by Holocaust scholars of Bonhoeffer’s theological writings on the Jews and argues that here, too, the significance of his resistance activity deserves a more critical and contextual analysis.

Dramm concludes that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was not “the theologian of the resistance” but a “theologian in resistance” – that his importance ultimately rests more in what he said (and wrote) throughout the resistance years, and less in what he actually did. I would concur, even as I would argue that this is precisely what opens the way for a reading of Bonhoeffer’s texts from that era as a critique, not affirmation, of the “national conservative” circles in which he moved. His role in the actual resistance may have been minor, and his colleagues in that resistance may have been nationalists and monarchists. But his theological reflections on the challenges that confronted Christians under Nazism, including his reflections on the role of the Church in an ideological dictatorship and the consequences this has for the Church’s very identity, are powerful reminders to all Christians of the dangers of an alliance between Christianity, state authority, and ideology. As a “theologian in resistance”, Bonhoeffer ended his life imprisoned and pondering the very viability of religious faith in an ideological age.

There are a number of interesting comments and insights throughout this work; Dramm is an observant reader of Bonhoeffer and the historical literature, and in addition to her closing chapter, she offers good suggestions for deeper analysis or new avenues to pursue in the endnotes. Given her earlier comparative study of Camus and Bonhoeffer (1998), it would have been interesting had she incorporated some of that analysis or pondered Bonhoeffer’s thought in the larger context of European intellectual resistance. She suggests, but offers no real analysis of the larger issues: how his resistance affected his theology, how this history fits in (or doesn’t) in German Protestantism. Another aspect would be to ponder the compromises and delays made by the July 20 resistance – by all accounts a source of real anguish to Hans von Dohnanyi – and what influence this had upon Bonhoeffer’s prison writings as well as the Ethics.

This is a good synopsis of Bonhoeffer’s role in the resistance, however, and a very readable book for both general audiences and students interested in learning the details of this history – and Dramm’s concluding questions are certainly worthy of further study and examination.

Victoria Barnett, Washington, D.C.

c) Anglicanism and Orthodoxy – an on-again, off-again relationship

(The following review doesn’t really fall within the time frame of the majority of our contributions. But I thought it was so delightful that I wanted to share it with you all. JSC)

When I was a student at Cambridge, nearly sixty years ago, I joined a group known as the Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius, which sought to know more about the affairs, and particularly about the spirituality, of the Orthodox Churches in eastern Europe. Unfortunately, since this was the height of the Cold War, visits to Russia were almost impossible. Some of us went on pilgrimages to Greece, but unfortunately I never got the chance to go to Mount Athos, that spectacular rocky peninsular in the northern Aegean Sea, on whose crags are built a bevy of Orthodox monasteries, visitable only by men, which pride themselves as being the spiritual power houses for the whole Orthodox communion. But the chaplain of my college, St. John’s. Henry Hill, who was a young Canadian, was greatly impressed. After he returned to Canada, he subsequently became the Bishop of Ontario, and was then invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury to become the Commissary for the whole Anglican Communion in its relations to the Orthodox Churches. So he spent all of his holidays visiting eastern Europe, especially Roumania, where he got to know many of the Orthodox hierarchs and visited the wonderfully decorated monasteries in the northern province of Moldavia, which are some of the most precious relics of Orthodoxy’s great days.

At the time, I didn’t realize that the links between Anglicanism and Orthodoxy go back a long way – four hundred years or so! But this fascinating relationship is the subject of a new book, which is the record of a conference held a few years back in Oxford, and now edited by the former chaplain of Worcester College. The title is Anglicanism and Orthodoxy 300 years after the “Greek College” in Oxford (Peter Lang 2006). The high point of these essays is the story of the establishment of a College for Greek Orthodox students in Oxford. This experiment enjoyed only a brief existence from 1699 to 1705, but was an example of how lively and inclusive ecumenical relations were three hundred years ago. Though long forgotten, even in Oxford, the home of lost causes, this incident has now earned a learned Festschrift which will undoubtedly enrich our understanding of how these two faithful communities can and should relate to each other.

At the end of the sixteenth century, the first generation of Anglican theologians, having just rejected the supremacy of the Pope, were very conscious of the example of the Orthodox churches which had done the same five centuries earlier. Here, they thought, were allies who could be useful in giving them international support against the papal pretensions of Rome. Furthermore they regarded the Orthodox as faithful witnesses to ancient tradition. The new Church of England was eager to show that it adhered to the doctrines of the early church. Its theologians admired the Greek fathers and the Greek liturgy, and had maintained the ancient practice of the apostolic succession for its bishops. This affinity was all the more attractive in the first years of the reign of King James I, when he authorized the translation of the whole Bible into English. The English scholars naturally looked for help from their counterparts who still spoke Greek, the very language in which the New Testament had been written so long ago. Despite the distances of land and sea, and the significant differences of language, culture and religious traditions which separated the Orthodox Church in the east from the reformed Church of England in the west, nevertheless the two communions sought each other out.

In 1615 a letter was received by the Archbishop of Canterbury from the Patriarch of Alexandria, Cyril Lukaris, asking for support to send young Orthodox priests to take advantage of the theological resources of England as part of their training. Lukaris himself was a native of Crete, had studied in Venice and Padua, and had even journeyed to Poland where the Orthodox community was being vigorously attacked by the zealous proselytizing efforts of the Jesuits. He knew very well that the poorly educated Orthodox clergy were at an immense disadvantage when confronted by skilled Jesuits, who had even penetrated as far as Constantinople itself.

Archbishop Abbott was a staunch opponent of Roman Catholicism, as was the monarch King James, though his interest was more for the promotion of reunion among the churches. Both looked favorably on this initiative, and in 1617 the first such scholar. Metrophanes Kritopoulos arrived from Mount Athos and took up residence in Balliol College. He stayed for five years, and then went to London to collect books before setting off overland to his homeland in 1624. It was another twenty years before he was followed by Nathaniel Konopios, also chosen by Lukaris, who had now become Patriarch of Constantinople. Konopios was sponsored by both King Charles I and by the new Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud.

Unfortunately political events both in Turkey and in England interrupted this scheme. In 1638 Patriarch Lukaris was deposed and subsequently executed by the Ottoman Sultan, while Konopios’ stay in Balliol College was cut short by the English Civil War. Nevertheless both Kritopoulos and Konopios wound up in conspicuous ecclesiastical positions, the former as Patriarch of Alexandria and the latter as metropolitan of Smyrna. However, the distressed condition of Europe during the disastrous Thirty Years War, and of England when the monarchy was overthrown and the king executed, unsettled relations with the Orthodox communities for several decades.

However, in the late 1660s and 1670s several scholars from Oxford and Cambridge served as chaplains to the Levant Company, or to the British envoy to the Sublime Porte in Constantinople. This gave them the opportunity to see at first hand the Orthodox community, two centuries after the catastrophic fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, as well as to note the depredations and persecutions suffered at the hands of the Muslim rulers. Their reports and books published after their return kept the subject alive.

Not until after the deposition of King James II in 1688 was the idea of bringing young Orthodox theologians to England raised again. In 1692, a new advocate in Oxford took up the task of promoting this idea. Dr. Benjamin Woodroffe, a Canon of Christ Church, was elected Principal of Gloucester Hall, one of the newer foundations on the edge of the city. Unfortunately, due to the recent political turmoil, Gloucester Hall was largely a ruin and had only a few students in attendance. But Woodroffe, who was clearly an Oxford “character”, had other ideas. Shortly after he was elected, he went to London and secured an interview with the directors of the Levant Company. He must have been persuasive, since they agreed to provide free transport in their ships from the eastern Mediterranean for up to twenty students who should be brought to London, where they would be met by Dr. Woodroffe and escorted to Oxford. It is not clear just who was going to support them while in England. And in any case, various factors led to delays. Not until February 1699 did the first group of five students arrive to be part of what was now to be known at the Greek College.

Woodroffe gave as much publicity as he could to this innovation, and indeed then proceeded to a further striking endeavour in building up good relations with the Orthodox Church. Together with Edward Stephens, another champion of the reunion of the churches, he persuaded the Oxford University authorities to invite a distinguished Greek churchman, the Archbishop of Philippopolis, to come to Oxford. Not only that, but he obtained their support to offer the Archbishop the honorary degree of D.D. – a very seldom honor. The day of conferment of this degree in September 1701 was a great day for Woodroffe. He delivered a speech of welcome in Greek – to the astonishment of his colleagues – and proudly showed his guests around the newly refurbished Gloucester Hall, introducing them to his prize Greek students. The next year, 1702, Queen Anne herself came to Oxford on her way from Windsor to Bath, and was received with all due honors. Included with the numerous addresses was an ode in Greek hexameters spoken by the senior Greek student, Simon Homerus. It was all very impressive.

Woodroffe was boastful of his students’ progress. Writing in 1703 to Lord Paget, one of his patrons, he reported that they had not only picked up ancient Greek and Latin but were now able to speak English as if they were natives, “even disputing with us in Divinity in the Chappel”. Unfortunately, however, there were dissentions. Three of the students were lured away from Oxford by emissaries from the Roman Church, who promised them a still better education if they converted. They were passed on to Brussels and later were put on their way to Rome. However, two now came to regret their haste, and sought to return to Gloucester Hall. Woodroffe forgave them but they appear to have been sent home to Smyrna later in the year. And then the three new students who arrived with Lord Paget began to complain that their studies were too scrappy, and took themselves off to Halle in east Germany where they were offered much better conditions of accommodation and study by the Saxon Protestants. This defection effectively killed off the Greek College in Oxford, and the Levant Company refused to accept any more students. Woodroffe now found himself in financial difficulties, which were eventually to land him for a time in the Fleet prison – a singularly unpropitious fate for such a flamboyant clergyman. He died in 1711.

Despite this setback, interest in the Orthodox Churches continued among some Anglicans, particularly those known as the Non-Jurors, who refused to swear allegiance to the new monarchs after 1689, William and Mary, on the grounds that they had already taken an oath to serve King James II and his heirs. Most of them were deprived of their offices and positions, so now looked elsewhere for support, in particular from the eastern Orthodox patriarchs. Their abhorrence of the Roman pretensions led them to look back to the roots of the Church in Britain which had been established even before the departure of the Roman legions in the fourth century. They revered the Christian traditions derived from the ancient Church in Jerusalem, and the faith delivered by the Apostles and confirmed by the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople. On the other hand, there were still doctrinal differences, between the Church of England and Orthodoxy, particularly over the doctrine of transubstantiation and the worship of ikons. And on these points, the Orthodox leaders refused to make any concessions, or to agree that the goal of a full and perfect union required mutual accommodations. But when the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Wake, heard about these negotiations in 1724, he wrote off to the Patriarch of Jerusalem denouncing these Non-Jurors as schismatics and in no way representative of the Church of England. That put an end to the correspondence for a good many years.

One interesting legacy of the Non-Jurors, which shows their desire to link their worship to the days of the early church fathers – a tradition shared by the Orthodox – was the Liturgy of St James, printed in full as an appendix in Doll’s book. This was entitled: “An Office for the Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist being the ancient liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem”, and was researched and used by a bishop of the Scottish Episcopal Church in the middle of the eighteenth century. The patristic spirituality of the Anglicanism of the day is profoundly present. The reordering of the Eucharistic liturgy particularly emphasizes the spirit of adoration of the triune God, thanksgiving for the gifts of the whole created order, and the joining together of heaven and earth, of time and eternity. It makes for a powerfully effective and accessible rite.

In the twentieth century, the Orthodox Churches bore the brunt of the violent onslaught of the Communists, first in Russia after 1917, and then, after 1945, in Roumania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. In Constantinople, the new secular rulers of Turkey after 1922 proved to be somewhat more tolerant than the Sultans, but the great days of the Byzantine Church could not be restored. The great Church of the Hagia Sophia having been a mosque for four centuries, is now a museum. In Jerusalem, the Orthodox patriarchate became embroiled in the bitter conflicts between Arab and Jew. Not until the overthrow of the Soviet Empire in 1989 did a new era begin. The Russian Orthodox Church, buried for more than seventy years under the scorched earth of Marxist domination, now started to put forth shoots of new growth. In the past twenty years, thousands of churches have been restored or rebuilt, the seminaries are attracting younger recruits, and the artistic revival in the liturgies and icon-painting has been notable. Even in remote Macedonia, monastic life has experienced a remarkable rebirth, witnessing to the priority given to such spiritual endeavors At the same time, the church has begun to undertake the task of coming to terms with the darker side of its past, through the unfortunate but enforced collaboration and even complicity with the former dictators. All these developments have stimulated the interest of numerous Anglicans who seek to share their heritage and insights with these long-estranged fellow Christians. The basis is now once more established for a strengthening of Anglican-Orthodox relations, which we hope will bear fruit in the years to come.

John Conway

3) Dissertation Research: Steven Schroeder, Fraser Valley College, Abbotsford, British Columbia
(Steven Schroeder successfully defended this thesis at Notre Dame University, Indiana, last February, under the direction of Professor Doris Bergen. Congratulations, Steven!)

Reconciliation in Occupied Germany: 1944-1954

This dissertation examines how, from 1944 to 1954, a wide variety of individuals and groups in all four occupation zones began the processes of reconciliation between Germans and their wartime enemies. Reconciliation is defined as the process of establishing peaceful — or at least non-hostile — relations between former enemies. This dissertation argues that reconciliation was encouraged through interactions between the Allies and Germans from the outset of the occupation of Germany and that non-government organizations (NGOs) were able to foster reconciliation in ways that governments and military personnel did not.

After the collapse of the Third Reich, most Germans were unwilling to engage critically with the recent past. Still, the conditions of Allied occupation and demands of the international community led Germans to acknowledge, however reluctantly, the crimes of the Nazi era. In all parts of occupied Germany, German and international NGOs — aided by a disparate array of individuals and groups — played a key role in shaping public memory of the past. In western Germany, Germans engaged in discussions and negotiations that acknowledged Nazi crimes and recognized and compensated victims of Nazism. Discourses created in eastern Germany also acknowledged Nazi crimes but did not admit that Germans in the Soviet zone/GDR bore any responsibility for them. Instead, they categorized and ranked victims according to Stalinist ideology and Soviet conventions, a method that left tens of thousands of victims, including thousands of Jews, without official recognition or compensation. In general, the motives of people involved in initiating dialogue between former enemies and between perpetrators and their victims mattered less than actions and their repercussions.

This NGO diplomacy achieved numerous positive results for both the short and long-term stability of Europe — most notably in Franco-German and Christian-Jewish reconciliation — and occurred when Germans had no means of conventional diplomacy. Indeed, the combination of early domestic and international efforts that produced these discourses of victimhood that contributed to recognition and compensation of victims of Nazism also served German reconstruction, and assisted German integration internationally. In approaching this little-explored realm of the history of occupied Germany, this project sheds new light on the understanding of postwar German political developments, both democratization and Stalinization, and offers insights into the significant roles that NGOs can have in post-conflict reconstruction.

Most surprising, perhaps, is the finding that the achievements of NGO diplomacy in postwar Germany did not rely on altruism or lofty ideas. Instead, idealism was only one part of a combination of outside pressure, German self-interest, and the participation of former victims that produced lasting results.

In examining the many dimensions of reconciliation, numerous standpoints must be considered. A wide variety of sources were consulted to address the central questions posed in this project, including the records of Allied personnel, German and non-German relief workers and other NGO operatives, German and international religious and political figures, and victims of Nazism, both within Germany and abroad. The primary material that informs this dissertation is found in numerous archives and private holdings in the United States, and Canada. The Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archives) in Koblenz was consulted for the records of the Allied Control Authority, the files of the western Allies, and the files of German administrative bodies and governmental ministries. The Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv (Archives of the Parties and Mass Organizations of the German Democratic Republic) in Berlin provided the basis for research on corresponding groups in the Soviet zone and the GDR.

The focus on NGOs in this dissertation necessitated vital research on many groups, whose records are scattered throughout Germany and Switzerland, including the records of: the Catholic Church Aid Society; the Societies of Christian-Jewish Cooperation; the Pax Christi group; and the Moral Re-Armament Group. In Berlin, research was conducted at the Archiv des Diakonischen Werkes der EKD (Protestant Relief Work archives), and the Evangelisches Zentralarchiv (Evangelical Central Archives), which holds the files of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze’s personal papers, and those of numerous Protestant NGOs. Together, these resources informed the details regarding the personnel, vision, and practice of the NGOs that were most effective in reconciliatory work in occupied western Germany.

The records of the NGOs that were most active in numerous aspects of reconciliation in the Soviet zone — the Victims of Fascism group, the Association of Victims of Nazism (VVN), and the Society of German-Soviet Friendship — are all located in the Federal Archives in Berlin. These files revealed the control that both the Soviet Administration and the eastern German governmental bodies had on NGOs, and correspondence between the groups shows the priorities and goals of each. Other useful resources consulted for this project include: the Zentralarchiv zur Erforschung der Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland (Central Archives for Research on the History of Jews in Germany) in Heidelberg; the Centrum Judaicum (Central Jewish Archives) in Berlin; the Archives of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana; and the John Conway Collection located in the John Richard Allison Library (Regent College) in Vancouver, Canada, which holds a wide variety of primary documents on the German churches.

Steven Schroeder, History Department, University College of the Fraser Valley, Canada
steven.schroeder@ucfv.ca

The June issue of this Newsletter will be edited by Matthew Hockenos, Skidmore College, New York. I am most grateful for his being willing to take this responsibility while I am on pilgrimage to the Middle East.

With very best wishes
John Conway

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April 2008 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

April 2008— Vol. XIV, no. 4

 

Dear Friends,

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) R.Boyd, The Witness of the Student Christian Movement
b) Austin, China’s Millions: The China Inland Mission and Late Qing Society, 1832­1905
c) Zumholz, Volksfrömmigkeit und katholische Milieu

2) Journal article: J. Steele, Germany’s search for home truths

1a) Robin Boyd, The Witness of the Student Christian Movement. Church ahead of the Church, London: SPCK 2007 ISBN 13-978-0-281-05877-8

When I was a student at Cambridge University nearly sixty years ago, two Christian organizations were active in the colleges, the Student Christian Movement and the Christian Union or InterVarsity Fellowship. Both sought to present the claims of Christ to the student body in most of the universities in the country in a friendly but often zealous rivalry. Both organized very active programmes of weekly meetings, prayer and discussion groups, reading parties in the vacations and summer work camps. The SCM laid its stress on the search for Christian unity, brought together students from different church traditions, and was concerned to bring a Christian witness to the wider political and social problems of the day. The Christian Unions concentrated more on the personal life of each individual student, seeking to enhance his or her knowledge of and commitment to Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Together they attempted to reach as many students as possible and to a large part succeeded.

Robin Boyd, who himself served as an SCM staff member in the 1950s and later was a long-term minister in Australia and Ireland, has written a highly informative and well researched survey of the last hundred years of SCM life. He begins by showing that the SCM and the Christian Union were both products of the evangelical impetus of the late 19th century, often led by charismatic American preachers, who particularly turned to the universities for recruits for the mission field. The Student Volunteer Movement sent hundreds of young men and women out to the mission field, especially China. An outstanding figure of the time was John R. Mott, a gifted YMCA organizer, who made use of the popular slogan “The evangelization of the world in this generation”. Thanks to his efforts, branches were set up to promote this endeavour in many European universities,.and in 1895 they came together to form the World Student Christian Federation. Mott and his followers recognized that mission work would succeed much better if the churches co-operated with each other, as was acknowledged at the famous 1910 Edinburgh Missionary Conference. From then on such ecumenical growing together became a high priority for the SCMs in many countries, building bridges across the various Protestant denominations, and later on with Orthodox communities. At the same time, a similar commitment emerged to overcome the barriers of race and gender. The same openness was found in the SCM’s tackling of theological exploration, especially biblical criticism. On this latter point, the split occurred with the IVF.

By mid-century, Boyd shows, the SCM had a commendable record of involving students in prayer, study, evangelism, ecumenical engagement and a search for social justice. Its members had a distinctively liberal mind-set, despite the horrors perpetrated in Europe by the Nazis or even the shock of the atomic bomb. Boyd describes the twenty years after 1945 as the SCM’s “golden age” Large student conferences were organized with prominent church leaders on hand. Theological debate flourished, assisted by the publications of the SCM Press in London. The students’ horizons were expanded world-wide by visits from representatives of the SCMs in newly-independent countries, such as D. T. Niles of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Philip Potter from the West Indies, or Bishop Ting of China. These men and women were to add much to the European-based membership of the World Student Christian Federation, and indeed were soon to assume leadership positions in the WSCF and after its inauguration in 1948 in the World Council of Churches. SCM graduates came to be the core group in such endeavours, and Boyd skillfully weaves in their linking stories in the development of these organizations.

As might be expected, the idealism of youth sought improvements in church affairs, were impatient of inherited bureaucracies, and actively sought for new opportunities for Christian witness. They sought to be the “Church ahead of the Church”. They united their faith and their university studies in a compelling and productive mixture. Many went on to hold leading positions in their own denominations, or as university teachers, and brought the optimistic if critical SCM ethos to their later careers.

But at the end of the 1960s, the whole system fell apart. The story of the storm which swept over the SCM’s student ministry makes for sad reading. Boyd clearly laments it. Basically he says there was a sociological or demographic change. Students no longer wanted to accept the authority of their predecessors, or of the churches as institutions. Instead a single-focused attention to political causes led to the abandonment of most of the SCM’s traditional fare. It became a protest not a productive movement. In Britain, the number of branches declined rapidly. The London headquarters were sold, and its surviving staff set up an agricultural community far from the cities or the universities. The emphasis on the prophetic witness to a new world of social justice and peace was no doubt well-meaning, but the move away from the SCM’s carefully-built traditions and structures meant that its effectiveness as a national organization was crippled. For many in the vanguard, the churches were no longer seen as welcome sponsors and friends, but as discredited conservatives to be held at bay. If there was bible study, it was only from the perspective of the poor. Much of the discussion took place in a Marxist framework.

These developments coincided with a sharp decline in support for all main-line Protestant churches in Britain. The reasons for this are still being explored. (Callum Brown’s theories have not met with universal acceptance). The increasing secularization of society was notable. Christian witness at the universities was markedly diminished, and increasingly met with a hostile, or at least a sceptical response. On many campuses the SCM disappeared. All of this Boyd regrets. In his view the situation can best be described in terms of deprivation. “Whole generations of students were deprived of the kind of lively, inquiring, concerned, worshipping Christian community which had been so influential in the lives of their parents and grandparents, and which had contributed so much to the life of the church. At a crucial point in their lives, students were deprived of the excitement and challenge of belonging to a student movement which was also a movement consciously dedicated to wrestling with the Christian faith and to changing the world to the glory of God” (p.129)

If such a view sounds idealized, it nevertheless accurately represented the feelings of many SCMers in the “golden age”. Boyd takes some comfort that this kind of SCM spirit has carried on in the lives of its alumni, many of whom have contributed so much to the work of world-wide organizations such as the World Council of Churches. In more recent years, he sees some signs of hope that the dangers of unilateral and extreme politicized positions on single issues have been learnt. And he quotes with approval the description by a senior British friend of the movement of what the SCM tradition has always sought to do:

to have, as its central thrust, the purpose of testing out the truth of Jesus Christ and of his calling;
therefore to give much attention to careful Bible study;

therefore too to know the community of Christians called to mission-in-unity, patiently being open to all religious heritages and all cultural backgrounds in order to discover and communicate the catholic and ecumenical identity of Christ;

to insist upon the lay leadership of students and teachers, with chaplains and other ecclesiastics at best serving and provoking others to play a larger part;

to assist on the appropriate intellectual calibre for Christian discipleship in higher education;

to be concerned for adventurous thinking and acting, never content with the status quo but always experimenting beyond;
yet to cultivate not least by student leadership a self-criticism, indeed a sense of humour, that stops anyone taking himself too seriously.

Such a goal may seem far off at the present time. Yet, a hundred years ago, so was John R. Mott’s aim to evangelize the world in one generation. It is clearly Boyd’s wish that Christians should all be one in a common desire to make the saving grace of Jesus Christ relevant again to the students of the twenty-first century.
JSC

1b) Alvyn Austin, China’s Millions: The China Inland Mission and Late Qing Society, 1832­1905. Studies in the History of Christian Missions series. Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007. xxxi + 506 pages.

This review appeared first in Church History, December 2007, and is reprinted by kind permission of the author.

The history of Christian missions in China remains one of the most intriguing and fertile areas of investigation in the study of modern Sino-Western cultural and political relations. Western missionaries in China played a crucially important role in setting the tone and influencing the course of China’s contacts with America and Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition, the experience of missionaries in China contributed significantly to movements and ideas, disputes and controversies, within the worldwide Christian community itself. In China’s Millions, Alvyn Austin employs his considerable experience as a historian to present a comprehensive overview of the origins and evolution of the China Inland Mission, describing the impact of its devout representatives on some of the most important historical developments and religious debates of the era. Drawing extensively upon the broad range of materials in the CIM archives, contemporary newspapers and missionary journals, and the biographies and historical accounts of both early missionary writers and modern scholars, Austin traces the growth of the CIM from the time of its precarious origins in the mid-nineteenth century to its emergence as one of the largest and most influential missionary organizations in China.

Embellishing his narrative with the allegorical themes of John Bunyan’s Christian classic The Pilgrim’s Progress, Austin focuses his study on the personalities that contributed to shaping the CIM in the challenging context of one of the world’s most difficult fields of missionary endeavor. The most important, and perhaps most enigmatic, of these personalities was Hudson Taylor (1832­1905), the founder and undisputed leader of the CIM throughout the first half-century of its existence. Inspired by the heroic, and at times controversial, example of the renowned Prussian missionary Karl Gützlaff (1803­1851), Taylor first ventured to China in 1854, where he struggled to acquire familiarity with the Chinese language and wandered about in Chinese dress in an effort to meld with the population and win the hearts and minds of the Chinese to his fundamentalist version of Christianity. Returning to England in 1860, he acquired a network of supporters who shared his enthusiasm for converting China’s millions, and in 1865, following a “Heavenly Vision” that lent greater spiritual urgency to his cause, he established the China Inland Mission. The CIM was established as a non-sectarian missionary organization specifically dedicated to extending the reach of missionary enterprise in China to regions far beyond the safe and familiar confines of the newly opened treaty ports. Impelled by the pre-millenialist conviction and evangelical fervor that enlivened much of the Christian world in the mid-nineteenth century, representatives of the CIM withstood considerable personal deprivation following Taylor’s directive to live and dress like the Chinese and use their closeness to the people to establish self-propagating communities of Chinese converts.

Naturally, much of Austin’s narrative focuses on the life of Hudson Taylor and the various challenges and setbacks that he encountered in his effort to transform the CIM into one of the most prominent international missionary organizations. Particular attention is directed towards understanding Taylor’s fundamentalist theological predispositions, aspects of which were reflected in his authoritarian style of leadership. The author is not, however, unsympathetic to Taylor’s exceptional insights into the missionary enterprise and presents a relatively balanced appraisal of both his strengths and weaknesses in confronting the various obstacles he encountered in promoting his unique missionary strategy. But Taylor is by no means the only individual associated with the CIM that Austin examines in some detail. Indeed, the chief characteristic of his narrative is the elaborate attention he pays to the many groups and individuals that either contributed to, challenged, or undermined the religious philosophy and objectives of the CIM. There is an abundance of fascinating anecdotal material gleaned from a broad range of archival and published sources that tell of the self-sacrificing devotion, exceptional fortitude, and at times freakish and disruptive behavior of the organization’s missionary workers, leaders, and financiers. This includes several important Chinese converts, such as the indefatigable Pastor Hsi, who assumed a key role in the activities of the CIM as it expanded its work into Shanxi Province in northern China. The missionaries of this region suffered disproportionately during the Boxer Rebellion, and Austin’s description of the circumstances surrounding this tragedy sheds considerable new light on this important incident in the history of modern China.

While others have undertaken to describe the history of the China Inland Mission and its eccentric founder, for the most part they have been either loyal family members or enthusiastic supporters of Christian missions that have accentuated the organization’s positive achievements and overlooked the more embarrassing or unsavory aspects of its work. China’s Millions strives to be more circumspect, and in this sense presents a more revealing and objective picture of its past. But Austin’s study still cannot be regarded completely as the work of an outsider, for he addresses his subject within the context of a Christian worldview and its attendant concerns. He does not cite any non-Christian Chinese sources in his work, and although his title suggests differently, there is very little of the perspective of Qing society in his presentation. In fact, he chooses not to challenge the fundamental religious premises of Christian missionary activity, thereby narrowing the range of insights that might be revealed on the basis of a more world-historical perspective. Nevertheless, this study represents the most expertly researched and pleasingly narrated investigation of this extremely important missionary organization and its workers published to date. It therefore deserves a prominent place on the shelf of all who wish to further their knowledge of the intriguing historical role of Christian missionaries in China.

Michael C. Lazich, Buffalo State College

1c) Maria Anna Zumholz, Volksfrömmigkeit und Katholisches Milieu: Marienerscheinungen in Heede, 1937-1940, im Spannungsfeld von Volksfrömmigkeit, nationalsozialistischem Regime und kirchlicher Hierarchie. [Schriften des Instituts für Geschichte und Historische Landesforschung, Vol. 12.] Cloppenburg: Verlag und Druckerei Runge. 2004. Pp. 745.

This review appeared first in the Catholic Historiccal Review, October 2007, and is reprinted by kind permission of the author.

In this interesting study, a slightly revised dissertation, Maria Anna Zumholz analyzes a series of Marian apparitions which occurred in Heede, a small village in the remote northwestern German Emsland region. She uses her analysis to offer a nuanced picture of the interplay between popular piety, Catholic milieu, ecclesiastical authority, and national socialist repression.

In a two-hundred page introduction, Zumholz provides a detailed history of the Emsland and its predominantly Catholic population. The Emsland changed hands repeatedly in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, always between states with Protestant rulers. Repression of their faith, combined with government neglect of this poor rural region, led the Emsländer to form a high level of suspicion of any state authority.

Zumholz argues that this population was particularly prone to beliefs in supernatural occurrences and in special gifts of certain individuals. The author also provides a thorough review of Marian apparitions in Germany and elsewhere in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. She points out that, in contrast to circumstances in other countries, no Marian apparition in Germany received ecclesiastical approbation. Zumholz believes German bishops were not only “Germanically thorough” and strict in their review of these events, but they also feared the condescension of the protestant majority, which considered Marian devotion in general and apparitions in particular to be proof of Catholic backwardness. In this context, Zumholz points to David Blackbourn’s study of the supposed apparitions at Marpingen, events which German bishops remembered only all too well.

The Marian apparition in Heede occurred over the course of three years in a village cemetery. Four teen-aged girls claimed to have seen the Mother of God appearing between two trees. They continued seeing the image, although not on a regular basis. The girls claimed to have spoken with the image, whose presence nobody else, even those present, could perceive. While the local priest soon supported the young women in their claims, the Bishop of Osnabrück as well as state authorities of the Third Reich were alarmed by the claims and even collaborated in banning pilgrimages to the cemetery. The bishop’s decrees and the draconian measures taken by the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst (the intelligence branch of the SS), however, failed to stop people, even those traveling considerable distances, from coming to Heede.

Zumholz uses these events to engage current debates about the formation and strength of both popular piety and the Catholic milieu. She argues convincingly that, at least in the Emsland, the milieu was deeply rooted in the community and that it had originated among the laity. She thus rejects the arguments of Olaf Blaschke and others who argue that the Church hierarchy created the milieu as an instrument of social control or even a way of resisting modernity. Similarly, Zumholz shows that while the Church encouraged Marian devotions specifically and expressions of popular piety generally, this particular expression grew in defiance of the bishop’s explicit instructions. Thus, popular piety, too, was not something engineered from above. Zumholz shows how the laity were and are quite powerful in insisting on forms of devotion acceptable to them and how this challenged and challenges bishops to find compromises between their own authority and the demands of the laity.

Zumholz also shows that the laity’s adherence to the milieu strengthened during times of crisis, such as during the repression of the national socialist regime and the trauma of the Second World War. She has marshaled a large body of evidence to demonstrate the failure of the national socialist regime to penetrate the Catholic milieu. Quite the contrary, the milieu appears to have strengthened under pressure from the outside. Zumholz believes resistance to external pressures to be one of the most important contributors to milieu formation, more important than socioeconomic change – largely absent in the Emsland –, modernization, or hierarchical instrumentalization.

There are only few substantive criticisms to raise against this work. Zumholz is too generous in her treatment of Wilhelm Berning, Bishop of Osnabrück during the Third Reich. While she attributes his accommodation of the regime to his desire to maintain adequate levels of pastoral care in his diocese, other bishops cared for their flocks without instructing their clergy to use the Hitler greeting and without instructing one of their aides to maintain regular informal meetings with the local Gestapo representative to resolve issues of common concern. Also, this volume would have benefited from additional editing before publication. For example, most readers who engage this work will not require a sixty-page description of the anti-Catholic views of national socialists such as Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich or of the organizational structure of the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst. Finally, two hundred pages of introductory material, even if it sets the scene carefully, are more than enough.

These criticisms, however, should not detract from the value of this work. More than the study of a particular Marian apparition, this is an excellent, detailed and well-differentiated analysis of the way in which laity, an inimical regime, and church hierarchy interacted in mid-twentieth century Germany. Too often, the history of Catholicism during the Third Reich is the story of extremes of resistance and collaboration. This study shows Catholics who were used to being a neglected if not oppressed minority doing what they had always done: rejecting the outsiders and maintaining their faith.

Martin Menke, Rivier College

2) Journal article: Jonathan Steele, Germany’s search for home truths.

(This article appeared in the Guardian Weekly, Feb 10th 2008)

Painstaking, persistent and anything but remorseless, Germany’s focus on the Nazi past never seems to slacken. As it marked the 75th anniversary of Hitler’s coming to power last week, the emphasis was on the fact that he became chancellor with the full backing of the constitution. This was no putsch but the legal transfer of authority to the leader of the party that did best in a general election. Hitler later won the support of the country’s millions of unemployed but as the news magazine Der Spiegel pointed out, most jobless Germans voted communist in the November 1932 poll. The middle class put the Nazis in power, and many of its voters were Protestant Christians.

This point also struck me forcibly when I visited a recent exhibition in the towering brick aisles of the north German cathedral of Schwerin. Blown up pictures and short life histories of a couple of dozen local vicars and parishioners were displayed on screens, with recordings of their voices and brief reminiscences by their friends.

It was a modest testament to modest people, yet one of considerable importance. The men and women in this exhibition all played a special role in the Nazi period, a few as opponents, but most as Christian collaborators with Hitler’s antisemitic discrimination and atrocities.

Germany’s record in coming to terms with its Nazi past has been remarkably good. Since Hitler’s defeat, the process of uncovering who did what has had impressive results, and by now is pretty much complkete – or so, like most people, I used to believe.
In the immediate post-war period, de-Nazification was driven by the victors. Senior Nazis were convicted at Nuremebrg. Revanchist propaganda was banned and textbooks changed. But most lower-level officials who had loyally served the Nazis kept their jobs. The western allies were careful not to impose on Germans the same kind of humiliation that had followed the first world war.

A new attempt to uncover the past came with the worldwide revolts of 1968. In Germany a key element of the youth rebellion was anger with their paents’ silence over what they had done under Hitler. The taboo of family secrecy was broken and parents had to come clean. But even this was confined to families where activist kids demanded the facts. Institutionally and publicly, Germany had rejected Nazism and recognized the nation’s guilt. Privatel;y most familkies avoided looking back.

More monuments to the victims of the Holocaust have been built in recent years. The German culture ministry has announced that the main one in central Berlin would soon be joined by one for murdered Roma and another for the thousands of gay and lesbian dead.. Other cities are putting bronze plaques on pavements to commemorate where a Jewish jeweller or dressmaker once had a shop. Some critics say it allows pedestrians to tread on them. Others say that for the one person in fifty who sees what is underfoot the shock is all the more powerful.

Remebering victims is only part of the story. What about remembering the guilty? Why did the backbone of the country’s middle class accept dictatorship so readily Why haven’t the professions yet opened their archives and done detailed research on how their leaders and members went along with Hitler’s repression? Above all, what happened to the conscience of the Lutherans, Germany’s largest church?

Now that the individuals have all died, it ought to be easier to research the truth. That is why I found the exhibition in Schleswig so fascinating.It was the first official attempt by the Lutherans – as yet confined to Hamburg and Mecklenburg – to name names. “In 1998 the evangelical church in the north Elbe region made a general declaration of guilt. We had to start research what we and the Lutherans of Mecklenburg were guilty of,” as Johann Peter Wurm, Schwerin’s church archivist told me.

German Protestants have tended to hide behind their one big resistance martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was hanged by the Nazis a month before the war ended. Lionised in books auch as Gordon Brown’s Courage: Eight Profiles, Bonhoeffer was the exception. His “confessing church” was a minority strand within German Lutheranism. The Schwerin exhibition recorded how, within weeks of Hitler becoming chancellor, a “Union of Nazi Pastors in Mecklenburg” was forrmed and the local synod brought in “Aryan paragraphs”, which barred converted Jews (of whom there were many) from church jobs. A Nazi member, Walther Schulz, who wore a large cross on his party uniform, was elected bishop in 1934.

Only a few stood out, such as August Wiegand, an elderly pastor who preached against antisemitism and was forced into early retirement by the church authorities, but went on to work with Berlin’s “Büro Grüber” to help Jews escape from Germany.
Much of the new research depends on reading the “chronicles” that every Lutheran pastor was required to keep, a mixture of private diary and official parish note-taking. In the small town of Plau they let me leaf through Wiegand’s ledger. Its later pages included a shocking sermon by a visiting pastor. Furious that some traditional churchgoers were not Nazi enough, he said Germany’s true Christians were outside the church, unlike the “pig-Christians” (Schweinchristen) who came to services.

I have to declare an interest. Wiegand was my grandfather. As with so many families, my German-born mother and her sisters never fully explained what he had done, and he died when I was four. We were told he started his career by trying to convert Galician Jews to Christianity, which sounded more negative than positive. That his later life was a matter of pride remained hidden. Perhaps we were too shy to put questions, fearing shame.

The search for home truths is always hard, but Germany’s new generations need to keep on pushing. Don’t congratulate them too fast. The job is not yet done.

With very best wishes
John Conway

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March 2008 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

March 2008— Vol. XIV, no. 3

Dear Friends,

Contents:

1) Journal issues:

a) Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 21, no. 3, Winter 2007
b) Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 20, no. 1, 2007.

2) Book review, Paldiel, Churches and the Holocaust

1a) Almost the whole issue of this issue of the leading journal in Holocaust history is devoted to the role of the churches during the Nazi years, presenting several valuable articles which raise interesting new perspectives and will serve to dispel some of the more prevalent misperceptions

Michael Marrus of Toronto University describes the meetings between leading Jewish representatives and Vatican officials after the end of the war in 1945 when they raised the issue of the missing Jewish orphans, many of whom were presumed to have been placed in Catholic institutions. They asked for the Pope’s explicit intervention and assistance. Their concern was to rescue these children as the future of the whole Jewish race which had been brought so closely to total extinction. The Pope and his officials naturally asked for details and lists, but it would seem that these were only occasionally forthcoming. Nevertheless the Vatican urged its subordinates on the local level to ensure that Jewish children whose parents had survived were given back, while those orphans already baptized and participating in Catholic riutals should choose for themselves. In France, at least, there were few conflicts, even though the Catholic authorities refused to make any general appeal to assist Jewish agencies. Subsequent attempts to portray the Vatican in pejorative terms, or to see Pius XII as an infamous kidnapper, are here shown to be motivated by extraneous reasons and have no historical substance.

In Germany, the Nazis’ deliberate but deceptively-organised campaign in 1940 to murder mental patients by so-called “euthanasia” was first detected and opposed by the director of a large Protestant institution near Berlin, Pastor Paul Braune, as described by Leroy Walters. Before 1939 both the Protestant and the Catholic churches ran numerous homes and institutions for the mental handicapped, so the Nazi decress ordering the transfer of some of these buildings and their patients to state control aroused alarm. In Braune’s case, this concern was only heightened when he received orders that some young women patients should be”transferred” to a state-run institution beyond his immediate purview. Shortly afterwards news came that several of these young women had died. Braune tried to detect what had happened, and soon found that similar steps were being taken in other parts of the country. The alleged excuse of military necessity caused by the war was palpably false. The upshot was that Braune prepared a strong remonstrance which he delivered to the health offices in Berlin, but to no avail. He was himself arrested by the Gestapo for supposedly defeatist attitudes, but was later released on promise of “good behaviour”. But the “euthanasia”programme continued, and was to lead to the Catholic bishop Galen’s more spectacular protest in the following year. Leroy Walters’ article most valuably shows what a determined church leader could find out, as well as the formidable difficulties which opponents of these measures faced.

Michael Phayer, who has been a strong critic of the Vatican’s war-time policies in earlier publications, provides an interesting and in-depth analysis of the considerations uppermost in 1942-3 in the Pope’s policy towards the catastrophes inflicted on the Jews. Pius XII’s “silence” on these matters, culminating in October 1943 when the Jews of Rome itself were deported, has been widely attacked, but Phayer now seeks to show that other factors played their part. He rejects the view that the Pope was uncaring about the disasters sweeping over all of Europe, or about the especially cruel fate of the Jews. But he was at the same time very conscious of the even greater harm which could result from some Papal pronouncement. Phayer lays stress on the Pope’s 1942 Christmas message which had already condemned, in very general terms, the fact that hundreds of thoiusands of persons, solely because of their nationality or race, had been consigned to death. The Dutch bishops took this an an encouragement to make their own publicly-read protest, openly referring to the Jews. But the violent reaction of the German occupiers which led directly to the deportatation and death of Dutch Catholic Jews was profoundly shocking to the Vatican’s leaders. In the following months, increasing numbers of reports were received indicating the scale of the Nazis’ extermination plans. The Holy See was obliged to come to terms with this indescribable horror. But also increasingly the Vatican officials were forced to recognize that they were helpless to stop the process.

In the absence of the surviving documents – still not available for the period in question – Phayer necessarily has to speculate but his observations are based on a close study of the contemporary publicized reports, including those written by the resident diplomats within the Vatican’s walls. Almost universally these convey an atmosphere of apocalyptic gloom, which was only heightened when German troops directly surrounded the Holy See, following Mussolini’s overthrow in July 1943. There was a widespread expectation that Hitler would take steps to carry the Pope off into captivity – a fear that was only relieved when the German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop gave repeated assurances that this would not happen, and that Germany would respect the Vatican’s territorial sovreignty. More worrying was the growing fear that Germany’s defeat would lead to a massive victory for Soviet Communism. Perhaps most pervasive was the fear that the cumulative effect of all these disastrous developments woudl mean that the whole of Christian civilization was doomed. Hence the strenuous efforts to get the western allies to proclaim Rome and its Christian treasures as an open city, not to be bombed. But the contradictions still remain, such as the Pope’s letter to the Berlin bishop expressing concern for hidden Jews, even while he was admiring Germany’s struggle against Soviet Communism. As Phayer notes, historians have still to find satisfying explanations for the behaviour of this enigmatic Pope.

Coming to terms with the past is the subject of Tom Lawson’s spirited essay on the Holocaust reception in later years. He points out that many commentators adopted a Christian interpretation of the evils inflicted on the Jews, not in the sense that they deserved this punishment, as mediaeval Catholic theology had taught, but rather in the looser sense that a Christain vocabulary and imagery was deployed to seek to give meaning to these events beyond Auschwitz. In part, at least, this was because the horrors of the Holocaaust were so often so extrreme that no existing language could be found to reveal what had happened. Hence the most widely available imagery was found in the Christian heritage dealing with suffering and death. Especially in more popular forms, such as the numerous films about the Holocaust, the alleged need to provide the audience with some morsels of hope or “resurrection” has coloured the general apprehension by the use of Christian language, often in a very traditional sense. So too commemorative events often seek to find meaning through Christian imagery. The visits of Pope John Paul II to Auschwitz necessarily saw the evocation of Christian symbolism.

Lawson attributes the trend in part to the fact that the Nazi persecution of the Jews was first seen as part of the Nazis’ wider perversion of European – i.e. Christian – civilization. Nazism came to be portrayed as the inversion of Christianity, and propaganda to this effect was useful during the war. Christian sympathy for the Nazis’ victims in the churches could easily be extended to the Jews, and efforts to assist the Jews were recommended for Christian reasons. So the whole Jewish catastrophe was fitted into a wider Christian framework, which continued in many of the post-war assessments. Even the word Holocaust with its connotations of sacrifice and martyrdom uses a language which, if not speciically Christian, is at least subject to Christian interpretation. So too, Lawson claims, such well-known Holocaust figures as Anne Frank and Oscar Schindler are popularized because they offer a messge of hope beyond the tragedy.

Lawson suggests that this kind of expropriation, however well-meaning, can or even ought to be a hundrance to improved Christain-Jewish relations. Theologians need to take note. Lawson has yet to develop his own ideas of how the Holocaust should be more fittingly understood and commemorated. It is a task which will require a different vocabulary, a different imagery, and the renunciation of the language of the perpetrators. We shall follow this undertaking with great interest.

1b) Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte/Contemporary Church History, Vol 20, no 1, 2007

This international journal for theology and history has been edited for twenty years by Professor Gerhard Besier, who now teaches at the University of Dresden. This is a remarkable achievement by a scholar who has consistently upheld high standards in the journal’s articles and book reviews. In more recent years, there has been a deliberate effort to increase the bilingual character of the journal, with articles written by English-speaking authors and printed in the same language. Such contributions make for interesting contrasts, since the English-speaking scholars usually adopt a narrative and historical approach very different from the more heavily theoretical and abstract Germans! Despite the sad decline in the number of professorships in church history, and especially in contemporary church affairs, nevertheless the quality of this journal speaks to the continued interest in recent church developments in a wider, mainly European, context.

The current issue covers two topics: the churches’ reactions to the striking political changes in eastern Europe since the 1980s, and theology and society in the 1920’s and early 1930’s.

Professor Renöckl who teaches ethics at the University of Linz, Austria, seeks to evaluate the impact of Christian social and ethical ideas in Europe today. Such an assessment can only be tentative, particularly in central and eastern Europe where the political developments of the last twenty years have led to such profound social consequences. But one thing is clear. The hope that the overthrow of the atheist communist system would lead to a revival of church adherence has not been realized. Indeed, in the Czech Republic, for example, the number of church members has markedly declined. But the opposite is true, at least for Catholicism, in the rump state of Slovakia. A similar pattern can be seen in Poland, Croatia, Roumania and Bulgaria, whereas in formerly strongly Protestant areas such as the Baltic states or East Germany, the decline is marked. All have been affected by the changes in economic activity, and also by the political attractions of joining the European Union. But it has to be acknowledged that, in the new Europe, the Christian presence is relatively weak.

Church history affords few pointers in this situation. But can Christian social ethics make a significant contribution? In the face of often inhumane technical and scientific debelopments, the need for a forceful discussion of ethical values seems clear. The rival claims of economic efficiency or of social justice have to be examined in a global context. On the other hand, each individual requires guidance for his or her personal stance.

Europe presently stands at a crossroads. Even though many seek to reject the institutions and ethical systems of the past, nevertheless Christian thinkers have an opportunity to show that the values proclaimed by Christian social ethics are both relevant and helpful. It is good to note that such proclamation is now more than ever made ecumenically.

On a somewhat narrower scale, Josef Pilvousek of the newly recreated University of Erfurt, examines the role of the Catholic Church in the former East Germany since 1985. During the years of communist rule, the Catholic Church withdrew into its own milieu, took protective measures against the undermining tactics of the Stasi, and resolutely refused to accept the premises of Marxism-Leninism. It was an unheroic stand. Compared to the Protestants, the Catholics played little part in the decomposition of the regime. But by the end of the 1980s the spirit of openness to the world, as proclaimed at the Second Vatican Council, found its expression in a number of well-attended conferences on the subject of Justice and Peace and the Preservation of Creation. Several of the leaders were to play a fuller role in politics after the regime’s collapse. Catholics were now urged to take a more active part in political life and to leave the ghetto mentality behind.

But Catholics were only a minority in East Germany, compared to the unreligious or Protestant majorities. They had gained the reputation of having abandoned their social responsibiolituies in the face of communist pressures. Since 1989 they have been repeatedly urged to become more active in their pastoral work, which can now be deployed freely. This process has been helped by the Vatican’s willingness to establish new dioceses, even though contacts with their former linkages in West Germany are actively propagated. In the meantime, such temporal matters as the church tax or religious education in schools has been assimilated to the West German practice. Catholic social work agencies have been given a new lease of life. But much will depend on whether the church can call on more of the East German population back from the secularized existence propagated under communist rule. Herein lies the main challenge for the years ahead.

Most welcome is the English-language contribution by the Finnish scholar Mikko Ketola, on the Baltic Churches since 1985. The fate of these small countries is not well known, and their complex church history even less so. So Ketola’s splendidly precise description is helpful. He first notes the striking changes in the religious map of the Baltic states since the 1930s. The dual invasions by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and the long years of Soviet domination, reduced the Lutheran churches in both Estonia and Latvia to minorities in a highly secularized society. Immigrants or settlers from Russia have increased the Orthodox church populations, even though these are divided between the supporters of the Moscow Patriarchate and those who looked to Constantinople. Only recently have these two groups been able to merge.

Lithuania presents a different picture since Catholicism was the predominant denomination, though again much weakened during the Soviet period. Yet its followers made few compromises with the dominant regime and may now be able to recover lost ground. Its members were certainly active in the struggle to regain independence and have a strong commitment to human rights. In Latvia, by contrast, the entire Lutheran hierarchy was voted out of office for its subservience to Soviet wishes. In Estonia, the same thing happened but their Archbishop was allowed to continue on the grounds of his personal piety.

All of these states, Ketola shows very graphically, have had to come to terms with the past. Each set up a historical commission to investigate the crimes committed by the Nazi and Soviet occupiers. Because of its longer duration, the Soviet period has been considered to be the more harmful and destructive. But another factor is the persistence of a cultural antisemitism, which has limited the investigations of Nazi atrocities. Yet the Lithuanian church has followed Pope John Paul II in asking for forgiveness for individual Catholics (but notably not for the church institutionally).

In Latvia, a new “Christian” party, drawing its ethos from American right-wing circles, has won a position in politics, adopting a rigid progarmme of social conservative values, and attacking homosexuality and abortion as convenient targets to mobilize its supporters. Protestant preachers are prominent in the membership. Their espousal of family values parallels the demands for more religious education in schools. So too the widespread support in the Baltic countries for the adhesion to the European Union can be seen as a means of rejecting both the Soviet past and of repelling the renewed Soviet pressures or assimilative moves, which are reputed to be on the rise again.

Theological education is a top priority. But after so long a period of isolation, only the more conservative brands of Lutheranism have been welcomed. These churches are very sensitive to real or imagined pressures from western church bodies to update their ideas, for instance on female ordination. This has led to a strained relationship with their most generous donors in Sweden and north Germany. But Catholics also have difficulty in coming to terms with the innovations of the Second Vatican Council. Such factors have undoubtredly hindered the task of fitting these churches for the twenty-first century.

Keith Robbins, a distinguished British historian, and former Principal of Lampeter Collge in Wales, examines the relationship between the British churches and eastern Europe over the past decades. This is a lucid but at times controversial account of this chapter in the wider dealings between Communist countries and a limited, if influential, number of British churchmen. In the decade after the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. British churchmen began to become concerned about how these churches in eastern Europe, as institutions, were surviving under Communist rule. The British Council of Churches appointed a working party whose report, published in 1974, was written by an Anglican clergyman and journalist, Trevor Beeson. It was entitled Discretion and Valour, referring to the two basic stances adopted for Christian witness under Communism. On the one hand, there were those who sought to accommodate themselves to their new situation and to promote their faith discreetly. On the other hand, there were those who refused to make any compromises, and were ready to face the possible consequences of persecution and even martyrdom. This they believed was the more valourous path.

In Britain, only a tiny handful of church members were openly sympathetic to the Soviet system, notably the “red” Dean of Canterbury, Dr Hewlett Johnson. The majority were divided as to whether discretion or valour was to be preferred in combatting totalitarianism. Some urged that a policy of constructive engagement should be attempted, whereas others believed that the experience of Nazi Germany had shown that resolute opposition was the only permissible stance, lest Christians fall into the trap of collaborationism.

During the 1970s and 1980s British church visitors were involved on both sides of this debate. Some supported the cause of Christian-Marxist dialogue or the activities of the Christian Peace Conference, based in Prague. The leading figure in this group was Rev. Paul Oestreicher, who worked for the British Council of Churches, and was also chairman of Amnesty International. Others were more concerned to make public the abuses of religious rights in Communist countries. Especially valuable were the publications of a group at Keston College, first in Kent and later in Oxford, led by Reverend Michael Bourdeaux. The rivalry between Oestreicher and Bourdeaux, though very polite, was an indication that British church opinion remained divided. In one sense, the events of 1989 surprised both groups. The wishful thinking of those who believed that Communism would soon “improve” or reform itself was shown to be a fanciful error, while on the other side, the overthrow of the Soviet system in all its satellite states, largely deprived Bourdeaux’s supporters of their raison d’etre. After 1991 there was no more need to smuggle bibles into Russia. The end of the Cold War ushered in a new period of religious life in all of eastern Europe, which was wholly welcome to the British church community. But more energetic steps are now needed to take advantage of this freedom to build more solid bridges of Christian fellowship between east and west.

The second half of this journal’s issue is devoted to studies in the theological trends of the 1920s. Ricardo Bavaj, who teaches in St Andrews, describes Paul Tillich’s political thought in the early 1920s, which was prompted by his sense of eschatological despair and by his traumatic wartime experiences. Tillich’s theology was one of crisis – or Kairos – and often took a mystical and antirationalist tone, full of idealism but too vague to be easily grasped. His political leanings were antinomian, almost anarchistic. He was also to be accused of undermining the rational democratic political system of the Weimar Republic. But in fact his influence was limited to his academic circles. His attempts to find a highly abstract synthesis between Christianity and Socialism aroused considerable opposition even amongst his univesrity colleagues. His appeal to the Social Democratic Party to recapture its earlier revolutionary impetus was also unsuccessful. But his early warnings against the dangers of National Socialism grew ever more urgent. In Bavaj’s view, Tillich’s political thought revealed very clearly the deficiencies of either the decided refusals to accept the existing political situation or cloudy projections of vague alternatives. Such ideas were characteristic of left-wing intellectuals in this decade.

Tillich was one of the first professors to be dismissed from his post in April 1933, and subsequently sought refuge in the United States, where a new and more positive chapter in his thinking began.

Charlotte Methuen, who teaches theology in Oxford, provides an excellent account of the three meetings between German and English theologians at the end of the 1920s (even though her article is mistitled as The Anglo-American Theological Conferences). These began as a result of Archbishop Nathan Soderblom’s lead at Stockholm in 1925. He nelieved that theologians had a significant role to play in binding up the wounds left by the first world war. He was supported by Geroge Bell, then Dean of Canterbury, and later Bishop of Chichester. Bell was amongst those who had been appalled by the readiness of his German colleagues to give unstinted support to their nation’s war efforts, or even to attempt to preempt God on their side and to demonize their enemies. He was equally shocked when similar features were found in Britain.

The records of these conferences offer a fascinating glimpse of the theological concerns of the day. They were an attempt by high-minded churchmen to find some appropriate language and methodology for a common witness to the cause of peace. A careful choice of delegates, almost all theology professors, was made to ensure harmony. Although fundamental dissent was voiced, it was not as much between the English and the Germans as within each delegation.

The first conference held in 1927 took up the subject of “The Kingdom of God” as an explicit continuation and deepening of the theological work started at Stockholm. In the following year the conference considered “Christology” since the first debates had shown a need to include a full treatment of this topic. The third meeting was held in Chichester in 1931 to discuss the nature of the church, about which there was much less agreement. The friendships established undoubtedly enabled both sides to learn more about the other’s theological traditions or presuppositions. But, as was soon to be revealed, even such an ecumenical approach did not lead to any lessening of the support these men gave to their own nation’s cause. In fact, on the German side, Gerhard Kittel and Paul Althaus warmly supported the Nazi cause, while Bell, warned by the young Bonhoeffer, became a strong champion of the Confessing Church.
For his part, Arne Rasmussen begins his account of the theological trends in Germany during the Weimar Republic by pointing to the controversial views of Karl Barth. Barth attacked his fellow theologians either for their vaporous liberalism or for their ultra-nationalist conservatism. For example, Barth accused Harnack and Troeltsch for being Kulturprotestanten, while Emanuel Hirsch and Paul Althaus were attacked for their collaboration with the Nazi Party. During and after the second world war, Barth’s views predominated, especially among Anglo-American theologians and supporters of the anti-Nazi Confessing Church. Only in more recent years have Trutz Rendtorff and his colleagues in Munich attempted to put forward a revisionist view. They criticized Barth for his supposedly rigid dogmatism, and suggested that Barth’s dialectical theology only served as a hindrance to the liberal basis of the Weimar Republic’s democracy.

In fact, as in secular history, the period of the 1920s saw a remarkable pluralism in theological views. Liberal theologians like Troeltsch provided justifications for the nascent political democracy after 1919. But their opponents in the nationalist and conservative camps had also given theological justification for Germany’s war efforts and for the demonization of its enemies. They remained highly visible anad vocal and were later to give significant support to the völkisch movement which supplied many of the Nazi Party’s recruits. In Rasmussen’s view, Barth’s criticisms of both the modern German nation state and of the theologians who justified its existence were very plausible.

In Rendtorff’s view, however, the tragedy was that so few theologians and church leaders followed Troeltsch, Harnack and Martin Rade in supporting the democratic experiment. He criticizes Barth for his refusal to sacralize any political form, since the Kingdom of God was not to be found in human terms or by human effort. Yet Barth was equally attacked by the nationalist anti-liberals, such as Hirsch, Althaus and Elert, for his lack of support of the German state which they regarded as the primary carrier of God’s historical action.

In fact, all of these German theologians had been traumatized by the loss of the war and the fall of the Empire. Each “school” sought to come to terms with these unexpected and unwelcome developments. But no consensus could be found.

In 1933 Barth’s chief concern was only to defend the independence of the church and to protect it from political interference by the now dominant Nazis. He was not concerned with politics because to him the church was more important.than the future of Germany. His protests were also ethical, since he recognized the danger of state dictation overwhelming Christian convictions. In the same year, however, many liberals and democratic Protestants, such as Martin Rade, threw their support behind Hitler. Their nation was going to be rejuvenated. And in the interests of the nation, the church must not be left behind. Cultural homogeneity was more important than defending pluralism or protecting individual human rights. Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze was almost the only German liberal theologian who made any stand on behalf of the Jews.

Rasmussen’s defence of Barth takes issue with Rendtorff’s apologetic revisionism in the current theological scene. It is all part of a continuing debate.For, as he says, historiography cannot be separated from theology, and theology cannot be separated from historiography.

2) Mordecai Paldiel, Churches and the Holocaust, Unholy teaching, Good Samaritans, and Reconciliation. Jersey City, New Jersey: KTAV Publishing House, 2006. 443pp. The following appeared first in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, as above, p.488

In 1953 the Israeli government established the Yad Vashem center as a memorial to the millions of Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Ten years later this commemoration was extended to include non-Jews who had rescued or assisted Jews to escape from death at the hands of the Nazis or their associates. Over the years some twenty-one thousand of these “Righteous Gentiles” have been identified, after careful scrutiny of the depositions made on their behalf. Each was remembered with the planting of a tree in the stately Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles and a plaque giving the name and country of origin.

Mordecai Paldiel, director of this section of Yad Vashem’s activities, has now selected the stories of some three hundred Christian clerics, both male and female, of a variety of denominations across the European continent. (Their names are listed by country in a useful appendix). While much of this material is already known, his convenient and comparative summary is welcome. His aim is to show that, despite the long history of Christian intolerance towards Judaism, nevertheless there were Christian clergy who acted with humanity and generosity towards Jews in their hour of peril. In so doing, he claims, they paved the way for the striking change in Christian theological attitudes implemented in the 1960s, particularly at the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II and his memorable visit of repentance to Jerusalem in 2000 set the seal on this unprecedented process of reconciliation, and opened the way for a whole new era in Christian-Jewish relations.

Paldiel’s narratives, which are organized by nationality, are designed to offset the feelings many Jews share that Christian anti-Semitism is ineradicable. He seeks to show that there were clergy who had shed such views, or who acted despite them. “The overwhelming motivation of clergy rescuers of Jews was compassion for their sufferings coupled with a Christian duty to help others in need; motivations powerful enough to overcome the traditional Christian anti-Jewish prejudice” (p.225). In Poland, for instance, where Catholic anti-Semitism was widespread, the Christian rescuers faced not only danger from the brutal German occupiers but also from their own anti-Semitic kinsmen. Their heroic deeds deserve particularly to be honored for “Polish rescuers occupy an elevate position of selfless devotion and great courage, unmatched in any other country” (ibid.).

Motivations are extraordinarily difficult to pin down. And Christian clergy rescuers would naturally express themselves in terms of compassion and mercy. But there can be no question that they were in a minority, and often without support from their superiors, which makes their risk-taking all the more notable. In Germany, even leading figures of the Protestant Confessing Church, such as Martin Niemöller, who opposed the Nazis openly, still held to the traditional Christian delegitimization of Jews. Paldiel includes Dietrich Bonhoeffer in this category. So too leading German Catholic bishops, such as Galen of Münster, even if opposed to some Nazi policies, did not take a stand for the Jews. Provost Bernhard Lichtenberg of Berlin was the only leading Catholic clergyman to pray for the Jews and was imprisoned for his daring. His Protestant counterpart, Hermann Maas, was equally isolated but survived to give courageous testimony after the war. Paldiel then recounts the names and stories of lesser-known German clergy rescuers who deserve recognition.

In describing events in successive countries across the continent, Paldiel adopts a convenient pattern. He first gives a survey of the situation of the Jewish community before and during the German occupation, followed by a section on the responses of the churches in general, which were all too often negative in tone, demonstrating the majority’s indifference or at least inaction. Then he gives details of the church rescuers, drawn principally from the files accumulated in Jerusalem, supplemented by comments from the numerous secondary sources. (A useful English-language bibliography is appended). In several situations, the desire to rescue Jews was undoubtedly seen as part of resistance to the German invader. But the motive of Christian compassion was clearly uppermost – at least in these sources. It is hardly surprising that, in some cases, those who cared for Jewish children should have desired their conversion, though in other cases, which Paldiel naturally applauds, this urge was not yielded to. For the same reason, in Holland for example, Christian rescuers who had become attached to the orphans in their charge, were most reluctant to hand them over after the war to unknown Jewish organizations, merely for the sake of preserving the Jewish race or building up the new Israel. But Paldiel fairly acknowledges the courage and open-mindedness of many of these helpers who were inspired by a genuine regard for God’s chosen people. Many of the stories he records are both touching and heart-rending. Not all rescuers were saints; many lost their lives as the price of their altruism. But their witness was a significant contribution, making it impossible for the pre-war climate of ideological hostility to remain unchallenged.

Paldiel’s lament over the failure of the church leaders to protest or prevent the mass murder of the Jews culminates in his chapter on Italy and the Vatican. He does not go into the heated and still continuing debates over the so-called “silence” of Pope Pius XII, which he attributes, not to anti-Semitism, but to an uncourageous prudence which amounted to a dereliction of moral leadership. Yet he argues that the fact that Pius did not publicly condemn the crimes of the Holocaust, does not mean that he did nothing to help the Jews. The thousands of Jews hidden in religious establishments throughout Italy were there with his knowledge and consent, and perhaps in some cases at his instigation. Paldiel then recounts a whole batch of notable rescue efforts by priests and nuns, implying that these were mainly spontaneous actions. The net result was that, thanks to these clergy, Italy was the Catholic country which saved the highest percentage of Jews, more so than any other country under German domination.

In conclusion, Paldiel contends that the higher ecclesiastical clerics were too much blinded by their anti-Jewish traditions to be able to act courageously in face of the moral challenge presented by the murderous Nazi anti-Semitism. But the lesser clergy and nuns were freer of these misguided doctrines and so acted humanely. Twenty years later, the shock of the Holocaust was sufficient to lead to an abandonment of the unfortunate teachings of contempt and supersession, and to create of a new climate which Jews should now embrace and welcome. Even if the belated Christian apologies for past intolerance fall short of what might be desirable, nevertheless he believes there is now room for dialogue and coexistence. The “Righteous” clergy can serve as role models for a new and constructive relationship between Judaism and Christianity.

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With ever best wish
John Conway

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February 2008 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

February 2008— Vol. XIV, no. 2

Dear Friends,

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) Burleigh, Sacred Causes
b) Dembowski, Christians in the Warsaw Ghetto
c) Zurek, The Churches and German-Polish Reconciliation

2) Journal article. Baran, Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia

3) Conference report: Sandford, Christian Science in East Germany

4) Book note: Gerhard Besier Festschrift

5) 10th International Bonhoeffer Congress, Prague, July 2008

1a) Michael Burleigh, Sacred Causes, New York/ London: HarperCollins Publishers 2006 556 pp. ISBN: 978-0-06-058095-7

The British historian and journalist Michael Burleigh has already gained a notable reputation for his books on Nazi Germany. He has now embarked on a broader survey of European history since the French Revolution in two volumes, of which Sacred Causes is the second, covering the period from the first world war to the present.

Burleigh’s focus is on the clashes between religion and politics, which he analyses in a series of well-researched episodes, drawing his material from widely separated parts of Europe. His overall aim is clear. He seeks to dispute the claim put forward in numerous surveys of European history, that, since religion plays only a marginal role in most European societies, it can be treated as an irrelevant factor in twentieth century history.

To the contrary, Burleigh asserts, the major conflicts of this century which brought such disasters to Europe were in fact the result of attempts by pseudo-religious movements, such as Fascism, Nazism or Communism, to supplant and replace the institutions and values of the established Christian churches from Spain to the Soviet Union, in pursuit of their own totalitarian ambitions. Despite the continuing divisions of the Christian churches, their resistance to these ideologically-based challenges, and their determination to outlast such ephemeral political experiments in social and political engineering, have proved successful. In Burleigh’s view, the Christian religion in its various forms still constitutes a valid component of Europe’s social and intellectual perspectives, both as the upholders of the moral and spiritual values of the past, and also as the guardians against other future totalitarian dangers.

Burleigh is not the first, but possibly the most forceful advocate of the view that the political extremism which swept over Europe after 1917 can be attributed to the catastrophes of the first world war. Not only did the slaughter of a whole generation of leaders produce a sweeping loss of confidence in the established classes, but even more vitally the collapse of credibility in the moral and spiritual values of the previous era had fateful consequences. To be sure, Burleigh admits, the Christian churches, especially the Protestants, had brought on these ominous developments by their over-eager support for jingoism, militarism and nationalism. The spectacle of each opponent claiming to have God on their side, while demonizing the enemy as un-Christian, in mutually contradictory and exclusive terms, had discredited their entire witness for many years to come.

In the aftermath, liberal churchmen sought to rebuild their faith through a naive support for peace movements and institutions, such as the League of Nations, while conservatives concentrated on a nostalgic longing for a return of the past, as seen in the universal commemoration of the war dead in cenotaphs and war memorials. Neither strategy was to be sufficient to equip the churches to resist the new forces of political radicalism, which appealed to the disillusioned populations. The offers of a secular vision of political recovery and reform, through the creation of a new man and a new society while repudiating the religious traditions of the past, proved to be alluring whether in a Fascist, Nazi or Communist guise. These are all effectively examined and analyzed comparatively in Burleigh’s narrative.

The rise of totalitarian movements, Burleigh believes, was brought on by the demands of so many millions of insecure and frustrated people looking for some powerful object or person in whom they could place their trust and faith. As was clear in the German case, this cult of the pseudo-divinity of the modern state or leader was not the invention of singular individuals, however charismatic, such as Hitler. Rather, it pointed to the apocalyptic mood amongst the people, which gave support to forms of political messianism or ersatz religious symbols and practices. The appeal of blood and soil was particularly seductive.

In the same way, the Bolsheviks in Russia campaigned as saviours of their country through the eradication of traditional religious life in pursuit of applied rationality along Marxist-Leninist lines. The cost in human suffering was indisputably enormous. The political extremism which accompanied the Bolshevik experiment in social engineering was ruthless and implacable. At least twenty-five million people are believed to have starved in the Volga and Ukrainian regions. Relief efforts by foreign church agencies were virtually prohibited. The plight of the peasants was used as an opportunity to smash the opposition from Russia’s church population, Burleigh is particularly good at evoking the pseudo-religious mentality of these persecutors, and in quoting from their writings. Opposition to the dominant secular creed was left to a handful of the faithful, mainly elderly women.

This secular triumphalism was also the hall-mark of Fascism, which, according to Mussolini, “is a religious conception in which man is caught up in his immanent relationship with a superior Law and an objective Will”.

The responses of the Catholic Church to these challenges is still a matter of dispute and debate among historians. The Vatican’s strategy after 1918 was to attempt to create legally-binding relationships with the new European states through treaties or concordats. But these did little to combat the extremist tendencies of the totalitarians. In predominantly Catholic states, such as Portugal, Austria and Ireland, a semi-autocratic Catholic regime was established, but in Spain such an attempt only provided the fuel for a convulsive civil war, for widespread and horrendous murders of opponents, and for the imposition of a political religion of the right.

All these developments are described by Burleigh with mordant exactitude, based on his extensive researches, particularly in English and German sources. In his view, only the mobilized integrity of a continent-wide Catholicism had the ability to withstand the forceful onslaughts into which it had been drawn.

By contrast, the Protestants were too divided or confused to be of much use. He can even state that “there is no evidence that the Nazis persecuted the Protestant Churches. . . despite what happened to a few dissenting individuals”. Such an astonishing misjudgment ignores the undoubted fact that the Nazi ambitions for total control made no exceptions. To be sure, in 1933, too many Protestants – as well as too many Catholics – welcomed Hitler as a national saviour, but the subsequent staunch opposition of a significant portion of German Protestantism, in the ranks of the Confessing Church, who also supplied numerous members of the Resistance Movement, cannot be so easily overlooked.

Despite such oversimplifications, Burleigh is surely right in stating that the relationships between the churches and the totalitarian political regimes were infinitely complicated and require considerable effort to reconstruct. His verdict on Pope Pius XII is suitably balanced. He admits that there may be many criticisms one might make of this Pope regarding what could or could not be done during the second world war. But he resolutely refutes the idea that Pius was “Hitler’s Pope”, and suggests that many of the attacks on this enigmatic pope derive from the kind of anticlericalism in which both the Nazis and the Communists excelled.

His chapter on the religious roots of the troubles in Northern Ireland is written both in sorrow and anger at the narrow-minded bigotry displayed on both sides, But his analysis is undoubtedly a most convincing one for the general reader. Here is a nutshell has been a case of religiously-propagated tribal warfare, in a province suffering periodic explosions of communal violence, and caught in a web of historical traditions, from which they are unwilling or unable to escape. Here the lamentable effects of the clash between religion and politics has been clear for all to see.

On the whole Burleigh does a masterly job in depicting these challenges to the churches’ life and witness across the continent. In the post-1945 conflicts, he stresses the more positive role played by churchmen in helping to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Empire. His hero in this account is undoubtedly Pope John Paul II, but he equally praises the insights on these matters of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Unfortunately at times his bias shows in unnecessary passages of vitriol against “trendy left-wing professors, especially of sociology”, which may possibly be merited, but do not belong in such a valuable historical survey.

Burleigh’s achievement is to provide a synoptic view of the last century which restores the religious dimension, and makes an effective case for its relevance in European history.

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1b) Peter Dembowski, Christians in the Warsaw Ghetto. An epitaph for the unremembered. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 2005. Pp xii,160. This review first appeared in the Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 93, April 2007.

In the writings about the Warsaw Ghetto, little is made of the some five thousand Christians of Jewish origin, mostly Catholics, who shared this plight. Jewish contemporary observers ignored this small group, or made disparaging comments about them. Afterwards, political factors dominated the writing of histories of these events. Archival sources were unavailable, and survivors were often too intimidated to speak out. So it has been left to Peter Dembowski, as an eye-witness, to describe the complexity and perils of their lives and deaths in the Warsaw Ghetto.

These Jewish Christians were a minority within a minority. Most of them had no sense of belonging to the Jewish community, and were only forced to accept this designation when expelled to the ghetto in February 1941. There they shared the fate of 300,000 full Jews in being murdered in the series of enforced deportations to Treblinka in the summer of 1942. In Dembowski’s view the Jewish Christian community ceased to exist in the early stages of the Nazi Aktion.

Within the largely Jewish part of northern Warsaw, there already existed three Catholic parishes: St. Augustine, where the priests lived outside the ghetto, but were later forbidden to enter, and services ceased; All Saints which was the largest church building in Warsaw, built in an imposing classical style; and the Church of the Nativity whose courageous priest resided there throughout the ghetto period, refusing to leave and helping Jews where he could. Like many others, these priests did not consider “their” Catholics to be Jews at all, and were shocked by the Nazi decision to include them in the ruthless isolation and persecution.

Since most of the Jewish Christians were educated and assimilated to Polish society, they were often resented as “enemies of Israel” by the Yiddish-speaking majority of full Jews. But Dembowski, who knew many of them personally, takes a more favourable stance. For their part, the Jewish Christians, usually of a higher social class, sought to maintain their former contacts in Polish Catholic society, attended the church services with diligence, and avoided contact with the majority of Yiddish-speakers around them. For those who had lost any contact with their Jewish roots, or had not been aware that they had any, the shock of being thrust into the ghetto was traumatic.

Another feature of the distance between the two groups can be seen over the plans made by the Catholic clergy to rescue Jewish children by finding places for them to hide in monasteries or convents. These efforts were misinterpreted as “soul snatching”, or in order to gain extra income for these institutions. Jewish observers had a long memory of such Catholic attempts to gain converts. They were rarely convinced by the priests’ assurances that these children would not be subject to proselytism. In fact, even though giving assistance to Jews of any age was punishable by death according to Nazi rules, the evidence is that many children were rescued, especially in 1942. Far more was at stake for these “righteous Gentiles” than monetary gain or conversionary fervour.

One moving testimony is the memoir, as yet untranslated into English, of the prominent Jewish Christian doctor, Ludwig Hirszfeld. His career was suddenly cut short by the Germans in 1939, but he was allowed for a few more months to practice in his hospital for typhus patients until forced to relocate to the ghetto. There he became one of the leading personalities in All Saints parish, and a great admirer of the selfless work of the priest Fr. Godlewski. Luckily he was able to escape just before the deportation Aktion of July-August 1942 when the remaining members of this parish were transported to their deaths in Treblinka. After this terrible atrocity, nothing more is to be found about the Christians in the Warsaw ghetto. In her post-war novel Hana Krall recalled “When the Germans cleared the church of all the Christian Jews, there was only one Jew left in the church: the crucified Jesus above the altar”.

Dembowski is well aware that the converts held an ambiguous position, often resented by both Catholics and Jews, and unable to convince others of the genuineness of their spiritual motivations. Forty-five post-war years of censorship, self-censorship, half-truths, “official” truths, lies and silences have made discussions of this difficult problem in Polish-Jewish relations highly problematic. But the fact that these Christians from the Warsaw Ghetto were murdered along with their fellow Jews undoubtedly affected the basis of the church-synagogue relationship. Today’s fully altered attitude in the Christian church towards Judaism may be said to be the mostfitting epitaph for these unremembered martyrs.

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1c) Robert Zurek, Zwischen Nationalismus und Versöhnung. Die Kirchen und die deutsch-polnischen Beziehungen 1945-1956. (Forschungen und Quiellen zur Kirchen- und Kulturgeschichte Ostdeutschlands. Cologne: Böhlau 2005 413pp
ISBN 3-412-10805-7. This review appeared first on H-German on December 10th 2007

The churches played an important role in improving German-Polish relations, which traditionally have been difficult. At the end of 1965, an exchange of letters between the Polish and the East and West German Catholic bishops prepared the way for a change in politics, which led to West German Chancellor Willy Brandt kneeling in front of the Warsaw ghetto monument in 1970. Robert Zurek focuses on the relationship between the national Catholic churches in Poland, East Germany and West Germany after World War II until 1956 when the Stalinist regime in Poland ended. One of the most important factors in all three societies was the Church, which constituted the largest mass organization and was committed to Christian love for one’s “neighbour”. This book will be of interest to all church historians, as well as scholars dealing with the relationship between politics and cultural history.

Zurek’s study offers an important insight into the powerful German-Polish and Polish-German resentments in place after World War II, even among Christians. The German attack on Poland and the persecution of its population and its priests strengthened :the existing Polish bias against Germany and Prussia. After Germany’s defeat, no amends or restitution payments and only general confessions of guilt were made. Instead, German fugitives and expellees published accounts of Polish atrocities after 1945, which strengthened existing prejudices. Catholics, Protestants and their clergy in Poland and East and West Germany did not differ in their attitudes from their societies at large, which they sought to influence. This state of affairs is hardly surprising in light of the war and events in its aftermath, such as the expulsion of Germans. The wounds of many were still open and fresh, so forgiveness and reconciliation between Germany and Poland were not on the agenda for some time to come. The title of the book appears to imply that the national churches and German-Polish relations were dominated by nationalism in the early period and the will to reconciliation in the latter. This apparent dichotomy does not accurately describe the situation. During the years 1945-56, only a few attempts were made at reconciliation, and no significant differences in attitude existed between the churches, despite the multi-layered situation.

After a short introduction, Zurek focuses on the German-Polish relationship between 1772 and 1956, yet only briefly mentions the role of the national churches in events between 1939 and 1945. This portion of the book is plagued by some problems: for instance, the author uses the unfortunate terms “German Christians” (deutsche Christen) for the Nazi period and also for the period after 1945, which suggests an (ecumenical) unity of Christians which did not exist. The study is then subdivided into seven chapters: “The Churches and National Socialist Crimes”; “The Church, the Expulsion of Germans and the Problems of the German-Polish border”; “The Church and National Minorities”; “The Church and Respective National Views of the Other”; “The German Church and the Persecution of the Polish Church”; “The Churches and their Mutual Contacts”; and “The Church and German-Polish Reconciliation”. In all of the chapters, the author addresses both the Catholic and Protestant perspectives.

Each section concludes with a summary and evaluation. This repetitive presentation does at times impede reading. More importantly a lack of contextual information plagues the analysis throughout. The author refers to different concepts of Kollektivschuld, for instance, but does not provide a rigorous historical discussion of this issue. Sweeping generalizations like “Christian ethics”, “principles of Christian morality” and “Polish reasons of state” are not explained or elaborated upon. In general, readers will expect more information than Zurek provides as to how these principles applied in particular contexts, why they were not followed, and why Christians seemed to have behaved in a very un-Christian manner. Apart from the four main causes of failure to live up to Christian ideals – the antagonistic constellation of German-Polish relations, negative national stereotypes, a difficult socio-political, economic and social situation, and thinking in categories of power and politics but not in religious or ethical ones – as summarized on p. 364 – others factors might have been taken into account. Mentioned in passing is the papal wish, expressed to the head of the German bishops, not to discuss the topics of the pope, Poland and the German-Polish border. This may have been one reason for silence on the German Catholic part. Another factor may have been the pressures put upon the Christian press by the Stalinist political authorities, not discussed here. Moreover at least theologically, reconciliation demands the recognition of guilt and its confession. As there was little consciousness of guilt on either side, forgiveness and reconciliation were impossible.

Among the strengths of the books are the sources. The author relies heavily on the Christian press in order to investigate reconciliation approaches and activities. He consulted thirty-eight newspapers and periodicals from Catholic and Protestant churches in each country. The newspapers heralded even a few private or unofficial initiatives. Exploiting these sources makes it possible to analyze the positions within the churches in all three countries and to draw comparisons. Often biases and similar concepts on opposing sides were revealed, which in turn crystallized the mentalities of the Christians involved. From this approach the reader is given well-documented insights into both mainstream and marginalized voices within the opposing churches.

Still, the author’s source examination is not as strong as it might be. Aside from printed sources, unprinted material was also consulted. Fifteen archives are listed, although their contents are not specified. A survey of the footnotes suggests that some archives were only consulted for rare printed periodicals or books. Somewhat surprisingly, the author boldly claims that it was unnecessary to consult Catholic archives in the former German Democratic Republic. In contemporary history, such an attitude might prove fatal, as it is nearly always possible to find new material, particularly background information about church leaders or on the minutes of ecclesiastical conferences, which are discussed insufficiently in this work. It is to the author’s credit that he consulted both Polish and German sources for a balanced account. There are some errors in his bibliography, and it is a shame that he did not consult the works of Gerhard Besier to amplify his discussion. It would have helped to include the 2002 issue of the journal Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, which specifically dealt with the role of the churches in German-Polish relations during the past two centuries. Finally, given that the topic is one of such contemporaneous history, it would have been enriched by the inclusion of more eyewitness accounts.
Overall this books fills in a blank space on the historical map. But, in essence the balance sheet has to be a negative one, since, for the period covered by Zurek, hardly any attempts were made at reconciliation. Despite their Christian ideals, little or no action followed. Only in the following decade did the ice begin to melt, and a new more positive relationship result. But, for the years covered in this book, the author has given us a balanced and fitting account of the situation as it unfolded.

Klaus-Bernward Springer, University of Erfurt, Germany..

2) Journal article: Emily Baran, “Continental Victims. Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Russian Orthodox Church 1990-2004” in Religion, State and Society, Vol. 35, no. 3, September 2007, p. 261 ff.

Coming to terms with the past has proved to be a difficult task for many of the churches who lived under dictatorial regimes. Emily Baran examines the rival strategies adopted after the collapse of the Communist empire in Russia amongst the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Russian Orthodox Church. Both wanted not so much to reveal the story of their repressive experiences under Stalin and his successors, but to use these for more presentist concerns, and in fact to avail themselves of this ammunition to dispute the claims of the other.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses have since 1990, so Ms Baran claims, become the fastest growing community in the new Russia. As elsewhere, their steadfast witness has drawn in new supporters, and their record of intrepid resistance to state tyranny has been a valuable drawing card. Indeed, as in other countries, the Jehovah’s Witnesses seek to be the barometer of religious freedom in general in the new Russia. But the Russian Orthodox Church sees things differently. They view the Jehovah’s Witnesses as undermining the traditional religious heritage of Russia and as exploiting the Soviet victimization in order to lure citizens away from Russian Orthodoxy. Both organizations see the role of religion as central in Russia’s transition to democracy and have looked to the state to confirm their map of Russia’s religious boundaries.

The new Russian rulers have yet to work to come to terms with the Communist past. No consensus is to be found. Consequently both the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Russian Orthodox Church can portray themselves as victims of repression, while denying that the other had any credible case to speak for the whole religious community. These rivalries are only likely to grow. But who were collaborators, who perpetrators, who victims? Ms Baran’s analysis of these issues brings up a lively discussion which undoubtedly has international repercussions, of which we should take note.

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3) Conference report: Greg Sandford: The Church that came in from the cold. The experiences of Christian Science in East Germany.
This paper was read at the 2008 meeting of the American Historical Association.

The Communist policies towards religious communities in the former East Germany were marked by repression and harassment. The strategy was clear. The Marxist regime sought to eliminate any possible political or ideological rival, to seize control of the education and media outlets, and to monopolize all sections of the national economy. In short, they set out to build up a socialist state through the emergence of a new socialist man. Using the model of the Soviet Union, and availing themselves of many of the former Gestapo’s tactics, the early years of the regime’s governance after 1949 saw a deliberately-induced Church Struggle, which sought to reduce church membership and limit its practices to private pursuits within church walls. Several lesser sects were prohibited outright, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Salvation Army. These regulations continued until the whole experiment was overthrown in 1989
But there were some exceptions. One of these was the Christian Science community about whom Greg Sandford reported at the AHA meeting. Sandford teaches at the Christian Science College in Elsah, Illinois, so his account is predictably one written with filial piety. But he was able to find documentary sources which revealed the surprising reversal of fortunes for this small sect at the end of the Communist era.

When they were banned in the early 1950s by the East German authorities, the sect’s members were faced with the same difficulties as they had experienced under the Nazis, who had placed a ban on their activities in 1941. Nevertheless, so Sandford believes, the unrelenting determination of the surviving members to continue their allegiance to their principles finally brought about a change in their fortunes, and recognition as a legitimate religious society.

Christian Science was founded by Mary Eddy Baker in the late 19th century. In 1945 the few survivors in Germany were able to start again with the help of the Mother Church in Boston. But after the East German regime was firmly in power, restrictions and police searches began, clearly aiming at the sect’s suppression. Their connections with the United States were suspect. Christian Science was accused of having links to Free Masonry, or of being engaged in “lively propagandistic activities to recruit foreign legionaries for the predatory American war” in Korea.

Further suspicion was aroused by the Christian Science practice of healing, which the Communists believed was undertaken solely as a financial swindle. During the 1950s the net got even tighter. In March 1951 Christian Science was struck from the list of permitted religious denominations. Inevitably, members who could leave went to West Germany. Those who remained were increasingly put under surveillance by the Stasi. After the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, their isolation was even greater. Underground meetings of a few supporters was the only means of survival.

Not until the 1980s did the East German authorities begin to show a more flexible mood. Klaus Gysi, the State Secretary for Religious Affairs, was surprisingly favourable to this small group – only 500 people, mostly elderly – which had caused no trouble, was clearly law-abiding, and was likely to put in a good word for the regime with its American backers.

At the end of the 1980s, permission was given for the importation of Christian Science literature from Boston on a private basis. In late 1987, for the first time, an official gathering of Christian Science members was approved, when an American visitor was allowed to speak. A leading Christian Science member, also a pensioner, was allowed to travel to the USA. The Stasi reports on Christian Science grew visibly warmer. In fact the Stasi officer reported that he could find nothing negative about Christian Science and stated that he would have no objection to their recognition. This was in fact granted exactly a week before the Berlin Wall was breached.
Greg Sandford has done an admirable amount of research in the surviving Christian Science as well as Stasi records. He has also had extensive interviews with survivors, including Stasi agents. His account, however, would have been strengthened by including references to the equally surprising fortunes of the Mormon community in East Germany, which obtained even greater and more remarkable concessions at an even earlier date. Nevertheless his account adds another stone to the wider mosaic of the former East Germany’s religious history.

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4) On the occasion of Gerhard Besier’s 60th birthday, his colleagues have gathered a fine tribute in a Festschrift entitled Glaube-Freiheit-Diktatur in Europa und den USA.
Edited by Katarzyna Stokosa and Andrea Strübind, and published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht in Göttingen, this 900 page volume contains contributions by 53 colleagues. The essays are grouped under three headings: Historical Theology, Religious Minorities and their legal status, and European and North American contemporary church history. Your editor is one of those who was glad to send in a heartfelt acknowledgment of our debt to Besier’s leadership in the field of contemporary church history over the past twenty years.

5) International Bonhoeffer Congress, Prague, July 2008

The following letter has been received from Keith Clements, the Chairman of the next International Bonhoeffer Congress
His address is Ckwclem@aol.com

Dear Friends,

Many of you will know already that the 10th International Bonhoeffer Congress will take place in Prague, Czech Republic, 22-27 July 2008. The theme will be Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theology in Today’s World – a Way between Fundamentalism and Secularism? The theme will be treated not only by an impressive panel of plenary speakers beginning with the Professor Juergen Moltmann of Germany who will give the keynote address, but also in over thirty seminars on a wide variety of particular topics by scholars from many different parts of the world.

Those of you who are not, as yet, aware of the Congress but would like to have the full information about programme, accommodation, costs etc are encouraged to consult the Congress website, where you will find all the necessary details.

There is also a special reason, however, for my writing to all of you. Thanks to the generosity of some donors we are able to offer a number of scholarships to cover the costs of registration and accommodation at the Congress for participants who would otherwise not be able to participate for financial reasons. Priority candidates for such bursaries will be participants, especially students, from Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia. The Congress Planning Committee especially wishes to make known this availability and you are therefore cordially invited to publicise it through your institutions and networks of communication, and wherever you have contact with people whom you consider could qualify for consideration. Application forms may be obtained from the Congress office in Prague (see webpage, above).

Thank you in anticipation of your kindness in attending to this!

With all good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Keith Clements
Chairman, 10th International Bonhoeffer Congress

With every best wish
John Conway

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